Summer 2013 Teacher Institutes

Abner Linwood "Woody" Holton III

Abner Linwood "Woody" Holton III (keynote speaker) is Peter and Bonnie McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. His 2009 book, Abigail Adams, which he wrote on a Guggenheim fellowship, won the Bancroft Prize. Holton is the author of Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (2007), a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize and the National Book Award. His first book, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (1999), won the Organization of American Historians's Merle Curti award. For the 2012–2013 academic year, Holton has a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to write a book called Liberty is Sweet: An Integrated History of the American Revolution. He received his PhD from Duke University. He will deliver the institute's keynote address on the causes of the American Revolution and discuss turning points in the Revolutionary War the following day.

Abner Linwood "Woody" Holton III.

Jeremy Bailey

Jeremy Bailey is associate professor at the University of Houston, where he holds a dual appointment in the Department of Political Science and the Honors College. His research interests include executive power, the presidency, and American political thought and development. He is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power (2007), and coauthor of The Removal Power: Dilemmas in American Constitutional Development (forthcoming from University Press of Kansas). Bailey's articles have been published in American Political Science Review, Review of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and Publius: The Journal of Federalism. Bailey is now working on a book on James Madison and the problem of constitutional imperfection, as well as collaborating with colleague Brandon Rottinghaus on a project on unilateral orders and the presidency. Bailey received his PhD from Boston College. Bailey will discuss the Declaration of Independence.

Jeremy Bailey.

Michael Les Benedict

Michael Les Benedict is professor emeritus at The Ohio State University. He joined the history department in 1970 and retired in 2005. He received his BA and MA from the University of Illinois and his PhD from Rice University. He has been a visiting professor at MIT, Yale Law School, the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, and Hokkaido and Doshisha Universities in Japan. Benedict is a recognized authority in Anglo-American constitutional and legal history, the history of civil rights and liberties, the federal system, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. He has published over forty essays in leading American history and law journals in addition to half a dozen history books and textbooks. He serves as parliamentarian of the American Historical Association and is currently working on the constitutional politics of the Reconstruction Era. Benedict will speak about violence during Reconstruction.

Michael Les Benedict.

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.

Heather Cox Richardson

Heather Cox Richardson is an expert in late nineteenth-century America. She is the author of several books on the Civil War and Reconstruction, including, most recently, West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War (2007), and Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (2010). A professor at Boston College, Richardson’s last three books were selected by the History Book Club; West from Appomattox was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection. She is now finishing a history of the Republican Party, which examines the party from its inception to 2008. It will be published in 2013. Cox Richardson will discuss westward expansion.

Heather Cox Richardson.

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.

Steven Deyle

Steven Deyle is associate professor of history at the University of Houston. He specializes in nineteenth-century U.S. social and political history, with a particular interest in slavery and the Old South. He received his MA and PhD from Columbia University. Deyle's first book, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (2005), examines both the fundamentals of the domestic slave trade, or the buying and selling of American-born slaves, and the larger impact that it had on American society. It was the 2005 winner of Southern Historical Association's Bennett H. Wall Award for the best book on southern business or economic history published within the previous two years. He is currently working on a new book project entitled Honorable Men: Isaac Bolton, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and the Murder of James McMillan. Deyle will speak about turning points in the Civil War.

Steven Deyle.

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.

James Kirby Martin

James Kirby Martin is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Houston. His research focuses on early American history, especially the era of the American Revolution, as well as American military and social history. He is the author or editor of twelve books. He received his MA and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin and began his teaching career at Rutgers University, where he helped found the Papers of Thomas Edison project. Martin serves on the advisory editorial board of the Critical Historical Encounters book series sponsored by Oxford University Press. He has consulted with some of the nation's most eminent law firms in regard to the history of consumer products, including alcohol and tobacco. He has appeared on and advised television programs aired by the History Channel. His current book project is a study of how the American Revolution avoided producing a military dictatorship, under contract with Oxford University Press. Martin will discuss the Seven Years' War.

James Kirby Martin.

Raúl Ramos

Raúl Ramos received his AB in history and Latin American studies from Princeton University in 1989 and his PhD in history from Yale University in 1999. He joined the history faculty at the University of Houston as an associate professor in 2002 from his position as an assistant professor in history and ethnic studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Ramos was a fellow at the William Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University from 2000–2001. His book, Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821–1861, is the winner of numerous prizes, including the 2008 T. R. Fehrenbach Book Award from the Texas Historical Commission and the 2009 NACCS-Tejas Book Award, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. His current research examines Mexican Independence parades and Fiestas Patrias in the American Southwest during the early twentieth century. Ramos will speak about the Mexican War.

Raúl Ramos.

Eric Walther

Eric Walther is professor of history at the University of Houston. His specialty is the antebellum South and the coming of the Civil War. Walther received his MA and PhD in history from Louisiana State University. He has taught at the University of Houston since 1991. Before coming to the University of Houston he held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Papers of Jefferson Davis at Rice University and taught at Texas A&M University. Walther is the author of three books and numerous articles and book reviews. Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s won a Choice Magazine book award in 2004. His biography of the foremost leader of secession, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in the spring of 2006 and has received the James Rawley Award from the Southern Historical Association and the Jefferson Davis Award from the Museum of the Confederacy. Walther will give a presentation on sectionalism, violence, and the causes of the Civil War.

Eric Walther.

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 Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as war leaders.

Jennifer L. Weber.