Newsletter Archive

2008-09 Events

Benefactors, Advisors & Staff

Community Fellows

Consortium for Southwest Studies

RESEARCH & STUDIES

Research Fellows

Ph.D. program

Graduate Students Research Grants

Dissertation Fellowship

Clements Center-DeGolyer Library Research Grants

Call for Papers!

PUBLICATIONS

Books on Southwestern American

Library of Texas

Clements Book Prize

PUBLIC EVENTS

Symposium

Brown Bags

Current Events

Lectures

LINKS

SMU Department of History

Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences

Links to SMU Resources Related to the Southwest

Links to Associations, Centers and Societies related to the Southwest

Links to Libraries, Archives and Reference sites related to the Southwest

Links to Museums related to the Southwest

Links to Publications & Journals related to the Southwest 

Links to sites related to Mexico

Links to Other Fellowship Opportunities

Texas State Historical Association Awards and Fellowships

Other Fellowship Opportunities

Former Texas Governor WILLIAM P. CLEMENTS  has long been fascinated with the American Southwest and the borderlands. In 1995 he embraced the idea of starting a research center at SMU that would advance scholarship in this region. His support materialized in two ways: the creation of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies and the creation of a Ph.D. program in the History Department that would prepare future scholars to deepen our understanding of the region. In 1996 the Clements Center opened its doors, and in 1998 the History Department welcomed the first Ph.D. students.

Governor Clements was the founder of SEDCO, one of the world’s largest drilling contractors. He was U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense (1973–76) and served twice as governor of Texas (1979–83 and 1987–91), the first Republican governor since Reconstruction. His ties to SMU extend over many years. Among his generous gifts, he made it possible for SMU to acquire and sustain a summer campus at Fort Burgwin, near Taos, New Mexico. From this significant historical and archaeological location to the development of young scholars in the History Department, to the scholarly research, publishing, and programs of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies, the governor’s dream continues to come true.

DAVID J. WEBER, Director, and Robert and Nancy Dedman Professor of History at Southern Methodist University, is author of a number of prize-winning books, including: The Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade in the Far Southwest (1971), Foreigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans (1973), The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846 (1982), Richard H. Kern: Expeditionary Artist in the Far Southwest (1985), The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992), and Bárbaros. Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (2005).  Named one of the "notable books" of 1992 by the New York Times, The Spanish Frontier won several awards, among them the "Spain and America" prize from the Spanish Ministry of Culture.  Barbaros won the American Historical Association’s 2006 J. E. Fagg Prize for the best book on Spain, Portugal, or Latin America.  Weber has been a Fulbright-Hays Lecturer in Costa Rica and a visiting professor at Harvard University.  He has held fellowships from the Huntington Library, the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the Beinecke Library at Yale. He is a past president of the Western History Association and the only American historian elected to membership in both the Mexican Academy of History and the Society of American Historians.  In May 2003, he was knighted by the order of the King of Spain, receiving the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel La Catolica.  In February 2005, Weber was named to membership in the Orden Mexicana del Aguila Azteca (the Order of the Aztec Eagle), the highest award the Mexican government bestows on foreign nationals.  In 2007 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

SHERRY L. SMITH, Associate Director of the Clements Center and University Distinguished Professor of History at Southern Methodist University.  She is President of the Western History Association, 2008-09.  Her work rests at the intersection of western, Native Americans, and U.S. cultural history. Smith's book, Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940, won the Organization of American Historians James A. Rawley Prize for the best book on race relations in 2001.  She coordinated the 2001 Clements Center Symposium on "The Future of the Southern Plains" and edited the books of essays that resulted.  Smith organized, with former Clements Center Fellow Brian Frehner, the 2008 symposium "Indians and Energy: Exploitation and Energy in the American Southwest."  SAR Press will publish that symposium's book, which she is co-editing with Frehner, in 2009.  Her other publications include: Sagebrush Soldier: Private William Earl Smith's View of the Sioux War of 1876 and The View from Officers' Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians.  Sherry received her M.A. degree at Purdue University and her Ph.D. at the University of Washington.  She arrived at SMU in the fall of 1999, after teaching for twelve years at the University of Texas, El Paso.  She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers in 1996-97 and has also held a Fulbright Foundation Senior Lectureship (New Zealand) and an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the Huntington Library.  Her teaching interests include the American West and American Indians.  Smith explores issues regarding constructions of race and ethnicity, and the implications for American thought and identity as well as for Indian policy. 

BENJAMIN H. JOHNSON, Associate Director of the Clements Center and Associate Professor of History at Southern Methodist University.  He is a specialist in both borderlands and environmental history.  He collaborated with photographer Jeffrey Gusky on Bordertown:  The Odyssey of An American Place (2008) and is the author of Revolution in Texas:  How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans (2003).  Johnson organized the 2006-7 Clements Symposium, Bridging National Borders in North America, with former Clements Center Fellow Andrew Graybill, which resulted in a volume to be published by Duke University Press.  His other publications include the edited volumes Making of the American West:  People and Perspectives and Steal This University:  The Labor Movement and the Corporatization of Higher Education, as well as numerous articles and chapters on environmental history.  Along with former Clements Center Fellow Pekka Hämäläinen, he is in the process of editing Major Problems in North American Borderlands History.  A native of Houston, Ben received his B.A. from Carleton College and his Ph.D. from Yale University.  He arrived at SMU in the fall of 2002, after a post doctoral fellowship at Caltech and teaching for a year at the University of Texas at San Antonio.  Johnson has received fellowships from the Beinecke Library, the Mellon Foundation, the Marshall Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Huntington Library, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  He is currently at work on a history of the Progressive-Era environmental politics for Yale University Press.

ANDREA BOARDMAN, Executive Director, arrived at the Clements Center in 2001, after earning an M.A. in American History at SMU in 1999. Her B.A. was in Spanish Literature from Wheaton College (Mass.). Early in her career she lived and worked in Mexico, arriving on an internship for a Masters program in non-profit administration run by the Experiment in International Living. She stayed to work as a translator for the International Olympic Committee in Mexico City and continued as a freelancer. Returning to the U.S. in 1974, she entered the fields of corporate communications and public broadcasting, winning numerous awards as a writer and producer. In 1995 she joined the writer/producer team that created the Emmy Award-winning PBS production The U.S.-Mexican War, 1846 -1848, and also designed and co-wrote the accompanying classroom curriculum package. From 1999-2001 she was the researcher for Shaping America: U.S. History to 1877, a 26-part national distance-learning telecourse for the Dallas County Community College District. Also, she researched, wrote the catalogue, and curated the SMU DeGolyer Library’s 2001 exhibition, Destination México-"A Foreign Land a Step Away": U.S. Tourism to Mexico, 1880s to 1950s  Later, working with the Texas Council for the Humanities, she transformed this project into a national traveling educational exhibition. In 2005 she contributed an essay, “The U.S.–Mexican War and the Beginnings of American Tourism to Mexico,” for a forthcoming book, edited by Dina Berger and Andrew Wood: Holiday in Mexico: Essays on Tourism and Tourist Encounters.

RUTH ANN ELMORE  has been with the Clements Center since 2002.  Prior to joining the Clements Center, she worked as the registrar for a major contemporary art gallery in Dallas, and with artists, galleries and consultants in the greater Dallas area.  She has also worked with various public and private community organizations handling their publicity and media relations. The Clements Center's "storefront" is their web site, newsletter and brochure, which she is continuously updating with news about the Center's fellows, activities and opportunities.  She also coordinates all of the center's public events, lectures and symposia.  In addition, she co-edits the newsletter and brochure, and oversees the production of specialized books and publications through academic support and research. She earned her B.F.A. in Studio Art and B.A. in Art History at SMU and is now pursuing her masters degree in Art History.  As a native Dallasite and an SMU alumna, she is a font of knowledge about local people and resources.

Directions and maps to sites frequently used for Clements Center events at SMU.

Visitor Parking at SMU.

E-mail us at swcenter@mail.smu.edu

Last updated September 12, 2008.

Bill Clements

Texian to his Toenails
by Carolyn Barta

Selected Books Written by Advisors and Staff of the Clements Center

Mulattas and Mestizas
Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas, 1850-2000
by Suzanne Bost

Teaching Mexican American History
by John Chavez

Revolution in Texas
by Benjamin H. Johnson



Bordertown: The Odyssey of an American Place
by Benjamin H. Johnson

Holy Day, Holiday:
The American Sunday
by Alexis McCrossen
 

Reimagining Indians: Native Americans Through Anglo Eyes,
by Sherry Smith

Ad Idahi Nili
by Philip Van Keuren

The Spanish Frontier in North America
by David J. Weber

America Past and Present, Vol. II, by Hal Williams, et al

Destination Mexico: "A Foreign Land a Step Away":  U.S. Tourism Tourism to Mexico, 1880s-1950s , by Andrea Boardman