Adam Lifshey, associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University, will present his paper "Born in the Estados Unidos: The Unbordered Frontiers of Latin America from Gloria Anzaldúa to Bruce Springsteen and Beyond," at this year’s Modern Language Association annual Convention, in Chicago. In his paper, Lifshey explores the possibility of studying the border songs of Bruce Springsteen and other musicians within Latin American contexts.

“Latin America does not stop, after all, at the national line between Mexico and the United States,” says Lifshey. “Currently, approximately one-tenth of the Mexican population is in the United States, a figure that does not even include the millions of Mexican Americans who are U.S. citizens.” Due to an 1846-48 war, one-half of Mexico actually is the United States he says.

Writing in the field of border studies, he explores the implications of the reality that Latin America and the US flow into each other in indivisible ways. “They cannot be cleanly separated into two distinct geopolitical or cultural units,” Lifshey argues. In one example, "Matamoros Banks" of the 2005 "Devils & Dust" album, Springsteen adopts the voice of a Mexican man who dies in the Rio Grande as he tries to reach his love on the northern side. Springsteen is entirely sympathetic to the man’s plight, as he is in other songs. “These sorts of moves, particularly by a figure so associated with U.S. national imagery as Springsteen, challenge conventional definitions of both Latin America and the United States and the walls that supposedly separate them,” says Lifshey.