The Happy Historian

In the Green Room with Northern Arizona University’s Eric Meeks

Eric Meeks is associate professor of history at Northern Arizona University and the author of Border Citizens, a history of racial and ethnic identities in 20th century Arizona. Before participating in a panel in Tucson about whether Arizona’s history matters today, he admitted in the green room that he was savoring not just the opportunity to talk about the subject of his research but the chance to be alone … and the martini he was planning to have at the end of the night.

Q. Where do you go to be alone?

A. To Zócalo events in Tucson! I have two kids and I’m married. This is the first day and night I’ve been alone by myself in as long as I can remember.

Q. What do you believe in?

A. That’s a big question. Social justice-that’s probably kind of a cliché, but I do. I believe in the right for all people to be educated, in Arizona as elsewhere. I believe in immigrant rights.

Q. What was your last major purchase?

A. I finally bought a stereo receiver after not having purchased one for 20 years. I don’t know if that counts as major.

Q. What would surprise Arizonans from a century ago about the state today?

A. The fact that it is primarily an urban state. And that the ethnic make-up of the state is quite different, though in recent decades there’s been an increase in Mexican immigration that probably makes it proportionately look more like it did 100 years ago than it did say 50 years ago. And I would also say the conservative politics.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?

A. I would be a musician in my next life-I’d follow my dreams form my teenage years. Which isn’t to say that I mind being a historian-that’s good too.

Q. What’s your favorite kind of doughnut?

A. I’m not a huge fan of doughnuts. But if I were to have a doughnut, it’d probably be a good chocolate doughnut.

Q. What’s worth waiting for?

A. These are such big questions. I’ll make this one small: a martini after tonight’s event.

Q. What’s your biggest pet peeve?

A. It’s probably when people tell certain versions of history to fit their own political perspectives in the present.

Q. What are you reading right now?

A. It’s boring, a history book: Andrés Reséndez’s Changing National Identities at the Frontier.

Q. How much is too much to pay for a haircut?

A. Let’s say more than 25 bucks.

*Photo by Kevin Brost.