Jean A. Stuntz

Jean Allison Stuntz (born April 8, 1957)^[1] is a professor at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, where she specializes in women's studies and the history of Texas, the Spanish Borderlands, and the American West. She has been teaching at WTAMU since 2001.

Background

Stuntz is the middle of 3 children of Homer Clyde Stuntz (born 1923), a retired physician, and the former Billie Jean Williams (born 1929). She was born and reared in Orange in Orange County near Beaumont in southeast Texas.^[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. Homer Clyde Stuntz wrote at least two histories, 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 (1979) from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and thereafter her Juris Doctorate from the 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 E. 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

Stuntz is best known for her 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. The book is an outgrowth from Stuntz's 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 "legal rights that would have astonished 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, they could seek redress in the courts."^[9] 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.^[9]

With Claudia Stuart, Stuntz is the co-author of African Americans in Amarillo.^[10]

Stuntz penned the chapter on Minta Holmsley, a pioneer woman from Comanche, Texas,^[11] in the award-winning book,^[12] Texas Women on the Cattle Trails (2006). Her 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 Year Book and has frequently presented papers at annual meetings of the association.^[5]

Stuntz was the president of H-Net, an Internet site for scholars and teachers which seeks to promote the study of history and the social sciences, in 2010. 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."^[13]

Her latest book, a work of creative non-fiction, is The Alamo and Zombies, available from Yard Dog Press.

In 2013, Stuntz joined the board of the Texas State Historical Association.^[14]

Curriculum revision controversy

In 2010, Stuntz 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 Constitution of the United States in regard to property rights. Students must be taught that new documents, the Venona project, verify U.S. Senator Joseph R. 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."^[15]

Along with professorial colleagues, Stuntz signed a petition requesting that the SBOE delay consideration of the changes so that curriculum experts can intervene. The changes do not require memorization, only inclusion of previously omitted materials. Stuntz, however, predicted that the revisions will 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."^[15]

Selected publications

• Stuntz, Jean A. (2005). Hers, His and Theirs: Community Property Law in Sapin and Early Texas. Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press. ISBN 978-0-896-72560-7. 
• Stuntz, Jean A. (2014). "Tejanas: Hispanic Women on the Losing Side of the Texas Revolution". In Mary L. Scheer. Women and the Texas Revolution. University of North Texas Press. ISBN 9781574414691. 
• Stuntz, Jean A. "Early Settlement of the Panhandle by Women" (PDF). Panhandle-Plains Historical Review. West Texas A&M University (2014): 9–18. 

References