Articles

"The Making of Modern America" and
"Shaping the American Republic to 1877"


In June 2012, Humanities Texas will hold four teacher enrichment institutes. "The Making of Modern America," two institutes held on the campuses of Southern Methodist University in Dallas (June 4–7) and the University of Houston (June 11–14), will cover U.S. history from Reconstruction through the present, including the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, World War I, the literature and culture of the 1920s, the New Deal, World War II, and American foreign policy following WWII. The institute curriculum will align with the TEKS for eleventh-grade U.S. history. 

The institutes on the campuses of The University of Texas at Brownsville (June 5–8) and The University of Texas at San Antonio (June 11–14), titled "Shaping the American Republic to 1877," will cover U.S. history through Reconstruction. Each program curriculum will align with the TEKS for eight-grade U.S. history. Topics to be addressed include the U.S. Constitution, the early republic, the age of Jackson, slavery, secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

As in past years, all institutes will emphasize close interaction with scholars, the examination of primary sources, and the development of effective pedagogical strategies and engaging assignments and activities.

The institutes are open to all middle and high school social studies, language arts, and humanities teachers but will focus on topics and skills central to the state's secondary U.S. history curriculum. Priority consideration will be given to early-career teachers in low-performing schools and districts. Teachers may apply to attend online.

Selected faculty members' bios and photos are posted below, or read about all faculty members for the Brownsville, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio institutes.

John Sloan, Six O'Clock, Winter, 1912. Oil on canvas, 26 1/8 x 32 in. Acquired 1922, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. © Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879), The County Election, 1852. Oil on canvas, 38 x 52 in., Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Bank of America 44-2001.
Gordon S. Wood

Gordon S. Wood (San Antonio) is Alva O. Way University Professor and professor of history emeritus at Brown University. He received his BA from Tufts University and his PhD from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at Brown in 1969. He is the author of many works, including The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969), which won the Bancroft Prize and the John H. Dunning Prize in 1970, and The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize in 1993. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (2004) was awarded the Julia Ward Howe Prize by the Boston Authors Club in 2005. His book Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different was published in 2006, and The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History was published in 2008. His volume in the Oxford History of the United States titled Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009) was given the Association of American Publishers Award for History and Biography in 2009 and the American History Book Prize by the New York Historical Society in 2010. It was also a 2010 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History and for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Wood is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Gordon S. Wood.

David M. Kennedy

David M. Kennedy (Dallas) is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Emeritus and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. He received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1988. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2000 for Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. He received an AB in history from Stanford University and his MA and PhD from Yale University. Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980) used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. Freedom from Fear recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II.

David M. Kennedy.

David Oshinsky

David Oshinsky (Dallas) is the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at The University of Texas at Austin. Oshinsky’s book Polio: An American Story won both the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Hoover Presidential Book Award in 2006. His other books include the Hardeman Prize-winning A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (2005), and the Robert Kennedy Prize-winning Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (1997). His articles and reviews appear regularly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

David Oshinsky.

Jack N. Rakove

Jack N. Rakove (Brownsville) is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. He was educated at Haverford College, where he earned a BA in history in 1968, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard, where he received his PhD in history in 1975 and studied under Bernard Bailyn. Before coming to Stanford, he taught at Colgate University from 1975–1980. He is the author of six books: The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1979); James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic (revised edition, Addison, Wesley, Longman, 2001, 2006); Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1996), which won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in History, the 1997 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award, and the 1998 Society of the Cincinnati Book Prize; Declaring Rights: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997); The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). Professor Rakove’s research continues to revolve around the era of the American Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution. His next book is Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience: The Radical Significance of the Free Exercise of Religion, to be published by Oxford University Press as part of its new series on unalienable rights.

Jack N. Rakove.

H. W. Brands

H. W. Brands (Dallas, Houston) was born in Oregon, went to college in California, worked as a traveling salesman in a territory that spanned the American West, and taught high school for ten years before becoming a college professor. He is currently the Dickson, Allen, Anderson Centennial Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, and is the author of The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, among many other books. Both The First American and his biography of Franklin Roosevelt, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr.

H. W. Brands.

Robert Dallek

Robert Dallek (Houston) holds a PhD in history form Columbia University. He has taught at several universities, including Columbia, UCLA, Oxford, The University of Texas, Boston University, and Dartmouth College. He currently teaches at Stanford University’s program in Washington, DC. He is the author of ten books on presidents and U.S. foreign policy, including biographies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Society of American Historians, of which he was a past president.

Robert Dallek.

Albert S. Broussard

Albert S. Broussard (Dallas) is professor of history at Texas A&M University, where he has taught since 1985, and a former Humanities Texas board member. Broussard has published six books: Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900–1954; African American Odyssey: The Stewarts, 1853–1963; American History: The Early Years to 1877; The American Republic Since 1877; and The American Vision. His most recent book, published in 2012 by Harlan Davidson, is Expectations of Equality: A History of Black Westerners. He earned his BA from Stanford University and his MA and PhD from Duke University. He is past president of the Oral History Association; he received a Distinguished Teaching Award from Texas A&M University in 1997 and presented the University Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2000. Broussard recently completed a history of African Americans in the American West from 1500 to the present for Harlan Davidson. His most recent book, published in 2012 by Harlan Davidson, is Expectations of Equality: A History of Black Westerners. He earned his BA from Stanford University and his MA and PhD from Duke University.

Albert S. Broussard.

Neil Foley

Neil Foley (Dallas) is professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin. His current research centers on the changing constructions of race, citizenship, and transnational identity in the Borderlands, Mexico, and the American West; Mexican immigration; and comparative civil rights politics of African Americans and Mexican Americans. He is the author of The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas (University of California Press, 1997); Quest for Equality: The Failed Promise of Black-Brown Solidarity (Harvard, 2010), and Latino USA: Mexicans and the Remaking of America (forthcoming, Harvard, 2012). In June, Professor Foley will become the Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Chair of History in the Clements Department of History at Southern Methodist University.

Neil Foley.

Heather Cox Richardson

Heather Cox Richardson (Dallas) is an expert in late nineteenth-century America. She is the author of several books on the Civil War and Reconstruction, including, most recently, West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War (Yale, 2007), and Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (Basic, 2010). A professor at Boston College, Richardson’s last three books were selected by the History Book Club; West from Appomattox was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection. Richardson is now finishing a history of the Republican Party, which examines the party from its inception to 2008. It will be published in 2013.

Heather Cox Richardson.

Allen Matusow

Allen Matusow (Dallas, Houston) is the academic affairs director at the Baker Institute and the William Gaines Twyman Professor of History at Rice University. He joined the Rice faculty in 1963 and served as the dean of humanities from 1981 to 1995. He specializes in twentieth century U.S. history and has written or edited five books, including The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s and Nixon's Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes. Matusow is in the early stages of a book on the presidency of Ronald Reagan and continues to teach history courses in conjunction with his associate director responsibilities.

Allen Matusow.

Michael Les Benedict

Michael Les Benedict (Houston, San Antonio) is professor emeritus at The Ohio State University. He joined the history department in 1970 and retired in 2005. He received his BA and MA from the University of Illinois and his PhD from Rice University. He has been a visiting professor at MIT, Yale Law School, the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, and Hokkaido and Doshisha Universities in Japan. Benedict is a recognized authority in Anglo American constitutional and legal history, the history of civil rights and liberties, the federal system, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. He has published over forty essays in leading American history and law journals in addition to half a dozen history books and textbooks. He serves as parliamentarian of the American Historical Association and is currently working on the constitutional politics of the Reconstruction Era.

Michael Les Benedict.

Robert M. Citino

Robert M. Citino (Dallas, PhD, Indiana University, 1984) is one of America’s most distinguished military historians. He is the author of nine books, including The German Way of War (2005) and Death of the Wehrmacht (2007), both of which were main selections of the History Book Club and the Military Book Club. His book Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm (2004) was the winner of both the American Historical Association’s Paul M. Birdsall Prize for best book of the year in military and strategic history and the Society for Military History’s Distinguished Book Award. His ninth book, The Wehrmacht Retreats, was released in early 2012. During the 2008–09 academic year, he served as the Charles Boal Ewing Visiting Professor of Military History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY.

Robert M. Citino.

Manuel F. Medrano

Dr. Manuel F. Medrano (Brownsville) holds a doctoral degree from the University of Houston and is currently a professor in the history department at The University of Texas at Brownsville, specializing in Mexican American history and culture. He is a Humanities Texas board member, as well as a program consultant for Lone Star: the Story of Texas, a middle school textbook published by Prentice Hall. He has produced and directed twenty-four oral history profiles of people and events in the Rio Grande Valley, including legendary folklorist Américo Paredes and acclaimed Tejano writer Rolando Hinojosa. In 2005 Medrano received the Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award and in 2008 he received the Houston Endowed Chair for Civic Engagement at The University of Texas at Brownsville. In 2009 he was selected as a Visiting Summer Scholar for the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, to examine the impact of standardized tests on minority students. In 2010 his biography about scholar and folklorist Américo Paredes entitled Américo Paredes: In His Own Words, was published by the University of North Texas Press.
 

Manuel F. Medrano.

Crista DeLuzio

Crista DeLuzio (Dallas) received her PhD from Brown University and joined the faculty at SMU in 2000. Her research and teaching specialties include the history of women and gender in the United States, the history of the family, and the history of childhood. She is the author of Female Adolescence in American Scientific Thought; the editor of Women’s Rights: People and Perspectives; and the coeditor of On the Borders of Love and Power: Families and Kinship in the Intercultural American Southwest, which will be published by the University of California Press in July. Her current research focuses on sibling relationships in American culture at the turn of the 20th century. Professor DeLuzio has been recognized with several teaching awards at SMU, including the Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor Award, the Rotunda Outstanding Professor Award, and the Deshner Teaching Award from the Women’s and Gender Studies Council.

Crista DeLuzio.

Charles Flanagan

Charles Flanagan (Houston, Brownsville, San Antonio) is director of educational programs at the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. Previously, he was a high school teacher for thirty years. During his last two decades in the classroom, Flanagan was the humanities department chair and history teacher at the Key School in Annapolis, Maryland. While at Key, he led the development of an interdisciplinary literature and history curriculum that featured hands-on learning with classic literature and primary sources in history. Flanagan has a BA from Assumption College, an MA from St. John’s College, and a PhD in American studies from the University of Maryland.

Charles Flanagan.

Monica Perales

Monica Perales (Houston) is associate professor of history at the University of Houston and is a member of the Board of Directors of Humanities Texas. She received her PhD in history from Stanford University in 2004, and holds a BA in journalism and an MA in history from The University of Texas at El Paso. She is author of Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), which received the Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book in North American Urban History from the Urban History Association. She is also coeditor of Recovering the Hispanic History of Texas (Arte Público Press, 2010). Perales’s general research and teaching interests include Chicana/o labor and social history, memory and history, immigration, race and ethnicity in the American West, Borderlands, and oral history.

Monica Perales.

Jennifer L. Weber

Jennifer L. Weber (San Antonio) is associate professor of history at the University of Kansas. She is the author of two books. Her first, for adults, is Copperheads, about antiwar Democrats in the Civil War North. Her second, Summer's Bloodiest Days, is about the Battle of Gettysburg and its aftermath, and is targeted for 9- to 14-year-olds. The National Council for Social Studies last year named Summer’s Bloodiest Days a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People. Professor Weber also has served as the executive editor of the Key Concepts in American History Series for Library Binding press—eleven books explaining various aspects of government to middle school students—and edited a supplemented edition of The Red Badge of Courage for Everbind. Her most recent book, which she coedited, is The Struggle for Equality, a collection of essays in honor of her graduate adviser, James M. McPherson. She is currently working on a book about the Union's conscription effort and its consequences. In addition to her work at KU, she serves on the advisory board of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College.

Jennifer Weber.