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benjamin l. brown
email:
bbrown@smu.edu
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Educational Background
I am a Fort Worth resident
and commute to SMU weekly. My passion for
history began during my undergraduate years
and led me to SMU to further my education
and experience in the field. The student
cohort and faculty assistance I have found
at SMU has been awesome during my first year
within the M.A. program.
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Research
Interests:
I entered the
program with no solid direction for my research, but
throughout the courses completed during my first
semesters, I have been exposed to a plethora of stellar
scholarly work on the American West, which has become my
major field of interest. While finishing up my
coursework during the Fall of 2011, I am also focusing
in on a thesis topic. My current topic deals with the
role of barbed wire in the West, more specifically the
Texas panhandle. As barbed wire spread west across
America, it fundamentally reshaped not only the plains
environment, but social relations and power dynamics
within the region. I hope that my thesis will reveal
just how disruptive and transformative barbed wire was
not only to the land it would fence off, but to the
people's lifestyle and economies that were caught up in
the fencing frenzy that took place between 1875 and
1900.
Last updated 10/11.
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