Announcements
Dr. Amanda Bresie, a graduate from the class of 2014, has published her first book titled Veiled Leadership: Katarine Drexel, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and Race Relations. According to the Catholic University of American Press website, Bresie's book "examines the lives of Mother Katharine and her congregation within the context of larger constructs of gender, race, religion, reform, and national identity. It explores what happens when a non-dominant culture tries to impose its views and morals on other non-dominant cultures."
Dr. Bresie is the current President of the Texas Catholic Historical Association and teaches at the Greenhill School in Addison, TX.
Dr. Sam Davis has been awarded a fellowship for academic year 2023-2024 as a Mellon Scholar in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia. The fellowship will support Sam’s work on his manuscript, Antislavery Conquest: Colonization, Removal, and Free-Soil Politics.
The Library Company, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731 and located in Center City Philadelphia, holds over half a million rare books and graphics that are capable of supporting research in a variety of fields and disciplines relating to the history of the United States and the Atlantic world in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The fellowship program began in 1987 and now has more than a thousand alumni. A list of past fellows and their topics is available here along with a list of publications resulting from their fellowship research.
Dr. Kara Vuic recently published a blog post in Process, the blog of the Organization of American Historians, The Journal of American History, and The American Historian. Process is dedicated to exploring the process of doing history and the multifaceted ways of engaging with the U.S. past.
Click here to read Dr. Vuic's post that discusses the legacies of women who served in combat in The Iraq War.
Back in March (2023), C-SPAN was on hand to record the keynote lecture for the 2023 LCpl Benjamin W. Schmidt Symposium on War, Conflict, and Society. The lecture was given by Thomas Guglielmo, Associate Professor of American Studies at George Washington University. His address drew from his prize-winning book, Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America’s World War II Military (Oxford UP 2021), to discuss the topic of race and World War II.
Dr. Alex Hidalgo's newest article has been published in the May edition of the Hispanic American Historical Review. The article, entitled "The Echo of Voice after the Fall of the Aztec Empire", forms part of a double special issue between HAHR and the William and the Mary Quarterly that features new work on the early Americas. Click here to read the article.
Dr. Hanan Hammad will deliver the keynote remarks at the The Egyptian Constitution of 1923 Conference at NYU on Friday, March 12th. According to the website, this conference seeks to "investigate the limits and opportunities of the decades of constitutionalism and 'democracy'", since the promulgation of the first Egyptian constitution in 1923. The conference is being held in person and can also be attended virtually via Zoom. Click here to RSVP for in person or virtual attendance.
Dr. Hanan Hammad was invited to give the 2023 Hassan (Husni) Haddad Memorial Lecture at the University of Chicago earlier this month. Dr. Hammad lectured on her latest book, Unknown Past Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt.
Click here to read the review of Unknown Past Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt. Since 1897 the Forward has been a leading source of news, opinion, culture, and more
through a Jewish lens.
The Náñez-Woodward Collection of Panamanian Popular Art includes photographs by Peter Szok donated in honor of Dr. Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr. and Dr. Guillermo Náñez Falcón.
This is an enhanced monograph digital scholarship collection, complementing and supplementing the book Wolf Tracks: Popular Art and Re-Africanization in Twentieth-Century Panama from the University Press of Mississippi.
Read Dr. Alex Hidalgo's essay for the international magazine, PopMatters. The article is titled Never Mind the Sex Pistols: 'Never Mind the Bullocks' at 45. PopMatter's mission is "to educate as well as entertain, our scope is broadly cast on all things pop culture and we are the largest site that bridges academic and popular writing in the world".
Read Ph.D. Candidate Cecilia Hill’s recently published article in the Fall Issue of the Journal of Social Studies and History Education. The article is titled, "Disrupting the Master Narrative: Mexican Americans in the Borderlands".
Congratulation to Jorden Pitt on being awarded the AHA-NASA Fellowship in the History of Space Technology to work on his dissertation, “The Traumatic Blue Sky: The Psychological Consequences of Aerial Combat in the Twentieth Century.”
Congratulations to Dr. Jodi Campbell! Jodi has been invited to give the Luis Martín Lecture series in the Humanities at the Meadows Museum. There will be four Friday morning lectures (April 1, 8, 22, and 29) that are both in-person and virtual.
Here is the story: a female singer becomes a movie star, has a tumultuous personal
life, finds herself engulfed in scandal and political intrigue but through it all,
becomes a cultural icon, relevant through the present day.
While this might sound like the plot of a 2023 Academy Award nominee, it is actually a rough outline of the life of Layla Murad, an Egyptian singer and actor of Jewish heritage who converted to Islam, and the subject of Hanan Hammad, Ph.D.’s latest book, Unknown Past: Layla Murad, the Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2022).
Gene Allen Smith, Ph.D., professor of history and director and co-founder of the Center for Texas Studies, was named as Class of 1957 Distinguished Chair in Naval Heritage at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Established by the USNA Class of 1957, the Distinguished Chair in Naval Heritage is a 10-month appointment to the Academy’s history department and is responsible for developing future Navy and Marine officers’ appreciation for naval history.
“I am excited about my return to Annapolis, MD to return as the Class of 1957 Distinguished Chair of Naval Heritage,” Smith said.
Smith, who previously served as Distinguished Chair for 2013-2014, brings decades of experience as a scholar of naval history, the War of 1812 and early American territorial expansion.
The NEH fellowship will support his book project, Mexican Soundscapes of the Colonial Era. Dr. Hidalgo is one of just 13 Texans, and one of 200 scholars nationally, to receive one of these prestigious awards from the NEH. Congratulations on this achievement!
https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-247-million-208-humanities-projects-nationwide
Congratulations to Dr. Kara Vuic, who has been selected as the inaugural Cokie Roberts Women’s History Fellow by the National Archives Foundation. The fellowship will provide support for her book project, Drafting Women; you can read more about the fellowship here.
Dr. Vuic discusses the history of women's exclusion from the draft.
We are delighted to announce that our department has landed not one, but two – TWO! – Summer Stipends from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): Dr. Alex Hidalgo for his project, “Mexican Soundscapes of the Colonial Era,” and Dr. Kara Vuic for her project, “Drafting Women.” Well done, Alex and Kara – we are so proud! This is a major accomplishment, as Kara and Alex are two of just six scholars in the state, and of 92 nationally, who received these grants this year. Please join me in congratulating Alex and Kara on their fine work.
Dr. Gregg Cantrell's book, The People’s Revolt: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism , has been chosen as the recipient of the Kat Broocks Bates Award for 2020. The Kate
Broocks Bates Award was established in 1976 in the name of the Daughters of the Republic
of Texas by her children, Kate Harding Bates Parker and C. Elisabeth Bates Nisbet.
The award honors Mrs. Bates, a dedicated member of the Daughters of the Republic of
Texas who was committed to the study of Texas history. The Bates Award is given annually
for a significant piece of historical research dealing with any phase of Texas history
prior to 1900.
Congratulations to Dr. Gregg Cantrell, the Erma and Ralph Lowe Chair in Texas History and Director of Graduate Studies (History), who is the winner of the 2021 AddRan Distinguished Faculty Lecture. Dr. Cantrell was selected for his exceptional work, The People’s Revolt: Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism (Yale University Press, 2020). As described by Dr. Karl Jacoby (Columbia University), Dr. Cantrell’s work is “[d]eeply researched and beautifully written [and] restores the Populists to their rightful place at the leading edge of American liberalism through his close attention to the experiences of African Americans, ethnic Mexicans, and women in the crucible of Texas politics.” Dr. Cantrell will deliver his distinguished faculty lecture in the spring.
Dr. Max Krochmal, Associate Professor of History, has been named the winner of the 2020 Diversity in Research Prize for his research “Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Hidden Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas”
Texas schools have an opportunity to embrace a culturally diverse history curriculum
and TCU History doctoral candidate Cecilia Hill is leading the charge. Read the full
story in the latest issue of TCU Magazine.
This seminar-style course will use the past to explain the present of Brexit. By using the lens of History, we can enlarge our understanding of how Britain arrived at this moment and why Brexit has been so difficult to achieve.