Around the Courtyard | 2020

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  • 2020 News Archive

    • Congratulations to Dr. Carrie Ritter, who received a MSI Faculty Research Grant from the UT Austin Center for European Studies. She will use the award to continue her research on British universities’ overseas marketing campaigns during the late 20th century.

      Congratulations to Dr. Jose Carlos de la Puente on a wonderfully productive semester. He summarizes his achievements much better than I ever could, so I will quote his message below.

      He published  a research report in Histórica, titled “Plateros para el Inca: la traducción de documentos en lengua general al castellano en la Audiencia de Lima a fines del siglo XVII” [Silversmiths for the Inca: The Translation of Documents from the General Language to Spanish in the Late Seventeenth-Century Lima Audiencia], the first ever to document the translation of Quechua-language texts into written Spanish as part of the colonial administration of justice in Lima’s high court. It can be accessed here.

      His article “Of Widows, Furrows, and Seed: New Perspectives on Land and the Colonial Andean Commons” has been accepted for publication in the 101.3 (August 2021) issue of The Hispanic American Historical Review, the flagship journal in his field.

      A collection of forty manuscripts (in facsimile and transcription) that belonged to seventeenth-century Jesuit author and extirpator of idolatries José de Arriaga, preceded by a 45,000-word introductory essay, will be published by Peru’s National Library (Lima) next May. The book is entitled “El taller del extirpador: los manuscritos jesuitas de Pablo José de Arriaga.”
       
      He has been invited to present past and new work in two venues next semester:

      1. He will be discussing his 2018 book as part of the Latin American History Seminar and Workshop entitled “Administrating Differences: Recent Scholarship on Indigenous and Afro-Latin America,” organized by Harvard University’s History Department.
      2. He will be presenting his new book project at Yale University’s Program in Agrarian Studies’ weekly Colloquium. The spring schedule is not out yet, but info about this venue, organized by James C. Scott, among others, can be found on the Colloquium website.

      Congratulations to Dr. Joaquin Rivaya-Martinez whose book chapter, “‘Bárbaros’ en la cartografía de Nueva España. El caso comanche,” has been published in El gran norte novohispano y mexicano en la cartografía de los siglos XVI-XIX, edited by José Refugio de la Torre Curiel and Salvador Álvarez, 104-134. Hermosillo - Zapopan: El Colegio de Sonora - El Colegio de Jalisco, 2020.

      Congratulations to Drs. Sara Damiano, Louis Porter, and Justin Randolph who have earned 2021 REP Awards from The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs!

      Congratulations to Dr. Ana Romo on the publication of her book chapter, “From the ‘Romance of Industry’ to the ‘National Soul’: Promoting Travel in the Pan American Union,” in The Business of Leisure: Tourism History in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Andrew Wood. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2021.

      Good news from Dr. Jason Mellard and the Center for Texas Music History. Jason’s chapter, "P. T. Barnum Meets Robert Smithson; Or, Claes Oldenburg Speaks with Mark Twain's Accent," appears in Bob Wade and W. K. Stratton's edited collection, Daddy-O's Book of Big Ass Art. Wade, who passed last Christmas Eve, was an influential Texas artist with pieces in the Whitney, Pompidou, and Menil Collection, but also here on campus in the Wittliff and Undergraduate Academic Center, as well as public works across the state.

      Congrats to the 2020-21 Awardees of the Margerison Graduate Fellowship in History!

      2020-2021 Margerison Fellow ImageThe Texas State University Department of History is proud to announce this year’s awardees 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 are awarded funds to fully cover graduate tuition and fees for the spring and fall semesters as well as research support—qualifying for in-state tuition. The Graduate Studies Committee considers 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.

      Learn more about Railey Tassin (top photo) and Madison Otte (bottom photo), this year’s recipients of this prestigious fellowship on our History Department Blog.

      Congratulations to Distinguished Professor Emeritus Dr. Victoria Bynum. Her book, Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South (Univ. of North Carolina, 1992), has been named one of the five best books on the Confederate home front by The Civil War Monitor. 

      Congratulations to Kierah Shirk, 2019-2020 President of the Model Arab League.

      Kierah's research poster "Comparing the Principles of Eastern and Western Feminism: Literature of Fatema Mernissi and Audre Lorde," is scheduled as part of the panel "Women’s Agency in Music and Literature" today, at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (attached).

      More information on Kierah and her project can be found on the Department of World Languages website. 

      Southwest Airlines awards Westlake teacher and History Department Alumna, Cathy Cluck, for her history road trip.  Cluck took her history class "on the road" in the spring with a 1,500-mile American history road trip to famous historic sites.  You can read more about Cathy and her teaching adventure in the Austin Statesman.

      Congratulations to Dr. Justin Randolph, who has won the Southern Historical Association’s 2020 C. Vann Woodward Prize for his dissertation, “Civil Rights Arrested: Black Freedom Movements and Mass Incarceration in Rural Mississippi, 1938 to 1980.”

      Dr. Dwight Watson will appear as part of a screening and discussion of the 2020 film, The 24th, by Kevin Willmott and Trai Byers, which “tells the incredibly powerful and timely true story of the all-black Twenty-Fourth United States Infantry Regiment and the Houston Riot of 1917.” The event will take place on October 8, 2020, 7:00pm - 9:30pm, Screening at 7:00pm | Q&A at 9:00pm. You can buy tickets at the link above.

      Congratulations to Dr. Elizabeth Bishop, whose article, “Dying to Survive: Construction Workers in French Algeria (1950-1960),” has been published in Oussour al-Jadida vol. 10, issue 3 (September 2020), which is edited by faculty at the Algeria History Lab at the Faculty of Humanities and Islamic Sciences, of Université Oran 1 Ahmed Ben Bella.

      Congratulations to Dr. José Carlos de la Puente, who has been appointed to the Institute of Andean Studies’ Blue Ribbon Commission, “Engaging Africans and their Descendants in Andean Studies.” This is an opportunity for Dr. de la Puente to aid in addressing systemic racism in his field of historical inquiry.

      Congratulations to Dr. Louie Dean Valencia-García on his latest publication, “How the El Paso Terrorist’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Rhetoric,” in the edited volume Mainstreaming the Global Radical Right (Ibidem-Verlag Press/Columbia University Press).

      Congratulations to Dr. John McKiernan-Gonzalez, who has been busy reaching wide audiences. Please see the links below to his media appearances on KXAN and USA Today, as well as a dialogue with the Mexican American Civil Rights Initiative.

      KXAN just had him provide commentary and context on a new Hays County Landmark. 

      The Mexican American Civil Rights Initiative featured a conversation with John, Dean Rogelio Saenz, and Professor Norma Martinez Rogers. 

      USA Today featured some commentary on structural racism and public health, mostly on the first national epidemiological survey of COVID 19 and Latinos.

      Congratulations to Texas State Alumni!

      Three undergraduate students, Hannah Thompson, Ileane Marquez, and Kendall Allento, presented independent research findings at the Florida Conference of Historians (FCH) Annual Meeting in Lake City, Florida, 27-29 February 2020.

      The paper of Kendall Allen (TXST ’20), “‘For Their Greatest Good’: Education as a Diplomatic Tool in Negotiations with Native Peoples,” has been selected as the winner of the J. Calvitt Clarke III Award for best undergraduate paper presented at the Lake City meeting, and will be published in volume 28 of FCH Annals: Journal of the Florida Conference of Historians, a peer-reviewed scholarly publication. Kendall was a double major in History and Political Science. She is a 9th-Grade World Geography teacher in Mathis, Texas. Her students love her, and she is already making a real difference in their lives.

      The paper of Ileane Marquez (TXST ’20), “The Right to Intervene: European Non-Interference and U.S. Aggression in Latin America,” was also selected for publication the FCH Annals journal. Ileane was a history major and has just begun her graduate studies in the Legal Studies Program.

      Congratulations to Ana Romo, whose book, Brazil’s Living Museum, has been released in Portuguese translation in Brazil!

      Congratulations to Dr. Jason Mellard, who was featured in an audio documentary that aired last Saturday on KUTX marking the 50th anniversary of the Austin venue the Armadillo World Headquarters.

       

    • Congratulations to John McKiernan-Gonzalez on the publication of his essay, “Concrete disavowal: Re-placing Colombian communities into the New York landscape before World War II,” in Latino Studies.

      Congratulations to our outstanding History Department faculty for winning various awards from the College of Liberal Arts:

      • Dr. Shannon Duffy has been awarded the Golden Apple Award for Service
      • Dr. Jeff Helgeson won an award for outstanding teaching
      • Dr. Nancy Berlage won an award for outstanding service
      • Dr. José Carlos de la Puente won an award for outstanding scholarship

      Dr. José Carlos de la Puente and colleagues from Cambridge and the Lima Art Museum, have been hard at work developing a new platform for the publication of reviews, debates, and opinion pieces about Peruvian history, art, and culture.  The project is still ongoing, but the portal is now live and can be found on tramacritica.pe.

      Congratulations to Dr. Shannon Duffy who was recently interviewed on Lunch & Learn with Gleaves.  Dr. Duffy and Gleaves discuss the diversity of our founders, and the conflicts that arose because of that diversity.  The video can be found under the June 30, 2020 heading. 

      Congratulations to Dr. Sara Damiano who has won the College of Liberal Arts golden apple award for teaching and to Dr. Louie Valencia who has won the golden apple for scholarly activity. Well-deserved awards for both!

      Congratulations to Dr. Leah Renold on the publication of her chapter, "Nationalist Education: The Case of Banaras Hindu University and Malaviya," in the Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia, Padma M. Sarangapani and Rekha Pappu, eds., published by Springer.  

      The volume is part of Springer's Global Education Systems book series. It is now available digitally and will be available in book format in February 2021.

      Congratulations to Dr. Valencia who was recently interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition about the removal of Spanish conquistador statues.

      Congratulations to Ken Karrer, who supervises student teachers on behalf of our department, for winning the Faculty Senate Part-Time Excellence in Teaching Award!

      Many of you do not know Ken, but he brings years of experience in public education to our student teacher program. For the last three years he, along with full-time colleague Dr. Lara Newcomer, has helped to make sure that our students who go into social studies education are well-prepared to go out and teach when they graduate. It is an important job, and the award is well-deserved.

      Congratulations to Dr. Ronald Angelo Johnson who has a chapter in a recently published edited collection:

      “Natural Rights: Haitian-American Diplomacy in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions,” in A Companion to U.S. Foreign Policy, Colonial Era to the Present, ed. Christopher Dietrich (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), I, 93-112.

      Congratulations to Dr. Shannon Duffy!  McGraw-Hill is re-publishing an excerpt from a digital encyclopedia article she wrote on “Press Attacks” on the Washington presidency in a US History textbook.

      Congratulations to Dr. Louie Valencia who was recently interviewed with the Tech against Terrorism podcast.

      Tech Against Terrorism is an initiative launched and supported by the United Nations Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate working with the global tech industry to tackle terrorist use of the internet whilst respecting human rights.

      Congratulations to Dr. Jeff Helgeson who has been accepted to the Texas Academic Leadership Academy (TALA), which represents state university systems across Texas. He was one of only 3-5 fellows chosen and nominated by the Provost to participate in the one-year program from Texas State. The academy includes:

      • Three face-to-face 3-day conferences held in different locations across the state
      • Professional development webinars
      • Virtual coaching groups
      • Mentoring
      • Leadership plan development
      • Case study discussions
      • Extensive networking opportunities

      This is a great opportunity for Jeff as an incoming chair, and I am sure it will benefit the department at large.

      Thanks to Jeff for putting in this extra work on everyone’s behalf, and congratulations on both the nomination and the acceptance.

      Congratulations to Bryan Glass, who has been awarded the department’s Swinney Leave for the Spring 2021 semester.

      Congratulations to Peter Dedek who has been approved by the Provost's Office for a promotion to full professor!

      Congratulations to Louie Valencia who was selected for an ACLS Project Development Grant for his project Ravaged and Ravished Bodies: Activism, Socialized Health Care, Research, and the HIV/AIDS Crisis in Europe. These awards support faculty at teaching-intensive colleges and universities with promising research agendas and are offered to select applicants for ACLS Fellowships.

      Congratulations to Louie Valencia! His edited volume, Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories, has been published as part of the Routledge Approaches to History Series.

      Congratulations to History major, Wesley Moore, who has been selected as Outstanding Undergraduate Student in the College of Liberal Arts for 2019-2020!

      Congratulations to Dan Utley who has another edited a book out, SAC Time: A Navigator in the Strategic Air Command, an oral history with Thomas E. Alexander that has been published by Texas A&M University Press.

      Congratulations to the following History faculty who are Liberal Arts nominees for Presidential Awards for Excellence:

      Sarah Damiano | for Teaching
      Shannon Duffy | for Service
      Louie Valencia | for Scholarly/Creative Activity

      Congratulations to Ellen Tillman, who will be one of the college nominees for the Muir Mentoring Award.