Beverly Tomek

Beverly Tomek, Ph.D.
Interim Dean, School of Arts & Sciences
Associate Professor of History
Phone: (361) 570-4200

Beverly C. Tomek specializes in early U.S. history, especially the Early Republic and Antebellum periods. Thematically, her fields of study include antislavery and social reform from colonial times to the present. Her courses include The Long Civil Rights Movement and the U.S. History survey courses. She is co-editor of the Pennsylvania Historical Association's History Study Series, in conjunction with Temple University Press, and is on the board of the Journal of the Early Republic, the journal of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR).  She has also served as book review editor and associate editor of Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies and on the board of the Pennsylvania Historical Association and has been on the boards of several H-Net list serves, including H-Pennsylvania and H-AMST (American Studies).  Locally she has served on the boards of the Victoria Adult Literacy Council and Theatre Victoria.

Selected Publications:

Books:

James Farmer’s Lifelong Nonviolent Quest for Civil Rights, under contract, University of

Massachusetts Press

Slavery and Abolition in Pennsylvania, forthcoming, Pennsylvania Historical Association/Temple University Press

New Directions in the Study of African-American Recolonization, University Press of 

            Florida, 2017

Pennsylvania Hall:  A “Legal Lynching” in the Shadow of the Liberty Bell, Oxford 

            University Press, 2013.

Colonization and its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in 

            Antebellum Pennsylvania, New York University Press, 2011, 2012.

Book Chapters:

“Ladies’ and Soldiers’ Aid Societies,” Essential Civil War Curriculum, (Online Peer-

            Reviewed Textbook), July 2019

 “The Mythology of Post-Racial America: On the Shadowy Color Line in the Twenty-

            First Century,” Race in America: How a Pseudo-Scientific Concept Shaped

            Human Interaction, edited by Patricia Reid-Merritt, Praeger, 2016.

“‘Hanoi Jane’ in American Myth and Memory,” The Vietnam War in Popular Culture,

            edited by Ron Milan, ABC-CLIO, 2016

Articles:

“Freedom Summer was the Ultimate Protest Summer.  And It’s Time for Another One,” 

The Activist History Review July 2018.   

“Civil Rights Today,” American Book Review 37(3) March/April 2016.

“The Economization of Freedom: Abolitionists Versus Merchants in the Culture War that

            Destroyed Pennsylvania Hall,” Canadian Review of American Studies, 47(2) 

            Summer 2017.

“A Stalking Horse for the Civil Rights Movement”:  Head Start and the Legacy of the 

            Freedom Schools The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of Arts & Letters in the 

            South 52(1) Fall 2014

“The Communist International and the Dilemma of the American ‘Negro Problem’: The 

            Limitations of The Black Belt Self-Determination Thesis” WorkingUSA: The 

            Journal of Labor and Society December 2012

“Seeking ‘an immutable pledge from the slave holding states’:  The Pennsylvania 

Abolition Society and Black Resettlement,” Pennsylvania History, Winter 2008

 “‘From motives of generosity, as well as self-preservation’:  Thomas Branagan, 

Colonization, and the Gradual Emancipation Movement,” American Nineteenth 

Century History 6(2) June 2005

Editing Projects:

Co-Editor of the Pennsylvania Historical Association’s Study Series, in partnership with 

            Temple University Press

Guest Editor of special issue on Civil Rights for the American Book Review 37(3) 

            March/April 2016.

Co-Editor of special edition of Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies,

“Defining the Mid-Atlantic Region,” Summer 2015.

List editor for H-Net’s American Studies list, H-AMSTUDY, 2011-2016

Associate Editor and Book Review Editor for Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-

            Atlantic Studies, 2013-2015.

Series editor for Pickering & Chatto Publishing, “People, Work, and Migration in 

            History,” 2012-2015.

Associate Editor of Encyclopedia of Free Blacks and People of Color in the Americas: The

African American Heritage of Freedom (Facts on File, 2011)

Associate Editor of International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to Present

(Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)

Section Editor of Encyclopedia of American Social Movements (M.E. Sharpe Inc, 2004)   

Selected Awards and Recognition:

Jim Bishop Leader in Literacy award by the Victoria Adult Literacy Council, 2019

Campus Humanitarian Award by the UHV Black Student Union, 2019

Ernest Redekop Prize for best article in the Canadian Review of American  Studies, 2018

College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, Texas State University,

2018

“Wonderful Women of UHV,” Jaguar Activities Board, February 2017

Excellence in Teaching Award, UH-Victoria, 2015

Included in Contemporary Authors (Gale Publishing), 2014