DissertationFellowship

In honor of Governor Clements' ninetieth birthday in 2007, two anonymous donors have generously underwritten this dissertation fellowship for five years to be awarded to qualified SMU doctoral students in the Clements Department of History.

The first year of the fellowship two awards were given; the remaining years only one fellowship will be awarded. This fellowship will be awarded to the student who has the greatest potential to write an outstanding dissertation with an additional year of research and writing. If no student qualifies in a particular year, no fellowship will be awarded.

Recipients will receive a living allowance and a travel/research fund so that they can devote full time to complete their dissertation and must graduate at the end of their fellowship year.

SMU doctoral students from the Clements Department of History who wish
to considered for this fellowship should contact:
Sherry Smith, Associate Director of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies.

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Announcing the 2008-2009 Bill Clements Dissertation Fellowship

JOSÉ GABRIEL MARTÍNEZ SERNA

"The Society of Jesus, Viticulture, and the Rise and Decline of an Indian Frontier Town:
Santa María de las Parras, Nueva Vizcaya, 1598-1822"
Martínez-Serna’s dissertation is a frontier community development study of the town of Parras during the colonial period. Located in what it today northeastern Mexico, Parras was founded as a Jesuit mission to the Lagunero Indians, and the Society of Jesus was a crucial player in the various stages of the economic, social, and cultural history of this frontier community . The Indians of Parras, through their town council and the help of the Society, retained the legal title to vineyards and water rights granted to the mission by the Spanish king at the time of its founding. This created a highly unusual situation whereby the town’s Indians were wealthier and politically more powerful than most of the community’s Spaniards. With its balmy weather and water springs, Parras became a thriving frontier community supplying agricultural products to mining centers farther west, and the viticulture hub of New Spain, its wine and brandy consumed in the vast region between Zacatecas, San Antonio, Texas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The study merges the historiography of colonial Mexico with the frontier historiography of the American Southwest, geographically and methodologically bridging these often mutually exclusive schools.

For more information about Gabriel Martínez-Serna, click here.

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.

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Last updated April 24, 2008.