“America at 250: A View from Mexico,” February 13 America at 250 Lecture with Prof. Erkia Pani

REGISTER HERE

For the second installment of the Kinder Institute’s Spring 2026 lecture series exploring the global significance of the United States’ 250th anniversary, Erika Pani, Research Professor at El Colegio de México’s Centro de Estudios Históricos, will situate the nation’s historical trajectory in the context of its two-centuries-long relationship with Mexico (see abstract below). The event will be held on Friday, February 13 in the ballroom at the Tiger Hotel, with Prof. Pani’s talk starting at 5pm and a reception to follow. Anyone interested in attending can RSVP (recommended, but not required) using the link above.

“A Relationship So Strange: Mexico and the United States at 204”

The border between Mexico and the United States is almost 2,000 miles long. Established in 1848, as a result of war and the relinquishment of half of Mexico’s territory to its aggressor, it is among the most stable of modern international borders. Today, the most frequently crossed international boundary in the world is lined by a border wall and guarded by over 25,000 members of security forces. Since the mid-nineteenth century, this border has both separated and brought together profoundly different social, cultural, and political realities, and increasingly disparate State, military, and economic capacities. This talk will probe the two-centuries-long complex, contradictory, and profoundly asymmetric relationship between dissimilar neighbors, and particularly the evolving and engrossing place that the United States occupied in the Mexican imagination, as model, threat, sister republic, partner, enemy, and destination.

Most recently the author of Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867 (UNC Press, 2025), Erika Pani is a Research Professor at El Colegio de México’s Centro de Estudios Históricos

The Spring 2026 America at 250: Global Perspectives Lecture Series is brought to you in partnership with the State Historical Society of Missouri