History Commons^™

[Vet] Veterans Day 2023, Special Collections & Archives, Shannon Pensa

Library Display Posters

UTRGV Special Collections & Archives presents an an annual poster exhibit honoring the service and sacrifice of military service veterans of the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

This year's digital poster exhibit features information about the historic changes in the U.S. armed forces as well as profiles for valley veterans, including: Richard E. Cavazos, Dr. Eloisa Tamez, Pedro Cano, Maria Osorio, Ruth M. Abney, Eugene Gutierrez, Angela Burton, Herbert Pike, and Edgar Hernandez.

Learn more about Special Collections & Archives resources on the history of military service in the Valley by visiting our research guide.

The Scramble For Africa And The Conquest Of The Congo, Adam Hochchild

Rondel V. Davidson Endowed Lecture Series

Adam Hochschild writes frequently about issues of human rights and social justice. The latest of his eleven books is American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, which won the Gold Medal for Nonfiction of the 2023 California Book Awards. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as was To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion. 1914-1918. His Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves was a finalist for …

American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, And Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, Adam Hochschild

Rondel V. Davidson Endowed Lecture Series

Book Talk

In American Midnight, award-winning historian Adam Hochschild reassesses the overlooked but startlingly resonant period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, when the foundations of American democracy were threatened by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor. American Midnight brings alive the horrifying yet inspiring four years following the U.S. entry into the First World War, spotlighting forgotten repression while celebrating an unforgettable set of Americans who strove to fix their fractured country showing how their struggles still guide us today.

Crossing The Line: Mexican Children Making The Border 1900-1930, Yolanda Chavez Leyva

Rondel V. Davidson Endowed Lecture Series

Dr. Yolanda Chávez Leyva is a Chicana/ fronteriza historian and writer who was born and raised on the border. She is of Rarámuri descent and honors her grandmother Canuta Ruacho. She is the Director of the Institute of Oral History and Associate Professor in the Department of History at UTEP. She is also the lead historian for the first-ever Bracero Museum (funded by the Mellon Foundation) slated to open in Socorro, Texas in 2024. She has spent her life listening to and now documenting the lives of people who live on la frontera. Professor Leyva specializes in border history, public …

Sick From Freedom: The Untold Story Of A Smallpox Epidemic Among Formerly Enslaved People, Jim Downs

Rondel V. Davidson Endowed Lecture Series

Emancipated from slavery, former bondspeople entered into an environment in which more soldiers died from disease than from battle. This talk explores the high rate of illness and mortality that devastated formerly enslaved people during the Civil War and Reconstruction. In particular, it provides the first analysis of the smallpox epidemic that began in Washington, DC in 1862 and then spread to the Lower South in 1863 and Mississippi Valley in 1864-65. By 1865, the epidemic plagued the entire South and began to move west and infected Native Americans on reservations. Due to the unexpected and inordinate mortality, the federal …

Borderlands Research In Spanish, Mexican, And Texas Archives, Armando C. Alonzo

Rondel V. Davidson Endowed Lecture Series

Dr. Armando Alonzo will speak to UTRGV students in Dr. Jamie Starling’s HIST 6325: Seminar in Borderlands History course as well as students from HIST 3300, HIST 3333, and HIST 4399. Interested faculty are also invited to attend. Dr. Alonzo’s presentation will focus on researching the South Texas Borderlands in Spanish, Mexican, and Texas archives as well as the challenges of studying the region’s earlier Spanish colonial era and Native American history. A native of the Rio Grande Valley, Dr. Alonzo received his M.A. degree in history in 1983 from what was then the University of Texas – Pan American, …

[Whm] Herstory: Women's History Month 2023, Shannon Pensa, The University Of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Library Display Posters

HerStory is a digital presentation created for Women's History Month 2023 using collection materials from UTRGV University Library Special Collections & Archives and resources from other regional and digital archives.

An Unhealthy Obsession: Understanding Russian Views Of Ukraine, Faith Hillis

Rondel V. Davidson Endowed Lecture Series

Faith Hillis is Professor of Russian History at the University of Chicago. She is particularly interested in nineteenth and twentieth century politics, culture, and ideas. She is the author of Children of Rus’: Right Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation (Cornell, 2013) and Utopia’s Discontents: Russian Exiles and the Quest for Freedom, 1830 1930 (Oxford, 2021). The latter work was awarded the 2022 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize from ASEEES, which recognizes the most important contribution in any discipline of Slavic studies. The recipient of research fellowships at Columbia, Harvard, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and …

Sharyland (View Book), John H. Shary

John H. Shary Collection

From the inside cover "The following views are faithful reproductions of genuine photographs of some of the many objects of interest to be seen on the John H. Shary Subdivision and other points of in the Lower Rio Grande Valley."

View book contains 40 pages printed in black and white with brief captions (left) and photographs (right).

Borderlands Course Reader, Volume One, Jamie Starling

Open Educational Resources

This collection compiles primary source documents and narratives from the present-day U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Region from c.1500 to 1865. The collection is designed for use with U.S. History and Mexican American surveys as well as Texas history and U.S.-Mexico Borderlands history courses. A few documents are abridged or excerpted from longer sources. All sources contain a citation or link to a source at the foot of the document. Documents span from indigenous accounts and sources of early contact through the late Spanish colonial period, era of Mexican independence, U.S. expansion and the American Civil War.