Around the Courtyard | 2014

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  • 2014 News Archive

    • Congratulations to Joseph Yick!  His article, “’Self-Serving Collaboration’: The Political Legacy of ‘Madame Wang’ in Guangdong Province, 1940-1945,” appeared in American Journal of Chinese Studies, Volume 21 (October 2014), Number 2, pp. 217-234.

      Congratulations to Jimmy McWilliams whose article, “How the Battle of New Orleans Birthed the American Character,” appears in The New Yorker. 

      Congratulations to Elizabeth Bishop who received word that she has been awarded one of the ten year-long supplemental developmental leaves!  That makes two years in a row that history has earned one of these grants.

      Congratulations to Bryan Glass who was named a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in recognition of his contributions to British History.

      Congratulations to Elizabeth Bishop who received a library grant to fill in more resources for Turkish Studies!

      Bost Congratulations to Joaquin Rivaya-Martinez whose chapter, “Reflexión historiográfica sobre los genízaros de Nuevo México, una comunidad pluriétnica del septentrión novohispano,” was published in Familias pluriétnicas y mestizaje en la Nueva España y el Río de la Plata, edited by David Carbajal López, pp. 271-308. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2014.

      Congratulations to Ken Margerison and Joseph Yick who were each awarded Research Enhancement Grants!!

      Congratulations as well to Abdualrahman Muhialdin, member of the Model Arab League Team, who learned late last week that the State Department has awarded him a 10 week internship at the U.S. Embassy in Muscat (Oman); he plans to travel during spring term.  Abdualrahman Muhialdin joined the Model Arab League team for the Nationals competition in Washington DC during March 2014; Associated Student Government awarded him a "Rising STAR" travel activity and research grant in support of his MAL participation. 

      Congratulations to Jose Carlos de la Puente! The National Endowment for the Humanities has notified him that he has been offered one of their Awards for Faculty for his manuscript project, “Andean Cosmopolitans: Indigenous Journeys to the Habsburg Royal Court.” According to the website, “In the last three competitions the three Awards for Faculty programs received an average of 127 applications per year. The programs made an average of eight awards per year, for a funding ratio of 6 percent.”

      Congratulations to Frank de la Teja whose monograph, Recollections of a Tejano Life, co-authored with Timothy Matovina, won the Presidio de Bahia award!

      Congratulations to Brian Brown who won The Graduate College’s Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award in the Humanities and Fine Arts.  His thesis, “The Mexico-U.S. Business Committee and the Foundations of the North American Free Trade Agreement”, was directed by Dr. Paul Hart.  He will receive $1,000 and be recognized at The Graduate College’s Awards Ceremony next April, and has also been entered into the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools’ competition for best master’s theses in his category.

      Congratulations to Jimmy McWilliams who article, “A Brief History of Insect Control,” appeared in the November 17th edition of The Paris Review.

      Congratulations to Jessica Pliley and the Phi Alpha Theta Officers--Malak Carillo, Heather Haley, James Scanlon, Mary Murphy, Russell Hill, Todd Richardson and Courtney Mcclure--on a wonderful conference on Saturday.  The keynote speaker Dr. Nabil Al-Tikriti gave an interesting address, the student presenters did a great job, and even the rain did not keep anyone away.  Thank you for what you did for our graduate students and those who came from other universities!

      Congratulations to Frank de la Teja whose chapter, “European Competition for the New World,” appears in LaBelle: The Ship that Changed History published by Texas A&M Press, 2014.

      Congratulations to Elizabeth Bishop on the publication of “ʻAlī al-Wardī, Texas Sociologist?” in the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 8, 2-3 (Exeter, UK), pp. 103-118.

      Congratulations to graduate student Heather Brown on her article on Gandhi and the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps that was published in an online journal, A Change for Better - circulated out of India.

      Congratulations to Jose Carlos and Linda!    JC sent the following message this morning:  “Baby Matías de la Puente Velásquez arrived today, Sunday October 19, @ 6 53 AM, after 18 hours of labor. Mom's a heroine and he's 7.2 pounds (3.450 kg) and 20 inches ( 51 centimeters). He's very healthy and surprisingly quiet (I am sure his keeping the best for later).

      Congratulations as well to Ken and Patty Margerison on the birth of their second granddaughter, Frances Elizabeth Zilko, 8lbs 2oz. 

      Congratulations to Dan Utley! On Friday, he was formally named a Fellow of the East Texas Historical Association along with archivist Donaly Brice, recently retired from the Texas State Library, and Dr. Merline Pitre, a historian with Texas Southern University.

      Congratulations to Shannon Duffy whose chapter titled “The Pequot War” appeared in The Routledge Handbook of American Military and Diplomatic History: The Colonial Period to 1877.

      Congratulations to Bryan Glass.  On 9 September, he had an opinion article about the upcoming Scottish independence referendum published on History & Policy.

      Congratulations to Bryan Glass on the publication of his book, The Scottish Nation at Empire's End (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and an article,  "Scottish Propaganda at the End of Empire," East Asian Journal of British History, vol. 4 (2014): 127-162.

      Congratulations to Liz Makowski, whose chapter, “When is a Beguine not a Beguine? Names, Norms, and Nuance in Canonical Literature,” appeared in Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe. Ed. Letha Böhringer, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, and Hildo van Engen. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) pp.83-98.

      Congratulations to Elizabeth Bishop whose article, “‘Noisy and Non-cooperative;’ LSD testing in Hashemite Iraq, 1953,” appears in Africa and the West (Oran, Algeria), pp. 25-39.

      Congratulations to Shannon Duffy, whose article, “The 1973 UpStairs Lounge Fire,” appeared in Disasters and Tragic Events and How they Changed American History, ed. Mitchell Newton-Matza (ABC CLIO Pub., 2014.)

      Congratulations to Joaquin Rivaya-Martinez whose article, "A Different Look at Native American Depopulation: Comanche Raiding, Captive Taking, and Population Decline," appears in Ethnohistory 61, no. 3 (2014): 391-418.
      In the same issue, there is a very nice review of Jose Carlos’ book.

      Congratulations to Elizabeth Bishop whose article, “Politics of Cinema In Hashemite Iraq,”  has been published in Oriente Moderno (Brill, Leiden), 93, 1 (2013), pp. 101-126.

      Congratulations to Jimmy McWilliams, whose piece on the history of the breadfruit came out earlier this week in The Paris Review.

      Congratulations Brandon Jett (MA ’10; doctoral student University of Florida).  The East Texas Historical Association awarded his article, "Paris is Burning," the Chamberlain award for outstanding article in 2013.

      Congratulations to Jose Carlos de la Puente!  His article, “The Many Tongues of the King: Indigenous Language Interpreters and the Making of the Spanish Empire,” is out in Colonial Latin American Review 23.2 (2014): 143-70.

      Congratulations to Kyle Goyette who successfully defended his dissertation last week at the University of Houston. Dr. Goyette, a graduate of our MA program, has been teaching part time for us since the fall.

      Congratulations to History Department alum, Patrick Cox, recipient of one of the 2014 Distinguished Alumni Awards!

      Congratulations to Elizabeth Bishop, Selene Hinojosa, Margaret Vaverek, who succeeded in their application to the Institute of Turkish Studies for a library grant. These funds will be used to purchase monographs and other materials relating to the Ottoman legal modernization (tanzimat) of the mid-nineteenth century, and will make Alkek's collections in this field comparable with those at Columbia, Princeton, and UCLA.

      Congratulations to Elizabeth Bishop and Joaquin Rivaya-Martinez, our two newest tenured Associate Professors!

      Congratulations to Joseph whose article 'Self-Serving Collaboration': The Political Legacy of 'Madame Wang' in Guangdong Province, 1940-1945," has been accepted for publication in the forthcoming October 2014 issue of the American Journal of Chinese Studies. This international peer-reviewed journal is the official publication of the American Association for Chinese Studies.

      Congratulations to graduate student Eva Fuentes whose article, “Conjunto Tejano y La Canción Ranchera,” is the opening article in the 33rd Tejano Music Awards Festival Magazine.

      Congratulations to Joaquin whose article “The Captivity of Macario Leal: A Tejano Among the Comanches, 1847-1854,” is in the April issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly: 373-402

      The Model Arab League, under the leadership of Elizabeth Bishop, advanced to the national competition for the first time this year. Five Texas State University students earned individual honors while the Bobcat delegation earned a commendation during the National University Model Arab League, held March 28-30 in Washington, D.C. 

      Since this news item posted, the American University in Cairo contacted Texas State's team and invited them to take part in the Cairo International Model Arab League, scheduled for November.
      Congratulations students and Elizabeth!

      Congratulations to Jeff Helgeson whose book, Crucibles of Black Empowerment, will be officially released by the University of Chicago Press on April 28th. Once he has more than one copy, we will put one out on the table in my office.

      Congratulations to Nancy Berlage who won a place and stipend to be an NEH Summer Fellow in Columbia University/East Central European Center’s “America's East Central European Immigrants & Refugees: Migration and Memory" program.

      Congratulations to Ron Johnson whose book talk in Boston made the Boston Globe.

      Congratulations to John Mckiernan-Gonzalez whose book, Fevered Measures, was reviewed in Reviews in American History.

      Congratulations to Shannon Duffy, Ron Johnson, Ana Romo, Ellen Tillman, Frank de la Teja, Jose Carlos de la Puente, Paul Hart and John Mckiernan-Gonzalez who succeeded in winning library grants!

      Mr. Richard Castro, History Department alumnus and recipient of the College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award (2013), has given the college a gift of $1M to support undergraduate scholarships for Liberal Arts majors. In recognition of Mr. Castro's generous gift, the TSUS Foundation has pledged a matching gift of $1M, which will support scholarships for graduate students in the college. The university has already received more than one-third of the total $2M gift, with the remainder coming over the next few years. I believe that this is the largest gift in the history of the college, and we are deeply grateful to Mr. Castro and the Foundation for making it possible. In recognition of Mr. Castro's gift, the university will name the admission center on Guadalupe Street in his honor.

      Congratulations to Jimmy McWilliams who wrote the cover story for the American Scholar.

      Congratulations to Jimmy who had an op-ed piece, Meat Makes the Planet Thirsty, in the New York Times last week. 

      Congratulations to Ana Romo who has been named International Studies Professor of the Year by the International Studies students!

      Congratulations to John Mckiernan-Gonzalez, whose edited volume, PRECARIOUS PRESCRIPTIONS: Contested Histories of Race and Health in North America, was just released by the University of Minnesota Press.

      Congratulations to Ellen Tillman whose manuscript, "Dollar Diplomacy by Force: U.S. Military Experimentation and Occupation in the Dominican Republic, 1900-1924" has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Edward M. Coffman First Manuscript Prize of the Society for Military History.
      The prize includes a cash award, a plaque, and an expedited review process at the University of North Carolina Press.

      Congratulations to Jason Mellard whose book, Progressive Country, has received the Texas State Historical Association's 2013 Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History!

      Congratulations to Ron Johnson on the publication of his book, Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance, by the University of Georgia Press.Congratulations to Ron Johnson whose book talk in Boston made the Boston Globe

       

    • Jessica Pliley's new book, Policing Sexuality, is now available on PopMatters.

       

    • Dr. Nancy K. Berlage, of the History Department and Public History Program at Texas State University, participated this past summer in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute hosted by Columbia University’s prestigious East Central European Center/Harriman Institute. Participants examined how identity and memory shaped the experiences of twentieth century immigrants and refugees from East Central Europe—all with diverse ethnic, religious, and political backgrounds. Dr. Berlage and the other 24 summer fellows developed methods for studying and teaching migration and memory in ways that would incorporate global history, biography, literary analysis, and art.

      Dr. Berlage was motivated to expand her understanding of the field in order to further develop her new course offering “Memory and History,” aimed at public and traditional history graduate students. “Immigration is a popular topic among public audiences and memory studies is a rising academic field with organic connections to oral history,” she explains. “It is important to bridge public history with scholarship on migration, global history and identity in ways that will be meaningful and educational for both public audiences and scholars.” Dr. Berlage is also developing a research project on a refugee, which uses oral history methods. She is particularly interested in how governments influence personal and collective memory.

      The Summer Institute followed a rigorous schedule of daily presentations, roundtable discussions, and critical analysis of readings, culminating in a final research presentation given by each fellow. Columbia provided access to its large collections of rare research material. “As one of the few Americanists among a field of Europeanists, I learned just how valuable dialogue across specialties can be, which is what these NEH Institutes encourage,” Dr. Berlage states. “The other fellows and the organizers were extremely generous in sharing their prodigious knowledge, and I am indebted to them. What I learned about East Central Europe and its relationship to U.S. history really moved my project and teaching forward. It was fascinating how the seminar revealed the disciplinary differences in paradigmatic concepts, which at times created communication gaps. This brought into focus the dynamics that we were studying, sharpening my understanding of the challenges that arose when individuals, shaped as they were by various nationalist and political ideologies, religion, and shared memories, migrated to a drastically different polity and society.”

      For more information, contact Dr. Berlage at nkb11@txstate.edu

       

    • The History Department's Dr. Elizabeth Bishop participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute hosted by Oregon State University, on the topic of "Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia: Literature, the Arts, and Cinema since Independence."  Participants acknowledged the region’s cultural and artistic vitality, in the literary, visual and musical arts with origins in Berber, Arabic and European idioms.

      The Summer Institute followed a rigorous schedule of daily presentations, roundtable discussions, and critical analysis of readings, culminating in a final research presentation given by each fellow.  The Institute was organized around three themes uniting politics and the arts since the 1960s: "Nationalism," "Exile," and "Revival," corresponding in overlapping ways to three periods: the post-independence and cold war years (1960-1990); the years marked by the political and economic instability of globalization (1990-2010); and the recent changes since the Arab Spring.   Bishop joined 21 other summer institute participants to expand the range of their coursework and research on contemporary North Africa.

      Bishop, who regularly teaches on "Gender and Militiarization in the Arab World," acknowledges an influence from University of Texas sociologist Mounira Charrad's States and Women's Rights in North Africa, and its turn to the region's postcolonial history.  Bishop used Charrad's narrative direction to address Nadir Moknèche's 2009 film, "Délice Paloma,"  underscoring the choice to cast Biyouna in a lead role named "Mme Algéria." Bishop says: "Although Charrad does not discuss homosexuality or transpeople in her monograph, I work from her main thesis—that strong states allocate strong rights to individuals—to assert that 'strong' states such as Egypt and Tunisia are particularly invested in heteronormative gender roles."

      As a follow-on activity to the NEH Summer Institute, the College Language Association included three participants' panel proposal in the program for their next conference. Scheduled to take place in Dallas during March 2015, the CLA annual meeting has chosen the theme "Expanding Frontiers: Freedom, Resistance, and Transnational Identities in Languages and Literatures."  Texas State will join the American University in Kuwait, McGill, and Tuskegee Universities in a panel addressing, "Globalization and Transnational Identities in Contemporary North African Music and Cinema."

       

    • Dan Utley, Chief Historian of the Center for Texas Public History, was formally named a Fellow of the East Texas Historical Association.  He received this honor for his many contributions to the writing of the history of East Texas.

      Fellows of the East Texas Historical Association are those members who publish East Texas history of outstanding quality and interest.... this is the highest honor that the members of the ETHA bestow upon their peers.

       

    • Patrick Cox with Students Among the nation’s most distinguished historians, Patrick Cox specializes in 20th-century American and Texas political history.  His extensive contributions to the field have included award-winning and critically acclaimed publications and documentaries on such notable and controversial Texas legends as Lyndon B. Johnson, Sam Rayburn, John Nance Garner, Ralph Yarborough and Bascom Giles.  The author of numerous articles and many books, Box brings history alive, making it accessible, entertaining and informative.

      Dr. Cox earned an M.A. in history from Texas State University in 1988 and a Ph.D. in history from The University Texas at Austin in 1996.  Through his firm, Patrick Cox Consultants, Dr. Cox provides expertise in historical research, commentary, publications and historic preservation.  He previously served as the Associate Director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin.  Additionally, his commitment to public service, natural resource conservation and education has benefited organizations that include the Pedernales electric cooperative, the American Journalism Historians Association, the National Council on Public History, the Barton Springs-Edwards Aquifer Conservation District and the Wimberley Lyons Club. 

       

    • Texas State was accepted as a member of The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII) this past summer.

      Elizabeth Bishop, associate history professor, represents Texas State and the Department of History on the TAARII board.

      TAARII was established to promote scholarly research on and in Iraq and ancient Mesopotamia.

      The institute offers graduate and post-graduate fellowships for Americans to work in Iraq in a broad range of disciplines. TAARII also has a fellowship program for Iraqi academics to aid them in carrying out research in Iraq.

      A collection of research materials on the Middle East is available in the Alkek Library, Bishop said. Among the collection are a complete run of the Iraq Times and copies of original records from libraries in London and Amsterdam as well as numerous secondary resources like academic journals and studies.

      “We have as good of a collection as UCLA or Princeton, right here in San Marcos,” Bishop said.

      Middle Eastern study materials are not only available to history students doing research but to any interested student, said Mary Brennan, Department of History chair.

      “Students will come to Texas State to take advantage of our resources and to get the full attention of professors that they might not get elsewhere while they develop themselves for schools like these,” Bishop said.

      Senior lecturer Bryan Glass, who graduated from UT Austin and is associated with Arab scholars there, said those studying Middle Eastern history with UT faculty often choose to come to Texas State for access to the resources.

      “The fact that (UT) actually (has) a Middle East center and they have students coming down (to Texas State) really says a lot,” Glass said.

      Other institutional members of TAARII include Columbia University, Georgetown University and Harvard University.

      This article, written by Kelsey Bradshaw, appeared in the University Star on September 18, 2014.

       

    • The State Board of Education is considering the adoption of new textbooks, despite claims from some that they contain misleading or biased statements and even misrepresentations of history. 

       

    • Public history graduate students, working through the Center for Texas Public History, were featured in an article in the New Braunfels newspaper. 

       

    • Texas State University, through the Department of History and the Center for the Study of the Southwest, has joined the recently created Southwest Seminar on Colonial Latin America. The seminar is a consortium of universities and scholars dedicated to innovative approaches to the study of colonial Latin America, broadly defined. Each year, a two-day workshop will bring together ten participants to present a pre-circulated paper and also serve as the primary commentator to another presenter’s work. The first Southwest Seminar will be held in Flagstaff, Arizona, on October 2-4, 2014. Texas State will host the seminar in 2016. Other member institutions include Northern Arizona University, Texas Christian University, University of Arizona, University of California-San Diego, University of Texas-El Paso, and Utah Valley University. For more information, visit The Southwestern Seminar.

    • Congratulations Brandon Jett (MA ’10; doctoral student University of Florida).  The East Texas Historical Association awarded his article, "Paris is Burning," the Chamberlain award for outstanding article in 2013.

       

    • LA_Academic_AwardsHistory Department scholarship and Academic Excellence Award Winners at the Liberal Arts Awards Presentations. April 2014

       

    • In Brief: Texas State joins Center for Arabic Study Abroad Consortium
      Posted by Jayme Blaschke
      University News Service
      June 6, 2014

      The Texas State University has joined the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) Consortium.

      The CASA Consortium offers programs providing intensive language, culture and specialized area studies training, with 9-20 hours of classroom instruction per week plus homework. Established in 1967 to offer language training at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, this is the most prestigious program of its kind. Since its inception, CASA has trained more than 1,387 upper level undergraduates, graduates, and professors specializing in various areas of Middle Eastern Studies.

      For the past seven years, the Arabic language program at Texas State has offered first- and second-year courses in preparation for the CASA exam.

      The CASA Consortium is currently comprised of 34 universities and colleges. Representatives from consortium member schools convene annually in conjunction with the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) meeting.

       

    • Posted by Jayme Blaschke
      University News Service
      May 28, 2014

      The Alkek Library at Texas State University has received a grant from the Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS) of Washington, D.C.

      Based at Georgetown University, the ITS is a non-profit, private educational foundation that assists American universities to develop their library resources, programs of study, scholarly conferences and outreach activities in the field of Turkish studies.

      Texas State's successful proposal sought funds to purchase new scholarly monographs on the legal modernization of the late Ottoman Empire, which is essential to understanding the politics of successor jurisdictions in the contemporary Middle East.

      Elizabeth Bishop, assistant professor in the Department of History, Selene Hinojosa, collection development librarian, and Margaret Vaverek, research/instruction/outreach department, were instrumental in securing the grant.

       

    • Colin_Wolff_IstanbulI studied in Costa Rica with a summer program through Texas State in 2010 and knew that I would have to spend an extended time abroad after I graduated with my B.A. degree.   And that's exactly what I did. Just two months after graduation, I boarded a flight bound for Istanbul, History diploma in hand, eager to start the next stage of my life. As a History graduate, I could not have chosen a more interesting destination than Istanbul. The home of four empires and various cultures spanning thousands of years, Istanbul is a history buff's dream. My history degree not only taught me about the issues of the past but also gave me the ability to think critically about the issues that face our world today. I teach at a prestigious private language school that caters to adult learners. In my job I interact with a wide cross section of Turkish society. Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, students, executives, religious leaders, politicians, and curious learners are who I interact with on a daily basis, so in this business creativity is a must. Studying history definitely gave me the skills I need to effectively engage with my students to achieve my goals and theirs. I originally came to Istanbul planning to return to the US after one year, however it's been almost two years now and I'm having too much of an exciting time to leave.

       

    • Brian Brown—Rutgers University
      Joie-Lynn Campbell—University of Massachusetts at Amherst
      Karen Johnston-Ashton—Texas State University, Education Program
      Alex LaRotta—University of Houston

       

    • Irene Hindson AwardThe award, given by the Texas Academic Advising Network, is given to one advisor from each associated university. A committee of advisors from across campus nominated and voted for Mrs. Hindson and she won at the start level. She will now move onto to compete on the national level.

       

    • Mellard TSHA AwardThe Tullis Prize is given for the Best Book on Texas History published that year. Dr. Mellard won the award for his book Progressive Country: How the 1970s Transformed the Texan in Popular Culture.

       

    • The 14th Annual Texas Music Unplugged drew in students and community members alike to hear Kyle Park, Lisa Morales, Jamie Wilson, Kelley Mickwee, Big John Mills and Paul Glasse perform their own songs and play along with the others. Additionally, history graduate student Audrey Najera won the Michael R. Davis Scholarship. Greg Davis, the sponsor of the scholarship, also presented her with an autographed guitar.

      Unplugged 2014--scholarship winnerUnplugged 2014--musicians_edit  

    • Five Texas State University students earned individual honors while the Bobcat delegation earned a  commendation during the National University Model Arab League, held March 28-30 in Washington, D.C.

      Student Feature: My True Loves - Music, Audiobooks, Movies by Christopher Allen

      Christopher Allen, Photo 2014From the first day I entered the Alkek Library, the Periodicals/Media collections on the third floor have entertained me and helped me study for classes.

      The DVD collection helps me study for my history classes with all the documentary films we have. Sometimes I even go to the VHS tapes, like when studying for my history exams on Nazi Germany.

      When it comes to music, I go straight to our collection. We have everything from the classical music of Beethoven to hip hop from Run DMC, folk from Bob Dylan, and rap from Tupac Shakur. When taking Sociology of Pop Culture and Society, I was able to use different music artists to show how their music impacts people and brings people together.

      We also have Rosetta Stone software for studying foreign languages. I use it to help me with Spanish.

      My favorite resource on the third floor is the audiobook collection. Audiobooks also help students study for exams. Most people assume only novels are on compact discs, but the library has audiobooks on a variety of sub¬jects as well as fiction. Some audiobooks con¬tain primary source information, like speeches of world leaders such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. Others have second¬ary source material including works on differ¬ent historians, philosophers, and scientists such as Sigmund Freud. When I listened to the pow¬erful speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, I learned new things about the his¬tory of African Americans, why America needs to change, and how these two public figures helped change America. I plan on using these resources for my research paper coming up in my American Religious History class.

      For my personal use, the audiobooks have given me great pleasure with their classic stories. Audiobooks on history help me with exams, as they are a great study tool when you stay up late and can’t read anymore. Listening is easier for me than using my eyes to read!

      Chris Allen, a senior history major, works at Alkek.

       

    • Bill_LiddleOn February 27th, Bill Liddle's big heart finally gave out. He passed away after weeks, really months of fighting an unspecified infection. As soon as I find out about the services, I will share that with you.

      Some of you did not get the opportunity to know Bill which was unfortunate. He was a man of great intellect and no pretensions. He did not like titles (he always listed himself as Mr. Liddle) and never stood on ceremony. He had a wonderful sense of humor and a dry wit; he never took himself too seriously. He loved his wife and daughters and was dedicated to his students. He has been a part of our community for almost half of a century. We will miss him.

       

    • MAL Awards, HoustonFifteen Texas State students and a faculty member returned from Houston,where the Model Arab League team took part in the Bilateral U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce Regional University Model Arab League (15-16 February 2014), with awards.

      The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations organizes these events at which students debate in five councils: Economic Affairs, Joint Defense, Palestinian Affairs, Political Affairs, and Social Affairs. At these competitions, students sharpened their skills in diplomacy and public speech. For this year's competition, Texas State students represented the North African country of Algeria. Hosted by the University of Houston Honors College, thirteen universities were represented- among them, Texas A & M, Louisiana State University, and the University of Arkansas (from both Little Rock and Monticello campuses).

      Texas State’s former MAL president Daniel Burrow garnered an “honorable mention” for chairing the Social Affairs council, and Bobcats Nora Lisa Cavazos and Ashley Jones received an “honorable mention” award for representing Algeria on that council. The resolution they drafted sought to decrease youth unemployment in the MENA region; as Jones explains, "because many leave the region to find better careers, [we] want to create more opportunities by providing vocational training in secondary educational institutions.”

      Texas State’s Ayhab Farhat and the University of Texas at Arlington's Hanaa Barakat received an “outstanding delegation” award for their representation of Algeria on the Palestinian Affairs council. About the overall debate, he states: "I took a part in convincing other states in the Palestinian Affairs Council to come up with a humane and proper way to solve the Palestinian refugee problems;" and, about the resolution she drafted, she says: “it would expand and renovate existing refugee camps in states bordering Palestine for the once again displaced Palestinians now coming from the Syrian civil war.”

      Under the gavel of Texas State’s Matt Korn, the entire Joint Defense Committee was awarded “Outstanding Council” for the quality both of their debate and the resolutions they produced. Korn acknowledges, "as chair, I was impressed by the preparedness and intensity of the delegates." Garret Honea, who represented Algeria there, observes: “The debate was quite intense; it gave me a better understanding of both the frustration to try and get everyone aboard and the excitement you experience when everyone comes to a mutual understanding.” He adds: “I learned that change must be gradual, you have to slowly come to an agreement with which everyone can identify.”

      The MAL program acknowledges the support of the Office of Equity and Access. Dr. Elizabeth Bishop, of the Department of History, mentors Texas State University's program. Email her at eb26@txstate.edu for more information.

       

    • Mai_MosadTexas State welcomed Cairo University's Dr. Mai Mosad under the Fulbright Scholar Program, Outreach Lecturing Fund (27 January-30 January). While on campus, she met with students and faculty in the History Department, Political Science Department, and Geography Department, as well as the International Studies program. In these conversations, she posed pertinent questions about the ongoing political changes in Egypt; asking, "is it a revolution, or is it a coup?"

      Dr. Mai Mosad presented a lecture which was open to the entire campus community which united ancient Egyptian and modern political themes. In this, she described King Narmer who united Upper and Lower Egypt in the pre-dynastic period. "Narmer was the first leader of Egypt to die in office; a tradition which has continued until Mubarak stepped down in 2011," she told her audience.

      The History Department would like to express its gratitude to the Provost's Office and CIES for their support.

       

    • Jack_Johnson_EventTexas State graduate students Alex Borger and Ann Landeros, took part in a dedication ceremony honoring heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson. Borger and Landeros wrote the documentation to justify the marker. Johnson was a Galveston native and the first African-American to win the heavyweight boxing title during a period of legally enforced racism.