Light T. Cummins is the Guy M. Bryan Chair
of American History, Emeritus, at Austin
College
where he served as a Professor of History from 1978 until 2018. He no longer
maintains an office on the campus but still may be reached through his Austin
College email address as noted below in the contact section.
The Governor of Texas
appointed him as the official State Historian of Texas,
a non-partisan post in which he served from May, 2009 until July, 2012.
He
received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Southwest
Texas State
University,
now known as Texas
State
University,
where he received an Achievement
Award from the Texas State Alumni Association in 2008 and a Distinguished
Alumni Award from the College of Liberal Arts in 2011. He was named a Distinguished
Alumnus of Texas State University in 2018. After serving as an officer in
the United States Air Force, he
received a Ph.D. from Tulane University.
He has been a Fulbright Scholar to Spain.
His wife, Victoria Hennessey Cummins, is currently a Professor of History at Austin
College, where she specializes in the colonial
history of Latin America and the history of women.
He
is a member of the Texas
Institute of Letters and the Philosophical
Society of Texas. Cummins was named a Minnie Stevens Piper Professor in
2006. He has received the Austin College Humanities Division Faculty Award
in each of the three categories of Outstanding Teaching, Community Service, and
Scholarship. In 2012 The Princeton Review selected him one of The 300 Best
Professors nationwide in all academic disciplines. He received the 2018
Homer Price Rainey Award.
Among his publications are
A
Guide to the History of Louisiana (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1982,) A
Guide to the History of Texas (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988,) Spanish
Observers in the American Revolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1992), Louisiana:
A History (New York: Wiley-Blackwell,) Austin
College: A Sesquicentennial History (Austin: Eakin
Press, 1999,) and several dozen articles in various historical journals.
His book, United
States History to 1877, is a widely-adopted textbook for college survey
and Advanced Placement courses.
He
has written a biography of Emily Austin. This
book won the 2010 Liz Carpenter Award as the best book about a Texas
woman.
Cummins is a former member of the Board of Directors
of Humanities Texas. He is
a lifetime fellow of the Texas State
Historical Association and has served on the Board of Directors of that
association. He is a former president
of the Louisiana
Historical Association. He previously served as president of the
Southwestern Historical Association.
In September
of 2014 Cummins published Discovering Texas History, edited with Bruce Glasrud and Cary Wintz. This
volume is a historical literature guide designed for use by undergraduates,
graduate students, and others who are beginning research projects on Texas
history. It contains almost two dozen articles, each written by a specialist in
the field, that survey the historical literature written about Texas history,
both chronologically and topically.
His book On
History's Trail: Speeches and Essays of the Texas State Historian, 2009-2012 was
published in October of 2014 by the Texas State Historical Association.
Cummins has written a book length biographical study
of Dallas sculptor Allie Tennant. This volume is Allie
Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas, 1892-1971. It was
published by the Texas A&M University Press. It
won the 2015 Liz Carpenter Award from the Texas State Historical Association.
His most recent book, To the Vast and Beautiful Land: Anglo-American Migration into Spanish
Louisiana and Texas, 1760s-1820s is currently in press at the Texas A&M University Press. It is forthcoming in 2019.
At present, he is editing and researching a book with
his wife Victoria Cummins. The tentative title is Making the Unknown Known: Women in Early
Texas Art, 1860s-1960s
Contact Information:
Light T. Cummins
P.O. Box 2065
Denton, Texas 76202-2065
email lcummins@austincollege.edu
