education Archives - Not Even Past

Converging Roads: Researching and Working at the Forty Acres

I learned a few months ago that the old Star Seeds Café near the UT campus had been demolished, a casualty of the I-35 expansion project. I was sad about this not because I miss the food—the old Star Seeds was always an acquired taste. My sense of loss, rather, has to do with the fact that the Star Seeds Café had been at the nexus of important professional and personal roads for me since my early 20s. And I have never attended the University of Texas as a student or lived in Austin. This requires some explanation…

I am a professional historian. I’ve taught at Portland State University in Oregon, down the highway at Texas A&M University, and, since last fall, have begun what I expect will be my final faculty position at the University of Texas at Austin. So this is an interesting time for me, one of reflection. At the age of 54 after more than three decades of a professional career studying U.S., Mexican American, and Texas history at these other institutions, these days I find myself spending a good deal of time learning how things work at my new university, where to go, and building relationships with a lot of new folks in and out of Garrison Hall.

Picture of Garrison Hall, the University of Texas at Austin — *Garrison Hall, the University of Texas at Austin. Source: Not Even Past*

As exciting as it is, this newness can also be humbling. For example, I participated in a faculty orientation process before fall classes began. This old dog was eager to learn new tricks. In those training sessions I distinctly remember a presenter chuckling about the first time they experienced the “passing period.” I had no idea why everyone thought this was funny, though context clues told me it involved students leaving class early. Oh well, I thought, each school has its own traditions. I resolved to be on the lookout for this so-called passing period on my teaching schedule, did not see it, and felt relieved—too bad for all those other suckers whose classes abutted this mysterious time! And then on my first day, I found out what it really was and how class times really worked. I had a chuckle…this time at myself. I’ve had additional little, surprising revelations in my new job, none of them quite so foolish. This is all a part of joining a new university, a universal experience for all faculty. And yet, I am in a slightly different position in that I’ve known this place in an entirely different context for decades. In fact, I’ve been coming to the University of Texas at Austin (and the Star Seeds Café) for over 30 years. The road to my historical research runs through this place.

As a historian of U.S., Mexican American, and Texas history, I have visited libraries and other archival repositories all over the country, though none so often and so deeply as the places of learning on this campus. The products of this research are my published books and essays. My first major research project, an extension of my Rice University dissertation, was a study of education policy and bilingualism in Texas schools. This resulted in some published essays in academic journals as well as a book, The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 (Texas A&M Press, 2004). My next major project was a biography of the famed University of Texas educator and civil rights advocate, Dr. George I. Sánchez, whose name graces UT’s College of Education building. That project resulted in another book, George I. Sánchez and the Long Fight for Integration (Yale University Press, 2014). All told I’ve authored over 20 essays in books, journals, or magazines and edited one other book, but it is those two major projects that have cemented my longstanding connection to this university and the treasures in its libraries. In all this work I find hidden, obscured voices of the past and bring them to light; I study not just conflict and injustice, but also the passion and joy that infuse those who try to make their worlds better places; I connect the dots between past and present, always believing that our shared future can be positively shaped by studying our shared past. It’s hard not to feel romantic about that mission! For years now, I have experienced those feelings whenever I conduct research. And I’ve had many of those feelings here on the 40 acres.

Book cover for The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas

I find research highly personal. I form a strong emotive connection to the places it takes me. Whether I am spending a week or two in Sleepy Hollow, New York to work in the General Education Board papers, in Nashville, Tennessee to work in the Julius Rosenwald Fund papers, in Pasadena, California at the beautiful Huntington Library, or College Park, Maryland’s mammoth National Archives II facility, each place I visit leaves an imprint. For example, the panoptical monitoring in the reading room at the Rockefeller Archives with constant reminders about breaking the rules of how many pages one can access on one’s desk or how folders are filed back in their containers are as vivid to me as are the New York-style pies from The Horsman, the neighborhood pizzeria, and its views of the spectacular Hudson River. And that was two decades ago.

As a historian with my particular interests in Texas and Mexican American history, most of the sources I need, however, are in Austin and, more specifically, in the libraries here at UT. I started doing work at the Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL) in 1993-94 working on my history MA at nearby Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos (now Texas State University) where I researched the history of higher education expansion in Texas during the 1960s. In the second half of the 1990s my PhD research at Rice University on bilingual education in Texas involved exploring the university’s archival holdings, including the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, the Barker Texas History Center (now the Briscoe Center for American History), and the Benson Latin American Center. Since then I have continued to visit these archival repositories (and others in town) for biographical research on the University of Texas faculty member Dr. George I. Sánchez and for other projects.

So UT Austin has been an integral part of my professional life for decades now. What was all this time on campus like? It had a monotonous rhythm that, I’m sure, must seem tedious to anyone without a passion for history. These trips for the past three decades have entailed staying at several hotels, but most often at the I-35 Rodeway Inn near campus for a week or two at a time. This was usually during the summer months. On these trips I would get up early, scarf down a heavy breakfast knowing that I would work through lunch, and hustle across Dean Keaton Street to the Benson, Brisco, or LBJ archives to begin the day’s work as soon as they opened. I worked non-stop until closing time near 5:00 PM.

What scholars actually do in archives might seem mysterious. It’s not really. My day typically involved sifting through hundreds of pages of old documents, including old carbon copies of letters on onionskin paper. Unfortunately this work creates for me a wave of allergy-related ailments ranging from cold-like symptoms to uncomfortable skin rashes. It is a small price to pay for learning about the past as I see it. I try my best to ameliorate the expected physical response by daily prophylactic antihistamine doping, an obsessive regime of handwashing every hour or more, using gloves and masks, and a habit (learned the hard way) of not touching my face with my hands or fingers while handling documents. It may sound like odd workplace behavior, but I’ve often thought of this as equivalent to a professional athlete’s pre-game stretching and taping rituals or a singer’s voice exercises. It is necessary to get the job done. It is a built-in cost rather than a burden.

After being kicked out of the archives at closing time, I would seek an early dinner (and an urgent one due to having skipped lunch) at nearby eateries, which frequently involved the now extinct Star Seeds Café. After dinner I would walk around campus to stretch my legs. Since most of my research happened in the summer, this meant sweltering walks in athletic gear with copious amounts of sunscreen in a mostly empty University of Texas campus. These post-workday walks were solitary. I wandered campus lost in thought about what I learned that day and how it could inform the larger project.

When I was working on the Sánchez biography, I would walk past the education building bearing his name, touch the plaque, and sometimes have a few silent moments in which I reflected about the remarkable human being I was studying who taught oversubscribed courses to decades of UT students all while running his department and quietly organizing groundbreaking civil rights efforts (and suffering consequences for it) from his office in Sutton Hall. My long day of allergy-related symptoms that ended with quiet reflection on hot concrete seemed like a small lift next to Sánchez’s herculean burdens. After these walks, I placed an evening call to my girlfriend who eventually became my spouse and in time these calls also involved our growing children. They punctuated a very long day and lead to a much-needed sleep to prepare for another similarly long day. I can still remember one evening during a two-week research trip in the late 1990s having an evening cheeseburger and a Shiner Bock (or a few…) at the Star Seeds while reading a monograph on early 20^th century anarcho-syndicalism along the U.S.-Mexico border by the dimmed, neon light of the bar. In that moment I was as happy as a lark, doing what I loved, though with enough self-awareness to realize I must have seemed a weird sight to the other bar patrons, who left me to my book.

*A plaque at the entrance to the George I Sánchez Building, the University of Texas at Austin. Source: Not Even Past*

However, these trips to Austin and the University of Texas contained much-needed moments in which the world outside of work joyfully broke up my owlish solitude. In the first half of the 1990s, for example, after my visits to the PCL, I would spend time with a dear cousin. We would have the kind of long chats about life that are such a part of being in one’s early 20s. In those days I also would visit a high school friend who happened to be a Longhorn football player. On one occasion this resulted in my tagging along with some very large guys to a country dance hall off of Ben White Boulevard, one of my few ventures into the famed Austin nightlife. That was fun! By the 2000s I was more personally settled. My Austin trips brought me to visit family who had moved to the area—tias, tios, and primos—at lovely dinners they provided for their vagabond relative temporarily living in a hotel near the interstate. We traded family stories and I would listen, especially to the older generations, to their lived experiences of the very things I was reading about in the archives that day.

Book cover for George I. Sánchez and the Long Fight for Integration

My sense of this campus and city is, in part, also an idealized connection. As the center for intellectual and cultural life in this state, Austin always had a special meaning for me even going back to when I was an aspiring, wannabe teen intellectual living a small South Texas town. And my academic research has always felt as if it were tapping into different parts of my personal history. Going through letters written by a young Lyndon Johnson in the 1920s about teaching Mexican American children at a segregated school brought to mind my mother and her family and the stories they told me. They would have gone to the same kinds of schools from their ranches, farms, and towns in the South Texas brush country of that era; they also would have been as unknowledgeable of the English language as young Lyndon’s students in Cotulla, Texas. For my biography of George I. Sánchez, I could not but help to compare his life and choices to my own as his work gradually revealed itself to me over many years of going through his manuscript collection at the Benson Latin American Center. I even caught myself using his own rhetorical flourishes in my daily emails!

All those experiences, the jumbling of my personal and professional selves that are so firmly rooted to this university, have now evolved. In my early 50s I find myself no longer on the outside looking into an idealized UT, but on the inside looking out in a very real and now lived-in space. Being here regularly means a different kind of connection. Now I can feel the bustle of the university when the students are going to and from class (in the passing period, of course). I now teach my classes and attend meetings in the very buildings that I once only knew as exteriors from my middle-of-summer, sweaty, evening hikes. And I now notice how many things have changed since the 1990s: the campus is more walkable, but less drivable than it once was; the massive Jester parking lot has been replaced by an art museum bearing my surname (no relation); and for the first time ever I got to actually go up “The Tower” for a reception. It was a revelation after so many years staring at it from the outside wondering what it was like on the inside. I am making all-new personal connections to this place, which remains the site of so much of the intellectual odyssey that led me here. My excitement at having new colleagues and students is only enhanced by my sense of how they are deepening and expanding upon those existing memories.

The 40 acres is a special place. For me, it’s a site both familiar and unknown—one that I’m constantly rediscovering as my roads of personal and professional discovery merge in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Sadly I’ll be having these new experiences without the Star Seeds Café, but I’m sure there is plenty more to discover on the converging road ahead.

Dr. Carlos Kevin Blanton is the Barbara White Stuart Professor of Texas History at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of History. Blanton’s books and articles involve the intersection of Chicana/o history with education, civil rights, immigration, politics, and Texas history. His George I. Sánchez: The Long Fight for Mexican American Integration (Yale University Press, 2014) won the NACCS Best Book Award; The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981 (Texas A&M University Press, 2004) won the TSHA’s Tulls Award; and the article “The Citizenship Sacrifice: Mexican Americans, the Saunders-Leonard Report, and the Politics of Immigration, 1951–1952” in the Western Historical Quarterly (2009) won the WHA’s Bolton-Cutter Award. He has edited A Promising Problem: The New Chicana/o History (Texas 2016) and published additional articles in professional journals such as the Journal of Southern History, the Pacific Historical Review, the Teacher’s College Record, the Journal of American Ethnic History, and Texas Monthly. Carlos holds a 1999 PhD from Rice University, a 1995 MA from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University in San Marcos), and a 1993 BA from Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M University-Kingsville). He has held faculty positions at Portland State University (1999-2001) and at Texas A&M University, College Station (2001-2024) before joining the University of Texas at Austin community in the fall of 2024.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

This is Democracy – New School Year

This week, Jeremi and Zachary discuss the upcoming academic year and how universities can impact our relationships with democracy and politics.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, “A New Season.”

Breaking ChatGPT: Good Teaching Still Beats the Best AI

At this point, everyone seems to have heard of ChatGPT 3, the breakthrough artificial intelligence engine released in November 2022. A product of the OpenAI consortium, this online tool can generate long-form prose from simple prompts, with results often indistinguishable from human efforts. A New York Times column reported that ChatGPT “creates new content, tailored to your request, often with a startling degree of nuance, humor and creativity.”[1] The bot thus commonly passes the Turing Test: it can convince users that it is human.

Many observers greeted ChatGPT with something close to terror. Our dystopian future, they declared, will be the inverse of that foretold by The Jetsons. Instead of cheerful robot servants freeing us from manual drudgery, robots will replace us as writers, artists, and thinkers. Domestic labor and farm work will become the last arenas where humans surpass our robot creations. Our niche will shrink to that of Romba assistants, tidying up the spots missed by robot vacuums. While some of these commentaries were arch, many were earnest. Writing in the MIT Technology Review, Melissa Heikkilä explicitly posed the question “Could ChatGPT do my job?”[2] In the New York Times, Frank Bruni wondered “Will Chat GPT Make Me Irrelevant?”[3]

Screenshot from "Could ChatGPT do my job?" — *Screenshot from “Could ChatGPT do my job?”, https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/31/1067436/could-chatgpt-do-my-job/*

Many academics echoed these alarms. “You can no longer give take-home exams,” wrote Kevin Bryan, a professor of management based at the University of Toronto. Samuel Bagg, a University of South Carolina political scientist, suggested that ChatGPT3 “may actually spell the end of writing assignments.”

I dissent.

At its core, ChatGPT is just a predictive text algorithm. Simple predictive text engines are ubiquitous. In the common email client Microsoft Outlook, for example, if I write several lines of text (an indication that it might be time for a conclusion), and then type “please get”, the software immediately suggests “back to me.” If I accept that suggestion, it offers “as soon as possible.” This is not scary or surprising. The algorithm is simply relying on predictable prose patterns. The best predictive text algorithms are adaptive. You have likely experienced how your phone’s texting feature improves with time. That is simply a product of the software incorporating the probabilities of your writing habits. If I routinely write, “Please get me a taco and change the oil on my car,” a good algorithm will accordingly change the autocomplete suggestions for “Please get.”

ChatGPT3 is nothing more than those familiar text algorithms but at a massive scale. It seems different because size matters. The textbase is roughly 300 billion words, and the computational costs to train the engine (essentially the electric bill) ran into millions of dollars. Unlike familiar predictive text methods, which look at a few words (e.g., “please get” prompts “back to me”), ChatGPT3 accepts, and returns prompt with thousands of words.

That difference in scale obscures key similarities. After all, although both are primates, a 400 lb. mountain gorilla is threatening in ways that a 5 lb. ring-tailed lemur is not. But the fact that ChatGPT3 is just a predictive text algorithm is essential to appreciating its limits. Gorillas, however large and scary, are primates and share the core limits of that order: they cannot fly, live underwater, or turn sunlight into starch. In the same way, ChatGPT does not “think.”

A 2013 photograph of The Thinker, a sculpture by Auguste Rodin on display at the Musée Rodin in Paris — *A 2013 photograph of T*he Thinker, a sculpture by Auguste Rodin on display at the Musée Rodin in Paris. Source: Wikimedia Commons/Tammy Lo. Image reproduced under the terms of Creative Commons License 2.0.

No predictive text algorithm, no matter its scale, can write anything new. The scope of ChatGPT3 conceals that it is just a massive “cut and paste” engine, auto-completing our text prompts based on billions of pages scraped from the internet. That is both its great power and its core limitation. ChatGPT3 is devastatingly “human” at the most mundane “cut and paste” aspects of writing. It will likely automate many forms of “compliance writing” (certifications that a person or organization conforms to rules and regulations), as well as customer service letters, legal forms, insurance reports, etc. Of course, many of those tasks were already partly automated, but ChatGPT3 has radically streamlined the interface. By extension, ChatGPT can resemble a human student and earn a solid B+ when responding to any question that has an established answer. If there are thousands of examples on the internet, ChatGPT will convincingly reassemble those into seemingly human prose.

ChatGPT thus poses a real but energizing question for teachers. If ChatGPT is most human-like when answering “cut and paste” questions, why are we posing such questions? Adapting to ChatGPT requires not a ban on the software, much less a retreat into an imaginary past before computers, but merely some healthy self-reflection. If we are genuinely teaching our students to think and write critically, then we have nothing to fear from ChatGPT. If our test questions can be answered by ChatGPT, then we aren’t requiring critical reading or thinking.

We can break ChatGPT simply by demanding that students directly engage historical sources. Consider the prompt, “Relate the Gettysburg Address to the Declaration of Independence. Is Lincoln expanding on an older vision of the Republic or creating a new one?” ChatGPT generates a compelling simulacrum of a cautious B-student: “the Gettysburg Address can be seen as both an expansion of the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the creation of a new vision for the nation.” But essay never quotes either document and ChatGPT gets confused as soon we push for specifics. Thus, the prompt “When Lincoln declared that ‘all men are created equal’ was he creating a new vision of liberty?” generates the response “Abraham Lincoln did not declare that ‘all men are created equal’; rather, this phrase comes from the United States Declaration of Independence, which was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776.” This answer is incoherent because ChatGPT3 does not “understand” the meaning of “declare.” It was likely tripped up by a probabilistic association of “declare” with “declaration.”

This early 20th century poster reproduces the text of the Gettysburg Address. Note that the very first sentence contains the phrase “all men are created equal”—something ChatGPT missed. Source: Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress.

ChatGPT3 collapses completely when we move beyond canonical sources and press further on specifics. Consider the prompt “Washington’s famous ‘Letter to a Hebrew Congregation in Newport’ is a response to an invitation from that congregation. Using your close reading skills, which aspects of that invitation does Washington engage and which does he ignore?” Here, GPT becomes an expert fabulist. There is no massive internet corpus on the original invitation, so it infers grievances: “For example, the Jewish community in Newport had expressed concerns about their status as a minority group, as well as their economic and social opportunities.” In other iterations, it asserts that Washington ignored a plea to “help secure the rights of all citizens, including those who are marginalized or oppressed.” Those answers have little to do with the primary sources, although they are compelling imitations of a poorly prepared student.

ChatGPT misses core elements of the exchange. For example, the invitation calls for the divine protection of Washington and for his ascent to heaven, but Washington responds modestly and with a broadly ecumenical vision of the afterlife. Even when I pasted the original Newport letter to Washington into ChatGPT, it responded with a boilerplate summary of Washington’s response. It can only write what’s already been written.

I have focused here on American history because in my specialty of Japanese history, where there are comparatively few English-language examples to repurpose, ChatGPT breaks down both rapidly and thoroughly. I asked it about Edogawa Ranpō’s 1925 short story “The Human Chair.” It is a haunting, gothic work about an obsessed, self-loathing craftsman who builds a massive chair for a luxury hotel, conceals himself in it, and then thrills as he becomes living furniture for a cosmopolitan elite. ChatGPT insisted that it was about a man who tried to turn his wife into a chair. ChatGPT didn’t do the assigned reading because it can’t read. That insight applies across fields and disciplines: the algorithm can only write modified versions of what’s already on the web.

Perhaps, in some distant future, ChatGPT 500 (the descendant of ChatGPT 3) will have absorbed everything that has been written or said. Until then, we need merely inflect our questions to move beyond predictable answers. Open ended questions about Rousseau’s Social Contract or Kant’s What is Enlightenment? need to slip into oblivion. But relating any of those canonical texts to non-canonical sources, and insisting on quotes, is a vibrant alternative. How, for example, does this Boston newspaper editorial on the Haitian Revolution relate to Rousseau? Or “Here’s an neglected passage of Spinoza. Relate to it to this well-known passage from Kant.” Such questions stymie ChatGPT3. They can also give our students a better education that is also more true to the objectives of the humanities—teaching students to think for themselves. And they will make teaching more rewarding. At first glance, ChatGPT3 is genuinely scary. But even the scariest gorillas cannot fly or turn sunlight into starch. And, “please get back to me as soon as possible.”

Mark Ravina is the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Chair in Japanese Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/26/upshot/chatgpt-child-essays.html?searchResultPosition=1

[2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/31/1067436/could-chatgpt-do-my-job/

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/opinion/chatgpt-artificial-intelligence.html?searchResultPosition=5

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

From There to Here: Matthew Butler

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.

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From There to Here: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra

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.

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From There to Here: 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.

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A Primer for Teaching Environmental History: Ten Design Principles. By Emily Wakild and Michelle K. Berry (2018)

by Bryan Sitzes

Environmental history is an approach that broadens our historical scope by acknowledging how the human and non-human worlds have interacted and shaped each other’s fates over time. Emily Wakild and Michelle K. Berry have produced a guide that teachers with diverse historical interests can apply in high school, undergraduate, or graduate classrooms. The authors envision teachers using A Primer for Teaching Environmental History in two ways: creating an entirely new course on environmental history or integrating environmental history into a more general history course. Despite their environmental focus, the disciplinary skills and pedagogical techniques they share are applicable in any history classroom. Whether you are looking to update your high school US history survey or conduct a graduate seminar on colonial histories of water, Wakild and Berry offer relevant advice on identifying course objectives, course structure preparation, communicating and engaging with students, developing disciplinary skills through activities and projects, assessment, and a great deal more. They pair these general concepts with examples from their own classrooms and suggest how other teachers might tweak the techniques to fit their own class.

A particular strength of Teaching Environmental History is that the authors repeatedly show teachers how to structure activities, units, and an entire course so that earlier lessons provide foundations for later, more complex ideas. The first tip in the book suggests asking students to think about their lunch – a tangible and personal object – and consider what processes were necessary for this sandwich or energy bar to arrive in their possession (farmers growing grains, rainfall watering agricultural fields, extracted oil powering global trade networks, etc.). Once students familiarize themselves with the various processes and relationships that make their lunch possible, Wakild and Berry show how teachers can historicize this concept by having students consider the history of bananas. Students listen to a 1922 song about a banana shortage in NYC and wonder, why was there a banana shortage? Students learn about globalization and teachers might choose to explore US foreign policy in Latin America, integrate economics by considering consumerism or labor, discuss the meanings of nature and natural, or begin interdisciplinary approaches by sharing papers on genetic engineering. A multitude of possibilities allow teachers to tailor the banana to the needs of their own classroom. Along the way, students learn to find sources, connect discrete information, and communicate what they found through writing assignments with topics they had a hand in choosing.

A Selection of Environmental History Books (see our article on teaching Environmental History)

The initial section on connecting students to environmental history also relates to a concept Wakild and Berry introduce at the end of their book: environmental justice and marginalized communities. Although teachers may want to avoid such a complex idea at the outset of the semester, the extremely visible effects of nature on contemporary society can also help students connect with course material. Wild fires in California, undrinkable water in Michigan, and hurricanes on the coasts are all issues students may already be familiar with. Teachers could use Elizabeth Rush’s Rising: Dispatches from the American Shore (2018) since she considers the effects of sea level rise and transmits the voices of affected coastal communities in California, Louisiana, Florida, and New York.

The second part of Teaching Environmental History shows how teachers can connect the various units in their course together through field excursions, human connections to space, and centering a semester around energy. Wakild and Berry consider the unique benefits and challenges of field trips, whether taking students to Latin America for a month, walking along a river that cuts through your local community, or creating assignments for distance-education students to go explore the outdoors in their areas. Students of today connect to spaces far beyond their local community through technology, and so helping students develop a sense of place can utilize the skills they already have. Teachers can pair Instagram or YouTube with diaries of travelers of the Oregon Trail or Indian Ocean to help students develop deeper feelings for places than if they only read a text.

Wakild and Berry end their primer by considering issues relevant to nearly every classroom: integrating technology and conducting assessments. Accordingly, approaches to incorporating environmental history take a backseat to discussions of general teaching philosophy in these chapters. Both technology and assessment actually appear throughout the book but receive extra attention in conclusion. The relative absence of environmental history discussions in the final chapters is a clue to the relevance of technology and assessment in all classrooms. They acknowledge the challenges these issues present while focusing on the immense benefits for students. Technology and assessments do not necessarily form pedagogical speed bumps or road blocks. With creativity, we can integrate institutional demands while continuing to imbue students with the skills necessary to critically reflect on the past and become well-informed global citizens. That is the primary objective Wakild and Berry want to help other teachers achieve.

In their epilogue, Wakild and Berry anticipate criticisms that their examples might skew too heavily toward modern histories and that too many “extra-disciplinary” approaches like environmental justice or natural science research risks diluting the requirements of a history course. I do not find either of these potential criticisms very problematic. Examples from the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries help demonstrate the relevance of environment history to students unfamiliar with the discipline, and the techniques the authors share can be translated to use with earlier histories if some teachers desire. As for diluting the historical discipline of the class, environment history thrives best when traditional skills of historians are combined with other approaches. Interdisciplinarity also allows teachers to engage more of their students, since some will surely be more interested in literature or the natural sciences. Any environmental historian who intends to teach should read A Primer for Teaching Environmental History, and teachers of all kinds will probably find it useful in preparing for their next semester.

From There to Here: Susan Deans-Smith

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: Julie Hardwick

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

(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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