Walter L. Buenger

Walter Buenger, Ph.D., is TSHA’s Chief Historian, responsible for the Association’s scholarly mission and providing academic oversight to its programs. He is also the inaugural Summerlee Foundation Lone Star Chair in Texas History at The University of Texas at Austin. Beunger was elected a TSHA Fellow in 2000, and he served as TSHA President in 2009-2010. The author of numerous books and articles, Buenger was awarded the Coral H. Tullis Award in 2001 for his book, The Path to a Modern South: Texas between Reconstruction and the Great Depression.

A native of West Texas, Buengerreceived his Ph.D. from Rice University in 1979. Soon afterward, he began teaching at Texas A&M University where he remained until 2017. While there, he gave courses in U.S. history, the history of the South, and Texas history, and served as chair of the history department. His own area of research focuses on comparative border studies, the South, and Texas since 1820. He is currently working on a project researching the relationship between history and memory in Texas after 1820.