The University of North Texas Libraries invite applications for the 2017 The Portal to Texas History Research Fellowship. Research using the Portal is relevant to studies in a variety of disciplines including history, journalism, political science, geography, and American studies. We encourage applicants to think creatively about the opportunities that research with large digital library collections can enable. Preference will be given to applicants who demonstrate the greatest potential for publication and the best use of The Portal to Texas History.

The Portal to Texas History 2017 Research Fellowship Awardee

Robin L. Roe

Project Title

On the Borders of Disaster

Project Description

This portion of On the Borders of Disaster compares English-language newspaper reports about a major 1921 flood with Spanish-language newspaper reports of that flood to analyze how one group contested the dominant narrative that cast the victims as passive and helpless. What emerges are two very different accounts of the disaster, manipulated not by lies but by selective inclusion and omission. This article will become a crucial chapter of my dissertation.

Biography

Robin L. Roe is a doctoral candidate at Texas A&M University and received her BA and MA in History from Texas A&M University. Her dissertation examines how media used weather-related natural disasters in Texas and the Southwest border region in the early Twentieth Century to manipulate public perceptions of race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, and class, and how some of those victims contested that manipulation. She is a veteran of the U. S. Air Force and has worked as a copy editor and in the computer industry before beginning her graduate work. She is particularly interested in the potential of digital humanities for historical research.