Trinity University History Department

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Trinity University History Department

Trinity University History Department Students may elect to study history on a broad scale or focus attention on a specific region or era.

The department of history offers students the opportunity to explore the histories of Africa, the Ancient World, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States. Our small class sizes encourage close work with professors who are active and accomplished scholars. Students have opportunities for independent research and internships, and our majors are regularly accepted to top gr

aduate and law schools. Many have gone on to careers in teaching, law, business, foreign service, social work, and public service. The study of history is nourished by the examination of other disciplines. Trinity's history department works cooperatively with other departments to offer a wide array of interdisciplinary majors and minors.

05/17/2026

The History Department had a grand time celebrating all of the graduates at today's commencement. Congratulations to all of our majors, minors, and students who graduated today! We're so proud of you and can't wait to see where your path takes you!

05/09/2026

This semester, the students in Dr. Turek's Public History course created an exhibit to highlight the 1921 San Antonio Flood collection, held in . This collection, which Dr. Char Miller assembled and donated after the publication of his book West Side Rising: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement, includes one of the only known existing physical copies of the Army Corps of Engineers report about the flood from 1921.

The students conducted extensive primary, archival, and secondary research to develop the content. They also drew on a range of technical and design skills to build the website, which includes student-created maps in GIS that show historic watershed information and more. The range of skills that students brought in from other disciplines, such as geosciences, urban studies, and art history, greatly enriched the project.

The students did a fabulous job today of presenting this work during our public exhibit opening.

To see the exhibit and learn more about the collection and especially the Engineer's report, follow this link: https://history.coateslibrary.com/exhibits/show/flood/home

05/06/2026

Enormous congratulations to Dr. Emilio de Antuñano Villarreal, who won the Early Career Faculty Award for Distinguished Research & Teaching for 2025-26 at yesterday's Faculty Assembly! We're so proud of you!

05/01/2026

Today was the last day of classes for the Spring semester and the History Department celebrated with a fabulous outing to the museum!

After enjoying lunch, we were treated to an incredible tour of the Mystic Threads exhibit from the artist and Curator of Collections Liz Paris. Hearing about the stories behind the vibrant, detailed, and tactile artworks added tremendous depth to our understanding and appreciation for them. The artist emphasized the centrality of stories and storytelling to the human experience, which was a very fitting message for this group of historians! We may tell our stories in different formats, but storytelling is at the heart of our work, too.

Thank you so much to the McNay for hosting us!

04/30/2026

On April 20th, the students in Dr. Turek's public history course presented their work-in-progress on a digital exhibit that they are designing about the 1921 San Antonio flood. At this design charette, which is a collaborative workshop where exhibit designers solicit feedback from public audiences, the students shared details with university community members about the interactive design elements, storytelling, and artifacts that they are planning to showcase in the digital exhibit that they will complete this semester. The exhibit will highlight materials held in the Trinity University Special Collections Library and Archives, and the students are developing the project in consultation and collaboration with the Special Collections librarian and the University archivist.

Stay tuned for more details about this exhibit once it is completed, and follow the link in our bio to read more about the design charette, which was part of Trinity's Earth Week!

04/29/2026

Yesterday afternoon, the .east program celebrated the launch of the EAST Oral History initiative, a fabulous interactive digital archive of oral history interviews with EAST faculty and alums. Dr. Lauren Turek spoke about the interviews that students in the Oral History class that she co-teaches with university archivist Abra Schnur conducted for the project. You can listen to a brief excerpt of one of the interviews with retired history professor Dr. Donald Clark by following the link in our bio!

04/23/2026

In very exciting news, the Trinity EAST program has announced the public launch of the EAST Oral History Initiative web page, located on the Coates Library Special Collections and Archives website. It includes an interview with retired history professor Dr. Donald Clark! Click this link: https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2913 to check out the new site and to listen to the interviews with Dr. Clark and his colleagues, conducted by Trinity student interviewers.

On Tuesday, April 28, from 4-5pm in the CIE Atrium (NH 108), there will be a presentation, with speakers Jie Zhang, co-director of EAST, Abra Schnur, University Archivist, and Lauren Turek, Associate Professor of History. Student interns who conducted the interviews and edited the transcripts will also be available to answer questions.

The project was initiated in the summer of 2021 to accomplish two goals: to learn the extent of AAPI representation on the campus since the university’s founding and to research the history of Asian Studies at Trinity. It is the second goal that is ready for prime time, and interviews with former colleagues Mackenzie Brown, Donald Clark, Ewing Chinn, and Randall Nadeau will now be available for public access. The second project is ongoing, and to date interviews with three AAPI alumni have been completed.

04/09/2026

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Erin Kramer, whose first book The Ancient House: Constructing Community in the Seventeenth-Century New York Borderlands is now available from the University of North Carolina Press! To learn more, follow the link in our bio.

Here is the brief description of this fabulous book:

While New Amsterdam has captured public imagination and scholarly attention for centuries, the Dutch borderland settlement that became Albany, New York, was no less vital to the development of early America. In The Ancient House, historian Erin Kramer examines how early relationships between the Dutch and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) built a foundation for the town’s oversized role in European and Indigenous diplomacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Albany (called “the ancient house” by a Haudenosaunee orator) was an essential space where Indigenous people articulated what it meant for Europeans to settle in their world. Kramer illustrates how Haudenosaunee people shaped the town, its politics, and the laws enforced there through a century of negotiations, and how they sought redress and hold colonists to their agreements. By incorporating Haudenosaunee stories into the broader narrative of New York history, The Ancient House reveals how Albany became a negotiated community, a site of dialogue, and a critical central place in early America.

03/20/2026

This morning, a fabulous group of history students participated in a meeting of our department book club! Check out these great pictures of history students engaged in a wonderful, thoughtful conversation about historian Tim Snyder’s book “On Tyranny” with Dr. Johnson and Dr. Romo. Stay tuned for details on our next book club read!

02/20/2026

The History Department is here for the .arts.and.humanities Major Declaration Day. Hooray for Xander who recently declared!!

Address

1 Trinity Place
San Antonio, TX
78212

Telephone

+12109997621

Website

https://new.trinity.edu/academics/departments/history, https://linktr.ee/trinityu_history

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