Dr. Theresa Case
Dr. Theresa Case
Professor of History History, Humanities, and LanguagesBiography
Theresa Case has taught at UHD since 2002, after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin and an editorial internship with the Texas State Historical Association. While at UHD, Dr. Case has served as history coordinator and assistant chair, organized student research conferences, developed University seminar courses and history courses, and led student success initiatives. Her research area is late nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century US, especially social and cultural history.
Degrees Earned
Doctorate degree: History (University of Texas at Austin)
Courses Taught
- United States History
- United States Women's History
- United States Working-class and Labor History
- Historical Methods
- New South
Experience Qualifications
Dr. Case earned her Ph.D. in United States History at the University of Texas at Austin. She has taught at University of Houston-Downtown since 2002. Her teaching areas are US women's history, the Industrial Age, the New South, and historical research and writing. Her scholarship explores working-class history, especially race and gender but also social and cultural history more broadly. Her 2010 book, The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor, revisited the history of a pair of massive strikes on the southwestern system of railroad, which laced across states such as Texas and Arkansas. She connected these labor protests and conflicts to the history and nature of railroad work, the relationship of railroad workers to one another across lines of race and skill, and the relationships between railroad workers and their local communities. More recently, Dr. Case has published her research on black railroaders' grassroots labor protest during and after WWI. In 2018-2022, she was chief liaison for the Gateways to Completion (G2C) Project, a partnership between the UHD History Program, the Gardner Institute, and the American Historical Association to advance student success in introductory history courses.
More Information
Theresa Case explores working-class history, with a special emphasis on social and cultural history. Her book, The Great Southwest Strike and Free Labor (2010) reconstructed a major railway strike of the Gilded Age. This strike helped to build and then undermine the first mass organization of industrial workers in US history. Her work on this topic delved into the working lives of "railroadmen," the racial hierarchies and alliances involved in strike organizing, and the context for and debates around industrial violence. Her new area of interest is the history of race and labor in the early twentieth-century South, with much of her research centering on black working-class protest in WWI-era and postwar Texas.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Case, Theresa A. "In the Trenches of World War I-Era Texas: Letters from Black Railroaders to the United States Railroad Administration." Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 124, no. 3 (Jan. 2021), 271-298.
Case, Theresa A. "Rooted: Black Railroad Shopmen, the 1922 Strike, and Southern Civil Rights Struggles." In Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power, eds. Matthew Hild and Keri Leigh Merritt, 159-173. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, Aug. 2018. https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813056975
Case, Theresa A. "The Radical Potential of the Knights' Biracialism: The 1885-1886 Gould System Strikes and Their Aftermath." Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4, no. 4 (2007), 83-107. Reprinted in Texas Labor History, eds. James C. Maroney and Bruce A. Glasrud, 79-108. Texas A&M University Press, 2013.
Case, Theresa A. "Losing the Middle Ground: Strikebreakers and Labor Protest on the Southwestern Railroads." In Rethinking U.S. Labor History: Essays on the Working-Class Experience, 1756-2009, eds. Daniel J. Walkowitz and Donna T. Haverty-Stacke, 54-81. New York: Continuum, 2010. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/rethinking-us-labor-history-9781441145758/
Case, Theresa A. The Great Southwest Railroad Strike and Free Labor. Texas A&M University Press: College Station, TX, 2010. https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781603441704/the-great-southwest-railroad-strike-and-free-labor/
Case, Theresa A. "Blaming Martin Irons: Leadership and Popular Protest in the 1886 Southwest Strike." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 8, no. 1 (2009), 51-82.
Recognitions and Awards
2021 H. Bailey Carroll Award for Best Article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly
2015-2016 UHD University Faculty Leave
2012 UHD Faculty Development Grant
2010-2011 UHD Organized Research Grant
2008 UHD Quality Enhancement Plan Curriculum Development Grant
2007-2008 UHD University Faculty Leave