Life Along the Border: A Landmark Tejana Thesis / Edition 1

by Jovita González, María Eugenia Cotera

Overview

The 1929 master's thesis of folklorist, Jovita Gonzalez has served as source material on the Texas-Mexican borderlands for more than seventy-five years but has never before been published. When Gonzalez decided to pursue a master's degree in history from the University of Texas, she was already the vice-president and president-elect of the Texas Folklore Society. Despite this, she wrote a defiant master's thesis that offered a competing vision of Texas history and culture to that promoted by the founding fathers of Texas folklore. Her complex analysis de-emphasizes the role of the Texas Revolution in Texas history and explores the ways in which Anglos and Mexicans developed tense ties following the U.S.-Mexico War. Her approach to Texas history elegantly counters the rhetoric of dominance of the established historians of the American West of her time. Gonzalez's thesis is now available for the first time to a wider reading public, especially those who value a Tejana legacy that presents the borderlands as a crucible in which a new kind of identity is being formed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781585445646
Publisher:	Texas A&M University Press
Publication date:	09/07/2006
Series:	Elma Dill Russell Spencer Series in the West and Southwest , #26
Edition description:	Annotated
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

JOVITA GONZÁLEZ was and educator, folklorist, and historian who received her master's degree in history in 1930 from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a protégé of J. Frank Dobie and a Rockefeller grant award recipient.
 

Editorial Reviews

This study is badly needed, for as many scholars have noted, the current status of Lation/Hispanic studies in the U.S. remains bereft of specific Tejano and Mexican-American studies based in Texas. Gonzalez’s thesis still stands today as a viable, important document. . .”--C. Jan Swearingen, Professor of English, Texas A&M University

C. Jan Swearingen