Three Questions is an initiative to share the value that our faculty, students, and external patrons derive from using the Portal to Texas History at UNT Libraries.
1. How important is the Portal in your teaching, learning or research?
As a Texas historian, I have been a regular — and often daily — visitor to the site since it first went online twenty years ago. My own area of research is the 19th century, and I have come to rely heavily on the Portal, and particularly its digital newspaper collection. Combing through old newspapers used to be an incredibly arduous and time-consuming process, requiring countless hours at archives or on microfilm machines. By collecting and digitizing newspapers from across the state, the Portal is nothing less than an indispensable resource for scholars of Texas history using print media in their research. What’s more, the Portal is much more user-friendly than other digital newspaper sites, one that students find accessible as well.
2. How has the Portal changed the way you approach your research, teaching or learning?
As a pedagogical tool, the Portal is essential for anyone teaching Texas history at the college level. I offer a research course at UT Arlington for undergraduate history majors, and last year students were tasked with writing an in-depth paper on a particular Texas monument. Some chose one of the many Confederate veterans’ memorials erected in towns and cities in the early 20th century, while others examined statues built to celebrate the state’s centennial anniversary in 1936. All these construction projects received considerable attention in the local press, so the Portal’s digital newspaper collection was invaluable, allowing students to get a real sense of what each monument meant to their respective communities when they were being built. Several told me that researching local newspapers via the Portal was their favorite part of the course.
3. What do you want others to know about your research, teaching or learning?
In 2015 I began work on a digital humanities project, Texas in Turmoil: Interethnic Violence, 1821-1879, which seeks to map sites of conflict in Texas from the Mexican republic to the end of the so-called Indian Wars. Texas was one of the most ethnically diverse regions in North America during much of this period, and this project has enabled me, and I hope will enable other historians, to better understand how the many peoples of Texas fought for land, resources and power. In my research I have drawn from historical monographs, local county histories, archival materials at the Texas State Library and the National Archives, and, of course, the Portal’s newspaper collection. When complete, the Texas in Turmoil project will have mapped more than 3,000 sites of conflict in nineteenth century Texas involving Anglo-Americans, Native Americans, Hispano Americans, and those of African descent. I am hopeful that the website will provide scholars and teachers with new ways to understand and visualize the interethnic and interracial struggles that represent such a conspicuous and protracted feature of the state’s early modern past.
