To mark our 40th anniversary, we have built a small but growing website where the history of the Southwest Center comes to life across three collections: Voices, Ideas, and Memory.

We are just getting started. The Voices section opens with a conversation with Joe Wilder, the director who shaped the Center for over three decades. Ideas features a growing selection of Journal of the Southwest articles that have stood the test of time — the second of which is Josiah Heyman's landmark 2008 essay on border enforcement, a piece whose questions have only grown more urgent. And Memory gathers documents from the earliest days, including the letter that called the very first meeting together back in 1978.

We will be adding to all three collections throughout the year. But we also need your help. If the Southwest Center has been part of your life as a scholar, a student, a collaborator, or simply a curious soul who showed up to a lecture once, we want to hear from you. Send us your memories, your photographs, your stories. This anniversary belongs to all of us.

[Visit the anniversary page] | [Share your memories]