Jean Stuntz

Jean Allison Stuntz​ (Historian and professor at West Texas A&M University)​
Born	April 8, 1957}​ Orange, Texas, USA Resident of Canyon, Randall County Texas​
Spouse	Single Parents: Homer Clyde and Billie Jean Williams Stuntz Alma mater: ​ West Orange-Stark High School Baylor University (Waco) ​ Baylor Law School ​ University of North Texas (Denton)

Jean Allison Stuntz (born April 8, 1957) is a professor of history at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, at which she specializes in women's studies and the history of Texas, the Spanish Borderlands, and the American West. A non-practicing attorney, she has been teaching at WTAMU since 2001.​

Background[edit]

Stuntz is the middle of three children of Homer Clyde Stuntz (1923-2016), a physician who delivered three thousand babies, and the former Billie Jean Williams (born 1929). Her siblings are Beverly Ann Stuntz, of Addison in Dallas County, Texas, and Philip Williams Stuntz, of College Station, Texas.^[1] She was born and reared in Orange in Orange County near Beaumont in far southeastern Texas and graduated in 1975 from West Orange-Stark High School.^[2]

In 1912, Stuntz's paternal great-grandfather, also named Homer Clyde Stuntz (1858–1924) of New York City, was named as a bishop of the Methodist Church. The great-grandfather wrote at least two history books stimulated by his missionary zeal, The Philippines and the Far East (1904)^[3] and​ South American Neighbors (1916).^[4]​

Stuntz received her [Bachelor of Arts degree in 1979 from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and thereafter her Juris Doctorate from Baylor Law School. She subsequently received Master of Arts (1996) and Ph.D. (2000) degrees from the University of North Texas at Denton.^[5] At North Texas, Stuntz said that she depended heavily on her major professor and mentor, Donald Eugene Chipman (born 1928), a specialist in the Spanish Borderlands.^[6]​

Stuntz is a board member of the Presbyterian Children's Home orphanage in Amarillo.^[7]​ ​

Scholarly pursuits[edit]

Stuntzs award-winning book, Hers, His, and Theirs: Community Property Laws in Spain and Early Texas, with foreword by Caroline Castillo Crimm and preface by Gordon Morris Bakken, is the published version of her doctoral dissertation entitled His, Hers, and Theirs: Domestic Relations and Marital Property Law in Texas to 1850.^[8] According to a reviewer in the Journal of Southern History, Hers, His, and Theirs "fills a major void in the historiography of women in the Spanish borderlands and the American Southwest." In her research, Stuntz found that Hispanic women in the northern portion of the Spanish Empire in North America had greater "legal rights than their British counterparts half a continent to the east. Under Spanish law, even in the sparsely settled land that would one day become Texas, married women could own property in their own names. They could control and manage not only their own property but even that of their husbands. And if their property rights were infringed upon, they could seek legal redress. The book hence examines how the Castilian legal system developed differently from other European models and survived in Texas beyond the 1830s, when Anglo settlers began moving in large numbers into the region.^[8]​^[2]

With Claudia Stuart, Stuntz is the co-author of African Americans in Amarillo.^[9]​

Stuntz penned the chapter on Minta Holmsley, a pioneer woman from Comanche, Texas,^[10]​ in Stuntz's award-winning 2006 book, Texas Women on the Cattle Trails. Stuntz's historical articles include "Women of the Texas Revolution" (2007) and "Prairies to Progress: Women on the Texas Panhandle Frontier" (2009), both published in The Social Studies Texan. She is the former book review editor of the West Texas Historical Association publication, West Texas Historical Review and has frequently presented papers at annual meetings of the association.^[5]​

Stuntz is a past president of H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences On-Line, an Internet site for scholars and teachers which seeks to promote the study of history and the social sciences.^[2]. She utilizes the Internet in her teaching, taking the view that students "learn best when [the instructor] gets them started and then stays out of their way."^[11]

Her book of fiction, The Alamo and Zombies, written with Mitchell Bentley, examines the Alamo in San Antonio from a non-traditional view.^[12]

In 2013, Stuntz joined the board of the Texas State Historical Association.^[13]​

Curriculum revision controversy[edit]

In 2010, Stuntz, a Democrat, spoke out against revisions in the social studies curricula approved by the Texas State Board of Education, changes which require the inclusion of conservative topics in public school instruction. For instance, Thomas Jefferson's name must be restored to a list of Enlightenment thinkers. There must be emphasis on the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution regarding property rights. Students must be taught that new documents, the Venona project, verify U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy's suspicions of communist infiltration of the U.S. government during the post-World War II era. Stuntz told The Amarillo Globe-News that the SBOE is "micromanaging. They don't know what they're doing."^[14]​

Along with professorial colleagues, Stuntz signed a petition requesting that the SBOE delay consideration of the changes so that curriculum specialists could intervene. The changes do not require memorization, only inclusion of previously omitted materials. Stuntz, however, predicted that the revisions would cause teachers to stress memorization of events, people, and dates, rather than guiding youngsters to think, analyze evidence, and communicate their thoughts. With memorization, Stuntz said that many students come to college with a dislike of history. Memorization, she said, "beats the imagination out of them. I have to teach them it isn't about memorizing. It's about why people did what they did. It's about analyzing evidence, what is true and what is not."^[14]​

References[edit]

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