Gregg Cantrell is the Erma and Ralph Lowe Professor
of History at Texas Christian University and the author of
Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas.
He earned his Ph.D. at Texas A&M University.
Elizabeth Hays Turner, an
Associate Professor at the University of North Texas, is the
author of Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and
Reform in Galveston, 1880-1920. Her Ph.D. is from Rice
University. |
Description: The past
has long fingers into the present, but they are not just the
fingers of fact. How we remember the past is at least as
important as the "objective" facts of that past. The
memories used by a people to define itself have to be understood
not just as (sometimes) bad history but also as historical
artifacts themselves. In just this way, this
groundbreaking volume uses both scholarly history and collective
memory to examine Texas' pasts, featuring chapters by scholars
with a range of experience.
Current historians' views of Texas
in the nineteenth century and especially the significance of of
the Alamo as a site of memory in architecture, art, and film
across the years comprise a major element of this volume.
Other nineteenth-century historical events are also examined
through their memorializations in the twentieth century:
the construction of Civil War monuments by the United Daughters
of the Confederacy, public and private Juneteenth celebrations,
and the Tejano memorial on the Capitol grounds commemorating the
history of Mexicans in Texas. Exclusively
twentieth-century chapters include collective memories and
meaning attached to the Ku Klux Klan, the significance of the
civil rights movement in the eyes of different generations of
Texans, and the lasting (or fading) Texan memories of Lyndon
Baines Johnson.
The volume editors offer these
studies as a model of how Texas historians can begin to
incorporate "memory" into their work, as historians of other
regions have done. In the process, they offer a more
nuanced and even a more "applied" versions Texas history than
many of us learned in school.
Available from Amazon
ISBN13# 978-1-58544-563-9
ISBN10# 1-58544-563-0 |
