Digital Humanities

Continent Divided website screenshot

A Continent Divided: The U.S. - Mexico War

UT Arlington Library's Special Collections serves as the repository for one of the most comprehensive archives relating to the U.S. - Mexico War in either the United States or Mexico. The core of these holdings was acquired by Fort Worth attorney Jenkins Garrett, who in 1973 donated to UT Arlington his collection of more than 10,000 discrete items on Texas and the war with Mexico, including broadsides, sheet music, manuscripts, maps and graphic materials.

A Continent Divided
Texas in Turmoil Landing Page

Texas in Turmoil: Mapping Interethnic Violence, 1821-79

This project maps sites of conflict between Native Americans, Hispanos, African Americans, and Euro-Americans in Texas from the creation of the First Mexican Republic (1821) to the aftermath of the Civil War. Although work on the project is ongoing, it seeks to map all inter-ethnic violence in a region that was for many years one of the most diverse region of the North American continent.

Texas in Turmoil
Screen Capture of the Twilight of a Cowboy God page

Twilight of the Cowboy God: Larry McMurtry's Literary Geography

Larry McMurtry (1936-2021) was the scion of a modest cattle-ranching family based in Archer City, and drew inspiration from first-hand experience with cattle, family lore, memory, and his hometown as sources of inspiration. The StoryMap and Timeline document the intersections between place and his various works set in Texas and the American West, which include numerous novels, essays and film scripts.

Twilight of the Cowboy God
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Cover

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian Map

This digital interactive map of Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel Blood Meridian; or the Evening Redness in the West traces the lifetrek of its titular character known simply as the ‘Kid.’ Blood Meridian adopts and re-imagines the lives of scalp hunters John Joel Glanton and Judge Holden discussed in Samuel E. Chamberlain’s memoir of the US-Mexico War, My Confession: The Recollection of a Rogue. 

Blood Meridian
Chicana Borderland Voices Project Home Page Screen Capture

Mapping Chicana/Mexicana Voices in the Borderlands

The Mapping Everyday Mexicana/Chicana Political Organizing in the Texas and Arizona Borderlands project examines the active participation of Mexican American women in politics. By centering the experiences of Mexican American women, the oral history project and website highlight the historical contributions of women’s grassroots organizing in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and Southern Arizona, in Tucson.

Chicana Borderland Voices