Rate My Professor Eric Boime

Eric Boime serves as a Professor of History at San Diego State University’s Imperial Valley Campus. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. Joining the faculty as an assistant professor around 2007, Boime received tenure and promotion in 2012 and has since advanced to full professor status. His academic career is centered at the Imperial Valley Campus, where he contributes to the Arts & Sciences Division and the History Department.

Boime’s research specializations include environmental history, borderlands studies, California history, and the development of the Colorado River region. His notable publications encompass “National Moat, Regional Lifeline: The Campaign for the All-American Canal, 1917–1944,” published in the Journal of the Southwest in 2011, which details the national security and regional economic arguments propelling the canal’s construction amid U.S.-Mexico tensions. Additionally, “Navigating the Fluid Boundary: The Lower Colorado River Borderlands, 1848-1865” addresses the geopolitical shifts following the Mexican-American War in the border region. Earlier work includes “Environmental History, the Environmental Movement, and the Politics of Power” in History Compass (2007). Boime has also authored book reviews, such as for Beth Rose Middleton Manning’s Upstream: Trust Lands and Power on the Feather River in the Western Historical Quarterly (2019), and contributed to discussions on water law and history in Western Legal History.

In teaching, Boime offers courses on modern United States history, emphasizing environmental, California, and borderlands themes. He is affiliated with SDSU’s Center for Comics Studies, integrating comics into historical analysis. Boime has served on university committees, including the 2021/22 Imperial Valley Dean Search Committee and as Imperial Valley representative for the California Faculty Association. He nominated colleague Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta for the 2023 SDSU Imperial Valley Outstanding Research, Scholarship, Creative Activity Award. Publicly, Boime delivered a 2016 presentation at SDSU Imperial Valley on Colorado River apportionment history involving the Mexicali Valley. His scholarship influences studies on regional water politics, infrastructure, and environmental transformations in the American Southwest.