Short Course: Spanish Texas

Dr. Frank De la Teja was the Jerome H. and Catherine E. Supple Professor of Southwestern Studies, Regents’ Professor of History, and Director of the Center for the Study of the Southwest at Texas State University until he retired in August 2017.  He has published extensively in Spanish, Mexican, and Republic-era Texas, most recently Faces of Béxar: Early San Antonio and Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2016) and Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance: The Other Civil War Texas(University of Oklahoma Press, 2016).  Formerly the book review editor for the Southwestern Historical Quarterly (1997-2014), he served as the inaugural Texas State Historian (2007-2009), and as president of the Texas State Historical Association (2007-2008). He is recipient of the Americanism Medal from the Daughters of the American Revolution, a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association and the Texas Catholic Historical Society, and a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas and the Texas Institute of Letters.

Dr. Joaquin Rivaya-Martínez is an Associate Professor of History at Texas State University. He specializes in the history of the indigenous peoples of the US-Mexico Borderlands and the Great Plains during the 18th and 19th centuries. He has conducted extensive archival research in Mexico, Spain, the United States, and France, accessing a massive corpus of non-English-language original sources, some previously untapped. His research incorporates ethnographic, archaeological, linguistic, and environmental evidence, as well as interviews with contemporary consultants. Numerous institutions have funded his research, including the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Newberry Library, the Philips Fund for Native American Research, the University of California Institute for Mexico and the US (UC MEXUS), UCLA’s Institute of American Cultures, and Mexico’s CONACyT. Dr. Rivaya-Martínez uses qualitative and quantitative analyses to cement his theories, paying attention to indigenous voices and perspectives from the past and from the present. His scholarship focuses primarily on the Comanches, whose actions influenced decisively the history of a vast expanse on both sides of the Rio Grande. He has conducted his research in close contact with members of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma. He is the author of numerous scholarly presentations and essays published in the U.S., Mexico, Spain, Canada, France, and Ecuador. His ongoing book manuscript on pre-reservation Comanche practices of captivity, slavery, and incorporation offers a fresh interpretation of the history of the Comanches and the US-Mexico Borderlands.