Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Anti-Japanese Sentiment, International Diplomacy, And The Texas Alien Land Law Of 1921, Brent M. S. Campney

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Japanese ‘invasion’ of Texas appears to be in full swing,” reported a correspondent from the lower Rio Grande Valley (hereinafter, the Valley) on January 7, 1921. The writer drew this conclusion from the arrival a day earlier of two Japanese families who had been met at the train station in the South Texas town of Harlingen by a mob who warned the immigrants not to settle on the land that they had already purchased in the vicinity. The alleged invasion continued with the arrival of B. R. Kato, “another Japanese colonist from California, [who] reached Brownsville today.” As Kato …

M. Roberts (Ed. And Trans.), Venantius Fortunatus, Poems (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 46). Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. Xx + 910. Isbn9780674974920. £19.95., Erica Buchberger

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Review Of Valley Of The Guns: The Pleasant Valley War And The Trauma Of Violence, By Eduardo Obregón Pagán, Jamie Starling

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

At first glance, the Pleasant Valley War that occurred in central Arizona from 1881 to 1892 represents an archetypal frontier conflict of that era. In this engaging book, Eduardo Obregón Pagán recovers this history from familiar western tropes and popular mythmaking with a thoroughly [End Page 245] researched study that draws theoretical inspiration from recent scholarship on the North American borderlands. In particular, the author acknowledges the influence of Ned Blackhawk’s acclaimed book Violence over the Land (Harvard University Press, 2006) for providing a framework for understanding how conflicts that appear to stem from personal feuds tie peoples and communities …

The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence In Texas By Monica Munoz Martinez (Review), Brent M. S. Campney

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

In The Injustice Never Leaves You, Monica Munoz Martinez provides an outstanding analysis of the racist violence that Anglos used to control ethnic Mexicans in Texas. Building on the work of other historians, including Benjamin Johnson, Nicholas Villanueva, William Carrigan, and Clive Webb, she discusses, for instance, the burning of Antonio Rodrıguez by a mob in Rocksprings in 1910 and the rampage by Anglo lynch mobs and Texas Rangers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in 1915, a massacre that claimed the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of ethnic Mexicans.

Candid About Cinema: Gregory Nava, Manuel F. Medrano

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Commentary On 50 Years Of Teaching At The Psu History Awards Ceremony, David A. Horowitz

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Commentary presented at: PSU History Awards ceremony, June 14, 2019.

A Thousand Years Ago, The Catholic Church Paid Little Attention To Homosexuality, Lisa Mcclain

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Pope Francis has spoken openly about homosexuality. In a recent interview, the pope said that homosexual tendencies “are not a sin.” And a few years ago, in comments made during an in-flight interview, he said,

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

However, the pope has also discouraged homosexual men from entering the priesthood. He categorically stated in another interview that for one with homosexual tendencies, the “ministry or the consecrated life is not his place.”

Mountain, Militarized: North Korea, Nuclear Tests, And Nature, Lisa Brady

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

On 3 September 2017, the earth shifted. Seismic activity registering 6.1 on the Richter scale indicated a major geophysical event had taken place, one strong enough to change the shape of mountains. On that day, North Korea exploded a nuclear device at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site inside Mount Mantap (Figure 1). Estimated to be at least 100 kilotonnes, it was the largest nuclear device detonated by North Korea to date (Figure 2). Satellite pictures from before and after the event provide visual evidence of the test’s power to alter the lay of the land (Figures 3 and 4). The …

Damián Fernández, Aristocrats And Statehood In Western Iberia, 300–600 C.E. Philadelphia: University Of Pennsylvania Press. 2017. 328 Pp., Erica Buchberger

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Other Constitutional Convention: Border Delegates At The Mexican Constitutional Convention Of 1916-1917, Irving W. Levinson

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

The article offers information on the Mexican Constitutional Convention of 1916-1917 and addresses the Mexicans living in states bordering the U.S. Topics discussed include dispossession of Mexicans by land seizure during the reign of Porfirio Diaz, attitude of convention delegates from the Border States and defeat of the army of Mexico President Porfirio Diaz in the Mexican Revolution.

"What We Need Here Is Another Crystal City": The Mexican Civil Rights Movement In South Texas, 1963, Brent M. S. Campney

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

In May of 1963, a police officer in San Benito, Texas, arrested Antonio Mendoza, a Mexican American, for public drunkenness. After beating him, he placed the dazed prisoner in a jail cell. For more than seventeen hours, no one at the jail saw f it to tend to the prisoner’s wounds, provide food or water, or check on his overall well-being. By the time an official checked on him, Mendoza, overcome by fear, pain, or emotional distress—or by some combination of all three—had committed suicide. “The man was found the next morning hanging by a belt from a pipe in …

Review Of A Crooked River: Rustlers, Rangers, And Regulars On The Lower Rio Grande, George T. Diaz

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Michael L. Collins’s A Crooked River is a continuation of his book Texas Devils: Rangers and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande (University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). Where his earlier book examined conflict on the lower Rio Grande from the U.S. invasion in 1846 to 1861, Crooked River considers the region from the U.S. Civil War through the end of Reconstruction. Collins provides a history of the region in the midst of upheaval and focuses particularly on “lawlessness” and violent policing (5). The book’s self-stated goal is to provide “the story Walter Prescott Webb never told” [End Page 471] (12), …

The Day The Shaman Came To Town, Manuel F. Medrano

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

A personal narrative is presented in which author share his experience of visiting Don Jacinto Tzab Chac, a traditional Mayan shaman, to Rio Grande Valley in South Texas.

Immigration, Identity, And Genealogy: A Case Study, Thomas Daniel Knight

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines the life and experiences of a 19th-century immigrant from the British Isles to the United States and his family. It examines his reasons for immigrating, as well as his experiences after arrival. In this case, the immigrant chose to create a new identity for himself after immigration. Doing so both severed his ties with his birth family and left his American progeny without a clear sense of identity and heritage. The essay uses a variety of sources, including oral history and folklore, to investigate the immigrant’s origins and examine how this uncertainty shaped the family’s history in …

"We Were At Our Journey's End" : Settler Sovereignty Formation In Oregon, Katrine Barber

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

For too long, Oregon history has been captive to the mid-nineteenth-century’s rambling wagon trains. Settler stories of motivations, hardships, and achievements, preserved in diaries, letters, and memoirs, are compelling and deserving of the attention lavished on them. But more is necessary. Oregon’s Euro-Americans were intimately tied to national and international events that saw the rise of White, European colonial expansion into the colored word. Alongside that expansion was the development of a framework of domination, justified by claims of superiority and destiny, that conflated the ability to control with the right to do so. Placing Oregon history in this larger …

Famous Mexican Films, Irving W. Levinson

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Since 1896, México’s film industry has produced more than 5,000 films. These works cover a full range of genres.

The Ghosts Of Mier: Violence In A Mexican Frontier Community During The Nineteenth Century, Jamie Starling

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

On April 23, 1852, Ramona de la Peña became a widow for the second time when she buried Eusebio García at the Inmaculada Concepción Parish of Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas. The priest who conducted the burial, Father José Luis Gonzaga García, had ministered to her family over the previous thirteen years and baptized five of the couple’s children. He christened their youngest, Gregorio, about a year earlier. On the day of the burial, the priest wrote a sacramental record that described Eusebio García’s death “in the hands of the Americans” (en manos de los americanos). He was one of eight Mexicans …

Gothic Identity And The ‘Othering’ Of Jews In Seventh-Century Spain, Erica Buchberger

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 589, Reccared, king of the Visigoths in Spain, converted from Arian to Catholic Christianity. Arianism was banned, and after a brief period which saw the repression of rebellions, eliminated from the kingdom. All Goths were required to become Catholic. This watershed in Visigothic history both necessitated and facilitated a renegotiation of the parameters of Gothic identity. The entire kingdom was affected: the ruling Visigoths, the small population of recently conquered Sueves, and the Hispano-Romans who were left under the rule of the Goths when the Western Roman Empire fell apart.^[1] This Roman population also included some Jews. While …