Joseph Locke

Highlights

Texas, U.S. South, U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, American Religion, Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Bio

Joseph Locke specializes in the history of Texas, the American South, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He graduated from the University of Texas and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Rice University. His first book, Making the Bible Belt: Texas Prohibitionists and the Politicization of Southern Religion, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. He also co-created The American Yawp (americanyawp.com), a history textbook published in print by Stanford University Press in 2019. He is currently at work on two projects: a history of religion in Texas and a history of Americans' imaginings of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. He teaches courses in the history of Texas, the U.S. South, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, American religion, and the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Selected Publications

Books

 Making the Bible Belt: Texas Prohibitionists and the Politicization of Southern Religion (Oxford University Press, 2017).

 The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook, Volumes I & II, Co-Edited with Ben Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019).

Selected Articles

“The Heathen at our Door: Missionaries, Moral Reformers, and the Making of the ‘Mexican Problem,’” The Western Historical Quarterly 49 (Summer 2018), 127-153. ***Winner: Western Historical Association’s Oscar O. Winther Award***

“History Can Be Open Source: Democratic Dreams and the Rise of Digital History,” co-authored with Ben Wright, The American Historical Review 126 (December 2021), 1485–1511.