News & Events

• Dr. Paul Boller recently met with history graduate students and faculty to sign copies of his latest book, Essays On The Presidents - Principles and Politics (TCU Press, 2012). See photographs here!
  

• TCU's Eta Kappa chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national honor society for history, held its fall initiation ceremony on Friday, November 16, at 3:30 pm on the first floor of Reed Hall. Congratulations to new initiates Jeremy Albers, John Richard Alvarado, Theresa Lynn Arias, Ande Brill, Jorge Manuel Castellanos, Lauren Thatcher Duggan, Sophia Marie Gase, Steven Charles Goeken, Scarlet Jernigan, Christian Lueck, Molly McCullough, Cathy Moody, Lauren Michelle Olander, Danika Elizabeth Scevers, Cristi Lee Slocum, and Ethan Williamson.

  
  

• The Department of History and Geography presented the Boller Symposium on the American Presidency, October 15-16, featuring Dr. William Chafe of Duke University. Dr. Chafe spoke on "Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal" on Monday, October 15 in Palko Hall 130. The symposium, which was free and open to the public, featured a variety of North Texas scholars speaking on the topic of the presidency. Click here for the full schedule of presentations.

  
  

• Congratulations to Dr. Max Krochmal, who received the Faculty Appreciation Award at TCU’s 14th Annual Intercultural Banquet, sponsored by Inclusiveness and Intercultural Services (IIS).  He was chosen from several nominees by a vote of undergraduate students affiliated with IIS.  The Civil Rights Tour he co-directed is also featured in the current issue of TCU Magazine.
  
  

• The department is pleased to announce the recipients of its inaugural dissertation research fellowships for 2012-13: Jensen Branscombe received the Schmidt Memorial Scholarship, and David Grua was awarded the Departmental Dissertation Fellowship.

• We were saddened to learn of the death of Dr. Ben Procter, a member of the department from 1957 to 2000. Read more about Dr. Procter's contributions to TCU and the historical profession here.
  
  

• Dr. Todd Kerstetter's research on rock music and the American West was featured in the most recent issue of TCU Endeavors magazine. Read more about it here!

• Dr. Steven Woodworth, along with two other TCU professors, has been named by the Princeton Review in The Best 300 Professors, its guidebook of top undergraduate professors from over a hundred American colleges.

• Congratulations to history majors Pearce Edwards, Tally Latcham, Jessika Velazquez, and Brittany Weaver, who are among the 36 students at TCU to be invited to join Phi Beta Kappa in 2012. The nation's oldest academic honor society, Phi Beta Kappa recognizes and celebrates intellectual integrity and excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.

• The annual history awards dinner on April 17, featuring speaker Dr. Bill Meier, celebrated the accomplishments of our undergraduate and graduate students. Jordan Mabry was the recipient of the Texas Sons of the American Revolution Van Zandt Chapter Award, while the Hammond Memorial Award went to Pearce Edwards. The graduate teaching award was given to Keith Altavilla, and Lisa Barnett received the Graduate Research Paper Award. Alisha Cherry, Ashley Hart, Brendan McNeal, Jason Moore, Heather Noel, Thomas Pronske, Kirby Richards, Jeremy Trettel, and John Watson were inducted into Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society.

• Congratulations to Dr. Peter Szok, who gave the Fifth Annual AddRan Distinguished Faculty Lecture on “Popular Art and the Emergence of Afro-Latin America” on Thursday, March 29.

• January's TCU Civil Rights Bus Tour with Dr. Max Krochmal was a great success! See the TCU360 article and slideshow here and op-ed piece here.

• The AddRan College of Liberal Arts welcomed John W. Frazier as the first speaker in the Endowed Geography Speakers Program. Dr. Frazier presented his lecture, Immigration, Place, and Community: A Case Study of Changing Place and Contested Landscape, on Thursday, March 15.

• Dr. Max Krochmal has published a chapter, “Chicano Labor and Multiracial Politics in Post-World War II Texas: Two Case Studies," in Life and Labor in the New New South, edited by Robert H. Zieger (University Press of Florida, 2012).

• Ph.D. student Amanda Bresie published "One Bread, One Body: The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Southeast Texas," Catholic Southwest 22 (2011), 21-38, which won the Knights of Columbus award for the best article in this journal in 2011. Amanda is also the new editor of The Texas Catholic Historian, the newsletter of the Texas Catholic Historical Society.

• Dr. Jahue Anderson’s article "The Wichita Valley Irrigation Project: Joseph Kemp, Boosterism, and Conservation in Northwest Texas, 1886–1939" has appeared in the current issue of Agricultural History.

• Ph.D. student Jensen Branscombe's essay "Knights Riding the Border”: The Ku Klux Klan and Security along the U.S.-Mexico Border during the 1970s” will be published as a chapter in Culture, Power, and Security: New Directions in the History of National and International Security, ed. Richard Damms and Mary Kathryn Barbier, to be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

• See Dr. Gregg Cantrell on the History News Network, in one of a series of interviews with leading academics on Republican presidential candidates.

• Dr. Clayton Brown's presentation at the Memphis Cotton Museum has appeared on CSPAN's American History TV: see the video here.

• Other recent publications by TCU historians include William Meier's Property Crime in London, 1850-Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Clayton Brown's King Cotton in Modern America: A Cultural, Political, and Economic History Since 1945 (University of Mississippi Press, 2010), Rebecca Sharpless's Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), and Steve Woodworth's Manifest Destinies: America's Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War (Knopf, 2010). Glen Ely, who received his Ph.D. in history from TCU in 2008, has published Where the West Begins: Debating Texas Identity (Texas Tech University Press, 2011).

• TCU historians are making news! Dr. Steve Woodworth participated in a panel discussion on C-SPAN on Civil War generals held in conjunction with the National Archives exhibition, "Discovering the Civil War," which marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. See the video here. Dr. Clayton Brown joined a panel sponsored by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library on "1935 and the Enduring New Deal: The Works Progress Administration and the Rural Electrification Administration," which examined the historical impact of the WPA and REA's infrastructure programs and the lessons that can be learned from these programs for modern America. See the video here.

• Congratulations to Dr. Rebecca Sharpless, who has been elected second vice president of the Southern Association for Women Historians, and will transition into the presidency in 2012-13.