Call for Contributors
We’re asking you to lend your expertise to the Texas Yawp,* a new, massively collaborative, free and open-source Texas history project. You may be familiar with our U.S. history textbook, The American Yawp. That project is published with Stanford University Press and our new contract provides resources to support the production of synthetic narratives on subtopics within American history. We’re starting with Texas.
We are beginning with Texas in part because of the precarious nature of Texas history in 2024. We believe that our position as scholars demands that we offer an honest and critical look at a history that is as rich and diverse and inspiring as it is brutal and coarse and humiliating (and often simply downright ridiculous). We also believe that Texas history needs to be written by historians. We plan to draw upon the wide-ranging expertise of hundreds of Texas historians to capture a history that reflects the state of the field and its many innovations.
Labor should be compensated and, as a result, we have secured a small pot of money from Stanford University Press to pay $250 contributor stipends. Because funds are currently limited, however, we encourage tenured and tenure-track professors, whose salaries include expectations of professional service and intellectual labor, to donate their stipends back to the project to ensure that unemployed or underemployed scholars, graduate students, and those outside of academia receive compensation. (The editors and board members, for instance, receive no compensation.) You can read more about how we understand labor and compensation and view our transparent accounting here.
* Texas Yawp remains a working title as we continue to search for the perfect flippant-yet-poetic, archaic-yet-urgent, pithy Texas reference. As with all aspects of the project, we welcome your ideas!
Project Overview
This fifteen-chapter textbook, which will undergo a rigorous peer review, will be authored by over 100 contributors and chapter editors whose scholarship reflects the diverse and innovative work being done today. Released under an open license, it will be free for students, ensuring that money is no barrier to Texas history. Contributors, especially graduate students and contingent scholars, will be compensated. This is not a profit-making endeavor, however. All royalties from print sales will be reinvested back into the project to pay hosting fees, contributor stipends, and future symposia.
Advisory Board
Juliana Barr (Duke University)
Carlos K. Blanton (Texas A&M University)
Jessica Brannon-Wranosky (Texas A&M University-Commerce)
Walter L. Buenger (University of Texas at Austin)
Stephanie Cole (University of Texas at Arlington)
Neil Foley (Southern Methodist University)
Trinidad O. Gonzales (South Texas College)
Andrew R. Graybill (Southern Methodist University)
Sonia Hernandez (Texas A&M University)
Karl Jacoby (Columbia University)
Benjamin H. Johnson (Loyola University Chicago)
Julian Lim (Arizona State University)
Andrés Reséndez (University of California Davis)
Rebecca Sharpless (Texas Christian University)
Tyina Steptoe (University of Arizona)
Whitney Nell Stewart (University of Texas at Dallas)
Jermaine Thibodeaux (Oklahoma University)
Participation
If you share our mission, please fill out the contributor form below or reach out directly to the editors, Joseph Locke (University of North Texas) and Ben Wright (University of Texas at Dallas), with any questions. Thank you!