This year marks the 125th anniversary of Texas A&M’s Department of History, and celebrations are in full swing.

A series of public events have been offered through the department, inviting attendees to explore Texas culture, borderlands and war and society studies. Moreover, the department’s website features a new digital history of the department, giving readers the opportunity to learn more about important figureheads and events from A&M’s 149-year history.

History Department Head and professor Angela Hudson, Ph.D., explained that, while history courses have been offered since the university’s conception in 1876, it was not until the year 1900 that the department itself was formally founded.

“The department was part of a unit that was joined with English until 1900,” Hudson said. “In 1900, we became a standalone department. So we decided to celebrate this as our kind of 125th anniversary of our independence … from English.”

The department kicked off its 125th anniversary celebration with a special cultural event highlighting Texas music history on Sept. 26. The event featured Jason Mellard ‘00, Ph.D., who currently serves as the director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University.

“We had [Mellard] come back as a former [history] student,” Hudson said. “We were celebrating his successes and he gave a talk about … Texas music history, about why cultural history matters to thinking about the human experience, about how his time at Texas A&M helped to shape him as a historian.”

The next event on Oct. 8 — organized by professor Sonia Hernandez, Ph.D. — celebrated 125 years of Texas and borderlands history, bringing together department alumni, distinguished professors and graduate students to discuss the field of study.

“Each person talked about what they learned in their time at Texas A&M, how this department and its legacy of scholarship and teaching in Texas/Mexico borderlands history influenced them [and] helped to shape their career,” Hudson said. “And then we talked sort of broadly … about why these histories matter.”

More recently, the department paid tribute to 125 years of war and society studies with a conference on the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA, with which the department holds a grant partnership.

The symposium featured speakers from the DPAA and students from the history, anthropology and geology departments, according to Hudson. The panelists highlighted the interdisciplinary approaches to war and society studies, focusing on the recovery and return of service members killed in action.

The event was attended by both students and community members, as well as many family members of Aggies missing in action, Hudson said.

An exhibit also launched in the Memorial Student Center’s Forsyth Galleries to highlight students’ work from each related department involved with the DPAA project.

The 125th anniversary celebration will culminate with the inaugural meeting of the External Advisory Development Council, a new group of former students appointed by Hudson to assist with the future development of the department. The council will be composed of A&M former students with graduation dates ranging from 1981 to 2020.

Hudson hopes the council will offer valued input on how to maintain continued momentum within the department well beyond the anniversary celebrations.

Most recently, graduate students and faculty from the department took to Downtown Bryan for First Friday on Nov. 7, giving away merchandise, challenging patrons to trivia games and engaging with the community.

Graduate Professional Development Director, Cornerstone Faculty Fellow and professor Jason Parker, Ph.D., said that he is very proud of where the graduate program stands within the department.

“We’re all psyched about the 125th, and I think it’s fair to say that extends to the grads,” Parker said.

Parker spoke highly of the hands-on experience available to history graduate students at A&M, highlighting the History Graduate Student Organization, or HGSO, conference. The annual conference stands as the largest entirely graduate-run history conference in the country, according to Parker.

“The really great grad programs have that kind of lateral learning going on, you know,” Parker said. “So they’re learning from each other, either by … running the HGSO conference, or comparing notes as they approach various milestones, like the qualifying exams or the dissertation defense … the sort of stations of the cross that everybody has to do. They can draw upon each other as much as they draw on us in the advisor role.”

History graduate student Jackson Baker echoed Parker’s sentiment, emphasizing the value he’s found in working alongside his colleagues within the department.

“Everybody lifts each other up,” Baker said. “Everybody’s very invested in helping you along. It’s just a really wonderful learning environment. … Each person is clearly invested in getting you hands-on experience, teaching you the tradecraft of the historian and making sure you’re equipped with the tools to be a successful historian in the future.”

Assistant professor Shae Smith Cox, Ph.D., said that, after touring the Civil War battleground in Shiloh, Tennessee, as an undergraduate, she knew that she wanted to help future students achieve that same touchstone experience during her employment at A&M.

“A lot of our events are actually open to the public as well,” Smith Cox said. “ … What they’re looking to do is just connect with non-history majors, connect with people in the community and really build a solid relationship with each of the people that we come in contact with. … We love everyone who is interested in history and just really wanna be able to be an avenue for the community to experience Texas A&M culture.”

The department’s official slogan is “History Matters.” Hudson explained that this slogan is not only true in the past, but through both the present and the future.

“History helps us understand context,” Hudson said. “ … Nothing happens outside of history, and the context in which decisions are being made, whether they’re in the past or in the present, is very, very important. … We want our students to be able to think critically about the different factors that are shaping the world that we share, so that they go out not only as, you know, lifelong learners and passionate about history, but being able to think in a very complex and critical way about the world that is around them.”