In 2019-2020, our Research Fellows have been busy researching, publishing, and presenting their scholarship. Here are some snapshots of their recent publications and works-in-progress.

Stephanie Cole: Dr. Stephanie Cole serves on TSHA’s Board and has given public lectures on the Woman Suffrage movement in Texas at both Tarrant County College and Grayson College in preparation of marking the 100^th anniversary of the 19^th Amendment granting some women the right to vote.  She is continuing research on interracial marriage in Texas and the United States, has published book reviews for both the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the Journal of the History of Sexuality, and is working on several entries for the Handbook of DFW, which will also be incorporated in the Handbook of Texas. 

Paul Conrad: Dr. Paul Conrad recently completed his book manuscript on Apache Indian history, titled “The Apache Diaspora: Four Centuries of Displacement and Survival.” It has been accepted for publication by the University of Pennsylvania Press and will be in print in early 2021.  He is currently in the early stages of a new project examining the role of Indigenous interpreters in the colonial North American West. He recently presented his research at the American Historical Association annual meeting in New York in January.  

Christopher Conway : Christopher Conway’s latest book, Heroes of the Borderlands: The Western in Mexican Film, Comics and Music was released by University of New Mexico Press in November of 2019. Some of the book’s themes include the Mexican Cult of Santa Muerte, gunfighter culture in Mexican corridos, immigration in Mexican comics, and Mexican rewritings and reimaginings of American Westerns like Shane and The Searchers. He and Antoinette Sol edited a collection of critical essays about comic book Westerns and globalization that is under contract with University Nebraska Press.

Robert Fairbanks: History Professor Bob Fairbanks continues his work on a book about the history of suburban cities in the Southwest that focuses on Arlington, Texas and Mesa, Arizona. He uses them as examples of this new type of city. From that research he has recently published “Planning the Suburban City in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex” as a chapter in Lone Star Suburbs” Life on the Texas Metropolitan Frontier. He also gave a paper entitled “From Suburb to City: The Emergence of Mesa, Arizona and Arlington, Texas as a New Type of City,” at the 9^tth Biennial Conference of the Urban History Association, Columbia, South Carolina.

Sam Haynes: Sam W. Haynes was the 2019-2020 Bill and Rita Clements Senior Fellow at Southern Methodist University, where he worked on a book on early nineteenth century Texas entitled “Border Land: The Struggle for Texas,” under contract with Basic Books. In March he commented on a panel on the Republic of Texas at the Texas State Historical Association. He was also scheduled to give two talks, at the San Jacinto Historical Commission and SMU. Both were cancelled due to the coronavirus lockdown.

Erin Murrah-Mandril: Dr. Murrah-Mandril presented her paper “Recuperating (from) the Past: George Washington Gómez as a work of Literary Recovery” at the 4^th Biennial Latinx Literary Theory and Criticism Conference in New York last April. She also presented work from her new research project in the paper “Parteras en la Communidad: Mexican American Midwives as Agents of Social Cohesion in the Southwest” at the Fall 2019 meeting of the Western Literature Association Conference in Estes Park, CO (September 18-21, 2019). 

Gerald Saxon: Gerald Saxon continues his work on a biography of Texas empresario Sterling Clack Robertson (1785-1842), who came to Texas from Tennessee in 1830. His most recent book is an edited volume with Sam Haynes titled Contested Empire: Rethinking the Texas Revolution, published by Texas A&M University Press in 2015. He is currently co-principal investigator of a Summerlee Foundation Grant, Building the Texas Disability History Collection (Stage 2), $11,890. Grant funds are being used to build the Texas Disability History Collection housed in Special Collections of the University of Texas at Arlington Library.