Rebecca Montgomery
Professor Emeritus
Email: rm53@txstate.edu
Areas of Interest: Gilded Age and Progressive Era, The New South, Southern Women, and Education
Dr. Montgomery is an alumnus of Southwest Texas State University who received her MA and PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is coordinator for the History Graduate Instructional Assistant program and co-advisor for the Peace and Social Justice Studies Minor. Her research and teaching interests lie primarily in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era United States, with emphasis on gender, race, and education in the New South. Several of her publications, including The Politics of Education in the New South: Women and Reform in Georgia, 1890-1930 (Louisiana State University Press, January 2006), document southern women's role in Progressive educational reform movements. Her most recent book, funded in part by two Mellon Research Fellowships from the Virginia Historical Society and a university Research Enhancement Grant, is an intellectual biography of a nationally known southern feminist and progressive educator. Celeste Parrish and Educational Reform in the Progressive Era South (Louisiana State University Press, 2018) examines how resistance to gender equality within the southern movement for educational reform discouraged progress and lowered the overall quality of public schools in the South. Parrish’s life demonstrates how southern men’s determination to retain their gendered political and professional advantages hindered women’s ability to give the full measure of their talents to reform. Forced to work mostly through female networks, women’s grassroots efforts often went unacknowledged and unrewarded.
Courses Taught
HIST 1310 | History of the United States to 1877
A survey of United States social, cultural, economic, and political history from the beginning of European settlement through the Civil War and Reconstruction. It examines the historical events of colonization, the Revolution, nation-building, and the Civil War from diverse cultural perspectives. Much of course content focuses on the significance of gender, race, and ethnicity in the development of American identity, culture, and institutions, and how diverse groups have worked to expand American concepts of freedom and democracy.
HIST 1320 | History of the United States 1877 to the Present
A survey of United States social, cultural, economic, and political history from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Central themes include industrialization and the movements of dissent and reform that occurred in response, the impact of wars on domestic and foreign policy, the significance of the social movements of the 1960s, and changing concepts of the role of government. Much of course content focuses on the significance of gender, race, and ethnicity in the development of American identity, culture, and institutions, and how diverse groups have worked to expand American concepts of freedom and democracy.
HIST 3340 | History of the United States 1877-1914
An advanced undergraduate lecture course that examines major historical themes from the end of Reconstruction through the beginning of the First World War. It examines the impact of westward expansion, industrialization, urbanization, and global economic competition, as well Americans’ conflicting notions of how citizenship, liberty, and democracy would be defined in the new social order.
HIST3368G | Democracy and Education
An advanced undergraduate lecture course that provides an overview of the relationship between democracy and education in the U.S. between 1865 and 1930, when emancipation, westward expansion, rural poverty, and growing immigrant and working-class populations motivated reassessment and reform of public education in an attempt to meet both individual and societal needs. It examines the tensions between democracy and education and the role of educators, parents, intellectuals, and philanthropists in addressing those tensions.
HIST 4350X | Peace and Nonviolence Movements
An advanced undergraduate course that explores the origins and impact of peace and nonviolence movements globally. In addition to examining the historical development of the philosophies and ideals underlying the practice of nonviolent direct action, it investigates the roles that religion, class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationalism have played in shaping social and political perceptions of injustice and public attitudes toward movement goals. It fulfills the required course component of the Peace and Social Justice Studies Minor.
HIST 5343 | Politics and Reform in the Progressive Era
A graduate seminar exploring the interplay of domestic forces that shaped politics and reform movements between the 1890s and 1918. Readings generally take a social history approach in which class, race, ethnicity, gender, and regional difference are used as categories of analysis to explain the nature of change and the strengths and weaknesses of Progressivism as a democratic movement for reform.