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2007-2008 Bill Clements Dissertation
Fellowships
MATTHEW BABCOCK
“Turning Apaches into Spaniards: North
America’s Forgotten Indian Reservations”
Babcock's dissertation addresses the
unrecognized historical experience of
thousands of Apaches who settled on
reservations near Spanish presidios a
century before Geronimo's surrender in 1886.
Challenging the Apache as relentless
warrior stereotype, this study examines
Apache motives for making and maintaining
peace and reveals that Apache men and women
were also adept at trade, diplomacy, and
agriculture. Moving beyond the familiar
role of the presidio as a garrisoned fort
for fighting Indians, it explains how
Spanish officers transformed these military
bases into Indian agencies for incorporating
Apaches, which they called
establecimientos (establishments or
settlements). Finally, it explores the
reasons for the system's decline and
collapse under Mexican control from
1821-1831 and the short and long-term
effects of this experience on Apache and
Hispanic culture.
For more information about Matt Babcock,
click here.
HELEN McLURE
“‘I Suppose You Think Strange the Murder of
Women and Children’: White-capping and
Lynching in the American West, 1850-1930”
McLure’s dissertation examines the
victimization and participation of women and
juveniles in lynching, vigilantism, and
non-lethal mob violence in the U.S. West and
Southwest between 1850 and 1930. Most
studies of lynching have either focused on
the South, or have glorified Western
lynching as a necessary response to the
naturally lawless and violent conditions of
the frontier. This project addresses several
methodological problems, such as the
traditional chronology of lynching, that
have tended to obscure a complete portrait
of the long and constantly-shifting history
of collective violence in the United States.
In addition to a focus on gender and age,
this study seeks to move beyond the
customary racial, ethnicity, class, and
geographical boundaries of much of the
scholarship. It also analyzes the cultural
context of mob violence, particularly the
relationship between what anti-lynching
activist Ida B. Wells called the lynching “programme,”
and other collective rituals such as
charivaris that survived in many areas until
at least the 1920s.
For more information about Helen McLure,
click here. |
