Scholar In Residence
Katherine Benton-Cohen
January – May 2024
Starting this month, historian, scholar, and Georgetown University professor Katherine Benton-Cohen is here for a five-month sabbatical. While here, Katie will be working on a global history of the Phelps-Dodge family, whose capitalist and philanthropic links between New York, the US-Mexico Borderlands, and the Middle East profoundly changed each region.
This winter, Central School is excited and honored to be sharing a space in our facility with historian, scholar, and Georgetown University professor Katherine Benton-Cohen for a five-month sabbatical.
She will be joined in Bisbee by her husband and younger son, who will be attending Greenway Elementary. While here, Katie will be working on a global history of the Phelps-Dodge family, whose capitalist and philanthropic links between New York, the US-Mexico Borderlands, and the Middle East profoundly changed each region.
Katie is a native Arizonan and a long-time friend of the Bisbee community, as she has spent so much time here over the years mining local archives to write her books and articles. In 2016- 2017 She generously shared her research materials with the Bisbee planning committee helping us build a symposium that observed the 100th anniversary of Bisbee Deportation. She is also the author of Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands (Harvard 2009), which was the basis for her work as historical advisor for the much-acclaimed documentary feature film, Bisbee ’17.
Her most recent book is Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy (Harvard, 2018). Her interests include the history of the American West, race and immigration, and women and gender in the United States.
Here is a great article to read by Katie. We hope you enjoy it:
Two Ways of Looking at the Bisbee Deportation: A century-old image and the film it inspired.
Stay tuned for opportunities to meet and learn about her work. She will have office hours at Copper Queen Library and we will be hosting a presentation here at Central School
