James Crisp
Associate Professor
Ph. D., Yale University, 1976
364 Withers Hall
Phone: (919) 513-2236
Email: james_crisp@ncsu.edu
FALL 09 OFFICE HOURS:
M T W 1:30-2:30 pm
Personal Introduction
James E. Crisp is Associate Professor and Assistant Head in the Department of History at North Carolina State University. He graduated with a B. A. in History from Rice University in 1968, and received his doctorate from Yale in 1976. A member of the NCSU History faculty since 1972, he turned apostate for only one year, when he was a Rockefeller Fellow and Humanist-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992-1993. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Academy of Outstanding Teachers at NCSU.
His 1993 article, "Sam Houston's Speechwriters," received the H. Bailey Carroll Award from the Texas State Historical Association. A sequel, "In Pursuit of Herman Ehrenberg: A Research Adventure," appeared in the April 1999 issue of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.
Since 1994 Crisp has published several articles relating to the authenticity of the celebrated memoir of José Enrique de la Peña, a Mexican officer who claimed to have witnessed the execution of David Crockett at the Alamo. An expanded edition of the "De la Peña Diary," with a new Introduction by Crisp, was published in 1997 by the Texas A&M Press under the title, With Santa Anna in Texas.
In 2000, the manuscript of the De la Peña Diary appeared for the first time in Guinness World Records, having been sold at auction for almost $400,000 in 1998. Both the History Channel and the Discovery Channel have televised special programs on the De la Peña controversy, and a documentary film – "The De la Peña Diary" --featuring Crisp's research has been produced by Rice University Film Studies Professor Brian Huberman. The film premiered in April, 2000, at the LBJ Presidential Library at the University of Texas at Austin. Video copies are available through Prof. Huberman at Rice University.
Prof. Crisp's most recent research has focused on visual imagery, collective memory, and historical identity. Two prize-winning articles have appeared so far from this work, one published in Italy in SITUAZIONE D'ASSEDIO, a multi-disciplinary collection of studies of siege situations through history (Firenze: Pagnini e Martinelli, 2002). A related study, "An Incident in San Antonio: The Contested Iconology of Davy Crockett's Death at the Alamo," appeared in the Spring 2001 issue of the Journal of the West.
Crisp appeared in the spring of 2004 in a PBS American Experience documentary film entitled "Remember the Alamo" depicting the life of Jose Antonio Navarro and the role of the Tejanos in the Texas Revolution.
Crisp is also a featured commentator in a frequently repeated two-hour History Channel program (also titled "Remember the Alamo") that was first televised on December 16, 2003. This documentary explores the historical background of the Texas Revolution, previews the new "Alamo" movie from the Disney studio, and explores evidence for Crisp's controversial conclusion that David Crockett was captured and executed at the end of the battle.
In October, 2004, Oxford University Press published Crisp's SLEUTHING THE ALAMO: DAVY CROCKETT'S LAST STAND AND OTHER MYSTERIES OF THE TEXAS REVOLUTION. This book is the second volume to appear in Oxford's "New Narratives in American History" series. The History Book Club made Crisp's book a featured selection in their 2004-2005 winter catalog, and on April 21, 2006, SLEUTHING THE ALAMO received the T. R. Fehrenbach Book Award from the Texas Historical Commission.
Crisp is currently at work (with co-editor Louis Brister of Texas State University) on an annotated translation of Herman Ehrenberg's memoir of his volunteer military service in the Texas Revolution. Ehrenberg first published TEXAS UND SEINE REVOLUTION in Leipzig in 1843 in an effort to make the new Texas Republic an inspiration to democratic and nationalistic reformers in the German-speaking states of Europe. The new edition of his work will include a lengthly biographical sketch of Ehrenberg, whose obscure but wide-ranging life in the American West has up until now defied the best efforts of historians.
Interests
US/Mexican Frontier; Texas Revolution & Republic; race relations; historiography
