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From There to Here: The Archive

February 18, 2019

University of Texas’ Professors of History come from all over the world. Some came to the United States to study or teach, while others found their calling only once they arrived. Regardless of the origin story, their experiences are as diverse as the histories they teach and over the past few months we have shared their stories of migration on Not Even Past.

Below we collected everyone’s story so that they can be found on one page. If you followed the series, we hope you return to it again. If this is your first time, we encourage you to explore the links below, and to see the many personal histories that bring people together to study the past.

Tatjana Lichtenstein: From Denmark to Here

Julie Hardwick: From the United Kingdoms to Here

Toyin Falola: From Nigeria to Here

Yoav Di-Capua: From Israel to Here

Susan Deans-Smith: From England to Here

Map of England (via Wikicommons)

Lina de Castillo: From Colombia to Here

Indrani Chatterjee: From India to Here

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra: From Ecuador to Here

Matthew Butler: From West Germany to Here

From There to Here: Matthew Butler

January 29, 2019

Map of West Germany (in blue), where Dr. Butler was born (via Wikipedia)

I can’t claim to have a particularly fascinating or intrepid migrant story, just a slightly convoluted one: I came to the US from the UK in 2008, though I had not lived in “my” part of the UK, England, for five years before that because when I moved here, it was from Belfast in Northern Ireland. Even the “my” feels a bit elective, since I wasn’t born in England but in West Germany as the child of a British services family, and have spent a lot of time living in and studying Mexico. All of this is to say that people can have multiple and cumulative senses of belonging and that borders are often arbitrary things––just as that archaic-sounding phrase, “West Germany,” tells us. I came to Austin to work, then, pure and simple, but expecting that home would soon be where the heart is. Sometimes, actually, I think Texas claimed me long ago because I have always been fascinated by vaquero-culture; I still like the fact that a bus ride to UT down I-35 rolls along the Chisolm Trail. Really I came to Austin because UT has a brilliant Latin American History program with an incredible library and archive, the Benson Collection, largely focused on Mexico. And sunshine, which hasn’t been invented in England yet. I’ve stayed in Texas because I like it (mostly), because my son was born here, and because my students are always teaching me new things. Mexico is also our neighbor: for me it’s a privilege to work in a University that has such historic and actual ties with the country I study, and so many Mexican and latino students.

Others in this series

From There to Here: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

January 22, 2019

Map of Ecuador (via Wikimedia)

I arrived in the Unites States 30 years ago, penniless but wide-eyed. I did not come to be a graduate student. I came as a migrant, fleeing war. I was fortunate. I met my first wife in Ecuador and she was a US citizen, I therefore did not come undocumented. Since I had only a smattering of English and everything in this country was wholly unknown to me, it took me months to find a job as a dishwasher. It was not easy: I had been trained as a medical doctor. I originally applied to a degree in Neurophysiology but Tufts turned me down. Then, one day, I serendipitously found in Madison courses on Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus. I immediately applied to the History of Science and got in without funding. I waited a year to establish residency. In the meantime, I learned to speak and write in English. I kept on working as a minimum wage, fast-food cook for five years while taking seminars and doing research. Graduate school was a mixture of homesickness, material hardship, and intellectual feasting. I loved every minute.

Others in this series

From There to Here: Indrani Chatterjee

January 17, 2019

Map of India (via State Department)

By Indrani Chatterjee

In 1947, when British India was carved into two states of India and Pakistan, many Hindu families relocated from eastern Pakistan (which became Bangladesh in 1971) to Indian Bengal. My parents came from two such families. My father was deeply curious about the world, and bought various Readers Digest and National Geographic publications on a meager rupee-based salary, earned as a doctor in the postcolonial Indian army. My youth was shaped by his predicament, balancing between his own ‘outsider’ status in the complex social-political world of postcolonial India, and the straining to flee these complexities for a world conjured up by books, theater, film.

In the 1980s, when I wanted to pursue research in history, funds were scarce. I worked as an adjunct at various women’s colleges for some years, learning to teach neo-literate young girls about distant places and long-ago events in Hindi when necessary. I met my partner, another historian, at a teacher’s strike for better wages during one such stint. Five years later, a scholarship to pursue research in School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, finally gave me the chance to belong to the land of books my parents had taught me to love.

The wealth of records in the SOAS Library, British Library and the British Museum convinced me to remain in the field of teaching and research, and to make these gains available to others in the country of my origin. But the country of my birth-origin had moved on by the late 1990s. Though I resigned my tenured job of teaching in a college of Delhi University, and moved to a full-time research position in my mother’s beloved city, Calcutta, the ethnic-linguistic and religious sectarianisms of the closing years of the millennium also narrowed research agendas. The Indian elections of 1998 were decisive in that regard. My life in research, as distinct from my partner’s, was over if we did not relocate. By 2000, we had both begun another version of ‘outsider’ lives, this time in the North American academe, he as a chair-holding professor, and me as a spouse on a visa that disallowed paid employment! Then began the struggle to secure work-authorization and the green card (resident status), learning the rituals of professional belonging – the job-search, from letter-writing to securing letter-writers for one’s own research, the social codes undergirding the profession. Mercifully, there were the Journal of Higher Education, various web-sites for applicants, and more than a little help from my friends. With all these tools, a brave Black feminist Chair heading a search at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ and an inheritance of survivorship, I entered the academic workforce in 2001. And here I am, a citizen, learning my way through the delightful open stacks of the Perry Castañeda Library, willing to do whatever it takes to preserve this new country of mine for the perpetually curious.

Others in this series

From There to Here: Lina de Castillo

December 6, 2018

By Lina de Castillo

Map of Columbia (via Wikipedia)

In September of 1980, my mother took a calculated risk. As a talented singer with perfect pitch frustrated by a broken marriage and limiting law career, my mom left Bogotá, Colombia to pursue her dream of opera singing. My father, already starting his second family, agreed that my brother and I needed to go with her. My maternal grandparents followed us to the United States soon thereafter. While my mother worked hard to win first prize at international lyric-opera competitions with the help of a renowned voice coach, my brother and I worked hard to learn English and excel in school with the help of caring teachers, our grandparents, and kind friends. We both were inspired by our mother’s tremendous efforts and her willingness to take risks. Although my daily life during the school year took place in Westchester County, New York, an important part of my childhood also took place in Bogotá, where I spent many summers and occasional winter breaks with my Colombian family. I yearned to learn more about the place of my birth. I also missed my family terribly when I wasn’t with them. At the same time, I appreciated the security, opportunities, and friendships I found in the United States.

Curiously, although Latin America was often included in the content of our social studies textbooks, we rarely got the chance to actually study the region. As an undergraduate student at Cornell University, I finally found courses that began to teach me about Latin America, including a course on US-Latino literature (the gendered sensitivity evoked by “Latinx” had yet to be imagined). For the spring semester of my junior year, I decided to ‘study abroad’ at home in Colombia. Doing so proved to be one of the most eye-opening and academically satisfying experiences of my life up to that point. The international relations seminar I took with Juan Gabriel Tokatlian at la Universidad de los Andes helped me see more clearly the problems that come with treating a public health crisis (drug addiction) through militarization and strategies of war. At the Javeriana University, I signed up for a graduate-level seminar on the Annales school, a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century that stresses long-term social history. A fellow student openly revealed his Marxist leanings and offered memorable critiques of our readings. These conversations for the first time allowed me to realize that there could be different schools of thought when it came time to develop historical analyses. Upon graduation, I decided to return to Colombia, where I taught a version of the US-Latino literature course at the university level, but only until my supervisor required that I teach the 19th-Century Colombian History survey. These experiences, together with the friendships I made with colleagues at la Javeriana and los Andes made one thing clear: if I wanted to be serious about teaching and researching at the university level, I needed to pursue graduate study in the United States. At the end of the day, the only career track that would allow me to bi-locate between my two beloved homes, the United States and Colombia, was the historical profession.

Also in this series:

Tatjana Lichtenstein
Julie Hardwick
Toyin Falola
Yoac Di-Capua
Susan Deans-Smith

From There to Here: Susan Deans-Smith

November 29, 2018

Map of England (via Wikimedia)

I came to Texas from England over thirty years ago, now. My prior experience of living in the U.S. had been during my year abroad as part of my undergraduate degree at the University of Warwick, embedded in the department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Although unbeknownst to me at the time my experience in Madison proved to be pivotal and part of the chain of events that would result in my coming to UT-Austin and Texas. Two things happened as a result of my time in Madison. The first was exposure to an absolutely brilliant political scientist of Latin American history– Peter H. Smith. The second was my first trip to Mexico. After completing my year at Madison and before returning to England to complete my senior year at Warwick, I embarked on my version of Jack Kerouac’s road trip – in my case a Greyhound bus and its Mexican counterpart (solo, no less) from Madison to Mexico City. Mesmerized by my experiences in Mexico, I knew that I wanted to specialize in its history. During the writing up of my dissertation at Cambridge University, I was lucky enough to be invited for one year as a visiting professor in the History department at UT-Austin. That year was particularly memorable and as I look back I’m still not quite sure how I did what I did: prep for four new courses in a university system very different from that of Cambridge where I was used to the tutorial system; complete my dissertation that involved some commuting between Austin and Cambridge; and, oh yes, fall in love with the Texan who I would marry. In fact, in March of that memorable year, I flew to Cambridge to defend my dissertation (successfully), and flew back to Austin the next week to get married. Not bad! But, things got even better. As it turned out, the professor for whom I substituted for a year, decided not to return. I applied for the tenure-track position that opened up and was fortunate to be selected for the position. And, here I am at home in Texas and privileged to be working with creative colleagues, stimulating students, and phenomenal research resources. Plus, I never did like the English climate……

Also in this series:

Tatjana Lichtenstein
Julie Hardwick
Toyin Falola
Yoac Di-Capua

From There to Here: Yoav Di-Capua

November 20, 2018

by Yoav Di-Capua

Map of Israel (via Wikimedia)

(UT History faculty come from all over the world. Here are their stories.)

I wish I could introduce clarity, coherence and a sense of purpose into the story of my arrival to this country from my native city of Jerusalem. I wish I could say that it was meticulously planned and well-executed. That it was a clean break with a past life that no longer resonated with me and that leaving behind parents, family, friends and memories was the natural and logical thing to do. I wish I could say that upon my arrival I actually knew English well enough and that it was all easy as it meant to be. That it was like in the movies. But, alas, I cannot. I never really pondered living here and America was never on my family’s radar. We were Europhiles of Italian stock. We did not travel to the US, we did not talk about the US or think about the US. Quite simply, it was not a part of our imagination. And though rock music was the soundtrack of my teenage years, the county as a whole stayed foreign to me.

That remained the case until I discovered the American life of the mind. Until I realized the brilliance of its academy, the beauty of its books and the depths of its intellectual tradition. Until I realized that it is not only Bob Dylan who was out there singing all by himself. And so, in late 1999, when I packed my bags to leave for Princeton I did not really immigrate to a new country with big cities, mighty rivers, unbelievable storms, manicured gardens and bad food. Instead, I immigrated to a new language, a new intellectual landscape and a new sense of perception. Above all else, that became my new home. It still is.

Life in the new country proved to be a mess. My manners were off. I was too rude, too direct, too disrespectful, too aggressive, too casual and too whatever you can imagine as improper and inadequate. The art of “small talk” eluded me. I could not follow the rules. The police took my driver’s license. By the end of four years, I badly wanted to go home, back to the tribal society of Israel where I could once again make sense of myself. A place where you earn points for being rude, direct and truthful and when you don’t need to drink a beer in order to open up your heart. So I did. I married an American girl and moved back home; subconsciously making it as likely as I could that my life in Israel would come to a quick end. And it did. For a while, I celebrated my reunification with the beloved Hebrew language and with its brilliant humor. I indulged in friends, memories, good food and music. A lot of music. But I was also shocked by what I encountered.

The Second Intifada just ended. I mourned the death and destruction. I took the collapse of the Peace Process personally and I hated, and still do, the occupation of Palestinians with every cell of my body. I became an activist and spent more time in threatened Palestinian communities than writing my book. Troubled and upset, the life of the mind was slowly slipping away from me. The politics of getting a teaching position in Israeli academia were something like an episode of the “Game of Thrones.” It was not for me. Months after my return, the prospects of making a life in Israel and building my career there appeared to be slim to non-existent. The fact that my wife was living in Damascus did not help matters, either. I guess this is what Philosopher Svetlana Boym meant when she wrote of the impossible condition of “homesickness and the sickness of home.” It was not good. My parents were also worried, loved ones tried to intervene and friends protested my activism. They wanted me to stop trying to fix the unfixable and settle down. I could see their point, and thought they were right, but I decided to do this settling down somewhere else: in Texas, to be precise. I loved them all, I still do, but that was it. Defying my provincial expectations, UT presented a rich intellectual –and more important – human environment. Fifteen years or so after my crash landing on this campus, it appears that my second coming to America was something of a rebirth. I love it here. Teaching, writing and raising kids is enough for me. I still miss home. I miss it daily, but I have acquired another one as well. It is a home I grew to appreciate and love slowly and patiently, taking it, just as my three daughters do, one step at a time.

Also in this series:

Tatjana Lichtenstein
Julie Hardwick
Toyin Falola

From There to Here: Toyin Falola

November 15, 2018

By Toyin Falola

Map of Nigeria (via Wikimedia)

(UT History faculty come from all over the world. Here are their stories.)

This Spotlight, this City

In my space and time of growth,
The long metallic snake of screeching hisses
And novel magical magnetic movement
Became a muse of songs and fantasies
Making the urge for voyage ineluctable

And from a tender age I fell for it
Paying with prizes of stigmatization as some alien
But as phoenix from fire and a reversing ram
The urge arose, heightened and strengthened
When I beheld the world reduced to print

History came as another huge impetus
Revealing creeds and tastes beyond imaginations
And so I saw this spotlight of glory and merit

I saw the promise of greater fulfillments
In this city reposing upon a hill
As Winthrop saw the promise of first freedom

Thus I set out to this spotlight, this city
Sailing across the Atlantic, but this time
Up in the sky, in a new model of the Arbella

Also in this series:
Julie Hardwick
Tatjana Lichtenstein

Also by Toyin Falola:
Toyin Falola on Africa and the United States

From There to Here: Julie Hardwick

November 8, 2018

by Julie Hardwick

Map of the United Kingdoms (via Wikipedia)

(UT History faculty come from all over the world. Here are their stories.)

I came here, aged 21, on 15 August 1984 to join a study abroad program in Wisconsin with every intention of returning to the UK to become an accountant in London – and in fact I had a nice job waiting. Instead I met my now husband of 31 years two days later, and I have been here ever since: first on a student visa as I shifted into a PhD program at Johns Hopkins, then on a green card as the spouse of a citizen, and latterly as a United States citizen. We have two native Texan daughters who have dual citizenship and they are very proud of their American and British roots.

From There to Here: Tatjana Lichtenstein

November 6, 2018

(UT History faculty come from all over the world. Here are their stories.)

By Tatjana Lichtenstein

Map of Denmark (via Wikimedia)

Being an immigrant has always been part of my story. More than 50 years ago, my parents left their home country in search of a better life. They ended up in the small country of Denmark in northern Europe. And it’s small: if you take a map and draw a line connecting Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio – well, Denmark fits within that triangle – and its population is less than those three cities combined. Like many European countries, Denmark did not have a tradition for welcoming immigrants. It was not part of the country’s DNA. My strange name, my parents’ accent, and our different foods made me stand out. I was a foreigner despite having been born there. Even though we were citizens, my family didn’t quite belong; didn’t really feel at home.

Perhaps because I had this feeling of being different, I developed a fascination with history very early in my life. Much like you and I have personal histories – experiences that we can point to as having shaped us – communities and societies also have stories that define them. To me the past is the key to understanding who we are as individuals and as community members. By the time I graduated from high school, I had decided that I wanted to become a professional historian, a teacher and researcher. After finishing my undergraduate degree in Denmark, I spent two years at Brandeis University near Boston, before I went to the University of Toronto for my doctorate in History.

Over nine years ago, I started my job as a professor teaching history at the University of Texas at Austin. My specialization is war and violence in the twentieth century, specifically the Second World War. It is a great privilege to be a teacher and a mentor to my students. This past January, I became an American citizen and am proud to take on the responsibilities that follows with that privilege.

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