Category: People

A Congratulations to TXST’s Model Arab League

Photo of Model Arab League Students

A big congratulations to the Texas State’s Model Arab League! From their press release:

The Model Arab League Chapter at Texas State University competed in the Bilateral chamber regional competition February 15-16, winning awards and having two members serving as chair positions for the competition. Representing Syria, Texas State delegates participated in debates, discussions and wrote resolutions on Political, Economic, Social, and Environmental Affairs and Joint Defense Council.

Following two days of dedication and hard work, Texas State students received the following awards:

  • Distinguished Delegation Award for Syria’s representation of the Joint Defense Council awarded to Parker Weaver and Aaron Gaul
  • Distinguished Delegation Award for Syria’s representation of the Environmental Affairs Council awarded to Yehia Hafez and Macy Birdwell
  • Distinguished Delegation Award for Syria’s representation of The Political Affairs Council awarded to Patrick Moloney
  • Social Media Award given to Brittlin Richardson for her online engagement during the competition
  • Most Engaged School on Twitter Awarded to Texas State University for its social media engagement during the competition

Brittlin Richardson served as Chair for the Council of Political Affairs and Devin Barrett served as Chair for the Council on Economic Affairs Ministers

Group photo

Categories: News, People

Meet the Chairs: Dr. Murphy and Dr. Helgeson reflect on the History Department and its future

Photo of Drs. Murphy and Helgeson

Dr. Angela Murphy, who has served as chair of the department since 2017, reflects on her time as chair and shares some of her upcoming research. Incoming chair, Dr. Jeffrey Helgeson, gives us a glimpse into his vision of the future of the department.

Join them both on 9 March 2020 from 5:30-6:30 PM in Taylor-Murphy Hall 101 for a discussion sponsored by Phi Alpha Theta History Honors Society.

Murphy and Helgeson FlyerA Note from Dr. Angela Murphy

It has been rewarding serving as chair of the History Department for the past few years. It has given me a chance to get to know students on a different level, beyond the classroom, and to help further the vision of my fellow faculty. Students should know that they are front and center in that vision. I am proud to say that although the department is made up of world-class researchers, student success has remained one of its highest priorities.  This can be seen not only in the way in which faculty interact with students both in and out of the classroom, but also in the type of people we have hired over the past three years, in the efforts that have been put into modernizing the curriculum, and in the accomplishments of our students both while they are enrolled with us and afterwards.

While I am grateful for the experience of serving as chair, I am very much looking forward to stepping back into to my old faculty role in which I get to teach more (hands down my favorite part of my work) and engage more heavily with my research. Next year I will return to teaching the first half of the U.S. history survey and upper level and graduate courses on the history of the United States during the Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction Eras. I also will be able to dedicate more time to writing a monograph that has been long in the making – a biography of 19thcentury African American activist, Jermain Loguen, who was one of the primary Underground Railroad operatives in New York State.

I am excited to pass the torch to Jeff Helgeson, who is a natural leader in the department already and whose dynamism and commitment will surely take the department to new heights!

A Note from Dr. Jeffrey Helgeson

It is an incredible honor to be able to say that in September 2020 I will be beginning my eleventh year here at Texas State in a new role as chair of the department of history. Over the course of the past decade, I have had the great good fortune to learn from, and have the support of, our previous chairs: Dr. Frank de la Teja, Dr. Mary Brennan (now Dean of the College of Liberal Arts), and Dr. Angela Murphy. To a great extent, as leaders of the history department, they have created the foundation for my success here as a scholar and a teacher, and they have helped guide the energy I have put into helping to foster the growth of Texas State as a whole (the kind of work academics label, “service,” that includes not just serving on committees, but, among other things, making decisions about how we will teach our classes, who we will hire, and how the university can live as a community of inclusiveness and student growth in difficult times). I hope to follow in the footsteps of the previous chairs, to support my colleagues in their work.

The history department has a reputation for being a well-run department. This means that the chairs who have come before me have been highly successful at doing the work of managing the department. They lead the way on the work that happens behind the scenes to make sure that students have the classes, advising, and academic support they need. They work to ensure that our faculty has the resources they need to develop their research, as well as coursework and extracurricular programs (study abroad, study in America, student clubs, teacher training programs, etc.) that make the Texas State history department such a vibrant place.

The Department of History is a dynamic living community, the health of which depends upon the dedicated work of dozens of people. Our academic counseling and teacher training leaders are amongst the leaders in Texas and the nation. Our public history program has established itself as a national leader, placing graduates in internships and jobs with institutions like the National Park Service, the Smithsonian, and dozens of museums, archives, and history enterprises nationwide. Our undergraduate major in history prepares students to be leaders in the professional worlds of education, the media, public service, the arts, and much more. Moreover, through our connections with vibrant areas of study across campus—including, but not limited to, the Center for International Studies, the Center for Texas Music History, the Center for the Study of the Southwest, the Center for the Study of Gender and Diversity, and minors in African American and Latino/a Studies—the history department opens doors for students to have a grounding in sophisticated historical thinking while pursuing academic and career paths that could take them literally anywhere in the world. None of this wide-ranging work would be possible if not for the department’s outstanding administrative staff—I know I am going to learn so much from Madelyn Patlan, Roberta Ruiz, Adam Clark, and the student staffers in the office.

As you can see, I am a big believer in the ongoing work of the Department of History. I have seen my colleagues dramatically transform the lives of thousands of students over the years. I want to do nothing that will slow down those achievements. Indeed, one of my goals is to sustain the department’s record of continuous excellence, and to build upon recent gains we have made in funding graduate student research and travel, in creating resources to foster undergraduate research, and to support our faculty in their awe-inspiring research on historical themes that span thousands of years of global history.

In addition to maintaining our ongoing success, I also pledge my energies to the tasks of making the Department of History a place where even more students—undergraduate and graduate, alike—can find a path for themselves, while gaining the kinds of skills and worldview that will give them the power to constantly reinvent themselves in the face of life’s inevitable challenges. This means that I am committed both to the fostering of a community of scholars, even as I show up day in and day out to ensure that the nitty gritty work of making the department run well gets done.

Looking forward, I have to admit that I find my new role to be somewhat daunting. Yet I return to advice I received years ago from none other than my own mom. She said, if you want to take on big challenges in life, be sure to surround yourself with people whom you respect and who are doing interesting things. The Department of History is a complex institution, it is also my academic home—a place where I look forward to learning from, and working alongside, fellow faculty members, deeply competent and friendly staff, as well as curious and profoundly interesting students.

 

Categories: Faculty, History at Texas State, News, People, PhiAlphaTheta, Spotlights

Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities

Check out some of these scholarship opportunities for Texas State University History Scholarships: Apply Here

Texas State Undergraduate and Graduate Level Scholarships
Alton G. Brieger Scholarship $950 Undergraduates History Majors  

3.3 GPA in History
Taylor-Murphy Scholarship $950 Undergraduates History Majors  

3.3 GPA in History
Dennis and Margaret Dunn Scholarship  

$2000

 Entering Freshmen, Undergraduates,

Graduate students.

 History or International Studies Majors 3.5 GPA
FitzPatrick-Clayton-Kissler Scholarship $1700  

Undergraduates,

Graduate Students

.

 History Major 3.5 GPA

Texas State Departmental Nominations
Outstanding Undergraduate Student In Liberal Arts TBA 30 hrs Completed/

18 in Major

 Department will nominate a junior or senior from our Majors for this Liberal Arts College Opportunity 3.75 GPA
Presidential Upper Division Schoalrhsip TBA 60 hrs Completed/

30hrs at TxState

 Department will nominate a junior or senior from our Majors for the Univeristy Wide Opportunity

Graduate Level Only History Scholarships
Brunson Family Endowed Scholarship $1000 Graduate Students History Majors 3.5 GPA
Minnie Knispel Scholarship $660 Graduate Students History Majors/Social Studies Teachers
 

James W. Pohl Scholarship

 

 $1800 Graduate students working on a Thesis in History. History Majors 3.5 GPA

Kenneth and Patricia Margerison Graduate Research Fellowship

The Fellowship is intended for use in recruiting master’s students of the highest quality to Texas State University. It provides support to full-time graduate students enrolled in the master’s degree program who demonstrate great promise as historians. All newly admitted students are automatically considered. Recipients will be awarded funds to fully cover graduate tuition and fees for the spring and fall semesters as well as limited research support. Fellows will also qualify for in-state tuition. In addition to the fellowship, students may also be offered a graduate Instructional Assistantship (IA) to create an attractive financial aid package for top applicants. Recipients who maintain a 3.7 cumulative GPA may have their fellowship renewed for up to three consecutive years.

Learn more about the 2019 inaugural fellows on our Texas State History blog.

 

Categories: Funding Opportunities, Graduate Students, News, Research, Undergraduate Students

Call for Abstracts—Southwest Historical Quarterly Special Issue “The Persistence of Forced Labor in the Southwest, 1865-2000”

 

The Southwestern Historical Quarterly is seeking expressions of interest to submit articles to a special issue on coerced labor, forced labor, and slaveries in the Southwest in the period between 1865 and 2000. The Southwest is defined as the border states of the United States west of the Mississippi. Sitting at the crossroads of empires, nation states, and migration streams, the American Southwest has long been a site of labor exploitation, and it continues to be a home to modern slavery. Since the 2000 passage of the Trafficking victims Protection Act and the formation and adoption of the United Nations’ Palermo Protocol, human trafficking and modern slavery has captured the attention of human rights activists, academics, jurists, labor organizers, and many others. Reports that the number of people caught in conditions of modern slavery continue to rise, as do the types of interventions to fight modern slavery. At the same time scholars of contemporary trafficking note that trafficking correlates to immigration restriction. Consequently, the Borderlands of the Southwest provide a fertile ground for interrogating the history of modern slavery. This special issue seeks to take the global phenomenon of modern slavery and trafficking, and ground it in the Southwest, considering the ways that labor migration, immigration restriction, border violence, and economic inequality combine to produce the soil that can give rise to modern slavery.

We are especially interested in work that:

  • Engages critically with the historical production of categories such as “peonage,” “forced labor,” “slavery,” and migratory “illegality” as they have pertained to the Southwest.
  • Examines ways border control regimes produced or exacerbated new vulnerabilities.
  • Explores the historical lived experience of forced labor in public and private institutions (such as reformatories, detention centers, prisons) in the Southwest.
  • Places trafficking and forced labor within a wider discourse of indenture, slavery and un-freedom; as well as imperialism, mobility, and globalization, while showcasing the ways these dynamics played out in the Southwest.
  • Explores how vulnerability, co-ethnic exploitation and solidarity, or disability, age and/or sexuality can serve as catalysing factors in producing forced labor.

All submissions must be historical in focus.

Prospective contributors to this special issue are asked to send an extended abstract of 1,000 words to the issue’s guest editors, John Mckiernan-González (mckiernangonzalez@txstate.edu) and Jessica Pliley (pliley@txstate.edu) by 15 January 2020. Abstracts should describe the prospective article and how it explicitly engages with the theme of the special issue. Authors should also include a discussion of the sources—archival or published—they will be using in the article.

Selected contributors will be informed within two weeks and asked to submit a complete manuscript by 1 March 2020, which will go through the Southwestern Historical Quarterly’s standard process of peer and editorial review. If the manuscript is accepted for publication at the end of this process, it will be published in the special issue.

Categories: Center for the Study of the Southwest, Faculty, History at Texas State, Publications, Research

Transatlantic Migration History with Visiting Fulbright Fellow Dr. Torsten Feys

Today we interview Dr. Torsten Feys, who will be a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at Texas State from the Netherlands beginning spring 2020. Look for his class Transatlantic Migration (History 4318N), 11am-12:20pm, Tuesday/Thursday, in Spring 2020!

Can you tell us a bit about your background and your research into transatlantic steam shipping and migration?

Dr. Torsten Feys: My dissertation analyzed how the transport of millions of transatlantic migrants turned into a big business managed by passenger shipping companies between the 1840s and its decline in the 1920s. It looks at the business aspects of how such companies competed to attract passengers to their homeports. The research analysed how the most important shipping companies formed a powerful cartel to coordinate the lucrative passenger market, ranging from price agreements, set routes, advertising rules, fixed passengers’ quotas between its members while trying to prevent outsiders from entering the market. By the turn of the century, the biggest threat to their trade became the growing anti-immigration movement in the U.S., which pressured for more legal restrictions and stricter enforcement. The research shows how the shipping cartel became the driving force of the American pro-immigration lobby influencing the enactment of the laws. Shipping companies, much like airline companies today, also played a central part in the enforcement of the laws. To compensate for its lack of resources, the U.S. immigration administration transferred part of its controlling responsibilities to shipping lines. This principle of imposing carrier penalties on transport companies for bringing in irregular passengers is still in use today. This commercialization of border control put the shipping companies in a privileged position to assist passengers to pass controls and develop alternative travel means to evade inspections.

My postdoctoral research focused on this impact on migration laws by drawing comparisons between the transatlantic migration system and the transpacific migrations from Asia to the U.S. It highlights how two migration regimes and policies developed simultaneously to govern European and Asian migrations. It led to different means of bypassing restrictions that, however, gradually collided at the land borders through routes via Canada and Mexico. They pioneered strategies and routes of illegal migration that are still very much in use today.

What you are hoping to do with your Fulbright and what brings you to Texas State?

Dr. Feys: Meet new people, exchange ideas, add to my teaching experience in a totally new environment, do some research and writing—in sum, having fun! I have had the opportunity to spend time abroad with various exchange programs in the past in Italy, Spain, Norway and the United States (Colorado and Pennsylvania). Each of these experiences has been very enriching and rewarding and now, as in most past occasions, the place tends to pick me than the other way around. Texas State was suggested by Prof. Jessica Pliley who I met at various conferences and I am very grateful she did. Many people in the History department and beyond contributed to the successful application of the Fulbright grant. They made it possible and I really look forward to finally meet everyone in person, experience the campus life of Texas State and discover San Marcos and Austin. It is my first trip to Texas and my first research stay abroad with the whole family, traveling with my wife, Malika, who is also doing a research stay and my son Basil who should be learning to walk and speak his first words in Texas. We are curious to hear what language that will be in!

We have a robust public history program here; can you tell us a bit about your work at the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp?

Dr. Feys: The Red Star Line is the name of the shipping company who transported more than 2 million people, mostly migrants, across the Atlantic between Antwerp and New York from 1872 until 1934. The museum tells their story through the eyes of the shipping company and how Antwerp functioned as a transit hub. I have collaborated with the museum as a member of the scientific committee of the Red Star Line since 2004, from its inception, development until its opening (in 2013). After completing my PhD, I also worked as full-time freelance researcher for various months. The experience offered me a unique opportunity to translate academic findings to a broader public. It allowed me to contribute to the development of the museum’s storyline, provide contents and materials, and translate these in different installations within and outside the museum walls. The latter consisted of collaborating to documentaries, museum catalogues, public talks etc. Because of the prominent place that migration has taken into the public debates, the responsibility of migration historians to provide historical context has increased. My experience and research topics lend themselves to continue doing so in and around Austin.

Tell us a bit about your Transatlantic Migration course; what students can expect?

Dr. Feys: The course uncovers how migration processes function, breaking these down into economic, social, cultural and especially political aspects. Who migrated, why and how did transatlantic migration patterns develop (1815-1930)? What actors steered it and how did the enactment, enforcement and evasion of American migration policies take shape? This will be linked to current debates by opening each class week with a discussion of migration in media during the past week.

The class uses both literature and primary sources. Each week the students will analyse a primary source ranging from migrant letters, a file of a deported migrant, reports of the United Nations, newspapers, interviews, etc. learning to draw valuable information from these, while at the same learning to assess the pitfalls and apply historical criticism. The discussion on these will be tested with academic articles using such sources to uncover parts of the process of transatlantic migration.

The assessment will consist of the class participation, a short presentation for ‘Migration in Media this week’, a research paper based on an oral history assignment interviewing a migrant and mid-term and final exams.

Background image from The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Categories: Faculty, News, Research

2019 Phi Alpha Theta Texas State University History Conference

Conference logo

8:00am—9am

Registration (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Foyer)

Breakfast and Coffee Service (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 110)

  • Assorted breakfast tacos from Taco Cabana
  • Coffee service from Mocha & Java

 

9:00am—10:20am

  • Diplomatic Response to Native and Foreign Powers Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 201) Faculty Commentator: Margaret Vaverek, Librarian, Texas State University, and Jason Rivas, Graduate Student, Texas State University

Student Moderator: John Rogers, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Issac Xaiver Auld, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Comparative Analysis of the United States, France, and Spain’s Use of Neutrality in 1776 and 1793’”
  • Christopher Bragdon, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Effects of Cherokee Nationalism and American Public Opinion on Early S. Diplomacy”
  • Kendall Jo Allen, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Education as a Diplomatic Tool in Negotiations with Native People”

 

9:00am—10:20am

Transformations in Architecture Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 106)

Faculty Commentator: Dr. Peter Dedek, Associate Professor, Texas State University Student Moderator: Kyla Campbell, Graduate Student, Texas State University

  • Kyle Walker, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Spanish Colonial Revival Architecture’s Role in the Preservation Movement in San Antonio”
  • Mary Kahle, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Architecture of Moral Treatment for the Mentally Ill in Nineteenth Century S.”
  • Nikolas Koetting, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “‘A Comparative Analysis of the Architecture of Charleston and New Orleans

 

9:00am—10:20am

Decolonization and the British Empire Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 105)

Faculty Commentators: Dr. Nancy Berlage, Director of Public History, Texas State University Student Moderator: Francisco Rodriguez Arroyo, Graduate Student, Texas State University

  • Rayanna Hoeft, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “A Collection’s Purpose: Connecting Material Culture to Museum Visitor Experience”
  • Messia Gondorchin, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Misunderstood Monuments of a Forgotten War: Commemoration of the Second Boer War throughout England”
  • Desmond Workhoven, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Barton Brothers: Privateers and Founders of the Scottish Navy”

 

10:30am—11:50am

Thomas Jefferson and National Leaders Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 201) Faculty Commentator: Dr. Shannon Duffy, Senior Lecturer, Texas State University Student Moderator: John Rogers, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Christian M. Prado, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Nature and Nurture: How Human Tendency and Exterior Influence Affected Early Diplomatic Policy”
  • Samantha S. Cayse, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “North African Pirates and American International Affairs: Evolution of Jefferson’s Diplomacy with the Barbary States”
  • Asher C. Rogers, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Jefferson’s America in the Age of European Colonialism: Western Territories & the Louisiana Purchase”

 

10:30am—11:50am

Gender and Women’s Identity Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 106)

Faculty Commentator: Dr. Jessica Pliley, Associate Professor, Texas State University Student Moderator: Messia Gondorchin, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Jennifer Blackwell, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Two for the Price of One: The First Ladies and American Diplomacy Beyond the Confines of the Women’s Sphere”
  • Lauren Kahre-Campbell, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Gendered Patterns of Inheritance in Early Modern England”

 

10:30am—11:50am

Foreign Policy and War Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 105)

Faculty Commentator: Dr. Ellen Tillman, Associate Professor, Texas State University Student Moderator: Desmond Workhoven, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Evan Moore, Graduate Student, Texas State University
  • “The Continental Army’s Role in Violence at the Battle of King Mountain”
    • Andrew Freeman, Graduate Student, Texas State University
      • “From Tampico to Niagara Falls: How a Perceived Insult Led to Invasion, Occupation, and Mediation”
    • Robert J. Anzenberger, Graduate Student, Texas State University
      • “Herbert Hoover: Finland’s Guardian Angel”

 

12:00pm—12:30pm

Lunch catered by Mamacita’s (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 110)

 

12:45pm—1:45pm

Keynote Presentation (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 101)

  • Dr. Thomas Cauvin, Assistant Professor at Colorado State University and President of the International Federation for Public History

 

2:00pm—3:20pm

The Continuous Role of Slavery in Revolutions and Diplomacy Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 106)

Faculty Commentator: Dr. Dwonna Goldstone, Director of African American Studies Program, Texas State University

Student Moderator: Messia Gondorchin, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Ana Sofia Hernandez, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “‘The Impact of the Haitian Revolution on Early American Diplomacy Towards Slavery”
  • Reagan Deona Sekander, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Annexation of Texas and the Issues that Slowed the Process”

 

2:00pm—3:20pm

Perspectives in Modern History Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 105)

Faculty Commentators: Mr. Dan K. Utley, Lecturer, Texas State University and Dr. Jeff Helgeson, Associate Professor, Texas State University

Student Moderator: Desmond Workhoven, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Suzanne Schatz, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Fire Burns On: Texas A&M Bonfire, Women, and Tradition”
  • Ethen Peña, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Yellow Stained Tears”: The Effects of Historical Trauma on the American Indian Movement”

 

2:00pm—3:20pm

The Chains of Early American Diplomacy Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 201) Faculty Commentator: Dr. Sara Damiano, Assistant Professor, Texas State University Student Moderator: John Rogers, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Tobi Omo-Osagie, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Racial Barriers to American Diplomacy”
  • William Joseph Keenan, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “By Way of the St. Lawrence: The Bond of Slavery in Canada and The United States”
  • Alex J. Humphries, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Faith of the Confederacy Rests on Cotton”

 

3:30pm—4:50pm

The Beginnings and Impact of the Monroe Doctrine (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 201)

Faculty Commentators: Dr. Thomas Alter, Assistant Professor, Texas State University, and Rayanna Hoeft, Graduate Student, Texas State University

Student Moderator: John Rogers, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Hannah Thompson, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: How Early American Presidents Paved the Way for the Monroe Doctrine”
  • Sarie Aguirre, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Advancement of American Imperialism through The Monroe Doctrine”
  • Illeane Marquez, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Monroe Doctrine: A Policy of Non-Interference for European Powers for Peace and Safety”

 

3:30pm—4:50pm

American Imperialism Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 106)

Faculty  Commentator:  Dr.  Joshua  Paddison,  Lecturer,  Texas  State  University Student Moderator: Messia Gondorchin, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Noa Vasquez, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Conquest and Growth: The Two Ages of Filibustering”
  • Carlos Fidalgo, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Texas Quagmire: How Failed Diplomacy Sparked the Mexican American War”
  • Jacob Dowdell, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University
    • “The Tempering of US Imperialism: The Cost of an Island Empire”

 

3:30pm—4:50pm

Military and Government Architecture Panel (Taylor-Murphy Hall, Room 105) Faculty Commentator: Dr. Peter Dedek, Associate Professor, Texas State University

Student Moderator: Desmond Workhoven, Undergraduate Student, Texas State University

  • Kyla Campbell, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “From Barracks to Balfour: The Evolution of Base Housing on American Military Bases.””
  • Evan Smith, Graduate Student, Texas State University
    • “Washington D.C.: A Unique Creation of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”

 

Categories: Events, Graduate Students, History at Texas State, Research

“Chasing Slavery” Participant Spotlight: Dr. Annie Isabel Fukushima

Dr. Annie Fukushima photo

In preparation for the upcoming symposium, Chasing Slavery: The Persistence of Forced Labor in the Southwest, to be held at Texas State University from 24-26 October, in Flowers  Hall 230, we will be running a series of posts focused on the conference participants and organizers. The conference will bring together dozens of scholars, with a keynote from Ambassador Luis C.deBaca (ret.). See the conference website for more details.

Today, conference participant Dr. Annie Isabel Fukushima, Assistant Professor in the Division of Ethnic Studies with the School for Cultural & Social Transformation at University of Utah, shares with us a bit about her research. She can also be found on Twitter.

Tell me in four sentences why I should read your book.

Dr. Annie Isabel Fukushima: Migrant Crossings examines the experiences and representations of Asian and Latina/o migrants trafficking in the United States into informal economies and service industries. It is an interdisciplinary analysis through sociolegal and media analysis of court records, press release, campaigns, filmic representations, performance and the law.  The book is an invitation to readers to query how readers will bear witness to migrants who experience violence in these migratory times. Anyone interested in issues regarding migration, citizenship, law and society, race, gender, transnational processes, and security should pick up this book. Readers encounter ghosts, notions of victimhood, court-performances and translation, zombified figures, and technologies of violence.

What was the most surprising thing you encountered when researching your book?

Dr. Fukushima: Part of the work was informed by my own work in community organizations. I found that a contradiction occurred. That as migrants navigated a range of institutions, they were bound to being seen in dualities of victim/criminal, legal/illegal, and citizen/noncitizen. I focused on a range of informal labor, however, informal labor cannot be disaggregated from formalized industries. And that in the campaigns and movement efforts to eradicate trafficking, the complex personhood migrants embody has been historically, socially and legally, reduced to nonhuman. And to see people for the complexity requires new modalities of witnessing. What I call, an “unsettled witnessing”.

What do you hope people will take away from our conference on trafficking, forced labor and labor exploitation? 

Dr. Fukushima: I hope people will see the significant role of history and the history of the present as central to our lived realities. That while we may not be laboring in the very industries where we see as ripe for exploitation, and that we not see trafficking as “everywhere” even our “neighbor.” But instead, we see how institutions and everyday realities structures the lives and conditions that create trafficking. A complex issue, it requires a complex response from multiple fronts—social, political, legal, historical, environmental, and cultural.

What challenge(s) raised by your research are you still trying to reconcile? 

Dr. Fukushima: I was left with the hauntings of how militarisms in the form of sexual slavery during war and militarized peace and (in)security served as the backdrop of my book. Additionally, Migrant Crossings is a book about labor. Therefore, I am currently working on my next book project which will dig deeper into militarisms and trafficking—however, with a particular interest in the role of contract workers. Amazing work has been done already, on sexual economies and militarized contexts. There is more to be understood regarding other forms of labor beyond sexualized industries.

Also check out:

Categories: Center for the Study of the Southwest, Events, History at Texas State, People, Research, Spotlights

“Chasing Slavery”: An Interview with Dr. John Mckiernan-González

Photo of Mckiernan

In preparation for the upcoming symposium, Chasing Slavery: The Persistence of Forced Labor in the Southwest, to be held at Texas State University from 24-26 October, in Flowers  Hall 230, we will be running a series of posts focused on the conference participants and organizers. The conference will bring together dozens of scholars, with a keynote from Ambassador Luis C.deBaca (ret.). See the conference website for more details.

Today, conference co-organizer Dr. Mckiernan-González, Director of the Center for the Study of the Southwest and Associate Professor of History at Texas State University, helps introduce the conference for our readers. He can also be found on Twitter.

Give us your elevator pitch for the conference. What is it about?

Dr. John Mckiernan-González: In a broad way, this conference aims to help us understand why forced labor continued after the 13th amendment banned slavery in the United States, and how people used the constitution to change their situation.  There is a thread in anti-immigrant politics in the United States that uses the rank exploitation of people in a given community to justify the expulsion or restriction of the presence of that community in the United States – rather than treating exploitation as a shared situation and part of a broader economic relationship.  This problem has been explored in depth in the U.S. South for year, from the rise of peonage during Reconstruction to the establishment of Jim Crow, and that deserves continuing exploration. By bringing a variety of perspectives, we can understand the many ways the 13th amendment shaped labor relations in the past and present of our multi-ethnic, indigenous and immigrant Southwest.  I want people to consider the criminal exploitation of workers, when conditions become visible and harsh enough to be considered a crime worth prosecuting.

In another sense, people should consider the way the challenge to forced labor, from peonage to labor trafficking, also involves a transnational response.  Our keynote speaker, Ambassador Luis C. de Baca, worked with the founders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to prosecute their contractors and, in the aftermath, the C.I.W workers went on to create one of the more successful migrant labor movements in the country. As historians, we have the disciplinary space to explore what happens before and after a labor conflict becomes a criminal matter, and track what different people do after slavery and human trafficking has been charged. One answer can be: create a labor movement.  Most of all, the conference should help us become more aware of the ways forced labor has shaped the Southwest.

What was the most surprising thing you encountered when researching the conference?

Dr. Mckiernan-González: Putting together the conference and the associated class on forced labor in the Southwest has been deeply educational.  I now tend to see forced labor almost everywhere, either directly or lying in the wings.  Most frustrating, of course, is when you realize key chapters in your work – in my case, my chapters on the (African American) Tlahualilo Colony and Camp Jenner in Eagle Pass would have been vastly improved.[1] I wish I had named the ways the medically detained refugees in Eagle Pass had to explain and challenge the contract they signed with William Ellis and the Tlahualilo corporation to demand help and resources from U.S. federal agencies.  Along with a deeper appreciation of the presence of forced labor, organizing the conference has helped me think more broadly about the labor constraints facing men and women in stigmatized communities – from juvenile inmates in state asylums to deaf migrants in a transnational forced labor key chain ring.

What do you hope people will take away from our conference on trafficking, forced labor and labor exploitation?

Dr. Mckiernan-González: Hope.  People have consistently challenged the constraints they have faced. Hopefully, people will leave the conference aware of the ways institutions maintain and have maintained forced labor in the Southwest and leave with an awareness that these struggles have a long and continuing history.

What challenge(s) raised by your research are you still trying to reconcile?

Dr. Mckiernan-González: Talking about the Chasing Slavery conference with soccer teammates and extended family has highlighted the way solidarity and coercion often coexist, from people sharing stories about adoption, smuggling debts to coyotes, to informal apprenticeships in semi-skilled trades like housecleaning and construction.  As a historian who prefers text, I see a distant connection between what appears on paper and the everyday coercions working-class people face; the challenge lies in tracing these connections.

[1] John Mckiernan-Gonzalez, “’At the Nation’s Edge’: African American Migrants and Smallpox in the Late Nineteenth-Century Mexican American Borderlands,” Martin Summers, Laurie Green and John Mckiernan-Gonzalez, ed. Precarious Prescriptions: Contested Histories of Race and Health in North America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 67-90

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Categories: Center for the Study of the Southwest, Events, Faculty, History at Texas State, News, People, Research, Undergraduate Students

“Chasing Slavery”: An Interview with Dr. Jessica Pliley

Dr. Pliley photo

In preparation for the upcoming symposium, Chasing Slavery: The Persistence of Forced Labor in the Southwest, to be held at Texas State University from 24-26 October, in Flowers  Hall 230, we will be running a series of posts focused on the conference participants and organizers. The conference will bring together dozens of scholars, with a keynote from Ambassador Luis C.deBaca (ret.). See the conference website for more details.

Today, conference co-organizer Dr. Jessica Pliley, Associate Professor of the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities at Texas State University, helps introduce the conference for our readers.  She can also be found on Twitter.

Give us your elevator pitch for the conference. What is it about?

Dr. Jessica Pliley: This conference tackles the question of the various ways that forced labor has persisted in the US after emancipation. My interest in this topic was born out the research I conducted for my first book, Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI. While I was deep in the investigative case files of the FBI looking for cases of investigations into violations of the 1910 White Slave Traffic Act, I regularly encountered investigations into cases of peonage in the American South. After my book was published in 2014, I became more involved in international conversations occurring among scholars thinking about trafficking and forced labor, which led me to co-organize the Working Group on Modern Slavery and Trafficking at Yale University. That two-year working group considered the ways that history can and should shape our understandings of the development of liberal political economy that is predicated on unfree labor. Partnering with the Center for the Study of the Southwest allows me to look at the ways that forced labor persisted in a discrete region—the borderlands of the Southwest. This conference aims to being together historians, sociologists, and other scholars to consider the different sites of persistent labor abuse, while attending the ways that race, ethnicity and gender shape that abuse. The other aim of the Chasing Slavery project that excites me is more pedagogical. John Mckiernan-González and I are co-teaching a graduate seminar that features the writings of many of the participants of the conference. By hosting this conference, we are providing our students a unique opportunity to meet the scholars whose ideas they have been substantively engage with in class.

Symposium flyerWhat was the most surprising thing you’ve encountered when considering forced labor?

Dr. Pliley: I am consistently struck by the routine quality of extreme labor exploitation. In many ways it hides in plain view, both historically and now. It is almost impossible to find products with supply chains that are clean of labor exploitation. Everything from the tea we drink to the fast fashion we wear is produced through extreme labor exploitation. Until workers’ voices are more firmly incorporated into accountability schemes, I fear this will remain the case.

What do you hope people will take away from our conference on trafficking, forced labor and labor exploitation?

Dr. Pliley: I hope the conference will prompt attendees to look at work in new ways. I also hope that it will lead to dynamic conversations among the attendees.

What challenge(s) raised by your research are you still trying to reconcile?

Dr. Pliley: I struggle with the dominance of contractual thinking as it pertains to ‘labor’. Often times reformers will argue that the solution to poor working conditions is a better contract. But when you look at the history of contracts it becomes clear that large swaths of people, like women and people of color—the very same people who are most vulnerable to labor exploitation—were excluded from liberal contract theory. And instead the work these people labored at became racialized and gendered to justify unfree, uncompensated or poorly-compensated work. In my own area of expertise of intimate labor, the question revolves around the paradox of intimate labor. In tradition liberal thinking, laboring is a public act that can come under the protections of a contract, yet work that is intimate labor—child care, elder care, domestic labor, wifely labor, sex work—is often done in private domains of the family outside of public view.

Also, I am endlessly vexed and fascinated by the ways that extreme labor exploitation has been conflated with trafficking under the rubric of modern slavery. Like many other scholars, I am deeply critical of the use of the term “slavery,” yet I find myself bound be the term. Again and again, historical actors pulled on the evocative power of the metaphor of “slavery” to describe their own experiences or to agitate for reform. Yet, the term slavery can have a conflating effect, on the one hand, while also dismissing the horrors of chattel slavery, on the other hand. Furthermore, once ideas of trafficking get introduced into the mix, what I find is a general lack of precision about the specific abuses, processes, and choices people have faced and continue to face. I am hoping that our conversations at the conference will help me find a better vocabulary to describe the practices associated with forced and coerced labor.

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Categories: Center for the Study of the Southwest, Events, Faculty, News, Research, Undergraduate Students

Introducing Dr. Casey Nichols!

Photo of Dr. Nichols

We are excited to welcome Dr. Casey Nichols to Texas State this semester. She studies African and Mexican American history, urban history, and social movements.

Growing up in Long Beach, California (often referred to as “The LBC”) piqued my interest in Black/Brown relations. The relationship between African Americans and Mexican Americans was fundamental to debates about urban space, education reform, and local politics in my majority people of color community on the Eastside of Long Beach. Earning a PhD provided an opportunity to construct a scholarly profile that focused on a set of issues that shaped the world I grew up in and would allow me to play a leadership role in narratives designed to tell our history.

Graduate school mentors encouraged me to cultivate an identity as a historian through my Long Beach background and inspired me to embrace my unique perspective as a historian. Thus, I turned inward and wrote a dissertation about the relationship between African Americans and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles within the context of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. My current book project in progress, Poverty Rebels: Black and Brown Protest in Post-Civil Rights America, is a love letter to the Eastside of the LBC. <3

Teaching students from similar backgrounds as myself has always been central to my goals as an academic historian. I had the wonderful privilege of teaching students at CSU, Long Beach, Dickinson College, and CSU, East Bay before making my way to Texas State. As an undergraduate student at CSU, Long Beach, Ethnic Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses taught me to understand education as a gateway to freedom. As a professor, my courses focus on themes of race, ethnicity, social justice, and diversity, including my U.S. history surveys. This year I am teaching History 1320: U.S. Since 1877. I plan to offer additional courses in African American history and U.S. social justice history in the near future. My primary goal as a history professor is that students walk away from my courses with an understanding that their history matters.

Outside of research and teaching, two of my favorite activities are watching movies at the theater and baking cookies. Popcorn and a cherry Coke make any movie worth watching. Fun fact: I’ve also had Beyoncé’s Lemonade album on repeat in my car since 2016 and lost count of the how many times I’ve watched Homecoming.

Categories: Faculty, History at Texas State, Research, Spotlights