Faculty Research Spotlight: Jed Kuhn

March 2025

Hello, everyone. I am excited to share a little about my research with you. Currently, I’m working on a book titled Traces of Intimacy: Native Americans and Mexican Americans in the Sierra Borderlands. It is a relational study of Native and Mexican American racialization in California and Nevada from the 1840s to the recent past. It examines how racial ideas about Native Americans and Mexican Americans developed over time and interact, and it examines how the way we think about these groups today structures how we understand the past.

My research reveals that the way we think about these groups today is different than how we thought about them in the past. In the lead-up to the Mexican-American War in the 1840s, for example, lawmakers and journalists frequently depicted Mexicans as racially Indian. The U.S. depicted Mexicans as racially Indian to justify treating them like it treated Indians. In other words, it justified taking their land. The idea of Mexicans as racially Indian surfaces at various points throughout history, often to justify segregation or curtailing Mexican immigration. Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers have sought to increasingly restrict who counts as Native American through a series of policies designed to end the U.S.’s ongoing obligation to Native peoples as colonized subjects. I examine how these differing histories of racialization work together to define the boundaries of racial categories and indigeneity in the American west.

My research also reveals that the way we think about Native Americans and Mexican Americans today has impacted the way we do research. Scholars often examine the history and literature of one group or the other. My project, on the other hand, examines what I call traces of intimacy—moments of relationship or connection between Native Americans and Mexican Americans. For instance, the first novel written by a Native American author—John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854)—is about Mexican Americans in California. Moreover, many Native communities in California and Nevada have been intermarrying with Mexicans/Mexican Americans for generations, some since the Spanish colonization of California in the late 1700s. Scholars often ignore these moments of connection because they don’t clearly fit within either Native American studies or Chicanx/Latinx studies. By centering my study on these traces of intimacy, my project sheds new light on how Native Americans and Mexican Americans have strategically negotiated their relationship to each other in their attempts to survive U.S. colonization.

I am currently working on finishing a full draft of my manuscript to send to my publisher, University of California Press. My editor will then send it out for other scholars to review. Once I get those reviews, I’ll begin the process of revising the manuscript once more. Turning my PhD dissertation into a publishable book has been a long process (over 10 years at this point!), but an enjoyable one. What keeps me motivated is a love for writing, my love and commitment to my Mexican American family and community, my love and commitment to the Washoe tribal community where I worked for several years, and my commitment to ethical relations with Native peoples. I have been delighted to be a part of the generous, welcoming community here in the History Department. I have been encouraged by the smart, thoughtful engagement of my students. I look forward to discussing the intricacies of race, indigeneity, and culture in the American West with students and colleagues for many years to come.

Prof. Jed Kuhn