Question: Where did maize cultivation begin in the region of which American studies is a facet?

full_context: Document 1: Hushpuppy: The use of ground corn (maize) in cooking originated with Native Americans, who first cultivated the crop. Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole cooking introduced one of its main staples into Southern cuisine: corn, either ground into meal or limed with an alkaline salt to make hominy, in a Native American technology known as nixtamalization. Cornbread was popular during the American Civil War because it was very cheap and could be made in many different sizes and forms. It could be fashioned into high - rising, fluffy loaves or simply fried for a quick meal.
Document 2: Maize: An influential 2002 study by Matsuoka et al. has demonstrated that, rather than the multiple independent domestications model, all maize arose from a single domestication in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. The study also demonstrated that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands. Later, maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths. This is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands.
Document 3: Corn Belt: The Corn Belt is a region of the Midwestern United States that, since the 1850s, has dominated corn production in the United States. More generally, the concept of the ``Corn Belt ''connotes the area of the Midwest dominated by farming. Many towns in this area are connected to powerful farm organizations with lobbying power.
Document 4: Marilyn Ivy: Marilyn Ivy is an associate professor of anthropology at Columbia University. She received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Cornell University, an M.A. in history from the University of Hawaii, and a B.A. in Asian studies from the University of Oklahoma. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Ivy taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Washington.
Document 5: Chalkdust: Chalkdust, who holds a Ph.D. in history and ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan, is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of the Virgin Islands, and frequently lectures and offers workshops on the history and culture of calypso music. He is the author of the books "Rituals of Power and Rebellion: The Carnival Tradition in Trinidad and Tobago, 1763-1962" (published in 2001) and "From the Horse’s Mouth", a socio-cultural history of calypso from 1900 to 2003.
Document 6: Maize: Maize (/ meɪz / MAYZ; Zea mays subsp. mays, from Spanish: maíz after Taino: mahiz), also known as corn, is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The leafy stalk of the plant produces pollen inflorescences and separate ovuliferous inflorescences called ears that yield kernels or seeds, which are fruits.
Document 7: Indigenous peoples of the Americas: Many crops first domesticated by indigenous Americans are now produced and used globally. Chief among these is maize or "corn", arguably the most important crop in the world. Other significant crops include cassava, chia, squash (pumpkins, zucchini, marrow, acorn squash, butternut squash), the pinto bean, Phaseolus beans including most common beans, tepary beans and lima beans, tomatoes, potatoes, avocados, peanuts, cocoa beans (used to make chocolate), vanilla, strawberries, pineapples, Peppers (species and varieties of Capsicum, including bell peppers, jalapeños, paprika and chili peppers) sunflower seeds, rubber, brazilwood, chicle, tobacco, coca, manioc and some species of cotton.
Document 8: Indigenous peoples of the Americas: According to both indigenous American and European accounts and documents, American civilizations at the time of European encounter had achieved many accomplishments. For instance, the Aztecs built one of the largest cities in the world, Tenochtitlan, the ancient site of Mexico City, with an estimated population of 200,000. American civilizations also displayed impressive accomplishments in astronomy and mathematics. The domestication of maize or corn required thousands of years of selective breeding.
Document 9: Gregory G. Colomb: Gregory G. Colomb (September 5, 1951 – October 11, 2011) was a professor of the English language and literature and Director of Writing Programs at the University of Virginia. His research interests were in writing studies, 18th century literature, and theory.
Document 10: Yale University: Yale's English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the Department of Comparative Literature from the late seventies to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called "Yale School". These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale's history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C. Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale's Music School and Department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th century. The Journal of Music Theory was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.
Document 11: Indigenous peoples of the Americas: Over the course of thousands of years, American indigenous peoples domesticated, bred and cultivated a large array of plant species. These species now constitute 50–60% of all crops in cultivation worldwide. In certain cases, the indigenous peoples developed entirely new species and strains through artificial selection, as was the case in the domestication and breeding of maize from wild teosinte grasses in the valleys of southern Mexico. Numerous such agricultural products retain their native names in the English and Spanish lexicons.
Document 12: Dayo Gore: Dayo Gore (Dayo F. Gore) is an African-American feminist scholar, former fellow of Harvard's Warren Center for North American History, formerly employed as Assistant Professor of History and of Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Gore is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at University of California, San Diego. Gore is one of a new generation of young scholars active in preserving and exploring the infrequently chronicled history of 20th-century black women's radicalism, in the US and beyond. Along with Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, Gore edited a collection of essays "Want to Start A Revolution? Radical Women In The Black Freedom Struggle" (NYU Press, 2009), to which she contributed the chapter "From Communist Politics to Black Power: The Visionary Politics and Transnational Solidarities of Victoria Ama Garvin".
Document 13: David Cingranelli: David Cingranelli is a professor of Political Science at Binghamton University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. He conducts global, comparative, econometric research examining the causes and consequences of variation in government respect for various human rights. His 2007 book with Rodwan Abouharb, "Human Rights and Structural Adjustment," demonstrated the negative human rights impacts of World Bank and IMF program lending in developing countries. His current research examines how constitutional design and other factors can provide incentives to politicians to enact policies protecting human rights including labor rights. He is a former president of the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association. Until 2013, he served as the co-director of the Cingranelli and Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project.
Document 14: Corn production in the United States: Iowa, the largest producer of corn in the US, grows three times as much corn as Mexico. Iowa harvested 3,548 acres (1,436 ha) of sweet corn in 2007. In 2011, the state had 92,300 corn farms on 30,700,000 acres (12,400,000 ha), the average size being 333 acres (135 ha), and the average dollar value per acre being US $6,708. In the same year, there were 13.7 million harvested acres of corn for grain, producing 2.36 billion bushels, which yielded 172.0 bu / acre, with US $14.5 billion of corn value of production. Almost 1.88 billion bushels of corn were grown in the state in 2012 on 13.7 million acres of land, while the 2013 projections are 2.45 billion bushels of corn on 13.97 million acres of land.
Document 15: Colin Dayan: Colin Dayan (also known as Joan Dayan), is the Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, where she teaches American Studies, comparative literature, and the religious and legal history of the Americas. She has written extensively on prison law and torture, Caribbean culture and literary history, as well as on Haitian poetics, Edgar Allan Poe, and the history of slavery. After receiving her Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1980, she taught at Princeton University, Yale University, the City University of New York, the University of Arizona, and the University of Pennsylvania.
ground_truth: southern Mexico
sub_queries: American studies >> facet of Answer: the Americas
where did maize cultivation began in the the Americas Answer: southern Mexico