New CSSW Director| Dr. John Mckiernan-González

Dr. John Mckiernan-González, Associate Professor of History, has been named Jerome H. and Catherine E. Supple Professor of Southwestern Studies at Texas State University beginning September 1, 2017.  He succeeds Dr. Jesús F. “Frank” de la Teja, who is retiring as director of Texas State’s Center for the Study of the Southwest and Regents’ Professor of History.

Dr. Mckiernan-González holds a Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of Michigan.  His teaching interests include borderlands and Mexican American history, and he has published widely in the field, with much of his scholarship focused on issues of public health and race/ethnicity.  His work includes Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848-1942 (Duke University Press) and a co-edited collection, Making Race, Making Health: Race, Medicine and Public Health in Historical Perspective (University of Minnesota Press).  He is currently at work on a monograph exploring the obstacles confronted by people of color in the medical profession, both in the Southwest and in the U.S. more broadly.  Dr. Mckiernan-González also has produced a large body of intellectual work in various non-traditional genres and formats, including digital scholarship, public history projects, reports, and online publications.

The Supple Professorship is named in honor of Texas State’s ninth president, Jerome Supple, who worked tirelessly in support of the Center for the Study of the Southwest, and his wife Catherine.  The professorship was made possible by a gift from the Alkek Foundation and by gifts from colleagues and friends of the Supple’s and Texas State.

The director of the Center of the Study of the Southwest is designated as the Supple Professor.  The Center supports a variety of activities, including programs for students and teachers, lectures and readings by scholars and writers, and publication of regional materials.