Skip to main content
//

Jerry D. Wallace

  Jerry D. Wallace

Contact Info:
jwallace@nmsu.edu
Breland 247

 

Education:  

B.A. History and Government, New Mexico State University   

M.A. History, New Mexico State University   

Ph.D. History, University of New Mexico  

 

Research and Teaching Interests: 
Borderlands History, Environmental History, Urban History, U.S. West, Historic Preservation, Public History.

Professor Wallace’s forthcoming book,  The Forgotten Empire: Trost & Trost and the Revival of Spanish Renaissance in the US-Mexico Borderlands, 1903-2020 (UNM Press, 2025), explores how Henry Trost’s borderlands architecture became an iconic symbol of modernity. His research also investigates twentieth-century neighborhood identities, including through shopping malls, five and dimes, and department stores, and he is interested in human-animal relationships in the borderlands, including humans’ interactions with deer, coyotes, mountain lions, wolves, and bears. Professor Wallace regularly participates in a wide variety of community-based research projects and exhibitions, including  The Murals of Las Cruces , which was covered by the National Council on Public History , and  The Murals of El Paso discussed by The Humanities Collaborative . Professor Wallace is overseeing the exhibition The Historic Theaters of Dona Ana County, forthcoming at the Branigan Cultural Center in the Spring of 2024.

 

Selected Publications    

The Forgotten Empire: Trost & Trost and the Revival of Spanish Renaissance in the US-Mexico Borderlands, 1903-2020 , forthcoming, University of New Mexico Press, 2025.   

“Passing the Buck” How Homer Pickens and Bucky the Mule Deer Influenced an Environmental Ethic in the Atomic City, 1958-1968, in progress.   

“ New Mexico’s Eerie Stories and Abandoned Places”   New Mexico Historical Review 96:2 (Spring 2021), 233-36.

“ All Over New Mexico: The Bellamah Addition and Other Midcentury Borderland Neighborhoods,”   New Mexico Historical Review 94:4  (Fall 2019), 383-415.

 

Service  

Historic Preservation Commissioner, Historic Preservation Board, City of Las Cruces, 2023.  

Vice Chair, Dona Ana County Historical Society, 2022.  

Chair, J. Paul Taylor Academy Governance Council, 2019.   

 

Awards  

Lansing B. Bloom Award for best dissertation on the history of New Mexico and the Southwest, 2023.   

Mellon Faculty Fellow, EPCC-UTEP Humanities Collaboration, 2020 and 2023, including historic preservation research on Rosedale Farms .

 

Courses  

HIST 1110 Early United States History 
HIST 1120 Recent United States History
HIST 368 New Mexico History
HIST 313/511 Making the American West  
HIST 397/594 Introduction to Public History  
HIST 483/583 Historic Preservation   
HIST 486/586 Interpreting Historic Places