Maggie Elmore

Areas of Specialization

Borderlands, Migration, Religion and Politics, and Latina/o History

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
M.A., Texas Tech University
B.A., Texas Tech University

Academic Interests & Research Narrative

As a historian of the borderlands, I am deeply interested in how law, race, religion, and politics shape migration experiences and border policies. My current book, Unholy Border: How the Catholic Church and the United States Controlled Mexican Migration, is under contract with Penn Press. At its core, Unholy Border argues that migrants’ efforts to enter or remain in the United States transformed Catholic immigration agencies from immigrant aid organizations into governing actors, whose authority reshaped how US immigration law was created, administered, and contested throughout the 20^th century. The book reinterprets the expansion of the modern federal state not as the simple development of a bounded bureaucratic apparatus, but as the construction of an associational regime in which religious and humanitarian groups performed functions traditionally understood as sovereign, blurring the border between church and state.

In addition, I recently co-edited book with Felipe Hinojosa and Sergio González, Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics since 1945, published with New York University Press in 2022. My recent article, “In the Shadow of the Law: the Hanigan Case and the Genesis of the Immigrant Rights Movement,” appeared in the Journal of American History and received the Western History Association’s Bolton-Cutter Award. The article looks at how the kidnap and torture of three Mexican farmworkers in Arizona led to an international immigrant rights movement in the late 1970s. 

I am also at work on a new book project, “An Illicit Trade: The Political Afterlives of Sex Trafficking,” is in the very early stages of development. Not merely a recounting of an unsavory past, “An Illicit Trade” also shows how policymakers, faith leaders, community organizers, and survivors have quietly come together across the political aisle. Together, they have worked to depoliticize perennial questions related to human trafficking and provide resources for the individuals and communities whose lives are impacted by trafficking.

Selected Publications

Books

Unholy Border: How Catholics Created New Gateways to the United States, under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press, Politics and Culture in Modern America Series. 

Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics since 1945, co-edited with Felipe Hinojosa and Sergio González, New York University Press, 2022. 

Book Chapters

“Segregating Sacred Space in the Great Depression,” in Llanera/os: The Mexican American and Central American Southern Plains since 1880, eds. Joel Zapata, Aimee Villareal, and Alex Hunt (in progress). 

“Catholics, the State, and Latino Advocacy in World War II,” in Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics since 1945, eds. Felipe Hinojosa, Maggie Elmore, and Sergio González, (New York University Press, 2022).

“Segregating Sacred Space in the Great Depression,” in Llanera/os: The Mexican American and Central American Southern Plains since 1880, eds. Joel Zapata, Aimee Villareal, and Alex Hunt (in progress). 

Articles

“In the Shadow of the Law: The Hanigan Case and the Genesis of the Immigrant Rights Movement,” The Journal of American History (September 2024)

“Presidential Martyr: How Kennedy’s Death Created New Political Possibilities for Mexican American Catholics,” Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture, volume 34, (November 2023).

“Fighting for Hemispheric Solidarity: The National Catholic Welfare Conference and the Quest to Secure Mexican American Employment Rights During World War II,” The US Catholic Historian, volume 35, number 2, (May 2017). 

Essays

“Religion at the Crossroads of Immigration, Borderlands, and Latinx Histories,” Modern American History, volume 8, issue 3, (February 2026) 486-492, https://doi.org/10.1017/mah.2025.10058. 

Reviews

“On Teaching Migration and Religion: A Review of Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State for the Undergraduate Classroom,” Teaching History: A Journal of Methods (in-progress). 

Selected Activities

Awards

• Bolton-Cutter Award for Best Article on Borderlands History to Appear in Any Journal, Western History Association (2025)
• Young Scholar in American Religion, Center for the Study of American Religion and Culture, Indiana University, Indianapolis (2023-2025)
• Patrick Foley Award for Best Article in the Catholic Southwest, Texas Catholic Historical Society (2024)

Fellowships

• Summer Endowed Teaching Fellowship, Texas Collection, Baylor University (2025)
• Bill and Rita Clements Research Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America, Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University (2021-2022)
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame (2018-2019)

Grants

• Louisville Institute Grant for Researchers (2025-2026)
• American Historical Association, Albert J. Beveridge Research Grant (2019)
• Dorothy Mohler Travel Research Grant, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives at Catholic University of America (2018)

Recent Presentations

• Commentator for Dolan Seminar in American Religion, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame, September 2026
• “Immigration and Immigrant Rights in an Age of Restriction,” Webinar, Teaching and Learning Committee, American Academy of Religion, October 2025
• “An Illicit Trade: Religion and Human Trafficking in the Borderlands,” Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Chicago, April 2025
• “Becoming Documented: Creating a National Immigration Legal Network, 1986-1996,” Newbery Library Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar,” Newberry Library, Chicago (Zoom), April 2025

Regular Course Offerings

• Undergraduate:
  • HIS 1300 | US in Global Perspective - American Migrations

Other Courses Taught

• Undergraduate:
  • HIS 3380 | Texas History
• Graduate
  • HIS 5393 | Global Comparative Borderlands History