The Department of History at Texas State University affirms that #BlackLivesMatter. We study, teach, and strive to understand the historical continuum of racisms in this country. We recognize the many ways that racism is intertwined with deep and constantly evolving structures and cultures of inequity, domination, exclusion, and exploitation in the United States and across the globe, throughout the long expanse of modern history. We have learned from this history that, in order to advance the cause of anti-racism, we must identify the many forms of violence that sustain racial injustice and affirm both the dignity of Black lives and the interdependence of all human beings.
We stand in solidarity with our Black students, colleagues, and their families, and we are grieving and committed to act against racial injustice with you.
Dr. Thomas Alter
Dr. Gregory Andrews
Dr. Nancy Berlage
Dr. Elizabeth Bishop
Dr. Ronald Brown
Dr. Victoria Bynum
Adam Clark
Dr. Sarah Coleman
Dr. Sara Damiano
Dr. Peter Dedek
Dr. José Carlos de la Puente
Dr. Shannon Duffy
Trace Etienne
Dr. Bryan Glass
Dr. Dwonna Goldstone
Dr. Jeff Helgeson
Dr. Debra Law
Dr. Deirdre E. Lannon
Dr. Bryan N. Mann
Dr. Kenneth Margerison
Dr. John Mckiernan-González
Dr. James McWilliams
Dr. Jason Mellard
Dr. Margaret Menninger
Dr. Rebecca Montgomery
Dr. Angela Murphy
Dr. Joshua Paddison
Madelyn Patlan
Dr. Jessica Pliley
Dr. Leah Renold
Dr. Caroline Ritter
Dr. Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez
Dr. Allison Robinson
Dr. Anadelia Romo
Roberta Ruiz
Katie Salzmann
Dr. Ellen Tillman
Dan K. Utley
Dr. Louie Dean Valencia-García
Dr. Joseph Yick
Congratulations to the class of 2020!
The Texas State University Department of History would like to congratulate all of our graduating students this semester. While it wasn’t the type of semester anyone expected, we are all very proud of all of you for graduating in this historic time! We encourage you all to stay in touch!
Students completing a Master of Arts in History:
Karen Johnston-Ashton
Blake Gandy
Rayanna Hoeft
Cheyenne Johnston-Ashton
Lauren Kahre-Campbell
Evan Moore
Amanda Rock
Suzanne Schatz
Travis Smith
Jonathan Wales
Students completing a Bachelor of Arts in History:
Brenda Alba
Kendall Allen
Brooke Anaya
Avery Armstrong
Sarah Arndt
Antonio Barbosa
Natasha Beck-King
Hannah Bertling
Kayla Borak
June Carnahan
Gwendolyn Cunningham
Blu De Vanon
Samuel Dunn
Celestial Edmonson
Katherine Edwards
Dominic Funug
Cody Gonzales
Devin Granado
Ty Hancock
Thomas Harney
Sydney Harrell
Daniel Hogan
Jayson Johnson
William Keenan
Lindy Lantelme
Nathalie Love
Rosemary Lugo
Christopher Luna
Kendall McCumber
Wesley Moore
Philip Mudd
Taylor Neal
Osaetin Omo-Osagie
Madison Otte
Brandon Paez
Ramon Perez
Jordan Pilkenton
Victoria Ramirez
Ashley Reimer
Christopher Reyes
Kristin Reynolds
Paul Saldana
Taylor Schuster
Laura Serrano
Scarlett Smith
Conner Staples
Dillon Tolsma
William Watford
Kaitlyn White
New General Education Offerings in African American History and Mexican American History
The History Department is excited to announce new options to students for completing state general education requirements in History!
In the past, History 1310 and 1320 – the general surveys of US History – were our only offerings that fulfilled state general education requirements. Going forward, we will be offering surveys of African American History (HIST 2381 and 2382) and Mexican American History (HIST 2327 and 2328) to our general education offerings. Students interested in those topics can take 2381 or 2327 in lieu of 1310 and/or 2382 or 2328 in lieu of 1320.
The Fall 2020 class schedule includes the following options for those interested in these alternatives:
- HIST 2381: African American History to 1877 with Dr. Dwight Watson, MW at 2pm (would replace 1310 in general education requirement).
- HIST 2328: Mexican American History since 1865 with Dr. John Mckiernan-González, MW at 11 am (would replace 1320 in general education requirement).
The Department of History is grateful to be able to build on persistent efforts of Texas State students, faculty, and staff to work for these constructive curricular developments, including groups such as: Pan African Action Committee, Black Women United, Student Community of Progressive Empowerment, Black Students Alliance, and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
A Congratulations to TXST’s Model Arab League
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
Meet the Chairs: Dr. Murphy and Dr. Helgeson reflect on the History Department and its future
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.
A 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.
Funding Opportunities
Check out some of these scholarship opportunities for Texas State University History Scholarships: Apply Here
Texas State Undergraduate and Graduate Level Scholarships |
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| Alton G. Brieger Scholarship | $950 | Undergraduates | History Majors |
3.3 GPA in History |
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| Taylor-Murphy Scholarship | $950 | Undergraduates | History Majors |
3.3 GPA in History |
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| Brunson Family Endowed Scholarship | $1000 | Graduate Students | History Majors | 3.5 GPA | |
| Minnie Knispel Scholarship | $660 | Graduate Students | History Majors/Social Studies Teachers | ||
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James W. Pohl Scholarship
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$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.
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.
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.
2019 Phi Alpha Theta Texas State University History Conference
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”
- Andrew Freeman, Graduate Student, Texas State University
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”
“Chasing Slavery” Participant Spotlight: Dr. Robert T. Chase
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. Robert T. Chase, Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University, shares with us a bit about his forthcoming book.
Tell me in four sentences why I should read your book.
Dr. Robert T. Chase: We Are Not Slaves will be the first study of the southern prisoners’ rights movement of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and the subsequent construction of what many historians now call the era of mass incarceration. By placing the prisoners’ rights movement squarely in the labor organizing and civil rights mobilizing traditions, my work reconceptualizes what constitutes “civil rights” and to whom it applies. My book shows that this prison-made civil rights rebellion, while mounting a successful legal challenge, was countered by a new prison regime – one that utilized paramilitary practices, gang intelligence units, promoted privatized prisons, endorsed massive prison building programs, and embraced 23-hour cell isolation—that established what I call a “Sunbelt” militarized carceral state approach that became exemplary of national prison trends. In this two-part narrative of resistance and punitive reconstitution, prison labor is treated as more than work; rather, prison labor constituted a regime of carceral discipline and power that ordered prison society, sexuality, white privilege and racial hierarchy. By drawing on newly released legal documents and over 80 oral histories with prisoners, this book considers the intersectional nature of prison labor as a cite of power that intersected with spatial control, gender identity, sexuality and sexual violence, and race and racial privileges. Rather than consider prison rape as an endemic feature of individual prisoner pathology, my study uses legal testimonies to excavate a changing prison society centered on labor division that controlled an internal sex slave trade that amounted to what what I call “state-orchestrated prison rape.”
What was the most surprising thing you encountered when researching your book?
Dr. Chase: The most surprising thing I encountered is the degree to which our criminal justice system relies on prevarication and outright lying to craft false narratives that incarceration offers modernization and rehabilitation, when, in point of fact, incarceration is, at its base, a system of state violence and coerced labor that ultimately eliminates people as citizens and as human beings. As a civil rights scholar, I expected to find in these civil rights cases the all-too frequent allegation of corporal punishment and physical abuse. But I never expected to find a system where fellow prisoners operated as guards over other prisoners where these “convict-guards” engaged in torture, maiming, daily abuse, and the sexual assault of other prisoners in a system that was sanctified by state power. By drawing on legal testimonies and by conducting oral histories with the incarcerated, I learned that prison rape was a system of state-orchestrated sexual assault as a state reward for those prisoners who acted as guards. As I shifted through personal papers, diaries, letters, and affidavits from the incarcerated, I became astounded at how these people who had so little formal education, learned to educate themselves, to become what are known as “jail house attorneys,” and how deeply these self-taught prisoners read philosophical and political treatises, and how such individual acts of “mind change” lent themselves to inter-racial political organizing in a racially segregated prison system that constituted a twentieth century “prison plantation” system that rendered these prisoners as literal “slaves of the state.”
What do you hope people will take away from our conference on trafficking, forced labor and labor exploitation?
Dr. Chase: I really appreciate the thematic approach of this conference that has taken normally separate fields of study – sexual trafficking, mass incarceration, and coerced labor – to instead put these fields in dialogue with one another to show how taken together these topics all too often operate as overlapping systems of oppression and dehumanization. Too often we think of “labor” as merely “work,” rather than the more comprehensive role that labor plays as a critically constitutive system that tends to divide society along strictly policed lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. When we think about labor as more than work and as a constitutive process of division, we can better reimagine our collective “work” as crossing these socially constructed divides to build bridges and collective communities to combat such societal divisions.
What challenge(s) raised by your research are you still trying to reconcile?
Dr. Chase: When I started this research in the early 2000s, there were relatively few historical studies of twentieth-century prisons and almost none of the prisoners’ rights movement. Despite the development of a “long civil rights movement” historiography, I found that the literature simply did not discuss the ways in which what we now call mass incarceration has turned the gains of the civil rights revolution into another age of racial disparity.
My contribution to this rethinking of post-1965 narratives is to demonstrate that the civil rights rebellion reached prisoners as well and that their collective efforts extend the struggle for civil rights into the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Moreover, my use of oral histories, legal depositions and affidavits, and courtroom testimony provides an example to students of the ways in which they can uncover the voice and agency of the prisoners themselves. Despite winning the nation’s largest civil rights victory against unconstitutional prison systems, however, the Texas prisoners’ rights movement found that the ground had shifted underneath their feet and that just as the southern prison plantation fell, the new “Sunbelt” militarized prison arose from its ashes like a carceral phoenix.
When activists, abolitionists, policy makers, and reformers attempt to curb mass incarceration, they must seek redress not only at the federal level through national legislation but perhaps more importantly they must encounter the ways in which policing and mass incarceration are governed at the local and state level where the American state is indeed strong. One suggestion that my book offers is that social justice movements against mass incarceration should continue to focus as much attention on changes in local and state government as the civil rights movement once did when it sought civil rights as a matter of national and federal intervention. To dismantle this encompassing thicket of mass incarceration, we must utilize the spade of history to reveal just how deep we must cut to reach the roots of intertwining carceral states.
Also check out:
- We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America
By Robert T. Chase (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) - Caging Borders and Carceral States: Incarcerations, Immigration Detentions, and Resistance
Edited by Robert T. Chase (University of North Carolina Press, 2020)