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Omar Valerio-Jiménez

Latina/o, Borderlands, 19th-century U.S., & American West

Office: 260 SH

Office Hours:
M/W 10:30AM-12:00PM
and by appointment

Tel: (319) 335-2294

Email: omar-valerio@uiowa.edu

Research

Teaching

Publications

Awards &
Service

Research

Omar Valerio-Jiménez joined the History Department in 2006. He is currently completing his first book, Rio Grande Crossings: Identity and Nation along the Mexico-Texas Border, 1749-1890 (under contract with Duke University Press), which combines his research interests in the histories of Chicana/os, the American West, and borderlands. The book explores state formation and cultural change along the Mexico-United States border during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It traces changes in ethnicity, citizenship, and gender relations among borderland residents as jurisdiction over the area passed from native peoples to Spain, Mexico, and finally the United States. His research is based on Spanish- and English-language archives in each of these countries.

His published work has appeared in the Journal of Women’s History, Estudios Mexicanos/Mexican Studies, Pacific Historical Review, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and Southwestern Historical Quarterly. He has also contributed chapters on Latinos, the American West, and the Spanish borderlands to various anthology collections including A Companion to California History, America on the World Stage, Latinas in the United States, and TheAtlas of the U.S. and Canadian Environmental History.

He has begun work on a study of Latinos in early twentieth-century Iowa that explores acculturation, labor, and gender relations. His longer-term project is a transnational study of the U.S.-Mexican War that examines memory, identity, and nationalism. His research and writing has been funded by the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, the Newberry Library, the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Valerio-Jiménez received his MA and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to becoming a historian, he worked as an electrical engineer for five years after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

Teaching

He has taught courses on the history of immigration, comparative borderlands, ethnic relations, the American West, Latina/os, and Chicana/os at universities in California, Texas, and New York. Courses recently taught at Iowa include:

  • 16A:051 Colloquium in History (American)
  • 16A:112 Chicana/o History
  • 16A:113 Latina/o Immigration
  • 16:280 Readings in Latina/o History
  • 16:281 Readings in Borderlands History

Publications

  • "New Avenues for Domestic Dispute and Divorce Lawsuits along the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1834-1893," Journal of Women’s History 21:1 (Spring 2009), 10-34.
  • "Strategies for Teaching the American West in a Global Context," in America on the World Stage: Essays on the Teaching of the United States History Survey, eds. Gary Reichard and Ted Dickson (University of Illinois Press, 2008), 99-106.
  • "Race and Immigration in Nineteenth-Century California," in A Companion to California History , eds. William Deverell and David Igler (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 145-158.
  • "Latinos in the American West," in The West: Perspectives on American Social History, ed. Benjamin H. Johnson (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007), 47-70.
  • "Spanish-Mexican Women in Texas," in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, eds. Virginia Sánchez Korrol and Vicki L. Ruiz ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 716-719.
  • "Spanish in Florida and the Southwest," in The Atlas of the U.S. and Canadian Environmental History, ed. Char Miller ( New York: Routledge, 2003), 16-17.
  • Co-author with Tracy McNulty and Mark Patrick, The Popol Vuh: Sacred History of the Maya (textbook and curriculum for intermediate school students; Irvine: Humanities Out There, University of California, Irvine, 2003).
  • "Neglected Citizens and Willing Traders: The Villas del Norte (Tamaulipas) in Mexico’s Northern Borderlands, 1749-1846," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 18:2 (summer 2002), 251-296.
  • "From Island to Mainland: Caribbean Migration, 1952-1995," in The Settling of North America, ed. Helen H. Tanner (New York: Macmillan, 1995), 170-171.
  • "El Norte: Spanish-Speaking Americans Come North, 1910-1995," in The Settling of North America, ed. Helen H. Tanner (New York: Macmillan, 1995), 172-173.

Awards & Service

  • Old Gold Summer Fellowship, 2007
  • Huntington-WHA Martin Ridge Fellowship, Western History Association, 2001-2002
  • Summerfield Roberts Postdoctoral Fellowship, Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, 2001-2002
  • Faculty Grant, University of California Institute for Mexico & the United States, 2001-2002
  • Institute of American Cultures Predoctoral Fellowship, University of California, Los Angeles, 1997-1998
  • Visiting Research Fellowship, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1996-1997
  • Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Ford Foundation and National Research Council, 1996-1997 (declined)
  • Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Project Grant, University of Houston, 1996
  • Short-Term Resident Fellowship, The Newberry Library, 1996
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2005. All rights reserved.		 Department of History, 280 Schaeffer Hall, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242. Tel: 319-335-2299. FAX: 319-335-2293.