Summer 2013 Teacher Institutes

Pauline Maier

Pauline Maier (keynote speaker, Austin) is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at MIT. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 1968. Her book publications include From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 (1972); The Old Revolutionaries: Political Lives in the Age of Samuel Adams (1980); The American People: A History (1986), a textbook for junior-high-school students; and American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997). In 1998 she received MIT's Killian Award, given annually to one senior faculty member for outstanding achievement. Her most recent book, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (2011) is the first comprehensive narrative history of the ratification of the U.S. federal Constitution. The Wall Street Journal listed it among the top ten books of the year; the New York Times Book Review included it in its list of one hundred "notable" books of 2010; and Esquire magazine included it among the best ten books of 2011. It won the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award (shared with Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life) for "the best newly published work on the American Revolutionary period, combining original scholarship, insight and good writing;" the George Washington Book Prize, for "the best book on America's founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history;" the Ruth Ratner Miller Award for "excellence in American history;" the Henry Paolucci/Walter Bagehot Book Award of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the American Historical Society's Littleton-Griswold Book Prize for a book on American law and society.

Pauline Meier.

H. W. Brands

H. W. Brands was born in Oregon, went to college in California, worked as a traveling salesman in a territory that spanned the American West, and taught high school for ten years before becoming a college professor. He is currently the Dickson, Allen, Anderson Centennial Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, and is the author of The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, among many other books. Both The First American and his biography of Franklin Roosevelt, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace. Brands will give a presentation on Ulysses S. Grant.

H. W. Brands

Erika M. Bsumek

Erika M. Bsumek is associate professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin, where she specializes in Native American and Western U.S. history. She is the author of Indian-Made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1868–1940, as well as a number of other articles about Native Americans, consumerism, and the West. Her current research explores the impact that large construction projects (dams, highways, cities, and suburbs) had on the American West. She is currently working on a book titled The Concrete West: Engineering Society and Culture in the Arid West, 1900-1970. Bsumek will speak about Indian wars in the Southwest.

Erika M. Bsumek.

Jesús F. de la Teja (2013)

Jesús F. de la Teja is the Jerome H. and Catherine E. Supple Professor of Southwestern Studies at Texas State University-San Marcos. Prior to joining the faculty at Texas State in 1991, he served as director of archives and records at the Texas General Land Office. He is a former president of the Texas State Historical Association and was the first state historian of Texas, serving from 2007–2009. He has been a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas since 2007 and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2001. He co-authored two textbooks: American Anthem and Texas: Crossroads of North America. Most recently, he edited Tejano Leadership in Mexican and Revolutionary Texas. He holds a PhD in colonial Latin American history from The University of Texas at Austin, as well as MA and BA degrees from Seton Hall University in New Jersey. De la Teja will give a presentation on the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

Jesús F. de la Teja.

Daniel Feller

Daniel Feller is professor of history and editor/director of The Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin and taught previously at Northland College and the University of New Mexico. His books include The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815–1840, The Public Lands in Jacksonian Politics, and a new edition of Harriet Martineau's 1838 American tour narrative Retrospect of Western Travel. Two volumes of the Jackson Papers, Volume 7: 1829, and Volume 8: 1830, have appeared under his stewardship. Volume 9: 1831 will be published in 2013. Feller was the lead scholar for the PBS special Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil, and the Presidency and has appeared on History Detectives. Feller will give a lecture titled "Why Secession?"

Daniel Feller.

Charles Flanagan

Charles Flanagan is director of educational programs at the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. Previously, he was a high school teacher for thirty years. During his last two decades in the classroom, Flanagan was the humanities department chair and history teacher at the Key School in Annapolis, Maryland. While at Key, he led the development of an interdisciplinary literature and history curriculum that featured hands-on learning with classic literature and primary sources in history. Flanagan has a BA from Assumption College, an MA from St. John’s College, and a PhD in American studies from the University of Maryland. Flanagan will speak about the War of 1812.

Charles Flanagan.

George B. Forgie

George B. Forgie is Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his PhD from Stanford University. His major teaching fields are U.S. political and cultural history from 1763 to 1877 and the U.S. Constitution. Forgie has received numerous teaching awards, most recently the 2010 Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award. He is author of Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and His Age (1979). He is currently working on a book-length study of Northern political writing during the American Civil War. Forgie will discuss sectionalism, violence, and the causes of the Civil War.

George B. Forgie.

Eric A. Hinderaker

Eric A. Hinderaker is professor of history at the University of Utah. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1991. In addition to numerous scholarly articles and essays, he is the author of Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800, which traces relations among the Ohio Indians and French, British, and American settlers over a span of more than a century. Hinderaker is also coauthor (with Peter C. Mancall) of At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America. With Kirsten Fischer he is coeditor of Colonial American History, a collection of original documents and scholarly essays. His most recent book, The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery, was published by Harvard University Press. He is at work on a book on the Boston Massacre, which will also be published by Harvard University Press. Hinderaker will discuss violence and conflicts in Colonial America.

Eric A. Hinderaker.

Daniel Walker Howe

Daniel Walker Howe is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University in England and professor of history emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2008 for What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815–1848, which portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. He was president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in 2001 and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Howe will give a lecture on the Mexican War.

Daniel Walker Howe.

Robert A. Olwell

Robert A. Olwell is associate professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching interests are focused on the eighteenth-century British-Atlantic world and the early American South. Currently, he is writing a book on the British Florida colony, 1763–1783. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Olwell is author of Masters, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790 (1998) and editor, with Alan Tully, of Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America (2006). Olwell will speak about turning points in the Revolutionary War.

Robert A. Olwell.

Jennifer L. Weber

Jennifer L. Weber is associate professor of history at the University of Kansas. She is the author of two books. Her first, for adults, is Copperheads, about antiwar Democrats in the Civil War North. Her second, Summer's Bloodiest Days, is about the Battle of Gettysburg and its aftermath, and is targeted for nine- to fourteen-year-olds. In 2011, the National Council for Social Studies named Summer’s Bloodiest Days a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People. Professor Weber also has served as the executive editor of the Key Concepts in American History Series for Library Binding press—eleven books explaining various aspects of government to middle school students—and edited a supplemented edition of The Red Badge of Courage for Everbind. Her most recent book, which she coedited, is The Struggle for Equality, a collection of essays in honor of her graduate adviser, James M. McPherson. She is currently working on a book about the Union's conscription effort and its consequences. In addition to her work at KU, she serves on the advisory board of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. Weber will speak about turning points in the Civil War.

Jennifer L. Weber.