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Meg Lauren’s Songs from the Archive

Meg Lauen's songs from the archive banner

This article is part of the series: History beyond Academia

Meg Lauren’s song “Harriet Ross” tells the story of a fourteen-year-old factory worker from Scranton, Pennsylvania. While working at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC), Lauren had the opportunity to read a letter, written on March 21, 1911, addressed to the governor of Texas. In the letter, Harriet Ross expressed her desire to “correspond with a cowboy.” The first time I heard the song at the Cactus Café open mic on the UT Campus, it struck me as a great example of creative engagement with a primary source that I could potentially share with students. When Raquel, the Associate editor of Not Even Past, mentioned that they were doing a series on “history beyond academia,” her song was the first thing that came to mind. The three of us met back in October 2025 outside of Epoch Coffee to talk about Meg’s approach to writing the song and to record a video of her performing it. Though distinct from the kind of research and writing typical of academic histories, the story of this song’s journey from the archive to a live audience parallels some of the ways that historians engage in historical reconstruction from fragmentary or partial primary source evidence.

Austin musician Meg Lauren, originally from Northern California, has been playing music for about fifteen years. “Both of my parents are musically inclined,” she told me, “but my dad was more of a gigging musician—he played guitar and sang in different bands, so I grew up watching him perform.” Her mother, meanwhile, worked as a county librarian, a line of work that she also found herself drawn to. Meg and her husband moved to Austin after the 2018 wildfires displaced them from their home in Northern California. Shortly after relocating to Texas, Meg found a job at TSLAC, initially working as a library assistant before moving into the archives. “This was different from the more public-facing library jobs I’d done before—I spent most of my time in the stacks, behind the scenes,” she explained. “It’s a research library—most of the materials are in closed stacks.” That archival work would unexpectedly shape her songwriting.

The Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives and Library Building in Austin, home of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Photograph by Tony Webster.

The Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives and Library Building in Austin, home of the TSLAC. Photograph by Tony Webster. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The inspiration for the song came when an archivist at the library was working to fulfill a request that required sifting through the records of the Texas Governor’s office. As anyone who has done archival research could tell you, it’s not uncommon for interesting and/or surprising material to come up in the process, even if it may have little to do with the main topic of interest. Finding a brief letter from Harriet Ross, the archivist called Meg and the rest of the team over to take a look. She and the other employees at TSLAC were immediately struck by it. Meg recalled, “Being a musician, when I read the letter, I was like, ‘This should be a song. No doubt about it.’” She took a photograph of the letter and kept it, though she did not write the song immediately. In July 2024, after having left TSLAC, she revisited the letter and began research to inform the songwriting process.

The first clue for learning more about Harriet Ross’s world was the return address on her letter, which traced back to the Sauquoit Silk Mill in Pennsylvania. After looking through resources from historical associations in Scranton and finding only minimal information about this mill where Ross presumably worked or at least lived, Meg turned to a documentary on a silk mill in New Jersey, featuring interviews with former workers—most, if not all of them women—who could elaborate on the working conditions. “Similar to how young boys, called ‘breaker boys’, would help in the coal mines, young women and girls, often recent immigrants, would be hired to work ten-hour days six or seven days a week in the silk mills,” Meg explained. The limited specific evidence available about Ross meant that she had to fill in the gaps with a mix of empathy and imagination. “I could assume that she wanted to escape the life that she was living”, she explained, adding, “And who knows where she first heard about the idea of a cowboy. Some people I asked suggested that she might have read dime-store magazines, which could have given her a romantic image of the ‘Wild West.’ I could only imagine that escaping to Texas to live with a cowboy sounded like the complete opposite of the dark, industrialized atmosphere she lived in.” As an art form, songwriting allows a more imaginative approach to source analysis than one might find in academic writing. At the same time, the use of detail and terminology grounded in background research helps make the song’s image of the past more convincing.

Workers at Hand Silk Mill in Wilmington, Delaware, May 1910. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.

 Workers at Hand Silk Mill in Wilmington, Delaware, May 1910. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine. Source: Library of Congress

For Meg Lauren, the value of writing and performing a song like “Harriet Ross” comes from its ability to draw attention to the experiences of historical actors typically left out of dominant narratives. “A lot of our history is often told through the eyes of certain groups, primarily white men, and as a consequence, there isn’t a lot of documentation of working class or poor immigrant men and women, especially young girls that would have been in Harriet Ross’s position”, she observed, “Because there’s not this whole picture I can paint of her life, I can use my own artistic imagination to create her whole world or at least a snapshot of what her world would have been like and elevate a story of someone who would otherwise remain unknown.” Besides coming across as endearing and somewhat sweet, telling the story of Harriet Ross’s letter to the governor also allows audiences to feel a connection with, and gain awareness of, a historical actor who would otherwise be unlikely to appear in a history textbook. The audiences that the song can reach, moreover, very likely include people who might be less likely to read about history in the first place, adding to the potential value and meaning of a song like Harriet Ross. With its relatable and memorable lyrics, Meg’s song demonstrates how even fragmentary archival evidence can inspire new forms of historical storytelling and bring subaltern actors from the past to life.

While her song Harriet Ross has not been released, she hopes to record it either at the end of this year or the beginning of the next one. Meg Lauren’s other music can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming platforms. On May 29, she released her EP, Strawberry Season.


Timmy Vilgiate (they/them) is a Ph.D. student in History at The University of Texas at Austin. They earned their B.A. and M.A. in History from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Their research looks at the relationship between assimilationist development projects and the study of psychedelic flora in the Sierra Mazateca from the late 19th Century to the mid-20th Century. Outside of history, they also enjoy playing music, sewing, and spending time with their cat Pedro.

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.

Curating History: Dr Pepper, Preservation, and Public Trust

This article is part of the series: History beyond Academia

Ostrich egg models, Dr Pepper bottles, and toothbrushes preserved in soda. What do these artifacts have in common? At the Dr Pepper Museum, these objects collectively tell a story about the past that otherwise might go unnoticed. Located in the historic downtown of Waco, Texas, in the 1906 Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company building, known as the “Home of Dr Pepper,” the museum has welcomed over 3 million visitors since opening in 1991. Much more than a repository for soda memorabilia, it is an active site of historical practice, demonstrating that museums are not peripheral to the discipline of history, but spaces where historians produce knowledge through preservation, ethical decision-making, and public engagement.

Graduate training in history often centers on life inside the halls of academia—publishing, teaching, and archival research—but this can obscure other sites where history is actively produced and imparted to the public. At the Dr Pepper Museum, history is not only written but stewarded. Senior Collections Manager Rachael Nadeau Johnson reflects, “We are but a speed bump in the life of these artifacts,” underscoring a central principle of museum work: historians are temporary caretakers of objects that will outlast them. Museums remain among the most trusted public sources of information, placing a significant responsibility on curators and collections staff to ensure that what they present and display is accurate, well-sourced, and meaningful.

This responsibility is especially pressing in a moment shaped by digital misinformation. Nadeau Johnson highlights the challenges posed by AI-generated inaccuracies as well as enthusiast and collector communities that can circulate well-meaning but false information. Thus, today’s museum professionals increasingly act as teachers and correctives. They spend their time verifying claims, tracing sources, and presenting evidence-based narratives. The work of preservation is not only about maintaining objects but also safeguarding historical knowledge itself.

The Dr Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas, housed in the 1906 Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company building. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith.

The Dr Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas, housed in the 1906 Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company building. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith. Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carol M. Highsmith Archive.

Much of this work begins behind the scenes, before the museum opens each day. The curatorial staff catalog and track new donations, maintain exhibits, and correspond with donors and executives to ensure the displays reflect the history of Dr Pepper in an engaging and accurate manner. Contrary to popular assumption, only a small fraction, between 5 and 10 percent, of a museum’s collection is on display at any given time. The rest of the objects require ongoing care: cataloging, condition tracking, and research. Central to this process is provenance, the documented history of an object from its creation or rediscovery to the present. Maintaining these provenances is both essential and resource-intensive, requiring time, funding, staffing, and institutional support that are often in short supply. Yet, the work of nonprofit staff like Nadeau Johnson and Assistant Registrar Zach Loflin transforms a curious artifact into a piece of historical evidence.

Selection for exhibition involves many layers of decision-making. Objects are not chosen simply because they are rare or visually striking, but because they can support meaningful interpretation. Provenance informs which stories can be told, while physical condition determines whether an item can be safely displayed. Light exposure, the artifact’s quality, and material fragility all shape curatorial choices, as does Dr Pepper’s broader commitment to “people-first” narratives that connect objects to visitors’ lived experiences. Loflin explains, “There are a lot of ethical considerations in museum work, from how we engage with the public, to how we preserve our artifacts, and how we tell these stories.” These decisions are guided by professional judgment and rigorous training, and also by institutional codes of ethics that inform how museums acquire, interpret, and present collections for public consumption.

If preservation and selection form the foundation of museum work, interpretation brings it into the public arena. One of the primary challenges of public history is translating information into formats that are both accessible and engaging. Exhibit text is written at a sixth grade reading level and must communicate meaning within a few seconds. Developing text that is approachable for a variety of visitors requires delicate layering and balance. At Dr Pepper, staff deal with the fact that language itself constrains ongoing efforts to include multiple language translations for exhibits. Idioms, humor, and wordplay that work well in a specific context do not always translate, and curators must balance clarity with nuance in every aspect of their work.

Ad in The Horned Frog (1906), Waco, TX

Ad in The Horned Frog (1906), Waco, TX, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Despite these constraints, the impact of public history is immediate and visible. Both Nadeau Johnson and Loflin describe the rewards of interacting with the public daily and seeing visitors engage with exhibits they created. Loflin notes, pointing to the sheer volume of visitors, “We get a very diverse spread of people coming to the museum, all ages, backgrounds, international visitors—seeing the sheer amount of interest in the history is rewarding in itself.” For Nadeau Johnson, some of the most meaningful moments come from walking through the galleries and speaking to visitors about the history she helped shape. Hearing someone have an “Aha!” moment when viewing an exhibit, “It does not get old. Being able to create those teachable moments and watching people learning in real time,” is at the core of the curatorial staff’s mission. These interactions underscore the unique and valuable position museums occupy, operating at a scale that academic work often struggles to reach: brief but meaningful moments of individual connection.

This scale also introduces challenges. Visitors often misunderstand how collections function or how donated and acquired materials are incorporated. In reality, acquisitions involve careful evaluation, and not all items can—or should—be accepted. At the same time, museums face persistent structural constraints. Funding—“everyone’s favorite F-word,” Loflin jokes—shapes how institutions can preserve, research, and display materials. Limited staffing and resources further complicate the work, particularly as collections and visits continue to grow.

While the work is complicated, challenging, and often behind the scenes, the practice of curation is both an art and a source of joy to those who undertake it. By selecting objects for display, Loflin and Nadeau Johnson shape the stories that are told and curate unique and exciting exhibits. One of the most interesting artifacts at the museum is an ostrich egg model of the Old Corner Drugstore where Dr Pepper was created in 1885 by pharmacist Charles Alderton. The egg sits on a brass pedestal and is textured and painted to look like a red brick wall. The top half has been cut and shingled to look like a roof, and the interior opens through double doors and windows to reveal a miniature drugstore fountain with a cash register, seating, and a drink dispenser made from a small bird egg. Decorated with the slogan “Drink DP the year round” and gold ric-rac trim, this artifact displays the love and care that Texans and Dr Pepper drinkers worldwide hold for this classic beverage.

Replica of Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store at the Dr Pepper Museum in Waco, where Charles Alderton first created Dr Pepper in 1885. Photograph by Michael Barera. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Despite the challenges of curation, museums remain an essential site of historical practice, where history is tangible, ethical, and intellectually demanding. As both Nadeau Johnson and Loflin note, public historians are the temporary caretakers of the past. The artifacts they steward will endure beyond any single career, but their decisions regarding what to preserve, how to interpret, and what to share shape how that past is understood. Museums, in this sense, are not places where history is simply displayed, but continually made, maintained, and entrusted to the public.

Further viewing: Rachael Nadeau Johnson appears in two episodes of the History Channel’s The Food That Built America: “Soda Rising: The Birth of Pop” and “Citrus Soda Stars.”

Danielle Sanchez is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her B.A. in History with a minor in Religion from Baylor University in the spring of 2021, and started in the Ph.D. program at UT Austin in the fall of 2021. She earned her M.A. in History in December of 2023, and is currently writing her dissertation research on the Texas Rangers in the early 1900s. Her research interests include race and American politics, religious-based oppression and violence, Texas and Southern history, the Texas Rangers, and anti-Mexican and anti-Black violence.

Author of banner picture: Larry D. Moore Wikimedia Commons

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.

The Brands of Garrison Hall at its Centennial

Banner for The Brands of Garrison Hall by J. R. Campos

As the Roaring Twenties hummed on, a brand-new building was erected on the grassy slopes of central campus at The University of Texas at Austin. A crew of around 50 to 60 people, working with eight car loads of stone, six stone cutters, and ten lathers, pieced together what would become Garrison Hall at breakneck speed.[1] On December 9, 1925, the building’s ceremonial cornerstone, still visible today, was laid, at a time when faith in science and its capacity to uncover objective facts was in full bloom. It was to be, according to renowned economist and then-president Dr. Walter Splawn, a place “free and unhampered in the search of truth” for the social sciences. The building was named after George Pierce Garrison, the first chair of the History Department and one of the founders of the Texas State Historical Association. The faculty building committee, led by philosopher William J. Battle from 1920 to 1949, chose to feature thirty-two cattle brands on the frieze beneath the building’s cornices and upper-floor window frames. No one on the committee could claim sole credit for an idea that seemed to have emerged from the broader cultural atmosphere of the period.[2]

Garrison Hall as it looks today, one hundred years after its construction. Photograph by the author.

Garrison Hall as it looks today, one hundred years after its construction. Photograph by the author.

Those cattle-brand medallions are more than architectural flourishes of what became the History Department building. The building was to be a “permanent monument to immortalize the history of the Southwest” through one of the region’s defining economic activities and cultural symbols: cattle ranching.[3] They were meant to symbolize what had been the beating heart of Texas, just as that era gave way to barbed wire, industrial livestock, and iron horses. By the 1920s, industrial modernization, agricultural crisis, and the rise of the oil industry were reshaping Texas. Agricultural and animal product prices collapsed after Europe’s recovery following World War I, while oil extraction emerged as one of Texas’s defining economic forces. It was under these circumstances that, in 1922, the University of Texas, then just a handful of brick buildings with temporary wooden shacks, began planning an expansion. Those plans received an unexpected boost the following year, when an oil reserve was discovered on university lands in the Permian Basin of West Texas. Santa Rita Well No. 1, now memorialized on the southern edge of campus, began producing oil, generating revenue that helped propel the University’s ongoing expansion. The most significant example was the construction of Memorial Stadium in 1924, named in honor of World War I veterans.[4] That same year, renowned New York architect Cass Gilbert was ousted amid pressure from local firms to hire a Texas architect, and a new architectural team was brought in to redesign the 1922 expansion plan. Garrison Hall therefore began its construction under two Texas architects, Herbert M. Greene of Dallas and Robert Leon White of Austin, and the Illinoisan James White.[5]

The pressure to oust Gilbert was part of a broader, emerging regionalism and a growing confidence that Texas itself could and should shape the University’s development. The American Southwest, long viewed as a backward periphery of the United States, was beginning to assert itself. With growing pride in its identity, history, and culture, Texas began to recast itself less through its Southern and Civil War associations and more as a western frontier society defined by ranches, cowboys, longhorns, and open ranges.[6] While UT professors Garrison, Eugene Barker, and Walter Prescott Webb were laying the bricks of the now traditional, and rather Anglo-centric, history of the Lone Star State, western dime novels were pouring into the market. Zane Grey, a writer of western adventure novels, by far outsold the more prestigious modernist authors of the time, including James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Scott Fitzgerald.[7] “Westerns, westerns and more westerns,” read a Burlington Hawk Eye of Iowa in 1926, as “a western a day makes good movie paid” became the motto of the burgeoning Hollywood film industry.[8] These western stories helped make longhorns, ranching, and cattle brands recognizable and popular icons of Texas identity.

The laying of the cornerstone of Garrison Hall, 1925. Source: The Cactus, University of Texas at Austin, 1926

The laying of the cornerstone of Garrison Hall, 1925. Source: The Cactus, University of Texas at Austin, 1926.

For these symbols to appear in westerns and popular fiction, however, they first had to exist in oral memory and the folklore movement. J. Frank Dobie led the Texas Folklore Society alongside his friend John Lomax. Together, they provided the raw material for the construction of an increasingly nostalgic vision of the Southwest. Dobie spent his childhood on a ranch near the Nueces River and grew up to become a Master of Literature at Columbia University. But he fell short of a Ph.D., since he never adapted to a New York culture he saw as snobbish for disdaining his cattle-ranching background. He came back to UT as an English instructor from 1914 to 1916, only to find himself marginalized again. After serving in World War I without seeing active combat, he returned to Texas and pursued folklorism, the study of local legends, stories, and oral traditions, which had long been his passion. By 1923, Texas folklorism had gained wider public recognition, with Dobie emerging as one of its leading figures. He was subsequently hired without a doctoral diploma as a full professor at the Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University) and appointed chair of its English Department. In 1925, however, UT Austin successfully recruited him back.[9] He went on to build his career writing about the fading world of Texas ranching, producing works such as Vaquero of the Brush Country, Coronado’s Chickens, The Longhorns, and The Mustangs.

The Old Main Building at The University of Texas at Austin in 1903

The Old Main Building at The University of Texas at Austin in 1903. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Garrison Hall under construction, pictured in the 1926 Cactus yearbook. Source: The Cactus, University of Texas at Austin, 1926.

Garrison Hall under construction, pictured in the 1926 Cactus yearbook. Source: The Cactus, University of Texas at Austin, 1926.

As modernization advanced, nostalgia for the world left behind kept growing. This enabled figures like Dobie to become spokespeople for a bygone era, revaluing regional history and tradition as worthy of academic study. In a lecture to a large crowd in the summer of 1926, when the facade of Garrison Hall was just completed, he argued that folklore is the fabric through which literature and culture are made. He then pointed to the cattle brands at Garrison Hall as an example.[10] Viewed through Dobie’s career, we can see that Garrison Hall’s cattle brands were more than a casual decorative choice. They were part of a larger cultural moment when Texans made ranching folklore a central symbol of their identity, just as the old frontier that produced it faded away. It was only fitting that the university’s new history building would try to preserve that past by turning it into stone.

The building committee assigned UT’s librarian and Texas historian Ernest William Winkler, student of Garrison, Eugene Barker, and Frederick Jackson Turner, to survey and select the brands for Garrison Hall.[11] After an exhaustive six months of reviewing twenty thousand brands, he selected thirty-two. He balanced four criteria: historical periods, regional representation, visual appeal, and donors and benefactors. Readers can identify each one using the brand locator at the end of the article.

Newspaper coverage of Garrison Hall’s cattle brands in 1926: “Brands in Stone,” Brownwood Bulletin, May 13, 1926 (left)
“Saving the Longhorn,” Mt. Pleasant Pyramid, October 15, 1926 (right).

Newspaper coverage of Garrison Hall’s cattle brands in 1926: “Brands in Stone,” Brownwood Bulletin, May 13, 1926 (left), and “Saving the Longhorn,” Mt. Pleasant Pyramid, October 15, 1926 (right). Source: NewspaperArchive.

The first period was defined as the Spanish and Tejano “pioneers” who introduced ranching to Texas, such as the Pedro Ibarbo and Mariano Sanchez brands. Notable among this group is the oldest of the thirty-two brands, that of José Antonio de la Garza, known as el flaco (the skinny one), who lived through the tumult of Mexico’s independence wars of the 1810s. The rebellion against the Spanish Crown reached Texas in 1813, followed by the brutal pacification by royalist commander Joaquín de Arredondo. As a result, ranches were ravaged, and large numbers of cattle were dispersed. Many of the ranches that survived the mayhem also changed hands. But de la Garza did more than preserve his estate. He became one of the leaders who organized roundups to recover and redistribute cattle that had been scattered and intermingled for years, many of them completely unbranded.[12] His brand is the first one, from right to left, on the upper northern side of the Hall.

The second period was meant to represent the first American ranching brands, most notably Stephen Austin’s, which was placed on the west-side main entrance, below the right upper-floor window. His brand was also known as the “Spanish Austin Brand” since its shape follows the traditional Hispanic style, very similar to de la Garza’s. Stephen Austin inherited his father Moses’s contract from the Spanish Crown, and later from Mexico, to settle families in Texas in the 1820s. When Santa Anna’s army invaded Texas in 1836, the main body of the Mexican army reached the Brazos River and survived by eating scattered cattle it found along the way, some of which probably bore Austin’s brand. Many colonists fled toward Louisiana or Galveston Island in what became known as the Runaway Scrape. Austin, meanwhile, was in the United States advocating for Texas independence after his imprisonment in Mexico. He returned to Texas later in 1836 and died that December. Many cattle dispersed into the wild again, adding to the already substantial feral herds that would later become associated with Texas Longhorns.

Cattle brands of José Antonio de la Garza (left)
Brand of Stephen F. Austin (right)

Cattle brands of José Antonio de la Garza (left) and Stephen F. Austin (right) on Garrison Hall. Photographs by the author.

The third period highlighted the trail-driving era, which flourished after the Civil War, when cowboys drove herds hundreds of miles to northern markets. These trails became legendary because they required immense skill to control large Longhorn herds, many of which had been rounded up from a feral state. Cowboys also had to contend with all kinds of rustlers and raiders along the routes. Ike T. Pryor, who helped Winkler in his search, belonged to this group. He began driving Longhorns to Kansas as a young man and later built his career around the 77 brand, located on the north side of Garrison Hall.

Preston R. Rose, whose 7-A brand was placed on the south-side frieze, introduced methods such as fencing and breeding that became the norm by the time Garrison Hall was built. By 1926, with the arrival of barbed wire and the introduction of “improved” breeds, such as Angus, the once-abundant feral and semi-feral herds of Longhorns were on the edge of extinction. That same year, the Texas Folklore Society pushed for the preservation of “pure blood Longhorns”, which led to the first protected herd on the Wichita National Forest Wildlife Refuge.[13] Garrison Hall followed the same impulse to preserve that mythologized vanishing ranching world, as the widely reprinted press release about its construction put it: “The aim is to preserve records of the fast disappearing brands.”

Cattle brands of Ike T. Pryor (left)
Cattle brands of Preston R. Rose (right)

Cattle brands of Ike T. Pryor (left) and Preston R. Rose (right) on Garrison Hall. Photographs by the author.

According to Dobie, one “can look at the buildings on the campus and trace the development of culture in Texas”.[14] But how representative were these brands really? Most of the thirty-two are trail-driving brands or belong to the century after 1836. The sample overrepresents late-nineteenth-century Anglo-American Texas ranching, even though Franciscan friars introduced ranching in the first half of the eighteenth century. Garrison Hall was built when Texas history was still heavily skewed towards the post-1836 period. Hispanic roots were acknowledged but marginalized. Dobie himself wrote about the Spanish period mostly as the background context for what later became Texas. In 1936, Carlos Castañeda began publishing his multivolume Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, which gave greater historical weight to the Hispanic legacy, along with the classic Borderlands scholarship of Herbert Bolton, leading the way for later historians like Jack Jackson, Jesús “Frank” de la Teja, and Andrés Tijerina.

Nevertheless, despite the curatorial bias, those Hispanic roots still made it into the Hall through style and shape. Hispanic brands used circular shapes and more intricate designs than the Anglo style of straight lines, sharp angles, and numbers. Some brands even blend both styles, reflecting the deep entanglements among peoples that characterize Texas history. Notable groups are absent, including Indigenous peoples such as the Caddo, Karankawa, Jumano, Lipan Apache, and Comanche, as well as enslaved and free Black communities. But they too should be invoked and remembered when looking at Garrison Hall and its cattle brands, because they were also knotted to Texas’s larger social fabric through cattle and horses. While the selection was based on a biased idea of Texas history, it still represents a way of life in which many peoples were involved: cowboys, owners, workers, raiders, traders, captives, fugitives, and neighbors. Ranching, as it developed in Texas, was not only an economic system but also a cultural and social web connecting the many peoples of the region.

Brand locator. On each side of Garrison Hall, the brands are listed from right to left as you face the building. All photographs by the author.

West side
Below the roofline: José Antonio de la Garza, José Antonio Navarro, Pedro Ibarbo, Mariano Sánchez.
Upper-floor windows: Stephen Austin, Richard King.

West side brands. picture by the author

North side
Below the roofline: Herbert L. Kokernot, William T. Waggoner, Anna Martin and Sons, Al E. McFadden, George W. Saunders, Ike T. Pryor, Christopher C. Slaughter, John R. Blocker.
Upper-floor windows: George Littlefield, Swante M. Swenson.

North side brands 1. picture by the author

North side brands 2. picture by the author

East side
Below the roofline: Capitol Land Syndicate, Joe Hunter.

East Side brands. picture by the author

South side
Below the roofline: Dudley H. Snyder, E. B. Millett, Mark Withers, Dillard R. Fant, John T. Lytle, Martha Rabb (Cattle Queen of Texas), Ellison and Dewees, J. J. Myers, A. H. (Shanghai) Pierce, Oliver Loving and Sons, Charles Goodnight, Preston Rose, Samuel A. Maverick.
Upper-floor window: Samuel B. Burnett.

South side brands 1. picture by the author

South side brands 2. picture by the author

South side brands 3. picture by the author

[1] Austin Daily Texan, October 28, 1925, p. 3, Austin, Texas, US https://newspaperarchive.com/austin-daily-texan-oct-28-1925-p-3/

[2] Austin Daily Texan, December 09, 1925, p. 5, Austin, Texas, US https://newspaperarchive.com/austin-daily-texan-dec-09-1925-p-5/

[3] Austin Daily Texan, March 14, 1926, Pg. 7, Austin, Texas, US https://access.newspaperarchive.com/austin-daily-texan/1926-03-14/page-7/

[4] Jim Nicar, “The Big Enormous Building,” The UT History Corner, February 10, 2017, accessed August 14, 2026, https://jimnicar.com/2017/02/10/the-big-enormous-building/

[5] Henry Wiencek, “An Architectural History of Garrison Hall,” Not Even Past, October 12, 2012, https://notevenpast.org/architectural-history-garrison-hall/

[6] Cummins, Light Townsend. “History, Memory, and Rebranding Texas as Western for the 1936 Centennial.” This Corner of Canaan: Essays on Texas in Honor of Randolph B. Campbell, vol. 9781574415179, 2013, pp. 37–57.

[7] Steven L. Davis, J. Frank Dobie, A Liberated Mind, Austin, UT Austin Press, 2009, pp. 75-78.

[8] Burlington Hawk Eye, May 09, 1926, Pg. 26, Burlington, Iowa, US

https://access.newspaperarchive.com/burlington-hawk-eye/1926-05-09/page-26

[9] Steven L. Davis, J. Frank Dobie, A Liberated Mind, Austin, UT Austin Press, 2009, pp. 63-81.

[10] Austin Daily Texan, June 20, 1926, Pg. 1, Austin, Texas, US https://newspaperarchive.com/austin-daily-texan-jun-20-1926-p-1/

[11] Llerena Friend, “Winkler, Ernest William,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed August 14, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/winkler-ernest-william.

[12] Jack Jackson, Los Mesteños, College Station, Texas A&M Press, 2006, pp. 540-542 and 562-565.

[13] Mt Pleasant Pyramid, October 15, 1926, Pg. 5, Mount Pleasant, Utah, US https://newspaperarchive.com/mt-pleasant-pyramid-oct-15-1926-p-5/

[14] Austin Daily Texan, June 20, 1926 Pg. 2, Austin, Texas, US https://newspaperarchive.com/austin-daily-texan-jun-20-1926-p-2/

José Roberto Campos Cordero is a Ph.D. student in History at The University of Texas at Austin. He holds an M.A. in Modern and Contemporary History from the Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora and a B.A. in International Relations from El Colegio de México. His research focuses on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and Texas, drawing on environmental, global, and cultural approaches. He is currently writing an environmental history of Texas centered on cattle and horses.

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.

History—For Whom? From The Public Radio in Mexico

This article is part of the series: History Beyond Academia

Este artículo tiene una versión en español

History, for whom? (Historia ¿para quién?) is the result of a conversation sustained over several years between young historians and a communicator interested in bringing historical reflection into everyday life. From the outset, the main question was how to translate complex topics—both historical and contemporary—into clear, accessible, and understandable content for very diverse audiences within Mexico’s public media. 

After the coronavirus pandemic, opportunities emerged to bring the ideas born of those conversations down to earth. Thanks to the generosity and complicity of many colleagues, we were able to experiment with different formats and across various public media outlets, whose doors were opened to us by the National Institute of Historical Studies of the Mexican Revolutions (INEHRM). 

In this sense, we consider Historia ¿para quién? to be the product of collaborative work among women dedicated to the social sciences and communication, including María Minero, Fernanda Nares, Guadalupe Muro, Ana Salinas, and Jehiely Hernández, from whom we have learned and with whom we have had the privilege of working. 

It is also a project that emerges from the federal public administration, as it depends on funding from the Ministry of Culture through INEHRM, as well as on the production, technical support, and broadcasting of Radio Educación. This means that it responds to the right of access to culture and therefore its contents require institutional validation. It is worth noting that this has not limited the expression of ideas or the selection of topics; on the contrary, institutional backing has allowed us to connect with multiple specialists, converse with people responsible for little-known collections, and give visibility to independent projects that are doing a great deal to preserve and disseminate historical memory. 

Late 19th century building in Mexico

Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de las Revoluciones de México. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The people responsible for bringing this project to life were the authors of this text: Natalia Luna and Tamara Aranda. Dr. Felipe Ávila, director of INEHRM, and M.A. Jimena Salgado, the institute’s director of outreach, placed their trust in us for this enormous and very important task. Holding fast to our initial premise, we decided to name the program Historia ¿para quién?, because the title encapsulates what matters most to us both: placing audiences—their interests and rights—at the center of the conversation. This was about democratizing historical knowledge to its fullest extent. 

Then came the planning of the format. To meet our objectives, we opted for the specialized interview, though with a warm and approachable tone, and included a segment providing historical context and another based on audience polling, giving listeners a voice to express themselves on each topic. We also added a song inspired by the conversation and a round of rapid-fire questions to energize the interview and push specialists to “get to the point.” 

The program is hosted by Tamara Aranda, a historian and researcher at INEHRM, and Natalia Luna, a communicator with more than a decade of experience in public media. In this project we found many points of convergence, ranging from personal interests—which are also political—to the need to explain and debate them through historical perspectives. Thanks to the collaboration and co-production between INEHRM and Radio Educación—a century-old broadcaster on the radio dial—a 55-minute space opened up for us to develop the program. 

We asked ourselves what the current proposals were for communicating history and why there were so few spaces dedicated to historical dissemination using a more colloquial language, with a gender perspective, inclusive, and willing to step outside the margins of “History with a capital H” to let popular culture enter narratives about the past. 

We were also interested in inviting young (and not-so-young) specialists whose projects, research, and knowledge transcend the walls of academia. We believe that the media—and public radio in particular—have an obligation to open spaces to disseminate knowledge and offer tools to audiences with very concrete rights: to understand, question, and better discern the reality around us. In the end, all of us are audiences. 

The day-to-day work of Historia ¿para quién?  is sustained by curiosity, wonder, and openness. Often we react to our own lives: to the people we meet, the topics we discover, the colloquia and conferences we attend. From there come the ideas that later become programs. 

Promotional banner for the radio show

Promotional banner.

We have a list of topics to address and a series of sound resources to “dress” the program: short segments, street polls to hear what people know or think, songs that dialogue with the historical moment, and audience messages—essential for generating resonance and feedback. It is essential here to thank Juan Ramírez, responsible for sound design and reporting that enriches the program. 

Any team member can propose a topic; we review possible specialist guests and, from there, collectively support the work. Tamara provides historical advising for each episode and conducts the research that then becomes a short segment. Natalia translates that work into a script designed for audiences, with trigger questions and resources specific to radio language. Both of us record the segment voices and host the program. 

The team is completed by Alma Lilia Martínez as production assistant and Mario Ledesma as general producer, who oversee the final product and coordinate timing, recording studios, and articulation with the station’s social media. 

For the dissemination of each program, we follow a basic rule: we cannot take anything for granted. Academic knowledge—and, in our case, historical knowledge—is not a common starting point for everyone. There will always be someone who does not share the same references, and it is precisely in the effort to break down topics to their apparent simplicity that the complexity of communicating to very diverse publics lies. Radio, the sound archive, and the digital platforms where the program is hosted are the tools with which we try to accompany that process. 

Our initial audience is Radio Educación’s listeners on 96.5 FM. Although we do not have precise metrics, our fifteen years of experience collaborating there tell us that a good portion of our listeners have grown up alongside the station. It is a predominantly older audience that participates critically through calls and messages: they congratulate us, question us, tell us how the topics resonate, and what else they would like to hear. 

At the same time, we have the mission of reaching younger audiences through the program’s repository on Spotify, where Historia ¿para quién?  can be listened to on demand and circulate through other circuits, especially among students and people linked to historical research and the humanities. 

Another core audience is INEHRM’s public, which spans a wide range of ages, genders, and geographic locations. As a national institute with more than 70 years of history, it has partnerships with institutions throughout the country, which makes it possible to decentralize history and take it beyond Mexico City and its metropolitan area. This also helps expand the thematic range and address histories that resonate in every corner of Mexico, connecting with local specialists and reaching audiences who call or write from across the Republic and even from other countries. 

After more than half a year on the air, we believe our work has helped rethink some traditional notions of how history is viewed, beginning with dismantling the idea that history is only the past and, as such, distant and sacred. On Historia ¿para quién?  we have critically reflected on events that seem far removed in time, but whose effects are observable today. Colonialism or Mexican Independence are examples of topics we have revisited with the help of experts who have shared their knowledge clearly with us and the audience. 

We have also addressed painful topics in national and world history, from the Dirty War and Spanish exile to the Bosnian and Palestinian genocides. Through these programs we have touched sensitivities that appeal to the humanity of listeners, giving History with a capital H a human character that makes it close and open to questioning. 

We analyze current problems through a historical lens to rethink our present and invite the listening community to imagine solutions. If feminists of the past were able to set aside their differences to fight together for citizenship rights, women struggling today can also generate more effective measures for access to justice; likewise, something must be done urgently, as citizens, if investigation files of people disappeared in the 1970s are piling up in prosecutors’ offices alongside those of the twenty-first century. Ignorance of history not only carries the risk of repetition, but also of non-repair and, worse still, the accumulation of grievances. In this sense, ignoring history condemns us to impunity and to perpetuating suffering. 

After 30 programs, we can state with satisfaction that our objectives have been met, both communicatively and institutionally, as the project has become a platform for colleagues inside and outside academia, as well as within the institute itself, whose areas of expertise enrich our understanding of the present and deserve not only to be heard, but to be recognized. 

For those of us who sign this text, the greatest challenges in carrying out the project were related to adapting language and communication strategies for a broad public. This is always difficult for those of us who come from academic spaces, because the habit of writing and speaking for peers weighs heavily. Fortunately, we managed to distance ourselves from tradition and think beyond the booth and the cubicle. We believe this is due to Natalia’s experience and sensitivity in public media and cultural and historical outreach projects, as well as Tamara’s lack of routine in academic exercises after having moved through such diverse worlds as public administration and human rights activism. 

Vendors selling produce and meat at a market

Public market in Mexico. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Forming a team composed of a historical researcher and a communicator forces us to maintain a dialogue outside strictly academic frameworks. This cross-pollination of knowledge has allowed us to rethink questions and ways of approaching knowledge, always keeping the social usefulness of history at the center. We often begin with the present moment as a trigger for constructing a historical understanding of our reality. 

We also believe that the program’s positive results are due to the great team behind it, especially INEHRM and Radio Educación, where Juan Ramírez’s mastery has brought to air programs far more beautiful than we imagined. Juan, the magician who always makes us sound smarter and who, through his interviews, becomes the bridge between our ideas and what truly matters in the streets. 

Together with our audiences, we explore how every element of our lives contains the possibility of being historicized and, in that sense, gains relevance in the passage from the individual to the collective. For the project, it has been fundamental to position ourselves there: in the street and its many voices, in the everyday as a space where history is woven daily and therefore deserves to be told. 

In this sense, Historia ¿para quién?  seeks to stop overlooking topics, characters, and events; to open space for doubt; and to engage in horizontal dialogue in order to critically reclaim what has always been ours. 

In this process, history ceases to be merely knowledge about the past and becomes a public practice: a tool to name experiences, recognize inequalities, dispute common sense, and expand the repertoire of what is imaginable. When historical conversation circulates outside specialized spaces—without renouncing rigor, but assuming a commitment to intelligibility and listening—public life is strengthened: it becomes more capable of deliberating, remembering, and demanding. 

Ultimately, the public value of this work appears in small scenes: a question that lingers after the radio is turned off, a family anecdote that suddenly connects with a collective process, a street that ceases to be a simple route and becomes a living archive. There, in that instant when the present becomes legible in the light of other eras—and the past reveals itself as something that still looks back at us—history recovers its power: not as a monument, but as a conversation. 

Finally, if we celebrate this beloved project as a success, it is because of the messages left by our audiences. Through our contact channels, we know that our narrative has impacted the way listeners understand and relate to history. We therefore close this text with the last message we received on Radio Educación’s WhatsApp: 

“…I think the great lesson I take away today, from the program of December 22, 2025, is that we human beings are a narration… and since the program is called Historia ¿para quién?, I think it would be important to ask who is building the [narration of] history, and I include myself—not because I am a historian, but because I am a citizen who wants to participate in building this country, which I truly hope will soon be a new country. In short, I think that today it is up to all of us to build the narration of our history.” 

Tamara Aranda studied history at Uiversidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán). She is currently a researcher at the Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de las Revoluciones de México (INEHRM) and co-host of Historia, ¿para quién? on Radio Educación.

Natalia Luna is a communicator and radio host with over a decade of experience in public media. She co-hosts Historia, ¿para quién? on Radio Educación, where she works to translate historical research into accessible content for diverse audiences.

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.

Las cosas tienen vida: A Podcast About the Role of Colonial Objects in Our Present Lives 

This article is part of the series: History Beyond Academia

Este artículo tiene una versión en español.

History is, above all, an effort to understand the past. Those of us who study it seek to reconstruct and interpret what happened, using methods that allow us to do so with care and rigor. We work with documents from the past—what historians call primary sources—which may be genuine, falsified, or somewhere in between. From these materials, and in dialogue with other researchers, we build interpretations that help us understand each era within its own context.

Often, we think of history as an individual pursuit among intellectuals. However, as the British historian Raphael Samuel noted, history is “a social form of knowledge, the work […] of a thousand different hands.”[1] This means that anyone—from a grandmother to a mail carrier—tells and evaluates historical events in their everyday lives, passing them down through oral or written traditions. History is not the monopoly of historians!

From the start, we conceived of the podcast as an opportunity to offer historical tools to a wider audience. In each episode, we present both objects—“things,” in this case—and distinguished researchers, with the goal of showing the many ways one can narrate and interpret a historical object, especially those from the colonial past and their implications in the present, whether the object is found in a museum, a church, or a private collection. This collaborative work has allowed us to build a shared vision of the colonial past—one we hope to enrich through dialogue with our listeners.

In this article, we reflect on the meaning of these historical objects and the ways researchers have revalued them—transferring their significance from the present to the past and vice versa—through a public medium such as a podcast.

Podcast Logo: Las cosas tienen historia

Podcast logo: Las cosas tienen vida. 

The podcast Las cosas tienen vida (“Things Have a Life of Their Own”) first aired in April 2021 as a Public History project.[2] Its goal was to awaken interest among a broad Spanish-speaking audience in new methods of historical research through the study of cultural objects.

The idea took shape months earlier, during the coffee breaks that punctuated our long workdays at the Archivo de Indias in Seville. Among the piles of colonial documents, our conversations kept circling back to the same frustration: alack of spaces where we could share our research beyond academia. We wondered whether there was an engaging way to communicate our colleagues’ scientific advances to a general audience.

Who are these stories really for—the ones we devote so much effort and passion to? Could we build communities that value historical objects? How can we create spaces for researchers to share their work with non-specialists? Perhaps it was the effect of the pandemic—or simply a final burst of energy in our doctoral lives—but that’s how the idea to create something new was born.

At first glance, our podcast might resemble other projects that tell the history of the world or a nation through a series of objects.[3] But our purpose is different: we don’t aim to offer an identity-based or closed interpretation of a community and its time. Instead, we want to open up new ways of understanding history and its objects across the vast and diverse space that was the Iberian world in the early modern period.

We don’t tell the stories—we simply open the microphone. The storytellers are our guests, the researchers themselves. Each season, we invite ten to twelve specialists whose work covers different regions of the Iberian colonial world, showcasing the richness of perspectives and methods used to study the past. Each guest chooses an artifact and, from there, guides us through their own historical journey.

So far, the podcast includes more than one hundred episodes across nine seasons, featuring researchers from seventeen countries and disciplines as diverse as archaeology, engineering, history, and art history.

Our “radio cabinet of curiosities” follows no rigid selection criteria; instead, it moves freely within a creative kind of disorder that we love. From the beginning, we wanted to center each researcher’s choices, convinced that doing history is also a political act. This means accepting that we cannot control an object’s narrative or claim a single truth. Rather, we share our own questions and experiences through them.

Within that apparent chaos, we always seek a common thread: the relationship between people and their objects, both past and present. That connection is what ignites historians’ passion—a feeling that comes through in every conversation. In recent episodes, we have begun even asking our guests directly about why they chose their object, what drew their interest, and when they first encountered it.

By incorporating objects from the Ibero-American and even Ibero-Asian worlds, we’ve been able to cross national, physical, and intellectual borders. These crossings have been especially fruitful: for instance, Argentine historian Lucila Iglesias discusses a Chilean object—the Cristo de Mayo; Chilean researcher Laura Fahrenkrog colonial Paraguayan musical instruments; or Spanish scholar Marina Torres a Catholic priest’s cap from the Guangdong Provincial Museum in China.[4] In such cases, boundaries blur and give rise to new, exciting combinations. We thus break away from the national paradigm that still conditions us—the idea that a Chilean historian must study Chile’s history, or a Californian, California’s.

Over the past five years, we’ve learned almost everything—from how to conduct a good interview to how to survive final editing. Given the geographical diversity of our guests, we rely on technologies like Zoom to record episodes. Then, we carefully edit each one so that both the researcher and the object are presented in the best possible way, using tools like Audacity. Afterward, we manage social media and digital platforms to reach a wide audience. Each season, we tweak the format based on listener feedback and suggestions.

For example, at first we produced longer episodes—45 minutes to an hour—but listeners told us that was too long for their typical listening habits. Some even told us, laughing, that they listen to the podcast while doing yoga! Since then, we’ve aimed to keep episodes between 25 and 30 minutes. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that behind each 25-minute episode there are over ten hours of work. Still, we continue this unpaid labor as an act of love—and as a political gesture toward the stories and research we share.

José and Kate in front of a microphone

José y Kate during a recording session.

Throughout our nine seasons, we’ve built a virtual cabinet full of fascinating objects: from a lost cushion that resurfaced in the midst of a political dispute during the alférez mayor ceremony in Quito in 1573,[5] to more traditional artworks like a Cuzqueñan School painting of the Magdalene in Ecstasy, now part of the Thoma Collection in the U.S.[6]

Our decision to title each episode as ”un (a)”—for example, A jar or A painting by Velázquez (an upcoming episode in our new season)—is a deliberate stance against the dominance of canonical historiography. We’re not a podcast about canonical works. Instead, we give voice to objects without imposing a stylistic or historiographical framework upon them. By examining different kinds of things, we aim to show the importance of studying them holistically—as individual responses to the local and global dynamics that characterized Iberian globalization.[7]

But it’s not enough to show a variety of objects. In our podcast, we strive to delve deeply into each one, going beyond mere description. We explore its historical value, its purpose, the reality it represents, and the context in which it emerged. We ask what messages it conveys, what role it played in its time, and what it means today. We also reflect on how these objects are accessed today and complement each episode with books or articles on the topic—ideally written by the guest researcher themselves.

Of course, making history accessible doesn’t guarantee people will listen. Since the first episode, we’ve reached over 10,600 downloads, meaning that each episode was saved by a user on their device.[8]  Listen counts vary widely depending on the object and its origin. For instance, the episode on South American Revolutionary leader Simon Bolívar’s sword has many more listens in Colombia than elsewhere.[9] Local communities are often especially receptive, both to the episodes and to the researchers’ own engagement—like in the episode about “a fragment of white clay” in Cajamarca, presented by Solsire Cusicanqui.[10]

Thanks to the RSA Grant for Public Engagement Project in Renaissance Studies, awarded by the Renaissance Society of America, we’ve recently expanded the project to other platforms by creating a website: www.lascosastienenvida.com.

Las cosas tienen vida web page

Las cosas tienen vida web page.

We began by uploading the most recent episodes, as older ones require image and copyright permissions. Our large archive of recordings will be gradually added. The website offers three different ways to visualize the objects, allowing listeners to make temporal, geographic, and visual connections among them. Clicking on any image opens an individual object page. For example, the page for the Inca staircase—the first object in season eight—shows the general layout: each page includes an image of the object, the podcast episode, its transcript in Spanish and English, and a brief biography and photo of the researcher.

Las cosas tienen vida Web page template

Template with an object and its interview.

            The new website also serves as a valuable educational resource, both for secondary and university teaching. It offers students and teachers the opportunity to explore new objects, ask critical questions, and even develop future research projects. The platform encourages active learning, inviting historians, students, and the general public to explore the past with curiosity and rigor. More than a digital tool, it’s an interactive space where objects come to life and become accessible to a wide audience. Its goal is to serve as a bridge between history and community, promoting dialogue and participation around our shared past.

As a closing thought, we’d like to return to a question historian Marc Bloch immortalized more than seventy years ago: “Tell me, father, what’s the use of history?”.[11] Our answer today has been to create a podcast. In Las cosas tienen vida, we show that history not only illuminates the past but also connects cultures, geographies, and human experiences through the objects that surround us. Across nine seasons, we’ve explored that relationship between objects and history with researchers from different countries and disciplines, revealing multiple ways of understanding the world.

With our new website, we take that mission one step further—creating a space that links objects across time and space and serves as both an educational tool and a platform for sharing historical knowledge. We want history to keep engaging with communities, inspiring every listener, student, and researcher to find, in the objects of the past, their own answer to that eternal question: What is history for?

Kate (Katherine) Mills is a postdoctoral fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University and an M.A. in the History of the Spanish Monarchy from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her current research examines the relationship between Andean natural disasters and the artists who contributed to the reconstruction of affected cities.

José Araneda Riquelme is a postdoctoral fellow in the MISGLOB Project, “Catholic missions and the global circulation of people and goods in the early modern period (1500–1800)”, at Roma Tre University. He holds a Ph.D. in Early Modern History from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and an M.A. in History from the Universidad Católica de Chile. His research explores the relationship between communication and the construction of the Spanish Empire during the seventeenth century.

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.

[1] Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994), 15.

[2] “Public history” is the practice of doing history with and for the public. It seeks to share historical research beyond the academic sphere, promoting civic participation in the interpretation and use of the past.
Thomas Cauvin, Public History: A Textbook of Practice, 2nd Edition (London: Routledge, 2022), p. 4.

[3] MacGregor, Neil. A History of the World in 100 Objects. New York: Penguin Books, 2013 y Lucena Giraldo, Manuel. 82 objetos que cuentan un país: Una historia de España. Madrid: Taurus, 2015.

[4] José Araneda Riquelme y Kate Mills, «Un gorro sacerdotal (China, s. XVIII). Con Marina Torres. Ep. 3×05 (12/04/2022)», Con Marina Torres. Ep. 3×05 (12/04/2022), Las cosas tienen vida, s. f.; José Araneda Riquelme y Kate Mills, «Un documento de unos músicos indígenas (Paraguay, s. XVIII)», Con Laura Fahrenkrog. Ep. 2×02 (31/08/2021), Las cosas tienen vida, s. f.; Araneda Riquelme y Mills, «Un gorro sacerdotal (China, s. XVIII). Con Marina Torres. Ep. 3×05 (12/04/2022)».

[5] José Araneda Riquelme y Kate Mills, «Un Cojín (Ecuador, 1573)», Con Laura Paz Escala. Ep. 5×05 (16/05/2023), Las cosas tienen vida, s. f.

[6] José Araneda Riquelme y Kate Mills, «Una Magdalena en éxtasis (Perú, s. XVIII)», Con Rosario Granados. Ep. 4×01 (13/09/2022), Las cosas tienen vida, s. f; José Araneda Riquelme y Kate Mills, «Un Velázquez (España, 1632)», Con Cécile Vincent-Cassy. Ep. 9×07 (13/01/2026), Las cosas tienen vida, s. f.

[7] Serge Gruzinski, Las cuatro partes del mundo: historia de una mundialización (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010).

[8] Datos derivados de las estadísticas privadas que nos entrega nuestra plataforma de podcast “Buzzsprout”.

[9] Por ejemplo, el episodio “Una espada de Simón Bolívar” (temporada 4, episodio 9) analiza la espada del líder revolucionario Simón Bolívar. El veinte por ciento del total de descargas de este episodio proviene de Colombia, en particular de la región de Bogotá, donde actualmente se encuentra la espada.

José Araneda Riquelme y Kate Mills, «Una espada de Simón Bolívar (Colombia, s. XIX)», Con Juliana Ramírez Herrera. Ep. 4×09 (08/10/2022), Las cosas tienen vida, s. f.

[10] José Araneda Riquelme y Kate Mills, «Un fragmento de cerámica blanca (Perú)», Con Solsire Cusicanqui. Ep. 3×10 (17/05/2022)., Las cosas tienen vida, s. f.

[11] Marc Bloch, Apología para la historia o el oficio de historiador [1949] (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001).

What is MACRI? Meet the Organization Showcasing Mexican American Civil Rights History in San Antonio and Beyond 

Banner for What is MACRI?

This article is part of the series: History beyond Academia

MACRI Executive Director Dr. Sarah Z. Gould will be at UT Austin on February 19th, 2026. You can find more information about her talk at the end of this article.

Nestled in the heart of San Antonio, Texas, just west of downtown, lies the Mexican American Civil Rights Institute (MACRI), an organization dedicated to chronicling and sharing the history of Mexican American civil rights in the United States. It lies within the field of public history, which moves history beyond university classrooms and academic journals, bringing it into museums, community spaces, and online platforms where the public can engage with it directly. On October 22, 2025, I sat down with its executive director, Dr. Sarah Zenaida Gould, to talk about the organization, its beginnings, and its mission.   

“2018 and 2019, these were two big anniversary years in San Antonio,” Gould said, explaining that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Hearings had been held in December of 1968 in the city. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was established in 1957 by the federal government to address issues like discrimination that concern race, ethnicity, and culture in the United States. The 1968 hearing in San Antonio was “one of the first times that the federal government officially heard testimony about experiences of discrimination that Mexican Americans had throughout the Southwest” specifically. The hearings occurred just a few years after the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which were aimed at reducing discrimination for African Americans and set a precedent for civil rights to later be expanded to other minority groups. A conference was held in November 2018 in San Antonio to commemorate the event.

This was followed by a second conference in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of the Edgewood school walkouts, an event that took place in May of 1968, when over 400 Mexican American students protested for better and more equitable education by walking out of Edgewood High School in San Antonio. The conferences were significant as people involved in both the walkouts and the commission hearings gave testimonies about their experiences and how the events got more people involved in the Chicano Movement, politics, and community activism. These back-to-back conferences reignited interest in Mexican American history and, more importantly, in how to preserve it.  

For Gould, the conference was not just a spotlight on San Antonio’s Mexican American civil rights history, but also a race against time. “At the next big anniversary,” she warned, “most of those people would no longer be with us.” The question was simple and urgent: “how do you keep that history alive?” That question ultimately led to the creation of MACRI. The initial plan was just to create an exhibit that depicted Mexican American civil rights icons in San Antonio, but support from the city council, Mayor Ron Nirenberg, and the community was much more substantial than anticipated. Gould explained that it was at a cultural moment when a lot of people were thinking about equity within history. “One thing that we kept hearing from city council members and members of the public was why haven’t we had this before?”   

National Farm Workers Association protest buttons

National Farm Workers Association protest buttons. Source: Wikimedia Commons

MACRI began organizing itself with funding from the city and was officially incorporated on May 29, 2019. Gould was involved from the beginning and was asked to step into the position of Executive Director in 2020, partially to help the organization transition into a virtual space during the pandemic. This was when MACRI first began to flourish in its engagement and reach, creating a community despite everything happening in the world at the time. They began by having conversations about Mexican American civil rights in online events with historians and other experts, and noticed that over half the viewership was from outside the San Antonio area. “They were from all over,” Gould said. “That was particularly exciting.” Even when MACRI began to transition to having mostly in-person events as the pandemic eased up, they still received emails from people across the country, asking that virtual involvement remain in some form so that they could continue to participate in Mexican American history.   

One of MACRI’s goals is to make San Antonio’s role as the birthplace of Mexican American civil rights to the general public. This is already happening among guests who attend MACRI’s in-person and virtual events, celebrating moments when people stood up against injustice. Gould discussed how “for so many people, this history is part of their living present moment,” as they often had a personal connection to the stories MACRI was telling. Still, others were learning about it for the first time. Nearly all wanted to learn more.   

MACRI hosts a number of different events, including talks and exhibits with historians, activists, and more. These usually have themes, such as civil rights trailblazers or landmark court cases involving Mexican Americans. Their September 27 to November 26, 2025 exhibit was on Cisneros v. Corpus Christi ISD, an important civil rights case that extended school desegregation from Brown v. Board of Education to Mexican Americans. Brown occurred in 1954 and Cisneros in 1970. “So it takes a while for these things to happen,” Gould said. “You have to have those precedent-setting cases so that you can move the legislation forward.”  

Gould is already planning events well into next year, which will be the 250th anniversary of the United States. The events will aim to “[make] sure we’re inserting Mexican Americans into how we understand America.” They will start with Spanish colonial Texas and will move forward in time over the course of the year. The events and exhibits will include discussions of important court cases involving due process, and in the summer of 2026 they will host screenings for the 30th anniversary of the Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement documentary series that originally aired on PBS in 1995. Gould will also be visiting a number of universities throughout the state, including the University of Texas at Austin, where she will be sharing more about what MACRI does with current students. 

A man walking in the old Mexican market area just west of downtown San Antonio

 In the old Mexican market area just west of downtown San Antonio. Source: Wikimedia Commons

When creating their in-person exhibits, MACRI tries to identify a scholar for whom that area of history is their subject matter expertise, whom they consult with. Their first exhibit was based on Dr. Cynthia Orosco’s biography Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights: Alonso S.  

Perales for their trailblazers series. For the current exhibit on Cisneros, MACRI worked with Dr. Isabel Araiza at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. Their goal with each project is to make the information accessible. “The idea with most exhibits is to give people just a slice of what that is, so that they have a basic understanding,” and then if they are interested in learning more, MACRI points them to more resources.   

MACRI has also done exhibits that were created through collaborations with local schools. Earlier in 2025, they did an exhibit for Dolores Huerta’s 95th birthday. Huerta is a Mexican American civil rights activist who is best known for being the co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association, a labor rights organization, alongside Cesar Chavez. MACRI’s exhibit on Huerta was created by sending out a call for art submissions to schools across the San Antonio area. “I have to thank the teachers whom we sent this out to, because clearly they talked to their kids about who she was,” Gould commended. “A number of them incorporated quotes from her into their artwork, and in their artist statement… You could just tell that they had been really reflecting on ‘Why does she matter to me?’ ‘Why does she matter to my family?’ ” She praised the teachers multiple times, stating that MACRI had only given them parameters and a brief synopsis of Huerta’s life, but she “could tell the teachers went above and beyond what we provided them, because the students clearly put a lot of thought into what they were drawing or painting, and connecting that to her life.” This was part of an initiative to get students more involved with history museums, which tend to cater to and attract an adult audience, unlike art and science museums. But the success of the project showed that it is far from impossible to get children to engage with history.   

Gould also discussed the challenges and opportunities that working beyond academia brings. The most difficult thing she cited was the lack of infrastructure available to her and the other employees at MACRI, including things like access to research databases. But there are positives too, the most prominent of which is the freedom from constraints of university timelines. Historians who work for universities are tied to both the academic calendar and making sure they are hitting the goalposts in their careers, such as tenure review. But as a public history organization, MACRI can do things on its own time.   

Still, Gould has hope for bridging the divide between the two fields. “I would love to see more collaboration between universities and people who are independent historians outside of academia,” Gould said. “Because you know, the universities do have resources that public historians could really benefit from, and public historians do have typically… connections to real grassroots-type history that could be of a benefit to students to know about.” With its exhibits, events, and media outreach, MACRI is working to bridge the gap. But to reach this goal, universities and historians within academia have to do their part to connect with public history as well. By remaining dedicated to continued collaboration between the public, academics, and everyone in between, MACRI is a model example of what these types of connections can look like, reshaping how American history is told. 

Flyer for Dr. Sarah Z. Gould's talk at UT Austin. February 19, 2026, 2:30 pm at Garrison Hall 4th floor

Kara Alexandra Culp is a current history PhD student at UT Austin, focused on Latina/o history in the 20th-century United States. Her dissertation project aims to explore the effects of education policy and law on Latina/o immigrant students in the borderlands in the 1970s and beyond.

Sarah Zenaida Gould, interview with author. October 22, 2025.   

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.

Long Before the Field: Community, Memory, and the Making of Public History

Banner for Long Before the Field: Community, Memory, and the Making of Public History

This article is part of the series: History beyond Academia

The term “public history” entered my vocabulary only after I moved to the United States, where it designates a well-defined professional field. In Latin America, by contrast, similar practices have long existed without requiring a defined institutional/formal designation. Communities have always engaged in the making and sharing of history through oral traditions, local museums, memory collectives, and neighborhood archives, public talks, among so many others. People have narrated their pasts, not necessarily within academic frameworks, but as acts of survival, resistance, and belonging. These longstanding traditions invite reflection on when and why the need emerged to name such practices “public history”, and what it means when collective forms of remembrance become institutionalized as fields or disciplines.

Public history, as a professionalized field, took shape in the 1970s in English-speaking countries, particularly the United States, as a means to bridge academic research and broader social engagement. As James Gardner and Paula Hamilton note, it encompasses both university-based training and work across museums, heritage sites, government agencies, and digital initiatives. Early definitions emphasized historical practice conducted “outside the ivory tower” for public audiences, but the field has since diversified to include participatory, activist, and civic-oriented approaches. Its growth has been shaped by national contexts, memory politics, and the expansion of heritage industries—each underscoring the social, political, and ethical stakes of historical work in public life.[1]

This institutionalization of public history resonates with ideas articulated much earlier by Carl Becker in his 1931 address to the American Historical Association, Everyman His Own Historian. Becker argued that all humans interpret the past through memory and imagination, and that historical understanding is not the exclusive domain of professionals but part of a shared human effort to make sense of experience.[2]  Recognizing this broader agency calls for humility rather than gatekeeping—a lesson that resonates with practices in Mexico, where the work of cronistas—local historians and chroniclers devoted to preserving the histories of towns and municipalities—has long been central to civic and cultural life.

An aerial view of Guelatao de Juarez, Oaxaca and its surroundings

An aerial view of Guelatao de Juarez, Oaxaca. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Within Latin America, scholars and historians—especially those working in public institutions—often see their research as part of a reciprocal relationship with the communities that ultimately fund and sustain their work. This reciprocation, and therefore responsibility, reflects a broader understanding that history is not produced solely by, and for, academic peers but also for the publics who inhabit and inherit its narratives. Such accountability offers an important lesson for public history internationally: that historical practice flourishes when it remains responsive to the people and places it seeks to represent.

This ethos is not unique to Latin America. Across the world, long before “public history” entered academic vocabulary, communities across the world were already generating their own forms of historical knowledge. The telling of history was never confined to universities or formal institutions. It lived in plazas, churches, community centers, and homes; it was sustained through storytelling, ritual, and collective memory. These practices were often carried forward by teachers, activists, Indigenous elders, and neighborhood leaders who understood history as a means of continuity, belonging, and survival.

Even within the United States, some of the earliest public history initiatives originated outside academia. African American museums such as the DuSable Black History Museum in Chicago, founded by Margaret Burroughs in 1961, or the African American Museum in Philadelphia, grew directly out of the civil rights movement and the effort to preserve histories neglected by mainstream institutions. These projects—grassroots, activist, and often underfunded—demonstrate that engagement with the past has long served as a form of political work as much as cultural expression. In many ways, it is the later institutionalization of public history—its adoption and formalization within universities and professional associations—that represents the anomaly. Yet this framework has been embraced, sometimes uncritically, in countries where community-based and independent initiatives had long flourished, often to the detriment of those same grassroots efforts and the pluralism they sustained.

The first home of the DuSable Museum of African American History was located in this house, built for Chicago contractor John W. Griffiths in 1892 and purchased by Charles and Margaret Burroughs in 1959, who opened part of their home for the public museum

The DuSable Museum of African American History began in this 1892 house, purchased by Charles and Margaret Burroughs in 1959, who opened part of their home to the public as a museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons

When the field of public history was formalized in the 1970s within U.S. universities, it offered institutional recognition, professional pathways, and a common language for collaboration. These developments were invaluable for advocacy and training. Yet they should not obscure the longer, global genealogies of community-based historical practice. The move to define and credential public history can, unintentionally, overshadow the traditions that preceded it—traditions that continue to challenge academic hierarchies and broaden understandings of who can produce and interpret history. Recognizing these antecedents reminds us that public history, at its best, is not an invention of the academy but an extension of longstanding efforts to remember, interpret, and claim the past.

In recent years, universities and cultural institutions have increasingly embraced public-facing projects—exhibitions, digital archives, oral history collections, and outreach programs designed to engage wider audiences. These initiatives have expanded access to historical knowledge and reinforced the social relevance of scholarship. Yet they often remain shaped by institutional logics: funding cycles, curatorial frameworks, and professional protocols that determine how stories are told and what counts as legitimate evidence. Their tone is often careful and curated, designed to invite participation while maintaining institutional authority.

Community-based projects, in contrast, frequently emerge from lived experience and collective need. They are sustained by urgency rather than funding, by care rather than formal mandate. Small local museums, cronistas municipales, and memory collectives exemplify such work. Their exhibitions may be improvised and their archives incomplete, yet they possess an immediacy and intimacy that make them vital spaces of historical continuity. They assert the right to self-representation and challenge the notion that only institutions can authorize history. These practices are not merely nostalgic; they are acts of preservation, repair, and political presence.

Our Famous people display at the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum

Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledging these distinctions is not about opposing the academic and the communal, but about recognizing that they operate through different epistemologies and responsibilities. Academic public history often interprets the past for the public; community-based projects tend to interpret it with the public—or, more precisely, as the public. This difference shapes not only the narratives we construct but also the relationships of trust and authority embedded within them.

The term public history has opened many doors. It has enabled scholars to frame their work through collaboration, to reach broader audiences, and to affirm the social value of history within institutions that often privilege theory over practice. The label provides visibility, resources, and a shared vocabulary for those working at the intersection of history, education, and engagement. These are invaluable contributions, and the growing community of public historians has helped redefine what it means to be accountable to the public.

At the same time, it is worth remembering that the impulse behind public history—the desire to connect the past with everyday life—is not new. Long before it became a field, people around the world were already practicing it: telling stories, preserving memories, teaching, and caring for their histories in ways that were collective and deeply local. To name these practices public history is not to claim them as new inventions, but to acknowledge and learn from those who have sustained them all along.

If public history offers one enduring lesson, it is humility. Historians do not possess the past; we share it with everyone who remembers, narrates, and imagines. Our task is not only to speak, but to listen—to build spaces where many histories can coexist. Whatever name we give it, public history is ultimately about relationships rather than audiences, collaboration rather than outreach. Perhaps the most meaningful contribution scholars can make is to remember that we are joining a much older conversation. Public history did not begin with us; it began with the understanding that memory itself is a form of care. Our responsibility is to help sustain that care into the future.

[1] Gardner, James B., and Paula Hamilton, editors. The Oxford Handbook of Public History. Oxford University Press, 2017.

[2] Becker, Carl. “Everyman His Own Historian”, American Historical Review 37, no. 2, p. 221–36: https://www.historians.org/presidential-address/carl-l-becker/

Raquel Torua Padilla is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a B.A. in History from the Universidad de Sonora and is currently a CONTEX Fellow. Her research focuses on the history of the Yaqui people in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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.

History Beyond Academia: Series Announcement

Banner for history beyond academia. Features a collage image with a sculpture of Herodotus head on a National Park ranger body, with a microphone beside it and a painted field in the background.

We are excited to announce the upcoming History Beyond Academia series, curated by Associate Editor Raquel Torua Padilla. This series explores how history reaches people outside universities, showing how it is transmitted, shared, and sustained through public projects, community initiatives, and oral traditions.

Contributors will reflect on a range of projects and practices that reveal the impact of engaging with history in non-academic settings. Taken together, these essays highlight the creative and varied ways history connects with communities and shapes collective memory.

History Beyond Academia presents history as a living practice that moves beyond classrooms and archives into neighborhoods, stories, and daily life. It invites readers to consider how history is shared, who carries it forward, and why it continues to matter.

Watch this space for new feature articles coming soon.

Raquel Torua Padilla is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a B.A. in History from the Universidad de Sonora and is currently a CONTEX Fellow. Her research focuses on the history of the Yaqui people in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Preservation and Decay as Public History at the Moon-Randolph Homestead

Preservation and Decay as Public History at the Moon-Randolph Homestead

By Gwendolyn Lockman

Past the local dump and the interstate, and separated by foothills from the nearby historic neighborhoods of Missoula, Montana, the Moon-Randolph Homestead can be found, steeling itself against the modern world but not quite stuck in the past. It is an unusual historical site where the ecological and the human, and the past and the present melt into one another.

Figure 1: Entrance gate for the Moon Randolph Homestead Site, June 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

Before U.S. westward expansion and federal homesteading efforts, Indigenous people traversed the North Hills of Missoula on the Trail to the Buffalo. They passed through nearby Hell Gate Canyon, named both for the cold, rough waters of the river and for the ambushes between tribes that occurred at the canyon. Once the U.S. seized the land in the late nineteenth century, homesteaders in the Missoula valley tried to raise subsistence crops and livestock there. These small parcels of land had little of the potential for profit that large, thousand-plus acre ranches enjoyed.

Ray and Luella Moon came to Missoula from Minnesota staking their homestead claim in 1889. They came to “prove up,” sell the land, and move on. Ray Moon sold his land to his relatives, George and Helen Moon, the same day he acquired the deed to the property in 1894. Then Ray and Luella left Missoula. George and Helen Moon had moved to Seattle by 1907. William and Emma Randolph came to Missoula from White Sulphur Springs, Montana to buy a farm so Emma could raise chickens and get William to settle down. The Randolphs tracked down the Moons in Seattle and wrote to them to purchase the land.[1]

William and Emma lived the rest of their lives in Missoula, alternating between the homestead, which they called the Randolph Ranch, and a home in town. They raised their three sons there and often let extended family stay with them for long stretches of time. William and Emma passed away in 1956 within months of each other. Their youngest son, Bill, continued living at ranch until his death in 1995. In 1992, Bill put a conservation easement on his land, which protected it from development after his death. The City of Missoula purchased the nearly 470 acres in 1997 and created the North Hills open space and trail system. Of those acres, 13 became the Moon-Randolph Homestead site. The North Missoula Community Development Corporation, a local nonprofit, created the Hill and Homestead Preservation Commission in 1998 to advocate for the Moon-Randolph Homestead. [2]

Figure 2: Panorama of the Moon Randolph Homestead Site from the Barn looking South and West, August 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

In 1998, the city began a program to house caretakers on site to oversee the Moon-Randolph Homestead, raise livestock, host events, and interface with the public. The Department of Interior listed Moon-Randolph on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. It is open to the public on Saturdays from 11 am to 5 pm, May through October, and is used by several groups during the week, including the Montana Conservation Corps, Opportunity Resource, Youth Homes, and Parks and Recreation Homestead Camps.[3] Dr. Caitlin DeSilvey, Associate Professor of cultural geography at the University of Exeter, was the first caretaker for the Moon-Randolph Homestead. She wrote her dissertation about her work in the late 1990s and early 2000s cataloging the Randolphs’ belongings.[4] DeSilvey’s scholarship contemplates the role of decay in heritage sites. She advocates for what she calls “encounter[s] with the debris of history,” allowing deterioration to proceed as a mode of historic interpretation.[5] Her approach to Moon-Randolph was to interfere as little as possible with anything on site. Though DeSilvey catalogued all of the artifacts and documents at Moon-Randolph, the decision to curate decay combined with a lack of dedicated city resources left much of what was on site to erode away or be eaten by the mice that inhabit the site.

Figure 3: Photos of decay at the Moon Randolph Homestead Site, June 2019. Photos by Gwen Lockman.

DeSilvey acknowledged in her dissertation the virtual impossibility that the city-managed property be allowed to totally decay. She suggested that, “Future management of the site will have to find a compromise between a celebration of entropic heritage and the conservation of material traces.”[6] As an intern for the City of Missoula Historic Preservation Office and Department of Parks and Recreation, the priority for my summer job at the Homestead was to help the preservation and interpretations methods for the site to evolve.

Figure 4: Photo of winch, still standing after original Mining Shed Collapse in 2014. Photo from Moon Randolph Homestead/City of Missoula.

My duties included the curation of the reconstructed Mining Shed. The Mining Shed had been entirely reconstructed, out of both new and salvaged materials, after collapsing in 2014, and exists in direct contradiction with the decay at the Homestead. The original Mining Shed stood from around 1900 until its collapse in 2014. It sheltered a hoist for the small-scale coal mining operation that William Randolph maintained on his land. Coal mining was not an especially profitable venture in Missoula, though at least one company, Hell Gate Coal, successfully mined the North Hills in the early 1900s. The naming of the Coal Mine Road, which led to the family ranches of the North Hills, Randolphs’ included, suggests Missoulians knew the area to bear coal. One must still use Coal Mine Road to get to Moon-Randolph and its neighbors, the city dump included.[7] Coal at the Homestead was likely found by George Moon, if not Ray Moon. Mining was a special interest for William Randolph, who was more of a dreamer and tinkerer than a farmer. The Randolphs’ quaintly named “Little Phoebe” mine produced low-grade coal, mostly traded with neighbors or used at home. They hired men to work in the mine, signaling either some profit or William’s financial dedication to his side projects. Robert, the middle Randolph son, wrote about the mine in his boyhood diary during the winter of 1916-1917. The Randolphs used coal from Little Phoebe until the 1930s, then let it fill with water to use to irrigate the pasture. In 1937, Robert wrote from Spokane, Washington to ask his father if he had given the coal’s use any further thought. William converted the building into a workshop but worked around the hoist, which still stands in its original place. Snow in the winter of 2014 caused the original building’s collapse. City and private crews completed the reconstruction in 2018. The new building is slightly larger than the original structure but is a close reproduction of the old shed.[8]

Figure 5: Photo of reconstructed Mining Shed, July 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

My curation of the Mining Shed sought to more formally interpret the space while maintaining the Homestead as a place both lost to time and still writing its history. The floor space must be kept free so that the building can be used as a gathering space in inclement weather. It is the safest and largest covered space on site, which will be slow to change, because historic site classification restrictions prohibit new permanent foundation construction. The Mining Shed interpretation does not recreate a specific year of its lifespan but instead illustrates the several layers of its use over time and restoration. We arranged artifacts from mining and shop work. We integrated elements of the original building into the structure of the new building. This protects the intact remains of the old shed and makes the reconstruction apparent through comparison. I wrote limited interpretative signage and selected for display original documents from the Moon Cabin archive related to William Randolph’s mining ventures away from the Homestead.

One of my goals for the Mining Shed was to connect the Homestead to Montana’s economic history from statehood in 1889 through the post-war era. The Moon-Randolph history connects Missoula’s river, trade, agriculture, timber, mining, and railroad economy and history. William Randolph’s investments and work in Montana and beyond call attention to the several ways he sought to make money outside of agriculture. His ventures included work for Standard Brick Company in Missoula, management of the Sibley timber property in Lolo, Montana, and attempts at placer mining in the Nine Mile Valley east of Missoula. Presenting this history highlights piecemeal economic survival in Montana prior to the 1960s and the survival of the Randolphs’ story through material and documentary evidence.

Figure 6 Photo of “Little Phoebe” Mining Adit, June 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

These changes marked a shift toward formal curation at Moon-Randolph. However, we sought to maintain “The Spirit of the Homestead,” a term defined in the Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update for 2015-2024. The Spirit of the Homestead aims to maintain Moon-Randolph as “a living place, where historic activities continue and new uses are established, and a place where natural processes of aging and ecological renewal can be appreciated.”[9] The idea of “living history” at the site is not produced as reenactment or period restoration. Rather, the Homestead is kept “alive.” Trees overtake metal refuse from rusty, repurposed farm equipment. There are mice, chipmunks, rabbits, songbirds, hawks, snakes, deer, and the occasional bear. Buildings collapse. Caretakers raise pigs and chickens, haul non-potable water for irrigation from a cistern, and tend to a 130-year-old orchard that still produces cider apples. There is almost no signage and very little written interpretation. The site is left to speak for itself, otherwise visitors must speak to a caretaker or volunteer to ask questions, enjoy a tour, or help with chores.

Figure 7: Photo of Summer 2019 curation in the Mining Shed, August 2019. Photo by Gwen Lockman.

And speak for itself it does: when I returned to the Homestead in May 2020 for a socially distanced excursion, the mining shed had new tenants. Magpies built their winter nests in the rafters of the reconstructed shed. Springtime bunnies darted in and out of the shed. Their curation enhanced ours. As much as there is curated decay at the site, there, too, is resplendent life. History and the present, decay, life, and curation, negotiate their coexistence in the North Hills of Missoula.

Figure 8: Photo of magpie nest in the Moon Randolph Homestead Mining Shed, May 2020. Photo by Caroline Stephens, Moon Randolph Homestead.

[1] DeSilvey, Butterflies and Railroad Ties; DeSilvey, Salvage Rites; Moon-Randolph Homestead, “History,” https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/history; Montana Association of Land Trusts, “About Conservation Easements,” http://www.montanalandtrusts.org/conservationeasements/; North Missoula Community Development Corporation, “Moon Randolph Homestead,” http://www.nmcdc.org/programs/moon-randolph-homestead/; United States Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, Moon-Randolph Ranch, March 1, 2010, https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/presmonth/2010/Moon-RandolphRanch.pdf; “Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update: 2015-2024,” 2-5. 

[2] Caitlin DeSilvey, Butterflies and Railroad Ties: a History of a Montana Homestead, second edition (Missoula, MT: Hill and Homestead Preservation Commission, 2002); Caitlin DeSilvey, Salvage Rites: Making Memory on a Montana Homestead, doctoral dissertation, Open University (2003); Moon-Randolph Homestead, “History,” https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/history; City of Missoula, North Missoula Community Development Corporation, and Five Valleys Land Trust, “Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update: 2015-2024,” Final, Adopted by Missoula City Council May 4, 2015, 7, https://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/DocumentCenter/View/31846/MoonRandolphHomestead_StrategicPlan_2015?bidId=. 

[3] Moon-Randolph Homestead, “History,” https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/history; North Missoula Community Development Corporation, “Moon Randolph Homestead,” http://www.nmcdc.org/programs/moon-randolph-homestead/; United States Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, Moon-Randolph Ranch, March 1, 2010, https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/presmonth/2010/Moon-RandolphRanch.pdf; Moon-Randolph Homestead, “Welcome,” https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/.

[4] University of Exeter, “Professor Caitlin DeSilvey,” College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Geography Department, http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Caitlin_Desilvey; DeSilvey, Salvage Rites; “Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update: 2015-2024,” 4-5.

[5] DeSilvey, Salvage Rites, 10.

[6] DeSilvey, Salvage Rites, 176.

[7] City of Missoula, Historic Preservation Office, Moon-Randolph Homestead Records; DeSilvey, Butterflies and Railroad Ties; DeSilvey, Salvage Rites; National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, Moon-Randolph Ranch, March 1, 2010; J.T. Pardee, “Coal in the Tertiary Lake Beds of Southwestern Montana,” Contributions to Economic Geology, Part II (1911);

[8] DeSilvey, Butterflies and Railroad Ties; DeSilvey, Salvage Rites; National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet, Moon-Randolph Ranch, March 1, 2010; Robert Randolph, Diary, 1916-1917, Moon-Randolph Archive; City of Missoula, Historic Preservation Office, Moon-Randolph Homestead Records.

[9] “Moon-Randolph Strategic Plan Update: 2015-2024,” 7.

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Our New History Ph.D.s

For so many students this year, the cancellation of commencement meant the lack of an important milestone. And in this unsettling time, with it many demands on our attention, it’s possible to overlook the extraordinary accomplishment involved in completing a PhD in History.  So we decided to take this opportunity to celebrate the 2019-2020 class of new UT Austin History PhDs and tell you a little about them and their work.

Each of these students completed at least two years of course work. They read hundreds of books and wrote dozens of papers to prepare for their comprehensive examinations. After that, they developed original research projects to answer questions no one had asked before. Then they did a year or so of research in libraries and archives, before sitting down to write their dissertations. They did all this while working, teaching, caring for their families, having at least a little fun, and, in some cases, writing for Not Even Past!

Here they are, with their dissertation titles (and abstracts, if we have them). CONGRATULATIONS DOCTORS!

Sandy Chang, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, University of Florida
“Across the South Seas: Gender, Intimacy, and Chinese Migrants in British Malaya, 1870s-1930s”

Across the South Seas explores the migration of Chinese women who embarked on border-crossing journeys, arriving in British Malaya as wives, domestic servants, and prostitutes. Between the 1870s and 1930s, hundreds of thousands of women traveled to the Peninsula at a time when modern migration control first emerged as a system of racial exclusion, curtailing Asian mobility into white settler colonies and nation-states. In colonial Malaya, however, Chinese women encountered a different set of racial, gender, and sexual politics at the border and beyond. Based on facilitation rather than exclusion, colonial immigration policies selectively encouraged Chinese female settlement across the Peninsula. Weaving together histories of colonial sexual economy, Chinese migration, and the globalization of border control, this study foregrounds the role of itinerant women during Asia’s mobility revolution. It argues that Chinese women’s intimate labor ultimately served as a crucial linchpin that sustained the Chinese overseas community in colonial Southeast Asia.

Sandy Chang on Not Even Past:
Podcasting Migration: Wives, Servants, and Prostitutes
A Historian’s Gaze: Women, Law, and the Colonial Archives of Singapore

Chinese Lady-in-Waiting Attending to Her Chinese Mistress’ Hair

Chinese Lady-in-Waiting Attending to Her Chinese Mistress’ Hair, c.1880s (Courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore).

Itay Eisinger
“The Dystopian Turn In Hebrew Literature”

From its inception in Europe during the final decades of the nineteenth century, the Zionist movement promoted, leveraged and drove forward a utopian plan for a Jewish national revival, in the biblical Land of Israel, and in essence framed these plans as a pseudo divine right of the Jewish people. Numerous intellectual, cultural and literary historians therefore have focused on the role of utopian thinking in the shaping of Zionist ideology and Hebrew literature. By way of contrast, this dissertation focuses on the transformation, or evolution, of dystopian poetics within the realm of modern Hebrew literature. … Recent scholarship argues that while early “totalitarian” dystopias tended to focus on the dangers of the all-powerful state, tyranny, and global isolation as the main sources of collective danger to a prosperous and peaceful future, more recently published dystopias – both in the West and in Israel – have moved their focus to other topics and hazards, such as catastrophic ecological or climate disasters, patriarchy, sexism and misogyny, and the rise of surveillance and the integration of the  intelligence community into the all-powerful well-oiled capitalist machine. While I do not disavow such arguments completely, I argue that most Israeli dystopias are still driven primarily by the traditional depiction of an authoritarian-fascist regime run amok – in alignment with the Huxley-Orwell model – while at the same time, explore creatively a vision of Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s prediction in 1967 that the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinians would inevitably force Israel to become a “police state.” … I examine the common themes found in these novels, including the dystopian depiction of an instrumentalization of the Shoah and manipulative abuse of the memory of the Holocaust in order to promote political agendas, allusions to the nakba, the over-militarism and nationalism of the state, the effects of the Occupation on Israeli society, and Israel’s neoliberal revolution…. By examining these novels from this perspective, and creating a dialogue between these works and different critical scholars, this dissertation aims to contribute to the study of Israel by rethinking its history – through the prism of dystopia.

Itay Eisinger on Not Even Past:
Rabin’s Assassination Twenty Years Later

Carl Forsberg, 2019-2020 Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, 2020-2021 Postdoctoral Fellow with Yale’s International Security Studies Program and the Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy. 
“A Diplomatic Counterrevolution: The Transformation Of The US-Middle East Alliance System In The 1970s”

This dissertation charts the agency of Arab, Iranian, and US elites in transforming the structure of Middle Eastern regional politics and constructing a coalition that persists to the present.  In the decade after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the regimes of Anwar Sadat in Egypt, King Faisal in Saudi Arabia, and Shah Mohamad Reza Pahlavi in Iran set out to overturn the legacy of Nasserism and Arab socialism.  Animated by a common fear that their internal opposition gained strength from a nexus of Soviet subversion and the transnational left, these regimes collaboratively forged a new regional order built around the primacy of state interests and the security of authoritarian rule.  They instrumentally manipulated a range of US-led peace processes, including Arab-Israeli negotiations, US-Soviet détente, and conciliation between Iran and its Arab neighbors to advance their diplomatic counter-revolution.  US administrations at times resisted these efforts because they read the region through the polarities of the Arab-Israeli conflict.  After the 1973 War, however, the opportunity to marginalize Soviet influence in the region proved too enticing for US officials to ignore.  My project deploys multi-lingual research conducted in Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, the UK, and the US.  To overcome the lack of open state archives in Arab countries, the dissertation examines US, British, Iranian, and Israeli records of discussions with Arab leaders, as well as memoirs, periodicals, and speeches in Farsi and Arabic, to triangulate the strategies and covert negotiations of Arab regimes.

Celeste Ward Gventer, Post-doc, The Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.
“Defense Reorganization For Unity: The Unified Combatant Command System, The 1958 Defense Reorganization Act And The Sixty-Year Drive For Unity In Grand Strategy And Military Doctrine”

Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles at the White House in 1956

This dissertation seeks to answer a deceptively simple question: why, in 1958 and as part of the Defense Reorganization Act (DRA) passed that year, did U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower remove the chiefs of the military services from the chain of operational command and instead empower the so-called “unified combatant commands” to lead American military forces in war? The answer, this dissertation will argue, is that Eisenhower had found himself competing with his military service chiefs for his entire first administration and the first half of his second over national (grand) strategy and military doctrine. Taking those service chiefs out of the chain of operational command would, in effect, diminish the role of those officers. Eisenhower had found that simply getting rid of refractory officers was insufficient to quiet their rebellion: only by suppressing their role permanently in the bureaucracy did he hope to unify American strategy- and policy-making. This interpretation is at odds with the few accounts of the 1958 DRA that do exist, which tend to take Eisenhower’s stated purposes—to enhance “unity of command”—at face value. The circumstances that led Eisenhower to take this step were decades, if not longer, in the making. … The situation resulted from the inherent pluralism in American military policy making … it was also a product of the decades that preceded Eisenhower’s administration during which the American military was consistently forced to “fill in the blanks” of national strategy. What drove matters to a head in the 1950s was the steady growth of American power after the 1898 Spanish-American War and, especially, after the Second World War. It is necessary to also appreciate several legacies Eisenhower confronted and that colored his own views: the history of American military thinking about command and about civilian control; the creation of military staffs and the process of reform and professionalization inside the military services during the twentieth century; and the development of independent service doctrines. … This work will trace these conceptual threads over the sixty-year rise of the United States to a global power, culminating in Eisenhower’s standoff with his service chiefs in the 1950s.

Lauren Henley, Assistant Professor, University of Richmond
“Constructing Clementine: Murder, Terror, and the (Un)Making of Community in the Rural South, 1900-1930”

Deirdre Lannon, Senior Lecturer, Department of History, Texas State University
“Ruth Mary Reynolds And The Fight For Puerto Rico’s Independence”

Ruth Mary Reynolds (Women in Peace)

This dissertation is a biography of Ruth Mary Reynolds, a pacifist from the Black Hills of South Dakota who after moving to New York City became involved in the movement for Puerto Rico’s independence…. She bucked the social norms of her conservative hometown to join the Harlem Ashram…. Her work within the Ashram connected her to the web of leftist coalition activism launched by the Popular Front era of the 1930s and 1940s, and to A. Philip Randolph’s March on Washington Movement for black equality. She became involved with organized pacifism, most notably through her membership in the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and her close friendship with its U.S. leader, Dutch-born theologian A.J. Muste. In 1944, Ruth decided to make the issue of Puerto Rico’s independence her own. She helped form a short-lived organization, the American League for Puerto Rico’s Independence, which was supported by Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck among others. She became close friends with Pedro Albizu Campos and his family, as well as other Puerto Rican independence activists. She traveled to Puerto Rico, and in 1950 found herself swept into the violence that erupted between the government and Albizu Campos’s followers. Her experiences in New York and Puerto Rico offer a unique lens into the ways in which the Puerto Rican independence movement functioned, and how it was quashed through governmental repressions. Her friendship with Pedro Albizu Campos, the fiery independentista who remains a figurehead of Puerto Rican identity and pride, helps to humanize the man behind the mission. Ruth never abandoned her friend, or their shared cause. She fought for Albizu Campos to be freed, bucking the climate of repression during McCarthyism. This dissertation traces her efforts until 1965, when Albizu Campos died. She remained an active part of the Puerto Rican independence movement until her own death in 1989.

Holly McCarthy
“The Iraq Petroleum Company In Revolutionary Times”

Signe Fourmy, Visiting Research Affiliate, Institute for Historical Studies and Education Consultant, Humanities Texas.
“They Chose Death Over Slavery: Enslaved Women and Infanticide in the Antebellum South”

“They Chose Death Over Slavery,” … examines enslaved women’s acts of infanticide as maternal resistance. Enslaved women occupied a unique position within the slaveholding household. As re/productive laborers, enslavers profited from work women performed in the fields and house, but also from the children they birthed and raised. I argue that enslaved women’s acts of maternal violence bear particular meaning as a rejection of enslavers’ authority over their reproduction and a reflection of the trauma of enslavement. This dissertation identifies and analyzes incidents of infanticide, in Virginia, North Carolina, and Missouri. Using a comparative approach to consider geographic location and household size—factors that shaped the lived experiences of the enslaved—I ask what, if any, patterns existed? What social, economic, and political considerations influenced pivotal legal determinations—including decisions to prosecute, punish, or pardon these women? Expanding on the work of Laura Edwards and Paul Finkelman, I argue that public prosecution and legal outcomes balanced community socio-legal interests in enforcing the law while simultaneously protecting slaveowners profiting from their (re)productive labor. The existing scholarship on slavery, resistance, and reproduction shows that enslaved women were prosecuted for infanticide, yet the only book-length studies of enslaved women and infanticide center on one sensationalized case involving Margaret Garner. Infanticide was more prevalent than the secondary literature suggests. Building upon the work of historians Darlene Clark Hine and Jennifer L. Morgan, I explore how enslaved women re-appropriated their reproductive capacity as a means of resistance. In conversation with Nikki M. Taylor, Sasha Turner, and Marisa Fuentes, I ask what this particular type of violence reveals about the interiority of enslaved women’s lives. Additionally, I explore what these acts of maternal violence reveal about enslaved motherhood—or more specifically an enslaved woman’s decision not to mother her child.

Signe Fourmy on Not Even Past:
Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio by Nikki M. Taylor

Sean Killen
“South Asians and the Creation of International Legal Order, c. 1850-c. 1920: Global Political Thought and Imperial Legal Politics”

This dissertation argues that South Asians used international legal discourse both for ideological disputation and to mount political challenges to the domination and subjugation that accompanied British imperial rule between roughly 1850 and 1920. South Asians instigated political and legal disputes in India and Britain, throughout the empire, and overseas, and gained promises and partial concessions to Indian opinions and demands that limited British options in imperial and international relations. In so doing, they compelled the British state to alter the ideology, the policies, and the practices of the state, in India and in its relations with other states both within and outside the empire. Britain’s power, ultimately, meant that South Asians’ argumentation and actions shaped the contours of global order after the First World War….Traditional histories of international law argue that international law originated in Europe and regulated European states’ relations until colonized states were granted international legal recognition at the time of decolonization. Recent revisionist scholarship argues that the existence and experience of empire and colonial rule shaped the development of international law and global order throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This dissertation approaches empire in a way that emphasizes the global exchange of ideas and the active connections between colonizers and the colonized. Elite, English-speaking South Asians acted as cultural translators or intermediaries. They engaged in debates as public intellectuals, and they carved out spaces for themselves in the social and political communities that created public opinion. Consequently, South Asians’ ideas about relations among different peoples and between states, and South Asians’ mobilization of these ideas throughout the empire and overseas to make political claims about the obligations of the imperial state and the rights of imperial subjects shaped ideas about global order and the structure of international legal relations.

Jimena Perry, Teaching Instructor, East Carolina University
“Trying to Remember: Museums, Exhibitions, and Memories of Violence in Colombia, 2000-2014”

The Center for Memory, Peace, and Reconciliation, Bogotá, Colombia.

Since the turn of the century, not only museum professionals but grassroots community leaders have undertaken the challenge of memorializing the Colombian armed conflict of the 1980s to the early 2000s. In an attempt to confront the horrors of the massacres, forced displacement, bombings, and disappearances, museums and exhibitions have become one of the tools used to represent and remember the brutalities endured. To demonstrate how historical memories are informed by cultural diversity, my dissertation examines how Colombians remember the brutalities committed by the Army, guerrillas, and paramilitaries during the countryʼs internal war.  The chapters of this work delve into four case studies. The first highlights the selections of what not to remember and represent at the National Museum of the country.  The second focuses on the well-received memories at the same institution by examining a display made to commemorate the assassination of a demobilized guerrilla fighter. The third discusses how a rural marginal community decided to vividly remember the attacks they experienced by creating a display hall to aid in their collective and individual healing. Lastly, the fourth, also about a rural peripheric community, discusses their particular way of remembering, which emphasizes their peasant oral traditions through a traveling venue. Bringing violence, memory, and museum studies together, my work contributes to our understanding of how social groups severely impacted by atrocities recreate and remember their violent experiences. In addition, my case studies exemplify why it is necessary to hear the multiple voices of conflict survivors, especially in a country with a long history of violence like Colombia. Drawing on displays, newspapers, interviews, catalogs, and oral histories, I study how museums and exhibitions in Colombia become politically active subjects in the acts of reflection and mourning, and how they foster new relationships between the state and society. My work also analyzes museums and displays as arbiters of social memory. It asks how representations of violence serve in processes of transitional justice and promotion of human rights for societies that have been racked by decades of violence.

Jimena Perry on Not Even Past:
When Answers Are Not Enough: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
More Than Archives: Dealing with Unfinished History
Too Much Inclusion? Museo Casa de la Memoria, Medellin, Colombia
Time to Remember: Violence in Museums and Memory, 2000-2014
My Cocaine Museum by Michael Taussig
History Museums: The Center for Memory, Peace, and Reconciliation, Bogatá, Colombia
History Museums: The Hall of Never Again

Christina Villareal, Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, The University of Texas at El Paso
“Resisting Colonial Subjugation: The Search for Refuge in the Texas-Louisiana Borderlands, 1714-1803”

This dissertation is a history of the Spanish borderlands from the perspectives of subjugated people in the Gulf Coast. Based on colonial, military, and civil manuscript sources from archives in the United States, Mexico, Spain, and France, it traces the physical movement of Native Americans, soldiers, and African and indigenous slaves who fled conscription, reduction to Catholic missions, or enslavement in the Texas-Louisiana borderlands of the eighteenth century. It reconstructs geographies of resistance to understand how challenges to colonial oppression shaped imperial territory and created alternative spaces for asylum. While the overarching focus of the dissertation is political space-making at the ground-level, the pivotal change occasioned by the Treaty of Paris (1763) serves as the central arc of the dissertation. The treaty, in which Spain acquired Louisiana from France, signified a major imperial transformation of the Gulf Coast. Initiated “from above,” this geopolitical transition expanded the Spanish borderlands over former French territory and altered the locations where Native Americans, soldiers, and enslaved people could find or avoid colonial oppression.

Christina Villareal on Not Even Past
The War on Drugs: How the US and Mexico Jointly Created the Mexican Drug War by Carmen Boullusa and Mike Wallace

Andrew Weiss
“The Virgin and The Pri: Guadalupanismo And Political Governance In Mexico, 1945-1979”

This dissertation explores the dynamic relationship between Catholicism and political governance in Mexico from 1945 until 1979 through the lens of Guadalupanismo. Guadalupanismo (devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe) is a unifying nationalistic force in Mexico. After 1940, Church and state collaborated to promote the Virgin of Guadalupe as a nationalist emblem following decades of divisive state-led religious persecution. Mexico, however, remained officially anticlerical sociopolitical territory. I analyze flashpoints of Guadalupan nationalism to reveal the history of Mexican Church-state relations and Catholic religiosity. These episodes are: the 1945 fiftieth anniversary of the 1895 coronation of the Virgin of Guadalupe; U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 visit to the Basilica of Guadalupe; the construction of the New Basilica in the 1970s (inaugurated in 1976); and Pope John Paul II’s trip to Mexico and the Basilica in 1979. Each of these occasions elicited great popular enthusiasm and participation in public ritual. And each brought politicians in contact with the third rail in Mexican politics: religion. The essential value of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as I show, is that as both a Catholic and a nationalistic icon, she represented an ideal symbolic terrain for the renegotiation and calibration of Church-state relations under PRI rule. I follow these Guadalupan episodes to track the history of Guadalupanismo and interpret the changing Church-state relationship at different junctures in the course of the single-party priísta regime. These junctures (1945, 1962, 1976, and 1979) are relevant because they are representative of classical and degenerative phases of priísmo (the ideology of the ruling party [PRI] that governed Mexico from 1929 until 2000) and cover the episcopates of three major figures who ran the Archdiocese of Mexico for over sixty years. The Church-state covenant was renegotiated over time as seen by the Guadalupan episodes I analyze.

Andrew Weiss on Not Even Past
Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico by Elaine Carey

Pictured above (Clockwise from top center): Sandy Chang, Andrew Weiss, Deirdre Lannon, Jimena Perry, Celeste Ward Gventer, Christina Villareal, Itay Eisinger.
Not pictured: Signe Fourmy, Lauren Henley, Sean Killen, Holly McCarthy, Carl Forsberg,

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