Clements Center for Southwest Studies

01/14/2026

The Clements Center for Southwest Studies is extending the deadline (January 31, 2026) for fellowship applications for the 2026-27 academic year. Our residential writing fellowships provide senior or junior scholars with an essential element for producing successful books: time.

The fellowships are for a full academic year (nine-months, typically coinciding with Southern Methodist University’s academic calendar). Competition is open to PhD holding individuals in any field in the humanities or social sciences conducting research on Texas, the American Southwest (including California in all periods), or the US-Mexico borderlands, as well as comparative projects with at least one foot in the region. Our fellowships are expressly designed to provide time for junior and senior scholars to bring book-length projects to completion, and as such do not include any teaching responsibilities or obligations.

We offer a research and travel allowance in addition to a publication subvention, and we convene a manuscript workshop for each fellow during their time in residence, in order to advise the author about how to make it the best and most influential book possible.

Our fellowships cannot be used to finish a dissertation or begin a new book project. Fellows are expected to be in residence in Dallas during the fellowship period and to participate fully in the intellectual and social life of the Center.

Fellowships carry a stipend of $50,000 ($65,000 for the senior fellow), benefits where eligible, a $3,000 allowance for research and travel, and a publication subvention.

For consideration, applicants must submit the following:
• a curriculum vita
• a letter of interest outlining a description of their project and research agenda (2 pp max)
• a sample chapter from the manuscript
• three letters of reference from persons who can assess the significance of the work.

Applications are now due January 31, 2026.

Our residential fellowships are for a full academic year (nine months, typically coincidental with SMU’s academic calendar). Competition is open to Ph.D.-holding individuals in any field in the humanities or social sciences conducting research on Texas, the American Southwest (including California...

06/02/2025

CALL FOR PAPERS
Lonesome Dove at 40: McMurtry, Mythmaking, and the Reimagining of the American Southwest, A Larry McMurtry Symposium
November 14–15, 2025
Southern Methodist University | Dallas, Texas
Co-Sponsored by SMU English’s Narrative Now Initiative and the Clements Center for Southwest Studies

Forty years after its publication, Larry McMurtry’s _Lonesome Dove_ continues to cast a long shadow across American literature, screen culture, and the cultural memory of the Southwest. A critical and commercial triumph, the novel earned McMurtry the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a massively successful 1989 television adaptation. And yet McMurtry, always a skeptic of romanticized frontier mythology, expressed ambivalence about the reception of _Lonesome Dove_, calling it “the Gone with the Wind of the West”—a work he feared had reinforced rather than dismantled myths of Western heroism, racial innocence, and masculine stoicism.
This inaugural Larry McMurtry Symposium invites scholars, critics, writers, archivists, and cultural historians to reflect on the literary and cultural afterlives of Lonesome Dove, as well as the wider legacy of Larry McMurtry as novelist, screenwriter, bibliophile, critic, and public intellectual.
Hosted at Southern Methodist University in Dallas—just two hours from McMurtry’s hometown of Archer City— this event marks the beginning of a biennial tradition honoring major contributions to Southwestern letters and American narrative culture.

04/25/2025

We will be there!

04/07/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18XHNBaLVE/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Congratulations to Refusing to Forget co-founder Dr. Sonia Hernández on her recent election as President of the Alliance for Texas History! Her leadership and dedication to preserving Texas' rich history will undoubtedly have a lasting impact on the organization. We are excited to see all the great work she will continue to do in this new role, and we wish her the best in her presidency! https://www.alliancefortexashistory.org/

04/04/2025

Come visit the Clement center booth at the OAH in Chicago. Learn about our fellowships, our symposia, our book series, our book prize, public events, and the books published by our fellows. And meet our new assistant director, Ashton Reynolds!

04/01/2025

Celebrating the life of Edward Countryman on April 29 at SMU. I

03/21/2025

For more information about this exciting symposium, see https://www.smu.edu/dedman/research/institutes-and-centers/swcenter/symposia/current

03/17/2025

🏆 The David J. Weber Prize offers $2500 for the best non-fiction book on Southwestern America. Applications are due by April 15th! Apply for it here: https://www.westernhistory.org/awards/weber

03/10/2025

Join us tomorrow as we host Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Victor Valle, winner of the David J. Weber Prize for Best Book on Southwestern History, for his award lecture, “The Poetics of Fire.” For more information or to register, see https://www.smu.edu/dedman/research/institutes-and-centers/swcenter/book-prize/current-winners.

02/25/2025

Join us next Tuesday, March 2 when we host Ben Johnson and the launch of his new book, Texas. Co-sponsored with SMU’s Center for Presidential History and Friends of the SMU Libraries. See https://www.smu.edu/dedman/research/institutes-and-centers/swcenter/events/lectures/mar-4-bhjohnson

02/11/2025

Come join us on Wednesday, February 19th when Clements Center fellow ToniAnn Trevino will talk on her current research project.

https://www.smu.edu/dedman/research/institutes-and-centers/swcenter/events/afternoon-talks/feb-19-trevino

02/11/2025

Call for papers: Indigenous Histories and Crossings in the Age of Global Change, hosted at our campus in Taos, New Mexico by the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at SMU.