2014 Summer Teacher Institutes

America in the 1960s

The institute in Austin (June 9–12), titled "America in the 1960s," will align with the state’s eleventh-grade U.S. history curriculum. Topics to be addressed include the Kennedy Administration, the Cold War, the Space Race, influential women of the period, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the Johnson administration, Republican politics, the protest movements of the 1960s, and the influence of the decade's music and writing.

Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon answer questions on the podium during the second in a series of debates between the two men. Frank McGee (center) of NBC News was moderator for this session. Washington, DC, October 7, 1960. United States Information Agency, UPI/WAP-100713.
David Oshinsky

David Oshinsky (keynote speaker) is a professor of history at NYU and director of the Division of Medical Humanities at NYU Medical School.  His books include A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy, which won the Hardeman Prize for the best book about the U.S. Congress and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Worse Than Slavery, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for its distinguished contribution to human rights, and was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Polio: An American Story, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History. Oshinsky's essays and reviews appear regularly in the New York Times and other prominent publications.  At The University of Texas, he was voted "Liberal Arts Professor of the Year" by the Texas Exes, was a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, and delivered the main commencement address at graduation ceremonies in 2007.

David Oshinsky.

Terry Anderson

Terry Anderson is professor of history and Cornerstone Faculty Fellow at Texas A&M University. He has published five books, and co-authored one, A Flying Tiger's Diary, with pilot Charles R. Bond Jr. His PhD dissertation was published as The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944–47. A baby boomer who went from a boy, to a Vietnam vet, to a man during the tumultuous 1960s, he knew that he would have to write on that time and has published The Movement and the Sixties, focusing on social activism, and a survey entitled The Sixties. During the 1990s, he became interested in a public policy that was dividing the American public, and he penned The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action, and most recently, Bush's Wars, which concerns the younger Bush's War on Terror in Afghanistan and, especially, the conflict in Iraq. He has visited almost eighty countries, held three Fulbright professorships, and taught in Malaysia, Japan, China, Ireland, and Indonesia.

Terry Anderson.

H. W. Brands

H. W. Brands 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 Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History 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 Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace.

H. W. Brands.

Albert S. Broussard

Albert S. Broussard is professor of history at Texas A&M University, where he has taught since 1985. He 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; The American Vision; and Expectations of Equality: A History of Black Westerners (2012). 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. He earned his BA from Stanford University and his MA and PhD from Duke University.

Albert S. Broussard.

Janet M. Davis

Janet M. Davis received her BA in history from Carleton College with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1986. After working in the airline industry from several years, she returned to graduate school. She received her PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin in 1998 and has taught American studies, history, and women’s and gender studies at The University of Texas at Austin since 1998. She regularly teaches the U.S. cultural history survey, as well as specialized courses on U.S. social movements, popular culture, and animal studies. She is the recipient of the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award and the Eyes of Texas Excellence Award. She is the author of The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top (2002); and the editor of Circus Queen and Tinker Bell: The Life of Tiny Kline (2008), by Tiny Kline. Professor Davis works regularly as a consultant for museum exhibitions and documentary films. She has received fellowships from FLAS VI in Hindi, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, and The University of Texas at Austin.

Janet M. Davis.

David Farber

David Farber is a professor of history at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is the author or editor of fourteen books including Chicago '68, The Age of Great Dreams, The Sixties: From Memory to History, The Conservative Sixties, and The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s. His honors include a senior fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, an American Historical Association Congressional Fellowship, and a Fulbright Senior Lectureship. He has lectured widely on the American Sixties, including invited talks given in Tokyo, Melbourne, Jakarta, Beirut, Moscow, Hamburg, Utrecht, Cambridge, and Paris.

David Farber.

Betty Sue Flowers

Betty Sue Flowers, PhD (University of London), is a writer, editor, and international business consultant, with publications ranging from poetry therapy to human rights, including two books of poetry and four television tie-in books with Bill Moyers. She has served as a moderator for executive seminars at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies; consultant for NASA and CIA; visiting advisor to the Secretary of the Navy; public director of the American Institute of Architects; and editor of scenarios for Shell International in London and the Hague, the OAS, Eskom in South Africa, the University of Oxford, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Geneva (on global sustainable development, on the future of biotechnology, and on global water issues). She was the series consultant for the PBS television series, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth and on-air consultant for the nationally broadcast The Mystery of Love.  Before moving to New York City in 2009, Flowers served as a professor, director of the LBJ Presidential Library, director of the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, director of Creative Writing, and associate dean of Graduate Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.  Her most recent publications include (with Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, and Joseph Jaworski): Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, The American Dream and the Economic Myth (monograph in the Fetzer American Dream series), and “The Primacy of People in a World of Nations,” The Partnership Principle: New Forms of Governance in the 21st Century, (London and Munich / Zurich).

Betty Sue Flowers.

Mark Atwood Lawrence

Mark Atwood Lawrence, associate professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin, is author of Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (2005), and The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (2008). He has also published articles and essays on various topics in Cold War history and is now at work on a study of U.S. policy making toward the Third World during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Mark Atwood Lawrence.

Karl Hagstrom Miller

Karl Hagstrom Miller is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin. Miller is a U.S. cultural historian who uses popular music to explore the cultural, economic, legal, and intellectual history of the United States. His book Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Duke, 2010) rethinks the origins of blues and country music. He is currently working on a book titled Sound Investments: A History of Music Ownership and Theft, which examines recent debates about illegal music file-sharing over the internet within the context of the long historical struggles over the meaning and control of music as property. Miller received a PhD in history from New York University in 2002.

Karl Hagstrom Miller.

Heather Cox Richardson

Heather Cox Richardson 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’s latest book, To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party will be published in 2014.

Heather Cox Richardson.

Jeremi Suri

Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the Department of History and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author of five books on contemporary politics and foreign policy. In September 2011, he published a new book on the past and future of nation-building: Liberty's Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama. Professor Suri's research and teaching have received numerous prizes. In 2007, Smithsonian Magazine named him one of America's "Top Young Innovators" in the arts and sciences. His writings appear widely in blogs and print media. Professor Suri is also a frequent public lecturer and guest on radio and television programs.

Jeremi Suri.

Mark K. Updegrove

Mark K. Updegrove became director of the LBJ Presidential Library in October 2009. He is an author, publisher, lecturer, and journalist who has served as U.S. publisher of Newsweek, president of Time Canada, and manager of Time Los Angeles. Updegrove has authored three books relating to the American Presidency: Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency (2012), Baptism By Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis (2009), and Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House (2006). He has written for American Heritage, The Nation, National Geographic, Parade, Texas Monthly, and TIME. As a historical and political commentator, Updegrove has appeared on CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, and NPR, among others, and has lectured on the presidency at the National Constitution Center and numerous universities.

Mark K. Updegrove.