Presenters

Dr. Kenneth W. Howell

Professor and History Department Head
Blinn College, Social Sciences Division

Kenneth W. Howell received his B.S. degree in history from the University of Texas— Tyler, his M. A. degree in history from Texas A&M University—Commerce, and his Ph. D. in history from Texas A&M University in College Station.  He taught for twelve years in the Texas public school system before becoming an Assistant Professor of History at Prairie View A&M University in the fall of 2004.  Howell has also taught at Texas A&M University (College Station), North Harris Montgomery Community College (now Lone Star College—Montgomery Campus), and Trinity Valley Community College.  He currently serves as a Professor of History and Head of the History Department at Blinn College.  Howell has several publications that focus on history of Texas and the Old South, including Henderson County, Texas, 1846-1861: An Antebellum History (Eakin Press, 1999), The Devil’s Triangle: Ben Bickerstaff, Northeast Texans, and the War of Reconstruction (Best of East Texas Publisher, 2007, reprint University of North Texas, 2019), Texas Confederate, Reconstruction Governor: James Webb Throckmorton (Texas A&M University Press, 2008), Beyond Myths and Legends: A Narrative History of Texas, 7th edition (Abigail Press, 2023), Seventh Star of the Confederacy: Texas During the Civil War, ed. (University of North Texas Press, 2009), Still the Arena of Civil War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865—1874 (University of North Texas Press, 2012, Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836-1845 (University of Texas Press, 2017), “George Adams: A Cowboy All His Life,” in Black Cowboy of Texas, ed. Sarah Massey (Texas A&M University Press, 2000), “Black Women in the Modern Era, 1974-2000” in African American Women in Texas: A Collaborative History, eds. Bruce Glasrud and Meriline Pitre (Texas A&M University Press, 2008), and “When the Rabble Hiss, Well May Patriots Tremble”: James Webb Throckmorton and the Secession Movement in Texas, 1845-1861,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly (April 2006). Additionally, Howell has published numerous articles and book reviews in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, East Texas State Historical Journal, Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South, The Southern Historian, West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, the Journal of South Texas, Diálogos Latinamericanos, and Central Texas Studies: The Journal of the Central Texas Historical Association.

Dr. Kenneth R. Stevens

Professor of History, Texas Christian University

Kenneth Stevens is a professor of history at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. After serving four years in the U.S. Navy, Dr. Stevens returned to academia to pursue his Ph.D. at Indiana University, where he also worked as an editorial assistant at the American Historical Review. Books he has authored include two volumes of the Diplomatic Papers of Daniel Webster, and an annotated bibliography of President William Henry Harrison. At TCU he teaches courses in U.S. Constitutional History, the American Presidency, and the Age of Jackson.

Dr. Joseph G. “Chip” Dawson III

Professor Emeritus of History, Texas A&M University

Professor Joseph G. Dawson III taught at Texas A&M University in College Station from 1985 to his retirement in 2018. During 2012-2013 he served as the Charles B. Ewing Chair and Visiting Professor of History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Dawson was honored to be selected as a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association in 2013. His publications include an essay on “The Army of the Texas Republic,” in Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, edited by Kenneth Howell and Charles Swanlund (2017), and an essay about Texas on the eve of the Second World War in Texas and Texans in World War II, edited by Christopher Bean (2022). Among his other publications, Dawson edited The Texas Military Experience: From the Texas Revolution through World War II (1995). He earned his Ph.D. in History from Louisiana State University in 1978.

Dr. James C. Kearney

Assistant Professor of Instruction, University of Texas

Dr. Kearney grew up on a historic Colorado County Ranch between Weimar and Columbus where he still makes his home with his wife of forty years, Paulina van Bavel. They have three grown children. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1969 with a dual major in History and German literature. Thereafter he was drafted and served as a combat medic in Vietnam.  He subsequently received his Ph.D. from the Department of Germanic Studies at UT and taught German at Katy High School for a number of years.  He teaches an upper division course on European immigration to Texas in the 19th century. He is the author of four books: Nassau Plantation; The Evolution of a Texas German Slave Plantation, (University of North Texas Press, 2009) and Friedrichsburg; The Colony of the German Fürstenverein, (University of Texas Press, 2011); Detlef Dunt’s Travels to Texas in 1834 (UT Press), 2015; and, No Hope for Heaven; No Fear of Hell: Private Justice in Colorado County (University of North Texas Press), 2016. Friedrichsburg received the Summerfield G. Roberts award for the best book on Texas history for the year 2012.  He also contributed a chapter on European immigration in Texas in the 19th century to a college textbook entitled Discovering Texas History (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.) He has two books due for release next year: He is working on several other books at the present including a comprehensive history of the Society for the Protection of German Emigrants in Texas, an annotated translation of W.A. Trenckmann’s Texas Civil War novel, Die Lateiner am Possum Creek, and a history of the Delaware Indians in Texas.