Category: Research

“Chasing Slavery” Participant Spotlight: Dr. William S. Kiser

William Kiser 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. William S. Kiser, Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, shares with us a bit about his research. 

Book coverTell me in four sentences why I should read your book.

Dr. William Kiser: This book broadens our historical understandings of slavery during and after the Civil War era by examining two relatively obscure forms of involuntary servitude:  Indian captivity and Hispanic debt peonage.  It focuses on American legal and political understandings of slavery and free labor in the 19th century, and the impact that the Hispanic Southwest’s alternative slaveries had on abolitionist ideology and jurisprudence.  People should read this book because it challenges prevailing conceptualizations of slavery and free labor by emphasizing the expansion of Thirteenth Amendment jurisprudence to include peonage and captivity in addition to the more familiar chattel slavery of the Old South.

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

Dr. Kiser: The most surprising thing to me was just how little had previously been written about debt peonage in the American Southwest. In the past 20 years, historians have increasingly taken notice of Indian captivity and slavery in North America, but peonage in the Hispanic Southwest has somehow managed to linger in the shadows of public and academic awareness until very recently.

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

Dr. Kiser: The main takeaway that I’d like to see is a better understanding of just how complex and complicated slavery is in the modern world and that, contrary to popular belief, forced labor remains prevalent but largely invisible throughout parts of the United States.  In this sense post-Civil War Reconstruction truly is, to borrow Eric Foner’s words, an unfinished revolution that continues to impact modern America.


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

Dr. Kiser: The paper I am presenting at this conference actually address this very issue.  In Borderlands of Slavery, I took the story of peonage into the late 19th century, but I did not follow it into the 20th century.  I am currently researching the persistence of forced labor—particularly the peonage and partido systems–in the modern American Southwest and attempting to reconcile the national ban on debt peonage in 1867 with the ongoing existence of the system, in disguised forms, into the late 20th century.

 

Also check out:

Categories: Center for the Study of the Southwest, Events, News, Research, Spotlights

“Chasing Slavery” Participant Spotlight: Dr. Manu Karuka

Karuka

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. Manu Karuka, Assistant Professor of American Studies, and affiliated faculty with Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, shares with us a bit about his research. He can also be found on Twitter.

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

Dr. Manu Karuka: Empire’s Tracks situates the history of the transcontinental railroad within an international history of imperialism. This framework helps dispel U.S. exceptionalism, as it has constrained historical imaginations. It also clarifies the relationships between processes occurring in North America, and those occurring elsewhere in the colonized world. Such insights can solidify internationalist understandings of North America in the past, and in the present.

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

Dr. Karuka: Working through the archives of Indigenous life in relation to the railroad, I came across records that have been cited in scholarship, and in Congressional testimony, often to deny or dismiss the collective land claims of Indigenous nations. I was surprised to consistently find records that scholars have cited as facts, which actually appear as rumors or questions in archival documents. Thinking about this pattern, I came to call it the “prose of counter-sovereignty.”

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

Dr. Karuka: I believe that unity and solidarity are the primary tools to fight these forms of social suffering. I hope that participants in the conference can build their understanding, and their confidence, towards the necessary work of forging unity and solidarity in our historical moment.

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

Dr. Karuka: Empire’s Tracks is driven by the question: What does a genuine anti-imperialism look like, from the vantage of North America? I continue to grapple with finding an answer to that question.

Also check out:

Categories: Center for the Study of the Southwest, Events, Research, Spotlights

“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

Also check out:

 

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.

Also check out:

 

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

TXST Faculty Members to Present at American Historical Association Meeting in NYC

AHA 2020

Congratulations to all our faculty members who will be presenting at American Historical Association 134th annual meeting in January in New York City!

Categories: Center for Texas Public History, Faculty, News, Research

Introducing Dr. Dwonna Goldstone!

Photo of Dr. Dwonna Goldstone

We are excited to welcome Dr. Dwonna Goldstone who joins Texas State to launch the new African American Studies minor!

After 18 years at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee—where I taught African American literature and coordinated their African American Studies program—I am super excited to join the history department at Texas State, where I will also be coordinating the new African American Studies minor.

I am originally from Moline, Illinois, home of the John Deere Tractor, and I did my undergraduate degree in American Studies at the University of Iowa. After finishing my M.A.T. at Brown University, I taught high school English for three years in Fairfax County, Virginia, where I also coached 9th-grade girls’ basketball and boys’ and girls’ track. I wasn’t a very successful basketball coach, however; the team went 1-15 the first year and 7-9 the second year. In spite of that record, I enjoyed coaching and learned a lot—like losing is okay if we’re having fun.

I finished my PhD in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and my dissertation about black student integration eventually became my book—Integrating the Forty Acres: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the University of Texas (University of Georgia, 2006). I have written several articles about African American history and culture, including “Home Economics,” a memoir about growing up poor and black in a midwestern town and “Stirring Up Trouble,” an article about teaching race at a PWI.

I am currently working on three essays—one about Barbara Conrad Smith, a black undergraduate student at the University of Texas in its first year of integration (1956-7) who was removed from the school’s opera; a second titled “Teaching While Black: A Black Professor in Trump Land”; and a third on teaching feminism in a men’s prison. This past year, I taught a class at the Lois DeBerry Special Needs prison in Nashville, Tennessee, and my students read feminist novels such as Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. My goal is to create an inside/out program at a prison in Texas, where Texas State students will take a class with students who are incarcerated.

This fall, I am teaching AAS 2310: Introduction to African American Studies. In the spring, I will teach AAS 2310 again and “Black Women. Black Protest.” I also plan to create new classes for the AAS minor, including “Race, Gender, and Sexuality”; “Blacks, Film, and Society”; “Negotiating the Color Line”; and “The Black Power Movement.” Please email me (dng66@txstate.edu) or come by my office (THM 205) if you have suggestions for classes or programming you would like to see offered in the minor or if just want to chat about your interests. You can also follow me on Instagram at dwonnanaomi.

When I am not teaching, writing, or creating programming for the African American Studies program, I train for half marathons, do CrossFit, and walk my dogs—Lena Horne, Ernie Banks, and Ralph Ellison. I also love to watch Judge Judy, so please come by my office and see my autographed picture of her!

 

 

Categories: Faculty, Research, Spotlights

Announcing: The Kenneth and Patricia Margerison Graduate Research Fellowship in History

Margerison fellowship

The Department of History is proud to announce the establishment of the Kenneth and Patricia Margerison Graduate Research Fellowship in History. The Fellowship provides support to full-time graduate students enrolled in the master’s degree program in history. Recipients will be awarded funds to fully cover graduate tuition and fees for the spring and fall semesters as well as research support. Recipients will qualify for in-state tuition. The Graduate Studies Committee will consider all first-year students as well as continuing students who demonstrate great promise as historians. In addition to the fellowship, students may also be offered a graduate Instructional Assistantship (IA), which includes a monthly salary. Recipients who maintain a 3.7 cumulative GPA may also have the fellowship renewed!

Please visit the History Department Scholarships website for specific details and requirements.

Learn more about Lauren Kahre-Campbell (top photo) and Amber Hullum (bottom photo), recipients of this inaugural fellowship:

Lauren Kahre-Cambell received a B.A. in international studies with a focus in international relations from Texas State University in 2012 and a J.D. from Michigan State University in 2015. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in History, with a focus in European History. Her areas of interest include early modern British history as well as women’s and legal history. While earning her degree, Lauren has served as a Liddle Teaching Fellow and been a recipient of both the Dennis and Margaret Dunn Scholarship and the Outstanding Graduate Student in History Award. Her thesis, “Where There’s a Will: Gender, Wills and Inheritance in Early Modern England,” explores gendered patterns of inheritance in early modern English wills. She conducted a portion of her archival research during the 2018 Texas State Chester study abroad program. Lauren hopes to forge a career that combines her legal background with her historical research interests.

How do you see this Margerison Fellowship helping you in your studies? 

Lauren Kahre-Cambell: As a non-traditional student, I face some unique challenges in financing my graduate degree. The Margerison Fellowship will really allow me to focus on completing my graduate thesis without additional financial stress. Writing a thesis can be daunting, so it’s nice to have the hard work acknowledged in a tangible way and receiving this fellowship makes me feel even more supported in my endeavors.

What have you enjoyed so far from your time in the Texas State graduate program?

Lauren: I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to delve deeply into my personal passions through the study of history. If I had to pinpoint one formative experience, it would be my participation in the Chester 2018 Summer Abroad program. While conducting my archival research, I had the opportunity to explore sixteenth century wills and manuscripts in person at the Chester Local Archives. I really appreciated the ability to make the kinetic connection with my research subjects, who wrote or commissioned these documents over 400 years ago.

Currently, your work is on women’s and legal history, how do your study of law and history complement each other?

Lauren: It has been so fascinating to approach the law from both its current application and to explore its origins. In the United States we share a common legal history with Britain, so my study of British legal history has been really informative for me in understanding the development of U.S. law. I find it particularly fascinating to explore which legal tenets have evolved or remained static over time.

I must confess that some subjects I found quite boring in law school (probate, inheritance, property rights) are much more interesting from a historical standpoint and have become the focus of my research.

Finally, in both my legal and historical careers I have focused on the intersection of women and the law and it is particularly interesting to me to see how some of the challenges that women face in accessing justice have remained the same through time.

Amber Hullum is a first-year graduate student working towards her master’s degree in Public History. Amber graduated from Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi with bachelor’s degrees in Theatre and in History, with hopes of marrying the two with living history. Amber has been doing living history for over four years and has also worked with the City of Corpus Christi in hosting “La Frontera,” a living history festival with multiple actors playing local historical figures who interact with visitors. After finishing her master’s degree at Texas State, Amber hopes to work with the US National Parks Service as well as museums around Texas to enact more living history programs which will harbor a greater interest for history in a much more exciting, interactive way.

How do you see the Margerison Fellowship helping you in your studies?

Amber Hallum: The Margerison Fellowship is already proving itself to be an enormous aid in my graduate studies. By covering my tuition, I am able to pour all my focus into my work rather than having to divide my time with another job to help pay for my courses and books. Further, now that I have the title of a fellowship behind me, I feel an increased fervor to succeed in my classes. I mean, you don’t really want to do poorly in a class that is getting paid for you by someone else!

You studied theatre and history in undergrad; how do you see those two helping inform your decision to study public history?

Amber: Theatre has been an invaluable part of my education. It has helped me with my communication skills, my creativeness, and has helped to grow my love of working with other people. History has always been exciting for me, ever since my grandparents would take me to annual trips to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. I knew that these two components of my education would best be married through living history, which allows for me to serve others in a way that my two passions can co-exist. Thus, my studies have brought me to pursuing public history.

You’ve done work hosting “La Frontera” in Corpus Christi. What is one memorable experience from your time with La Frontera that inspires your work today?

Amber: While the entire festival was amazing to attend and watch my living historians/ actors interact with the community, the most rewarding moment was when an elderly couple approached me after speaking with some of the “characters” and exclaimed how exciting it was to talk with local historical figures, some of which they were related to. They had never seen anything like “La Frontera” before and they were grateful to have the history of their hometown and family be told. So many people around the state have never heard of– let alone experienced living history. To be able to share this with them, therefore, is why I am pursuing public history.

 

 

Categories: Funding Opportunities, Graduate Students, News, Research

Making History with Margaret Vaverek: Tea and Snacks with History’s librarian

As just about any historian in the Department of History will tell you, research is often a long but rewarding process. One of the best resources for historians at Texas State is Margaret Vaverek, who is the History subject librarian at Alkek—and a History alum!

Whether you are a first-year student or a faculty member, she is  invaluable when it comes to tracking down the materials you need to do your research. On Thursday, 5 September, and Monday, 9 September, she will be having tea and snacks with students at Alkek. Stop by, say hello, and share your research interests with her. Not sure what a subject librarian does? She explains in her own words:

As history librarian, I will help you search for, find, and obtain better and more sources for your research project than you might have found on your own, and it’ll take less time and effort.

We call these sessions research consultations

During the consultation, we will work together to search the catalog, relevant discipline-specific databases, and other resources depending on your research needs.

By the end of the consultation, you will have:

  • Discovered lots of resources at Texas State and learned how to find and request materials from other libraries as well.
  • Discovered a whole lot more about how to do academic research effectively & efficiently

Here’s the research consultation request form.

Once you’ve pressed submit on your request, the request will come to me and I will then email you to schedule a time and provide directions to the space where the consult will take place.

Categories: Events, Graduate Students, Research, Undergraduate Students