Each year UT Arlington’s Center for Southwestern Studies gives two awards for students working in the American Southwest and related fields. This year, graduate student Joseph Carpenter received the Jenkins Garrett Award, given annually to a student working on a research paper using archival materials in UTA Libraries’ Special Collections. Joseph’s paper, “Ties that Bind: Plainfolk Migration to Texas,” examined the challenges faced by yeoman farmers who migrated from their homes in the Lower South to Texas after the Civil War. Focusing on the Latham family, who moved from Alabama to Cass County in East Texas in 1887, Joseph presented a version of his paper at this year’s Texas State Historical Association conference in El Paso.

This year’s recipient of the Ida V. Hall and George Kohfeldt Scholarship, given to an undergraduate student for work in the field of Native American history and culture, was Vanessa Pacheco. A citizen of the Navajo nation, Vanessa examined the history of Lozen, a Chiricahua Apache woman, in a paper she wrote for Dr. Stephanie Cole’s Women’s History class. Highlighting the distinctive gender roles that existed within Apache and other Native communities, she considered how Native women have often been mythologized in ways that distort their real historical actions and influence.

Congratulations, Joseph and Vanessa!