Americas and Africa

The Americas and Africa caucus invites students to explore the complex history of intercultural encounter, exchange, and conflict that connects South, Central, and North America and the diverse nations of Africa. Courses in this concentration locate these regions within larger global movements of people, goods, and ideas. Major topical themes in the concentration include Indigenous history, African diaspora, immigration, gender, labor, religion, social movements, politics, and critical history of race. Courses in this concentration extend from the colonial era to the modern day and reflect interdisciplinary approaches to historical practice.

Major Requirements

The history major requires a minimum of 12 unique courses. At least eight of the 12 courses must be upper-division (HIS 100-199). A maximum of four courses, including the introductory survey course, may be lower-division (HIS 1-99).

Major Planning Worksheet

Copy a History Major Planning Worksheet and Sample Academic Plans to your UCSC Google Drive.

Region of Concentration: Americas and Africa (6 courses)

I. One lower-division introductory survey course:

All of the above courses satisfy the Ethnicity and Race (ER) general education requirement.

II. Four additional Americas and Africa courses, three of which must be upper-division

III. One Americas and Africa Comprehensive Requirement

Historical Skills and Methods (1 course)

IV. HIS 100, Historical Skills and Methods

HIS 100 introduce history majors to historical methods and provides preparation for advanced historical research. Students develop critical reading, historical analysis, research, and disciplinary writing skills. HIS 100 also satisfies the Textual Analysis and Interpretation (TA) general education requirement.

Students who enter UCSC as frosh are expected to complete HIS 100 by the end of their second year. Transfer students are expected to complete HIS 100 no later than their second term at UCSC.

Catalog of Course Requirements

The History Catalog of Course Requirements indicates what region(s) of concentration and what chronological distribution requirement(s) individual history courses may apply toward.

Breadth Requirements (4 courses)

V. Two courses from each of the remaining two regions of concentration:

Upper-Division Elective (1 course)

One additional upper-division history course of your choice from any of the three regions of concentration

Distribution Requirements

Of the 12 courses required for the major, at least three must meet chronological distribution requirements. One must be set before 600 C.E., and two must be set in periods prior to the year 1800 C.E.

Intensive Major Option

The intensive history major offers students a pathway to enrich their study of history, refine their skills in writing and research, and receive a designation on their transcripts that signals their ambition and accomplishment to potential employers and graduate schools. All history majors are eligible to declare the intensive track, including junior transfers. If a student attempts but does not complete the intensive track they may still graduate with a standard history degree, provided the appropriate major coursework has been completed.

Pronouns she, her, her, hers, herself
Title
- Associate Professor
Division Humanities Division
Department
- History Department
Affiliations Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, Kresge College, Merrill College, Stevenson College
Email
- gpdelgad@ucsc.edu
Office Location
- Humanities Building 1, 542
Office Hours Spring 2024--Weds. By appointment via Zoom; email in advance to set up Zoom meeting at your convenience.
Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services
Mailing Address
- 1156 High Street
- Santa Cruz CA 95003
Faculty Areas of Expertise Border Studies, Ethnicity, Chicana/o Studies, Nationalism, Immigration, Latin American and Latino Studies, Sexuality, Asian American Pacific Islander History, Mexico
Courses History 12: Introduction to Latinx History; History 128: Chicanx History; History 190D: An Undergraduate Seminar in US Migration History; History 190E: Topics in Chicanx History: Chicana Feminism and the Open Borders Debate; History 201: Directed Research Colloquium in the Masters Essay; History 204E: Transnationalism, Borderlands, and History; History 222: Global Sexualities: A Seminar on Queering Historiographies; History 280B: Grant Writing and Academic Conferencing; History 280C: The Academic Job Market
Advisees, Grad Students, Researchers Aaron Anthony Aruck,

Summary of Expertise

North American Borderlands (Canada-U.S.-Mexico)

Immigration--Mexican, Asian

Gender and Sexuality

Race and Nationalism

Chinese in Mexico

Research Interests

North American border-making processes
Chinese in the Americas
Sexuality and Morals Policing
Diasporas and Transnationalism
Nationalism

Biography, Education and Training

Grace Peña Delgado is Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a historian of borderlands and migration in nineteenth and twentieth-century North American. She is the author of Making the Chinese American: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the US-Mexico Borderlands (Stanford: 2012), distinguished as a CHOICE Academic Title. Delgado is also co-author of Latino Immigrants in the United States (Polity: 2011) Professor Delgado has also published numerous articles in the Journal of Social History, Journal of American History, and Western Historical Quarterly, where her piece, “Border Control and Sexual Policing” received numerous best article awards. She is currently completing two books: States Against Sex: Morality and Migration in the Policing of America's Borderlands; and To Open Our Borders: America's New Conversation About Immigration.

Delgado participates on the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (UK) Project on Trafficking, Smuggling and Illicit Migration in Historical and Gendered Perspective at Cambridge University and also collaborates with Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition working group on Modern Day Slavery. In addition to her research, Delgado has received an Excellence in Teaching Award from UCSC’s Academic Senate and is co-lead administrator of UCSC’s Dissertation Proposal Development Program with the Mellon-SSRC Foundation. Delgado received her Ph.D. from UCLA in American History.

Honors, Awards and Grants

UCSC, Academic Senate, recipient, Excellence in Teaching Award

Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Exclusion, and Localism in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Stanford University Press: 2012) was distinguished as a CHOICE Academic Title.

"Border Control and Sexual Policing: White Slavery and Prostitution along the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1903-1910," Western Historical Quarterly (Summer 2012): 157-178, has won four awards for outstanding scholarly article:

Oscar O. Winther Award (2012) -- best article published in the Western Historical Quarterly in that year
Judith Lee Ridge Award (2012) -- best article in history published by a member of the Western Association of Women Historians
Jensen-Miller Award (2013) -- best article in the field of women and gender in the North American West
Bolton-Cutter Award (2013) -- best article on Spanish Borderlands history

Selected Publications

2012 - Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Stanford University Press)
2012 - Latino Immigrants in the United States (Polity Press, Cambridge, England)
2011 - “Neighbors by Nature: Relationships, Border Crossings, and Transnational Communities in the Chinese Exclusion Era,” Pacific Historical Review 80, no. 3: 401 - 429.
2004 - “At Exclusion’s Southern Gate: Changing Categories of Race and Class among Chinese Fronterizos, 1882 - 1904” in Continental Crossroads: Remapping the History of the U.S.-Mexico Border, eds. Samuel J. Truett and Elliot Young, Duke University Press, 183-208.

Teaching Interests

U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Chicano/a History
Latino American History
Nationalism
Asian and Latino Immigration