Synopses & Reviews
In Fevered Measures, John Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez examines public health campaigns along the Texas-Mexico border between 1848 and 1942 and reveals the changing medical and political frameworks U.S. health authorities used when facing the threat of epidemic disease. The medical borders created by these officials changed with each contagion and sometimes varied from the existing national borders. Federal officers sought to distinguish Mexican citizens from U.S. citizens, a process troubled by the deeply interconnected nature of border communities. Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez uncovers forgotten or ignored cases in which Mexicans, Mexican Americans, African Americans, and other groups were subject toandmdash;and sometimes agents ofandmdash;quarantines, inspections, detentions, and forced-treatment regimens. These cases illustrate the ways that medical encounters shaped border identities before and after the Mexican Revolution. Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez also maintains that the threat of disease provided a venue to destabilize identity at the border, enacted processes of racialization, and re-legitimized the power of U.S. policymakers. He demonstrates how this complex history continues to shape and frame contemporary perceptions of the Latino body today.
Review
andquot;In Fevered Measures, through dramatic case studies, John Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez brings exciting new insights to the intersection of state formation, racial formations, and medical discourse. Using archives on both sides of the border, he complicates our analysis of federal and local dynamics, earning a place among the best of the new borderlands historians.andquot;
Review
andquot;Fevered Measures remaps the border as a space in which ideas of race and nation take on new meanings in relation to the development of the state and science. The book serves as a superior model for analyzing and narrating the transnational flow of people, ideas, and policies.andquot;
Review
“This very detailed and thoroughly reference work will be of greatest interest to students or scholars of the history of public health or the history of public policy, particularly immigration policy. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers/faculty.” - M. A. Thompson, Choice
Review
andldquo;Fevered Measures is an engaging and multi-layered historical narrative that underscores the centrality of public health to daily life, social relations and power dynamics along the Texas Mexico border over one century. . . . What makes this story particularly compelling is that Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez frames it with a compassionate and informed plea for greater awareness of Latina/o health disparities.andrdquo;
Review
“John Mckiernan-González's impressive work Fevered Measures reminds us that the intertwining connections of race, health, and exclusion have a long history in the United States.” - Amy M. Hay, Southern Spaces
Review
andldquo;Mckiernan-Gonzalez . . . adds substantially to the large literature on the history of public health, particularly its role in controlling immigration into the United States.andrdquo;
Review
“The vivid and rich narrative of Fevered Measures should reach both an academic and popular audience on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border.” - Miguel A. Levario, Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Review
“Fevered Measures is a wonderful and significant contribution to Latina/o studies, medical history, and borderlands history.” - Mark Allan Goldberg, Pacific Historical Review
Review
“Mckiernan-Gonzalez . . . adds substantially to the large literature on the history of public health, particularly its role in controlling immigration into the United States.” Global Public Health
Review
andldquo;Mckeirnan-Gonzandaacute;lez provides a sophisticated and ?ne-grained analysis of the work of overzealous public health of?cials on the border, but he also places these efforts in a global imperial context.andrdquo;
Review
“Fevered Measures is a wonderful and significant contribution to Latina/o studies, medical history, and borderlands history.” Stephen J. Kunitz - American Historical Review
Review
andldquo;Fevered Measures gives us a penetrating view of the intersections between race and public health policies, bringing new insights to the history of both the borderlands and US public health. It will be valuable to students and researchers in Chicano/Latino studies, in social sciences and humanities. Appealing also to a broader audience, this welcome book contributes significantly to the current debates about Latinos and American public health. . . .andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Fevered Measures is a wonderful and significant contribution to Latina/o studies, medical history, and borderlands history.andrdquo;
Synopsis
In Fevered Measures, John Mckiernan-Gonzand#225;lez examines public health campaigns along the Texas-Mexico border between 1848 and 1942 and reveals the changing medical and political frameworks U.S. health authorities used when facing the threat of epidemic disease.
About the Author
John Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas, Austin.
Table of Contents
Notes on Labeling Places, Peoples, and Diseases ix
Introduction 1
1. From the U.S.-Mexican War to the Mexican-Texas Epidemic: Fevers, Race, and the Making of a Medical Border 18
2. The Promise of Progress: Quarantines and the Medical Fusion of Race and Nation, 1890-1895 59
3. The Appearance of Progress: Black Labor, Smallpox, and the Body Politics of Transnational American Citizenship, 1895 78
4. The Power of Progress: Laredo and the Limits of Federal Quarantines, 1898-1903 123
5. Domestic Tensions at an American Crossroads: Bordering on Gender, Labor, and Typhus Control, 1910-1920 165
6. Bodies of Evidence: Vaccination and the Body Politics of Transnational Mexican Citizenship, 1910-1920 198
7. Between Border Quarantine and the Texas-Mexico Border: Race, Citizenship, and National Identities, 1920-1942 236
Epilogue. Moving between the Border Quarantine and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands 274
Acknowledgments 285
Notes 289
Bibliography 363
Index 403