Paper Trails: The U.S. Post and the Making of the American West

Dallas Hall 306 (McCord Auditorium) 3225 University Blvd, Dallas, TX, United States

   A Preview Interview with Dr. Cameron Blevins A groundbreaking history of how the U.S. Post made the nineteenth-century American West. Join us as historian Cameron Blevins discusses his latest book, Paper Trails: The U.S. Post and the Making of the American West, on the pivotal role of the U.S. postal service during the country's expansion west. […]

LIVE Finale! – Presidential Crises Podcast

Zoom Webinar

With political gridlock in Washington DC at an all time high, government shutdowns--or the threat of them--have become a routine occurrence. National parks close. Federal paychecks stop going out. The National Institute of Health stops admitting new patients. How did we get to the point where it has become normal for the US Government to […]

The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America

Dallas Hall 306 (McCord Auditorium) 3225 University Blvd, Dallas, TX, United States

  Join us as historian Sarah Coleman recounts the numerous battles over US immigrants’ rights since 1965―and how these conflicts reshaped access to education, employment, civil liberties, and more. The 1965 Hart-Celler Act transformed the American immigration system by abolishing national quotas in favor of a seemingly egalitarian approach. But subsequent demographic shifts resulted in […]

A Politics For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality

Dallas Hall 306 (McCord Auditorium) 3225 University Blvd, Dallas, TX, United States

  A Preview Interview with Dr. Dorothy Sue Cobble       Drawing on her acclaimed new book, For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality, Dorothy Sue Cobble will discuss how American women moved the nation and the world toward inclusion and equality.  For the Many: American Feminists and the […]

On Juneteenth

Mack Ballroom (Umphrey Lee Center, SMU) 3300 Dyer St, Dallas, TX

Join us as the essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, is told by a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native, Annette Gordon-Reed. Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins […]

Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor during World War II

Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum 300 N Houston St, Dallas, TX, United States

A Preview Interview with Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz Join us as author Stephanie D. Hinnershitz recasts the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II as a history of prison labor and exploitation. Following Franklin Roosevelt's 1942 Executive Order 9066, which called for the exclusion of potentially dangerous groups from military […]

Dewey Defeats Truman: The 1948 Election and the Battle for America’s Soul

Dallas Hall 306 (McCord Auditorium) 3225 University Blvd, Dallas, TX, United States

  Join us as New York Times best-selling author A. J. BAIME tells the thrilling tale of the 1948 presidential election, one of the greatest election stories of all time, as Truman mounted a history-making comeback and staked a claim for a new course for America. On the eve of the 1948 election, America was […]

Red, Blue, and Brown: Tejano History, Politics, and the 2022 Election

Dallas Hall 306 (McCord Auditorium) 3225 University Blvd, Dallas, TX, United States

  Election seasons have always been filled with political and partisan appeals to various groups of people: special interest groups, religious organizations, ethnic voting blocs, and more. One group which has received a dramatic increase in political and journalistic attention over the last few years are Tejanos: Texans of Mexican or Hispanic descent. Much digital […]

Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas

Dallas Hall 306 (McCord Auditorium) 3225 University Blvd, Dallas, TX, United States

  The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam Houston, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis fought to free Texas from repressive Mexican rule. In Unsettled Land (Basic, 2022), historian Sam Haynes reveals the reality beneath this powerful creation myth. He shows how the lives of ordinary people—white Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, and those […]

Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s

Dallas Hall 306 (McCord Auditorium) 3225 University Blvd, Dallas, TX, United States

  The Center for Presidential History welcomes Nicole Hemmer (Vanderbilt University) as she discusses her new book Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s . Hemmer offers a bold new history of modern conservatism that finds its origins in the populist right-wing politics of the 1990s. Ronald Reagan has long been lionized for building a conservative coalition sustained by an optimistic vision […]