Holly M. Karibo is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History at Oklahoma State University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the history of vice, labor, and sexuality in transnational urban spaces from the late-19th century to the present. She is the author of the award-winning book Sin City North: Sex, Drugs, and Citizenship in the Detroit-Windsor Borderland (UNC Press 2015), which examines the history of illegal economies in the Great Lakes border region during the post-World War II period. Karibo is also the co-editor (along with Dr. George T. Díaz, UTRGV) of a collection of essays titled Border Policing: A History of Enforcement and Evasion in North America (University of Texas Press 2020). This volume traces the development of state regulation and policing practices in the US-Canada, US-Mexico, and Indigenous borderlands. Her research has also appeared in numerous journals, including Social History of Medicine, Left History, Journal of the Southwest, Histoire sociale/Social History, American Review of Canadian Studies, and Social History of Alcohol and Drugs. Karibo’s current book project, A New Home on the Range: Addiction, Treatment and Punishment at the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm, examines the intersections of federal drug treatment and incarceration in the American West. 

Noe Perez (b. 1958)

Noe Perez is a contemporary painter living in Corpus Christi. He has painted his native South Texas his entire life. In 2015, he received a commission from King Ranch to create a painting commemorating the one-hundred-year anniversary of the historic Main House. His works have been exhibited in the Witte Museum in San Antonio, the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, the Nave Museum in Victoria, the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University in Waco, and at the Capitol Rotunda in Austin. His paintings have been published in Of Texas Rivers and Texas Art (Texas A&M University Press, 2017), Texas Traditions (Fresno Fine Arts Publications, 2010), King Ranch:A Legacy in Art (Texas A&M University Press, 2021), and The Art of Texas State Parks (Texas A&M University Press, 2023).

Benjamin V. Allison is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where he specializes in US foreign and national security policy since 1945, especially toward the Middle East and Russia. He also studies terrorism. He has written numerous scholarly encyclopedia entries and book reviews, along with three scholarly journal articles, which have been published by Perspectives on Terrorism, the International Centre for Counter-terrorism, and Cold War History. His public-facing work has been published in TIME, Lawfare, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inkstick, and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Alice Embree is a nationally known writer and activist. She was a leader of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Texas, helped launch Austin’s underground newspaper The Rag, and contributed to the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful. She is an editor of Celebrating The Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Newspaper, published in 2016

Andrew M. Busch is an interdisciplinary historian who studies cities, environmental planning, knowledge production, and political economy. He is also an oral historian. Busch received a PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth Century Austin, Texas (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) and co-author of Republic of Barbecue: Stories beyond the Brisket (University of Texas Press, 2009). His new project, High Tech Texas: Public Institutions, Regional Economic Development, and the Myth of Free Markets, is under contract with the University of Texas Press.

Caitlyn is a first-year PhD student in the Department of History, and the Instructional Assistant for the Sharing Stories from 1977 digital humanities project. She is also the former Welcome Wilson Houston History Graduate Assistant in the Center for Public History.

Alejandro Wolbert Pérez is a guest upon unceded Muewekma Ohlone land, where he teaches Ethnic Studies and Xicanx/Latinx Studies at Berkeley City College, and coordinates the Faculty Diversity Internship Program for the Peralta Community College District, in Oakland, California.

A Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellow, he has received an Ivor Guest Research Grant from the Society for Dance Research, as well as a William J. Hill Visiting Researcher Travel Award from Texas State University San Marcos, in support of his ongoing study of conjunto dance, music, and performance venues.

He has published on conjunto dance in The Journal of American Culture, and is currently working on a book manuscript, “Embodiments of Aztlán: Performers, Participants, and Place in the Texas Mexican Conjunto.” Prior to pursing a doctorate, he wrote extensively upon conjunto music and other forms of Xicanx and Latinx cultural expression as a journalist for the San Antonio Current.

Kevin P. McPartland is a PhD student studying Confederate nationalism and Southern identity in the press during the Civil War under Dr. Christopher Phillips. My research focuses on the ways the Southern press helped to create and either sustain or subvert nationalism during the war. While many scholars rely on papers from the large cities in the east, my work looks to examine smaller local papers that were interested in writing for a very local audience about their specific exeperience of the war. I have presented work on the press at the University of Alabama, Louisiana State University, and here at the University of Cincinnati.I graduated from The University of Alabama with my BA in history in 2016 and an MA in history in 2018.

ArCasia D. James-Gallaway, Ph.D., is a proud first-generation college graduate and Waco public schools (WISD) alumnae, whose family born and bred her in Waco, Texas. She is an interdisciplinary historian of education and teacher educator in the Teaching, Learning, and Culture Department at Texas A&M University, where she works as an Assistant Professor, ACES Fellow, and ADVANCE Scholar. Her scholarly aim is to bridge past and present perspectives on African American struggles for educational justice. She earned her PhD in History of Education from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, her master's degree in Education, Culture, and Society from the University of Pennsylvania, and her bachelor's degree from the University of Texas, Austin, where she pursued a dual major in Sociology and History while earning her secondary social studies teacher certification.

Dr. James-Gallaway's research agenda follows three overlapping strands of inquiry: the history of African American education, Black history education, and gendered (anti)Blackness in education. Her work engages critical perspectives and approaches such as critical race theory, Black feminist theory, oral history methodology, and Black Southern epistemology to address questions of systemic domination, oppression, agency, and self-determination relative to African American education.

Dr. James-Gallaway's dissertation, More than Race: Differentiating Black Students' Everyday Experiences in Texas School Desegregation, 1968-1978, was supported in part by a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and won her the Honorable Mention designation for the 2021 Claude A. Eggertsen Dissertation Prize, awarded by the History of Education Society. As a former social studies teacher and current teacher educator, Dr. James-Gallaway's emphasis on social justice broadly and racial justice specifically was recognized by the National Council for Social Studies' College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA), which awarded her the 2021 Kipchoge Neftali Kirkland Social Justice Award for her paper, "I Stay Mad: A Black Woman Social Studies Educator's Fight to be Seen, Heard, and Heeded." Some of her other notable awards include Emerging Gender Researcher by the academic journal Gender, Work, and Organization and an Illinois Distinguished Fellowship. Additionally, she was designated as a member of the University of Michigan's Diversity Scholars Network, which is part of its National Center for Institutional Diversity; a University Council of Educational Administration (UCEA) Barbara L. Jackson Scholar; and a Dean's Centennial Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

Gaila Sims is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She has held positions at several museums, archives, and cultural institutions, including the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, the Bullock Texas State History Museum, and the National Museum of American History. Originally from Riverside, California, she graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in History and African American Studies in 2011.

Her dissertation, Imprimatur of the State: Interpretation of Slavery at American History Museums examines representations of slavery at state history museums in Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

Received her Ph.D. from Texas A & M University. Fulgham is the Division Chair for the Social Sciences Department. Recipient of the Mosal Award and McDonald’s Excellence in Teaching, she has multiple Phi Theta Kappa advisor awards. With 21 published articles and books, Fulgham scores AP U.S. history exams and U.S. Department of State scholarships. She has served on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and Phi Theta Kappa’s Honors Program Council. She teaches World History in the sophomore-level fall Honors seminar.

Derek Xavier Garcia was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of Deep South Texas. However, his research and studies have led him far from the border: from a BA at Amherst College, to a Master’s degree in Civilisation Américaine at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3). He now resides in Montréal, where he is a doctoral student in History at Concordia University. His research focuses on historical Mexican-American and Chicano educational activism in South Texas, with an emphasis on folklore and oral history. His work on folklorist and scholar Américo Paredes has been published in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies and Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies.

Alana de Hinojosa is a doctoral candidate in the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. She is a public historian of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, a human geographer, and poet.

James Bernsen is a native of Castroville, Texas and graduated from Texas A&M University in 1995 with bachelor’s degrees in Journalism and German and from Texas State University in 2016 with a master’s degree in history.

After working as a newspaper reporter in Stephenville, Uvalde and Lake Jackson, he moved into the field of public relations and public policy, working for elected officials at the state and national level, as well as at a public relations agency. As a communications professional, he has appeared in over 250 television interviews on local, state and national news outlets.

After 9/11, Bernsen joined the United States Navy as an intelligence officer. He has been deployed on active duty to Iraq (2007-08), Afghanistan (2017-18) and has served in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Australia. He has been awarded the Defense Meritorious Service Award and the Joint Service Commendation Medal and is a graduate with distinction of the U.S. Naval War College. He continues to serve in the US Navy Reserve.

A lifelong interest in Texas history led him to use his G.I. Bill to obtain a master’s degree in Texas and American History from Texas State University in 2016. His thesis, Origins and Motivations of the Gutiérrez-Magee Filibusters, broke new ground in exploring one of Texas’ most important, but least-understood historical events. He has been published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and Texas Books in Review, and has an article accepted for publication in the near future in the East Texas Historical Journal.

He currently lives in Castroville, Texas.

Cathrine McMahan is a social studies teacher at Levelland Middle School in Levelland, Texas. Mrs. McMahan leads her students in regional competitions for Texas History Day, and consistently has teams place first in their region. Through these projects, her students learn about the tools of a historian’s craft, but they also learn about long term project management in a research setting.

Todd Camp’s journalism career spans more than two decades, including 18 years at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His writing was first recognized when he received a Katy Award for his newspaper column “Confessions of a Gay Eagle Scout.” Outside of his journalistic endeavors, Camp has written and illustrated three graphic novels and seven long-running comic strips. In 1998, he co-founded Q Cinema, Fort Worth’s Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival, for which he served as Artistic Director for 14 years. He’s currently working on two concurrent books on his more than 180-year-old Fort Worth neighborhood, Chase Court, as well as the Tarrant County LGBTQA+ community.

James C. Kearney teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. He is the author of several books and articles on Texas German history, culture, and literature. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas State Historical Association and serves on the advisory board of the German-Texan Heritage Society.

Rebecca Cummings Richardson [Beckie] has been teaching for 25+ years. She currently teaches A.P. U.S. history and A.P. Macroeconomics at Allen High School in Allen, Texas where she serves as Team Lead. Mrs. Richardson has developed numerous strategies and materials that she posts on her website, FFAPUSH.com. She makes her learning materials available to teachers free of charge, and often mentors teachers on how to teach and build historical thinking skills. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of teachers using her materials across the country and abroad. She strongly believes that as educators we should help each other improve as well as helping our students improve. She has also had lessons published in journals such as the Black History Bulletin. The impact of her work includes increased exam scores, higher level skill development among students, increased writing and critical thought, and assisting other teachers in the development of strategies and scaffolding for the vertical alignment of instruction. Beyond her campus, the impact of her work is hard to quantify. A brief internet search will reveal the prevalence of her materials on many school/teachers’ websites. She has helped thousands of teachers and students tackle the challenges of Advanced Placement United States History. Her work also includes serving as a Best Practices presenter and committee member for College Board and guest presenter for the Advanced Placement Summer Institute at Texas Christian University for the past two years. Attendees of her sessions consistently rate her work and presentations highly, resulting in her being asked to return and repeat. Beckie’s work emphasizes skill development, and her goal is to help students and teachers approach education/learning from a “skill based” perspective rather than “content based” perspective. She utilizes a plethora of primary and secondary sources in order to bring history to life and to emphasize skill development. Analyzing documents is one of the best ways to teach students how to become young historians. She believes that students should not be expected to listen to lectures only to be asked to regurgitate information. She believes that students should develop their own opinions/perspectives on history, and not be presented with someone else’s biased view with the expectation that they should absorb and embrace it. These beliefs impact her teaching greatly. She is a wonderful teacher who loves history - celebrates history - and makes a positive difference in the lives of others while also contributing meaningfully to the broader community of history-loving educators

Angus McLeod is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow, and Louis Galambos National Fellow.  His dissertation tells the long history of Texas’ school finance system from the 1820s to the present.  Tracing changes in school fiscal policy highlights the development of state power and democratic decision-making as well as how activists have contested inequalities over time.  Angus grew up in San Marcos, attended the University of Texas, and taught high school social studies in the Rio Grande Valley and Austin.

Lewis F. Fisher is the author of numerous books about San Antonio and Texas, including Greetings from San Antonio: Historic Postcards of the Alamo City, American Venice: The Epic Story of San Antonio’s River, Saving San Antonio: The Preservation of a Heritage, Maverick: The American Name That Became a Legend, Chili Queens, Hay Wagons, and Fandangos, and The Spanish Plazas in Frontier San Antonio. He has received numerous local, state, and national writing awards and was named a Texas Preservation Hero by the San Antonio Conservation Society in 2014.

Lauran Kerr-Heraly is professor of history and Innovation Fellow at Houston Community College. She earned her B.A. and M.A. at Sam Houston State University. She earned her Ph.D. in History and Women’s Studies at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on Black women medical doctors. She is the winner of the Texas State Historical Association’s Randolph B. “Mike” Campbell and Houston Community College’s Teaching Excellence Award. For more information on Kerr-Heraly and her research, including a timeline of Dr. Edith Irby Jones's life, see https://www.laurankerrheraly.com/research. 

Frank Jackson received a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. in Radio-TV-Film from Northwestern. Currently employed by the Turley Law Firm, he has written more than 250 articles for the Hardball Times web site and has also written several articles for the Texas Rangers program magazine. He has been a frequent contributor to Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas.

Sylvia Gann Mahoney, Frisco, Texas, fifth-generation Texan, raised in New Mexico, earned AA at NMJC, BA, MA summa cum laude at ENMU. Taught literature, writing, and research at NM and Texas public schools and colleges. College rodeo coach inducted into the Western Junior College Athletic Hall of Fame. A founder/exec. dir. of Western Heritage Museum/Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame. Rotary co-chair, Marking the Great Western Trail. Two books: College Rodeo: From Show to Sport, Texas A&M Press, 2004; Finding the Great Western Trail, TTU Press, 2015, awarded West Texas Historical Association Best Book of the Year, named WTHA Fellow, and 2024 president WTHA. Past president Texas Folklore Society, life member Texas State Historical Assoc. and elected past trustee of Vernon College Board.

Paul Lucko is Professor Emeritus at Murray State University where he served as Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Social Work from 2015 to 2022. 

Paul received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin.  He has taught at several community colleges, worked for Texas state government agencies, and served as Executive Director of the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society. 

Paul was a consultant and cast member for Susanne Mason’s PBS Writ Writer documentary film production as well as a cast member in the “Prison Labor/Prison Blues” episode of the PBS We do the Work documentary film series.  He also served as a consultant for the chain gang scene in director Simon Callow’s Ballad of the Sad Café movie.

A former research and writing associate for The New Handbook of Texas project, Paul has completed numerous entries for the Handbook.  He also has publications in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, East Texas Historical Journal, Texas Books in Review, Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities, and American Journal of Criminal Law.  

DR. ANNE J. BAILEY is the author of nine books, numerous book chapters, and more than 300 articles and book reviews. She edited the Society of Civil War Historians Newsletter for almost twenty-five years, and the Georgia Historical Quarterly for ten years. She has taught at Texas Tech University, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and in the University of Georgia system. She resides in Cleburne, Texas.

Kay C. Goldman’s fascination with history began in the eighth grade when her teacher took the class to the oldest cemetery in Shreveport, Louisiana. Kay learned to scour the tombstones for information and became hooked on not only visiting cemeteries but also on historical research. While raising her two daughters, she began documenting her family history in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas and read all the books she could find on Southern Jewish history. Because historians had written little about that topic during the 1970s and 1980s, the list was short.  Thus, when she returned to college to earn a master’s degree, she knew exactly what she wanted to write about: the Jews of Texas. Her master’s thesis documented nineteenth century Jews who lived along a trading route between Indianola, Texas, and San Antonio.  After completing that work at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, she earned a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in College Station. Her dissertation discussed how nineteenth century Texas Jews –primarily businessmen—merged into Texas society. In 2013, Texas Tech University Press published her book, Dressing Modern Maternity: The Frankfurt Sisters of Dallas and the Page Boy Label, which relates the story of three Texas Jewish women who began manufacturing maternity dresses in Dallas during the depression and continued their business through the early 1990s.  That manuscript won the initial Lou Halsall Rodenberger Prize in Texas History and Literature. Kay’s chapter “On Becoming Texans: Nineteenth-Century Jewish Immigrants Claim Their German Identity” was included in Texan Identities: Moving Beyond Myth, Memory, and Fallacy in Texas History published by The University of North Texas Press. Although retired, Kay is currently working on another manuscript about nineteenth century Jews who lived in the Texas and the Southwest.  She hopes to document how the Jewish holiday of Purim was celebrated in the Southwest and how their celebrations differed from those in larger cities. She and her husband live in Houston, Texas.    

Sheena Cox is a Borderlands Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research is focused on the Liberal Enlightenment in Texas, and its impact on Indigenous relations with Tejanos and Mexicans, 1810-1839. In addition to her dissertation research, Sheena is also dedicated to public history and historic preservation through projects with the Bullock Texas State History Museum and the Texas Historical Commission. From 2019-2021, Sheena worked as the coordinator for TSHA's annual meeting program. She has served as a graduate research assistant for the Handbook of Texas, and as a processing intern for the Handbook of Texas Women and Handbook of Dallas Fort-Worth Handbook projects.  

Brian A. Stauffer is the Director of Public Services and the author of Victory on Earth or in Heaven: Mexico’s Religionero Rebellion.

Anneleise Azua is a PhD Candidate in American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin specializing in twentieth-century US and Mexican medical history.

Nathan Ellstrand is a PhD candidate in History at Loyola University Chicago.  Among various topics, he is interested in United States-Latin American transnational history, ideology, and borderlands.