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About War Stories

The “Giant” Project

West Texans and the Experience of War: World War I to the Present

In 2014, Dr. Christine Lamberson and Dr. Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, faculty in Angelo State University’s History Department, were awarded a prestigious three-year, $99,982 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to preserve experiences of veterans and their families and examine how those experiences have changed or remained the same over the past century.

Awarded through the NEH’s Humanities Initiatives for Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) program, the grant funds an overarching project titled “West Texans and the Experience of War: World War I to the Present.”

The project will provide ASU history and archive-focused students, as well as student veterans, with the opportunity to assist in producing a digital archive of documents and interviews attached to ASU’s Dr. Ralph R. Chase West Texas Collection. In addition, the project will co-sponsor a series of public presentations on World War I, starting in the fall of 2015, and host a series of roundtable discussions with local veterans.

“This project will ensure that the experiences of West Texas veterans and their families are not lost to history but are preserved and made available for researchers and the interested public,” Lamberson said. “The project also provides a great opportunity for ASU students to get hands-on experiences working in the humanities and to make connections with the broader West Texas community.”

ASU was designated a Hispanic Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education in the fall of 2010. To qualify as a HSI, a university must have Hispanic enrollment exceeding 25 percent of the undergraduate population.

National Endowment for the Humanities

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the NEH supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation.