Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é

Professor of History

I joined the Department of History at UTEP in 2002, after receiving my PhD from Arizona State Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é.  Since then I have taught graduate and undergraduate courses in U.S., Indigenous, Borderlands, Western, Environmental, and Public History.  I have chaired several dissertation and masters committees on topics as diverse as colonial era Spanish masculinity, gender and the bracero program, Indigenous-African relations in the early Florida borderlands, Native peoples and legal borderlands, and the tri-racial dimensions of settler-colonial violence in nineteenth century New Mexico.  My research interests include Indigenous peoples in North America, particularly the Apache/Nde’ and Native groups in the U.S. – Mexico borderlands: environmental history; biography; and art and culture as a form of resistance to militarizing the borderlands.  My first book, , was published in 2010 with the Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é of Arizona Press; and my second book, , came out in 2019 with the Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é of Massachusetts Press.  My most recent articles and chapters include, “Land, Labor, and Leadership: The Political Economy of Hualapai Community Building,1910-1940,” in Brian Hosmer and Colleen O’Neil (Eds.)  (Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é Colorado, 2004); “At the Crossroads of Hualapai History, Memory, and American Colonization: Contesting Space & Place," in The American Indian Quarterly; “Reflections from the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands on a ‘Border-Rooted’ Paradigm in Higher Education,” with Cynthia Bejarano, in Ethnicities, (January 2018); and, “Race, Blood, and Belonging: Transnational Blackfoot Bands and Families along the U.S. – Canada Border, 1870-1915,” in Pablo Mitchell and Katrina Jagodinsky (Eds.) , (The Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é of Kansas Press, 2018).  I am presently working on several projects: a biography of Wendell Chino, who was president of the Mescalero Nation for nearly 40 years; an investigation into the Apache Treaty of 1852; and an analysis of the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site as an example of settler colonial memory making, racial violence, and the politics of historical commemoration.  In addition, I am the co-editor (with Myla Vicenti Carpio) of the book series, , through the Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é of Arizona Press.  I have received grants from the American Philosophical Society, the Andrew H. Mellon Foundation, The Charles Redd Center at Brigham Young Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é, and Texas Tech Ãå±±ÂÖ¼é.  Between 2011 and 2019 I was Director of the PhD Program in History, and I served as Department Chair from 2019 to 2023.   

Curriculum Vitae  

Contact Info:

Liberal Arts 326

(915) 747-6805

Email: jpshepherd@utep.edu