MARIE SALDAÑA
I explore the borderlands of history, data, and design.
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TAMING THE WILD HORSE DESERT
2018 - Present
Taming the Wild Horse Desert explores the origins, relationships, and built environment of the families who settled the Wild Horse Desert, otherwise known as the Nueces Strip, during the years before and after the region was annexed to the United States.
Before the border between Mexico and the United States was drawn in 1848, generations of Spanish and Mexican soldiers and settlers had arrived in the frontier north of the Rio Grande. They intermarried, crossing racial boundaries; they started families and put down roots; they applied for land grants and established garrisons, towns, ranches, and homesteads. This project tells the story of these settlers and their spaces in an architectural and social history that traces the family networks, placemaking practices, and built environment of Spanish and Mexican habitation in Texas.
Related Activities
Taming the Wild Horse DesertDigital Project, Ongoing
Database, maps and network visualizations linking people, places, and buildings.
Settled SpacesMonograph, in preparation
An architectural and social history of Mexican ranching families in South Texas.
“Interiority and Mestizaje: Entanglements in the Tejano Borderlands”Book chapter, forthcoming
In Race in Design History, edited by Kristina Wilson and Michelle Wilkinson. Princeton University Press.
“Monuments and Metadata: Navigating Scale in Cultural Landscapes”Book chapter, in review
Debates in Digital Humanities: Cultures of Scale, edited by Sarah H. Salter, Jim Casey, Benjamin Charles Germain Lee, and Joshua Ortiz Baco. University of Minnesota Press.
2024 – 2025 FellowNational Endowment for the Humanities
Funding towards research and writing on book project Settled Spaces.
"Interiority and Mestizaje: Entanglements in the Tejano Borderlands"Conference presentation, April 2024
Society of Architectural Historians Annual International Conference, Albuquerque, NM.
“Province of Interiors: Strategies and Tactics on the Frontier of Northern New Spain”Book chapter, 2024
In Interior Design on Edge, edited by Erica Morawski, Deborah Schneiderman, Keena Suh, Karin Tehve, and Karyn Zieve, 43–61. Routledge.
“Acts of Possession: Survey and Embodiment in Nuevo Santander”Conference presentation, Sept 2023
Society of Architectural Historians Annual International Conference, Virtual.
"In search of 18th century town and ranch life in South Texas"Conference presentation, May 2022
Vernacular Architecture Forum Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX.
"Province of Interiors: The Colonial Home in Northern New Spain as Private Frontier, 1700 – 1821"Symposium talk, May 2022
Interior Provocations Symposium, Pratt Institute.
“The Rio Grande Settlers: A Family History, 1577 – 1848”Invited talk, May 2020
Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, Stanford University