Zachary Crouch

I am a historian of animals in the Mexico-U.S. borderlands during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920. My work focuses on how the theft of livestock during the revolution tied into the politics of the border. The goal of my work is to move away from U.S. centered histories of the borderlands towards a Mexican-centered history of the borderlands. I ask the questions of how Mexican revolutionaries used the border to further their revolution, and how the Mexican and U.S. nation-states responded to these threats on the border. My research also centers animals as being part of the revolutionary state-making through meat consumption, focusing on Chihuahua during the Constitutionalist state under Pancho Villa. While working on my dissertation project, I am also in collaboration with the Colegio Mexiquense A.C. in the Estado de México to publish an edited volume on animal histories of Mexico. 

Outside of my research I work as the Coffee Project Coordinator for the local nonprofit Building New Hope. The goal of the nonprofit is to provide economically and environmentally sustainable coffee for both coffee farmers and drinkers. I also collaborated with colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh to inaugurate the Three Rivers HIstory Graduate conference, a conference dedicated to elevating the work of history graduate students across the Rust Belt. 

 

Conferences Attended

• Northeastern Graduate History Conference, Boston 2024. 
• Asociación Latinoamericana de Historia Rural, Mexico City 2024. 
• American Society of Environmental Historians, Pittsburgh 2025.