The University of Houston Department of History offers a challenging array of lectures, workshops, and other historical presentations for its students, faculty, the University, and the wider community. The department works with other campus organizations and local entities to bring distinguished historians and other well-known speakers to the University of Houston while simultaneously creating opportunities for our graduate students to share their exciting research.Since 2002, for example, the Department has hosted an annual Mexican American History Workshop in conjunction with the UH Center for Mexican American Studies. Gerald Horne, the Moores Professor of History and African American Studies, has sponsored a series of presentations by leading archivists. In 2005, the Department welcomed the 2005 meeting of the American Society for Environmental History that drew almost 400 scholars from around the world and launched the annual Houston Phi Alpha Theta Consortium with the initial meeting of graduate and undergraduate students from local institutions.
The Project for the Active Teaching of History (PATH), a collaboration between the Department of History, the UH College of Education, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Region IV Education Service Center, promotes increased historical understanding through summer seminars and public lectures. Recent speakers in this program have included historians Eric Foner and Howard Zinn, filmmaker Spike Lee, and noted singer and Civil Rights activist Odetta.
Inaugurated in 1986 and administered by the UH Center for Public History, the Tenneco Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible by grants from Tenneco, Inc. and the National Endowment for the Humanities. To support our teaching, research and outreach missions, the Tenneco Lecture Series has sponsored several symposia and conferences on issues as wide-ranging as “Houston in Search of Vision” and “Dumps, Landfills and the Neighborhood.” Past speakers in the Tenneco Lecture Series include Robert Caro, Henry Cisneros, Norman Cousins, David McCullough, Elie Wiesel, Cornel West, Daniel Yergin, Lynton Caldwell, and Alfred Kahn among others. A list of past Tenneco conferences, symposia, and speakers follows.
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RECENT EVENTS SPONSORED OR CO-SPONSORED BY THE UH DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, TENNECO LECTURE SERIES, AND PATH
April 2008
Sterling Evans, Brandon University
"Nothing New About NAFTA: The History of Commodities and Interconnections in Mexico, the United States, and Canada"
April 2008
Paul Sutter, University of Georgia
"Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Georgia's 'Little Grand Canyon' and Conversation in the South"
March 2008
Deirdre Moloney, George Mason University
"National Insecurities: U.S. Immigrants and Deportation Policy Since 1882"
March 2008
C. Stephen Jaeger, University of Illinois
"Charisma and its Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Death of a Religious Leader and his Postmortem Authority"
March 2008
Andrew Sandoval-Strausz, University of New Mexico
"A History of American Hospitality: The Importance of Accommodating Strangers"
November 2007
Michael Botson, Houston Community College
"Labor, Civil Rights and the Hughes Tool Company"
October 2007
Greg Grandin, New York University
"Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism"
October 2007
James Carter, Texas A & M, Corpus Christi
"Inventing Vietname: Lessons in Nation Building from a Forgotten Example"
October 2007
Susan Ferber, Oxford University Press
"Publishing History"
October 2007
Dominque Barthelemy, University of Paris-Sorbonne
"The Origins of French Chivalry"
April 2007
Michael Olivas, University of Houston Law Center
"Colored Men and Hombres Aqui"
April 2007
Carlos Monsivais
"Imagenes de la tradicion viva en Mexico"
(co-sponsored by Tenneco Lecture Series
and UH Dep. of Modern/Classical Languages)
April 2007
Michael Gelting, Senior Research/Archivist, Danish National Archives
"Reason and Black Death: Coping with Plague in the Fourteenth Century"
April 2007
Third Annual Houston-Area Phi Alpha Theta Consortium
April 2007
Cynthia Radding, Latin American and Iberian Institute, University of Mexico
"Environmental History in Colonial Mexico and Bolivia"
March 2007
Wendy Martinek, Binghamton University
"The Strategy of Dissent on the U.S. Court of Appeals"
(co-sponsored by the Tenneco Lecture Series
and the Program for Empirical Studies)
March 2007
Michael Watts, African Studies, University of California, Berkeley
"Rethinking the Resource Course: Oil Insurgency
and the Conflict in the Niger Delta"
(co-sponsored by the Tenneco Lecture Series
and Houston Area African Studies Group)
March 2007
Jay Hakes, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
(co-sponsored by Tenneco Lecture Series)
November 2006
Arthur McEvoy, University of Wisconsin Law School
"The New Legal Realism"
(co-sponsored by Tenneco Lecture Series
and the Program for Empirical Legal Studies)
November 2006
Thomas Cole, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston
"The Strange Demise of Jim Crow"
(co-sponsored by UH Honors College and Tenneco Lecture Series)
October 2006
James Scott, Yale University
"Why Civilizations Can't Climb Hills:
Hills and Valleys in Mainland Southeast Asia"
September 2006
Douglas Seefeldt, University of Nebraska
"History in the Digital Age"
(co-sponsored by Tenneco Lecture Series)
September 2006
Susan Ferber, Oxford University Press
"Everything You Wanted to Know about Academic Publishing
and Were Afraid to Ask"
(co-sponsored by Tenneco Lecture Series)
June 2006
"Southwest Vistas: The Border in American History"
NEH Teachers Institute in conjunction with Humanities Texas
April 2006
Fifth Annual Mexican-American History Workshop
April 2006
Stefania Barca
Universitario Suor Orsola and Visiting Fellow in Agrarian Studies, Yale University
"Emodying Environmental History: Labor, Health, and Social Struggle in Italy, 1958-2000"
April 2006
Marco Armiero
Institute of Mediterranean Studies and National Council for Scientific Research (Naples)
"Looking for a Common Ground: Social History, Environmental History, and the Study of Conflicts"
February 2006
Mark Bixler, author, The Lost Boys of Sudan, and Jerry Fowler, U.S. Holocaust Museum "The Imperative to Act: Darfur and Sudan"
February 2006
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Historian and Activist
"Sandinistas, Miskito Indians, and the Contra War: A Case Study in the History of Nationalism, Indigenism, and U.S. Imperialism in Latin America"
October 2005
Texas Medieval Association Annual Meeting
October 2005
"21st-Century Motherhood: Change"
Conference co-hosted with UH Women's Studies Program
May 2005
Fourth Annual Mexican-American History Workshop
April 2005
John Turtino Georgetown University
"New Spain, Mexico, and the United States: Rethinking the History of North America"
April 2005
William O. Walker III, University of Toronto
"Cuban Communists and Columbian Cocaine: The United States and Identity Formation in Latin America since 1960"
April 2005
Jay Rubenstein, University of New Mexico
"Chroniclers of the First Crusade: Stories of the Clash of Cultures at the End of Time"
April 2005
First Regional Conference for Graduate and Undergraduate Students, Phi Alpha Theta
March 2005
American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting
February 2005
James H. Jones, Author and Historian
"Science in the Bedroom: Alfred C. Kinsey and the Rise of Scientific Research on Human Sexuality"
February 2005
Odetta, Folk Music Legend and Civil Rights Activist
"Songs for Social Change"
October 2004: Tenneco Community Symposium: "Families in Crisis"
October 2004
Andrew Sandoval-Strausz, University of Mexico
"For the Accommodation of Strangers: the Invention of the American Hotel"
2004-2005: Are the Answers in the Archives?
Patricia Bozeman, University of Houston Library
Cathleen Baird, Conrad Hilton College, Library & Hospitality Industry Archives, University of Houston
William Gibbs, Indiana Historical Society
Phyllis Earles, Prairie View A&M University
Nurah-Rosalie Jeter, Schomburg Center
Will Howard, Houston Public Library
Lisa May, Diocese of Galveston-Houston
May 2004
Third American Mexican-American History Workshop
April 2004
Spike Lee, Filmmaker
November 2003
A Debate with Benjamin L. Hooks, Civil Rights Leader, and Linda Chaves, Center for Equal Opportunity
"Affirmative Action - Is it still needed?"
November 2003
Southern Historical Association Conference
October 2003
"Bringing Science to Life: Finding a Language for the Mind"
October 2003
Southwest Conference on Asian Studies
September 2003
Howard Zinn, Columbia University
"America Today and America Past"
May 2003
Mexican American History Workshop
April 2003
Kevin Phillips, author, Washington D.C.
"Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich"
April 2003
National Council on Public History Annual Meeting
April 2003: School of Theatre
Arnold Aronson, Columbia University of School of the Arts
"Looking Into the Abyss: Reflections on Scenographic Space"
Mary Henderson, author, New York
"Early 20th century American Scene Design"
February 2003: School of Music (co-sponsor)
Otis Murphy, alto saxophone, Indiana University
Recital and Master Class
William H. Street, saxophone, University of Alberta
Roger Admiral, piano, University of Alberta
Jean-Marie Londeix, saxophone
Recital, Master Class, Lecture
Michael Brecker, tenor saxophone
Texas Music Festival Jazz Project
February 2003
Roman de la Campa, SUNY at Stony Brook
Symposium: Building a Latin American Studies Program
February 2003: Department of Chemical Engineering (co-sponsor)
John Villadsen, National Technical University of Denmark
"The Impact of Chemical Engineering on Bio-Reaction Engineering"
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PAST TENNECO SPONSORED LECTURES, WORKSHOPS, AND CONFERENCES
1986-1991
1992-1997
1998-2002
