Professor Emeritus Daniel Arreola will speak about his book, “Postcards from the Sonora Border: Visualizing Place through a Popular Lens, 1900s-1950s,” as part of the State of Arizona Research Library’s 2023 Arizona Author Series.

The talk takes place at 1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2, and will be held virtually on Zoom.

Attendees can click here to register to receive the link to the presentation. After the talk, there will be time for questions from the audience.

The publisher, University of Arizona Press, provides this book summary:

“Young men ride horses on a dusty main road through town. Cars and gas stations gradually intrude on the land, and, years later, curiosity shops and cantinas change the face of Mexican border towns south of Arizona.

Between 1900 and the late 1950s, Mexican border towns came of age both as centers of commerce and as tourist destinations. Postcards from the Sonora Border reveals how images — in this case the iconic postcard — shape the way we experience and think about place.”

Making use of his personal collection of historic images, Arreola captures the evolution of Sonoran border towns, creating a sense of visual “time travel” for the reader. Supported by maps and visual imagery, the author shares the geographical and historical story of five unique border towns — Agua Prieta, Naco, Nogales, Sonoyta, and San Luis Río Colorado.

“Postcards from the Sonora Border” introduces readers to these important towns and provides individual stories about each, using the postcards as markers.

Arreola is a cultural and historical geographer who specializes in the study of the Mexican American borderland and Hispanic cultures in America. He is the recipient of the Paul P. Vouras Medal from The American Geographical Society for his studies in regional geography, and the Carl O. Sauer Distinguished Scholarship Award and the Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award from the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers for his Mexican borderland studies.

He is the author of seven scholarly books, and is an Arizona State University Professor Emeritus, and currently resides in Placitas, New Mexico.