About the workshop

Arizona-Sonora Borderland, Palimpsest of Cultures is a residential workshop that brings K-12 educators to Tucson and the Arizona Borderlands for one week in summer 2022 to study the arts, environments and plural cultures of the region in the context of past habitation and present conditions of tri-national (U.S., Mexico, Native Nations) coexistence. The workshop’s framing question is, how do place, space and identity intermingle in the region’s millennia of layered written, oral, aural and visual histories to construct its futures?

Given current conversations about the nature of the US-Mexico border and global migration more generally, the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands present a compelling and real-time learning-lab for studying the layered histories, cultures, arts, ecologies, and current events of the region. The workshop week will unfold chronologically to track human impact in and on this space and place, from ancestral and modern indigenous presence to Spanish colonialism, Anglo settlement, and the cumulative environmental and political effects of the diverse cultures in the 21st century Arizona-Sonora Borderlands.

This historical geography will be enlivened through readings, lectures, and immersive visits to archaeological, architectural, artistic, cultural, agricultural and native landscapes, including an exploration of the US-Mexico border itself. Workshop content will be highly adaptable for grades 6 to 12, although many topics are relevant to younger students as well.

Academic & professional outcomes

Participants will produce two items during the week: 1) a teaching portfolio which includes an individual lesson or curricular plan for applied practice in a specific course; 2) an individual vlog in which they reflect upon workshop content and experiences in relation to their own classroom or educational practice, share insights and discoveries with fellow participants, and curate an archive of their experience for future use. The blogs will be linked to this website and used to build a broader conversation about the Borderlands region. Video essays and digital stories may supplement the blogs. The workshop’s place-based approach, including on-site experiential learning, will thus translate directly to participants’ own curricula and classrooms.