Center for History and Culture
of Southeast Texas and the Upper Gulf Coast
Founded in 2016 by Dr. Mary Scheer as one Â鶹ÊÓƵ’s “Visionary Initiatives,” the Center serves the many constituencies of Â鶹ÊÓƵ students and faculty, the communities of Southeast Texas and the greater Gulf Coast, and the scholars and creatives who explore the region’s past and present. The Center promotes the study of these regions with a commitment to multicultural, interdisciplinary, collaborative, and community-focused projects.
The Center hosts programs that highlight the work of artists, authors, scholars, community leaders, and others who represent varied specializations and backgrounds. It also awards two annual book prizes and funds original research, creativity, and community outreach through its fellowship program.
2026 Summerlee Book Prize: Creative
Burnside Soleil, Berceuse Parish (Texas Review Press).
“Berceuse Parish conjures a fictional Louisiana place caught between bayou and river, memory and myth, between the words of French-speaking ancestors and the silence lost to poverty and displacement. Burnside Soleil holds all of it together through a cast of wayward, estranged, dead, and beloved characters who had to be written. In precise and exacting poems, Berceuse Parish delivers the toiling affection that comes with being from somewhere worth knowing.” Randy Gonzales—Winner of the 2024 Summerlee Book Prize for Settling St. Malo (2023).
2026 Summerlee Book Prize: Nonfiction
Tim Seiter, Wrangling Pelicans: Military Life in Texas Presidios (University of Texas Press).
“Wrangling Pelicans offers a refreshing examination of the fort at La Bahia (present Goliad) and the challenges to soldiering in Texas under Spain. Seiter, however, not only presents the harshness of making a living on the Spanish frontier in northern New Spain, but he also provides an indigenous perspective of the Karankawa who dominated the Gulf coastal region in the shadow of Apache and Comanche expansion from the Southern Plains. The book deftly weaves multiple angles from the internal daily struggles of military life through Antonio Treviño, a Badeño, as the protagonist amidst the external threat from Native American resistance that undermined Spanish mercantilism, missions, and conquest.” Francis X. Galán—author of Los Adaes: The First Capital of Spanish Texas (2020).