For millennia, the Southwest region has been a crossroads of cultures, languages, customs, and ideas. Its diverse ethnic groups and societies, past and present, lend the Southwest a distinct regional identity, shaped by the land itself.

It was in recognition of that special character that the Southwest Center was first conceived at a conference held at San Xavier del Bac Mission, outside Tucson, in 1978, when then-president John Schaefer and field historian Bernard L. Fontana, among others, first proposed that an institution devoted to regional studies be founded at the University of Arizona. Eight years later, their vision was realized with the formal establishment of the Southwest Center.

Faculty and research associates of the Southwest Center document and interpret the region’s natural and human cultures through a vigorous program of scholarly investigation. Recognizing that no single academic discipline can fully comprehend the Southwest, the Center serves foremost as a clearinghouse for the exchange of ideas from many fields. Insights drawn from social and intellectual history, anthropology, geography, folklore, literature, photography, architecture, politics, ecology, ethno-botany, and the natural sciences alike contribute to our ever-broadening study of the region.

A research unit of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the University of Arizona, the Southwest Center has a threefold mission: to sponsor and facilitate research on the Greater Southwest, to publish exemplary work growing from that research, and to act in service to citizens of the region through programs of teaching and outreach. In all three areas special emphasis is given to strengthening individual and institutional ties to our colleagues at universities and cultural centers in the Republic of Mexico.

The Southwest Center carries out the land grant mission of the University of Arizona by creating partnerships with Sonora and Mexico, contributing substantially to scholarship and research on diverse cultures native to the Southwest, and representing to the larger world the University’s regional interest and expertise. The Center’s activities are based in three disciplines-ethnoecology, architecture, and folklore-and extend into five broad areas: native peoples of the Mexican northwest; contemporary cultural studies and folklore of the region; ethnobotany/ecology/rural development of the region; history of anthropology; and architectural cultures of the Southwest. 



The Southwest Center is a founding partner of the Consortium for Southwest Studies.

RESEARCH

Since its inception, the Southwest Center has sponsored dozens of research projects that have enhanced our understanding of trans-border culture and history.

• Linguistic and literary studies of the Yaqui People of Sonora;
• Diachronic analyses of the economics, cultures, and history of northern Mexico;
• Research in comparative urban development;
• Ethnobotanical studies among the Mayo and Guarijío peoples of southern Sonora.
• Multidisciplinary studies of the region that explore cultural dimensions of plant cultivation and land use;
• Southwestern folklore;
• Study and inventory of Sonoran religious art;
• Studies in the architecture and urbanism of northwest Mexico and the American Southwest.

EDUCATION

The Southwest Center provides a platform for cross-disciplinary regional studies through a vigorous publication program; support and creation of research initiatives on the Greater Southwest (including northwest Mexico); public outreach and transborder programming, including conferences, seminars, field trips, and cultural events; and teaching in the Department of English (folklore) and School of Architecture (urbanism and architectural preservation). Southwest Center initiatives are designed for their multiplier effects on the research, teaching and outreach mission of the University, creating new opportunities for interdisciplinary and binational scholarship.

The Center sponsors the Southwest Center Book series with the University of Arizona Press, as well as an imprint (”A University of Arizona Southwest Center Book”) with the University of New Mexico Press, and publishes Journal of the Southwest, a scholarly regional quarterly.

Recent public outreach efforts include:

• The development of a biological reserve in cooperation with comuneros of the Mayo indigenous community of Masiaca, in southern Sonora;
• Historic preservation projects in Sonora in collaboration with faculty and students from the University of Sonora and Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History;
• Teaching and mentoring of Mexican architecture students from the Universities of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas through a University of Arizona exchange program;
• A collaborative project with the City of Tucson to research and design a downtown plaza based on regional principles of urbanism;
• A Spanish-language translation of ethnobotanical studies done with the Guarijío people;
• Participation in the PBS program “The Desert Speaks”;
• Plans to establish a binational book series through formal convenios with universities in northwest Mexico, a series which will be linked to our ongoing program of support for Mexican scholars.