Jake Swisher

PhD student in history, University of Notre Dame

Jacob Swisher is an environmental historian with interests in borderlands, the digital humanities, and the North American Southwest. He received his M.A. in history from Colorado State University and is currently a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Notre Dame.

Jake Swisher
Jake Swisher

Written by Jake Swisher

  • Photo closeup of four beef hamburgers cooking on a grill. The first side of the burgers has been cooked, because the tops of each burger patty have "grill marks" lining them. The orange grill flames are visible beneath the black cast iron grates of the grill and a few wisps of smoke are rising from the cooking surface.

    COWvid-19: A Look Back at the Meat of 2020

    It was a year of reckonings both big and small. In 2020, Covid-19 disrupted supply chains around the world as consumers adapted to the new realities of life in a pandemic. Sometimes, it took something as simple as an all-American entree to help us see how truly connected we all were.

  • Jake Swisher

    Were They Mexicans or Coloradans? Constructing Race and Identity at the Colorado–New Mexico Border

    What does it mean to be a Coloradan? A connection to snow-capped, Rocky Mountain peaks and imposing, river canyon walls is often part of the portrait, even for those who migrate to growing cities along the Front Range. For Coloradans on the Eastern Plains, a relationship to agricultural landscapes and rural communities remains important too. A diverse heritage also shapes Colorado identity—one that fuses Colorado’s American history with the state’s Spanish, Mexican, and Indigenous pasts. Currently, this cultural identity grows more expansive as Colorado continues to experience an influx of Americans from across the United States and immigrants from around the globe. 

    These two characteristics—a powerful connection to nature and a diverse cultural inheritance—converge in the San Luis Valley, a small, intermontane park in southern Colorado where the state’s complex past and multicultural identity are made manifest beneath a sublime, mountainous backdrop. Today, the San Luis Valley is a Colorado landscape. But it almost wasn’t.