Past Institutes

Teaching Texas History (2020-2021 Online Series)

In the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021, Humanities Texas held a weekly webinar series for Texas history teachers.

Curriculum

The curriculum aligned with the TEKS, addressing critical topics in the state's seventh-grade Texas history curriculum.

Each faculty member led a 75-minute session over Zoom that included a lecture, Q&A, and discussion centered on primary source documents. Faculty addressed the following topics: Native Americans in Texas; Spain in Texas; the Collapse of Spanish Texas; Tejanos and Mexican Texas; Anglos and colonization; the road to the Texas Revolution; annexation and slavery; the Civil War; Reconstruction; the Red River War; cotton and Populists; cattle and railroads; and the Progressive Era.

Like all Humanities Texas programs, the webinar series was content-based and teacher-centered, with an emphasis on teaching with primary sources and developing effective pedagogical strategies.

Faculty

The webinar series was led by faculty director Andrew Torget (University of North Texas) and featured presentations by Juliana Barr (Duke University), Alice Baumgartner (University of Southern California), Jessica Brannon-Wranosky (Texas A&M University—Commerce), Gregg Cantrell (Texas Christian University), Jesús F. De la Teja (former Texas State Historian), Linda English (The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), Daniel J. Gelo (The University of Texas at San Antonio), Deborah M. Liles (Tarleton State University), F. Todd Smith (University of North Texas), Susannah J. Ural (University of Southern Mississippi), and Ben Wright (University of Dallas),

Schedule

You can view the full schedule for both the fall and the spring webinars here.

Sponsors

The institute was made possible with major funding from the State of Texas, with ongoing support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.