Texas Tech University

Charles L. Wood Annual Lecture Series

2022
Ellen Wu (Indiana University, Bloomington)
"Overrepresented: The Surprising History of Asian Americans and Racial Justice"

2021
Pekka Hämäläinen (University of Oxford)
"Comanche Southwest: The Contest for Empire"

2020
Tiago Saraiva (Drexel University)
"Cannibalism and Sadness: Californian Oranges in São Paulo and the Writing of Global History"

2019
Bruce E. Baker (Newcastle University)
"Dirty Cotton: How Crime and Corruption Made the Postbellum Cotton Trade"

2018
Marc Elie (French National Center for Scientific Research)
"From One Dust Bowl to the Other: North-American Erosion Experience in Soviet Kazakhstan during the Cold War"

2017
Cecilia Tsu (University of California, Davis)
"Refugees and the Agrarian Dream: The Politics of Resettlement in the 1980s"

2016
Rebecca Sharpless (Texas Christian University)
"Do You Want Biscuits or Cornbread?: Grains in Conflict in Early America"

2015
Lisa M. Brady (Boise State University)
"Seeds of Discord: Agricultural Implications of Modern Warfare"

2014
Emilio Zamora (University of Texas at Austin)
"From Texas Farms to the Americas: Alonso Perales and His International Call for Mexican Civil Rights"

2013
Debra A. Reid (Eastern Illinois University)
"Planters and Laborers Across the Civil War Years: A Texas Journal"

2012
Melissa Walker (Converse College)
"Agrarians, Locavores, Foodies, and Congressmen: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Food Issues"

2011
Sterling Evans (University of Oklahoma)
"Nothing New about NAFTA: Connecting Great Plains Agriculture to a Larger North American History"

2010
David Danbom (North Dakota State University)
"Myths of American Agricultural History: Rethinking Farmers' Behavior"

2009
Claire Strom (Rollins College)
"Ticks, Men, and Cattle: Cattle Tick Eradication and the Transformation of the Yeoman South."

2008
Peter A. Coclanis (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
"Two Cheers for Revolution: The Virtues of Regime Change in World Agriculture"

2007
Deborah Fitzgerald (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
"Industrializing Everything: Food and Farmers in a Technological World"

2006
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg (Iowa State University)
"Childhood on the Farm: A Natural History"

2005
Steven Stoll (Yale University)
"Fatal Promises: Agriculture and Capitalism"

2004
Donald J. Pisani (University of California, Davis)
"The Family Farm, the Reclamation Bureau, and the American West in the 20th Century"

2003
William Kittredge (University of Montana)
"Klamath: Calamity without a Cure?"

2002
John R. Wunder (University of Nebraska)
"The Last Season: Crisis Times in Modern Plains Agricultural Communities and the End of Six-Man Football."

2001
Vicki L. Ruiz (University of California, Irvine)
"Big Dreams, Rural Schools: Mexican Americans and Public Education, 1879-1950"

2000
Dan Flores (University of Montana)
"Alternative World: Comanche Spirit of Place and the Pre-Agricultural Llano Estacado"

1999
Elliott West (University of Arkansas)
"Finishing America: Bringing the Great Plains into the Nation"

1998
Myron P. Gutmann (University of Texas at Austin)
"A New Look at the Causes of the Dust Bowl"

1997
Anne Butler (Utah State University)
"Sowing Seeds of Justice: Catholic Nuns, Race, and Texas"

1996
Peter Iverson (Arizona State University)
"Natives and Newcomers: Residence, Tradition and Identity in the Rural American West"

1995
Richard Slatta (North Carolina State University)
"Social History in the Saddle: Trailing the History of the Cowboys of the Americas"

1994
Joan M. Jensen (New Mexico State University)
"Where Have All the Rural Women Gone in Texas?"

1993
Patricia Nelson Limerick (University of Colorado)
"City and Country in the American West: Can This Marriage Be Saved?"

1992
Terry G. Jordan (University of Texas at Austin)
"The Overemphasis of Texas as a Source of Western Cattle Ranching"

1991
Donald E. Worster (University of Kansas)
"Cowboy Ecology: A New Look at an Old West"

1990
R. Douglas Hurt (Iowa State University)
"Land Policy in Little Dixie, 1800-1820"

1988
Wayne D. Rasmussen (United States Department of Agriculture)
"The Family Farm in Historical Perspective"

1987
Clark C. Spence (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
"Texas and the Age of Pluviculture"

1986
Joe B. Frantz (Corpus Christi State University)
"Little Water, Less Wood"

1985
Gilbert C. Fite (University of Georgia)
"Recent Trends in the United States Agriculture History"

Charles L. Wood
1937 - 1981

Charles Wood

Charles L. Wood was a son of the Great Plains and its agricultural heritage. Born into a farm family in Hemingsford, Nebraska, Chuck Wood was educated at St. Benedict's College in Atchinson, Kansas, and at the University of Kansas where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in American history under the tutelage of Professors George L. Anderson and John G. Clark. Between 1963 and 1970 and again from 1974 to 1976, he served on the faculty of Hayden High School in Topeka. Chuck joined the history faculty at Texas Tech University in 1976 where he taught agricultural history until his sudden death in 1981.

Although his stay with us was brief, Chuck communicated his deep affection for the land and people of the Plains and energetically pursued his research on cattle ranching in the West. His articles on the range and cattle industry appeared in the Kansas Historical Quarterly and the Journal of the West, and in 1980 his monograph The Kansas Beef Industry was published by the Regents of Press of Kansas. An Associate of the International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies at Texas Tech, Chuck Wood had begun to research the ranching industry in West Texas at the time of his death.

Chuck's enthusiasm for his subject, his dedication to good teaching and careful scholarship, and his kind and gentle manner touched students and colleagues alike. Both agricultural history and Texas Tech are richer for the work of Charles L. Wood.

-Joseph E. King
Department of History
Texas Tech University

1970-2010