Degrees and Credentials
Ph.D. in History, Southern Methodist University, 2021
M.A. in History, The University of Akron, 2014
B.A. in History, The Pennsylvania State University, 2011
Short Bio
Dr. Troester grew up in Erie, PA, and completed his undergraduate work at Penn State University. He has taught previously at Southern Methodist University, Fort Lewis College, and Clemson University. Outside the classroom, he enjoys cooking, making music, and woodworking. He lives in Olean, NY, with his partner, Christina, and their dog, Janet.
Academic Focus
Dr. Troester is a cultural and social historian of nineteenth-century North America, specializing on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. At Pitt-Bradford, he teaches a broad range of courses on the United States, Latin America, and Early America, with a particular emphasis on trans-national connections.
Research, Accomplishments, and Publications
Dr. Troester’s research explores the interwoven histories of organized violence, gender, and nationalism in the nineteenth-century borderlands of Texas and northeastern Mexico. His current book project traces the series of violent conflicts that swept that region between 1820 and 1890, drawing on archival sources from both sides of the modern border. It uncovers how diverse local peoples actively participated in creating the Mexican and U.S. nation-states at the grassroots level, using pre-existing frameworks of kinship, honor, and community.
Dr. Troester is currently working on a chapter for an edited anthology that will examine how conceptions of honor informed national citizenship and loyalty during the U.S.-Mexico War. He is also developing a Spanish-language journal article about northern Mexican women’s participation in the War of the Reform and the French Intervention. He has previously published two other articles and a forthcoming anthology chapter:
“Bad Fathers, Spurious Daughters, and Fratricidal Projects: Borderland Violence, Gender, and Nation in the U.S.-Mexico War,” Pacific Historical Review 91 no. 3 (2022): 297-328. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2022.91.3.297
“'No Country Will Rise Above its Homes and No Home Above its Mother’: Gender, Memory, and Colonial Violence in Nineteenth-Century Texas,” Western Historical Quarterly 52 no. 2 (2021): 143-166, part of James F. Brooks ed., “An Unholy Union of West and South,” joint special issue with the Journal of the Civil War Era. https://doi.org/10.1093/whq/whab001
(Forthcoming) “‘Let Us Be Men and Texas Will Triumph:’ Gender, Race, and Nation in the Texas Rebellion,” Lesley J. Gordon and Andrew Huebner, eds. Race and Gender at War: Writing American Military History, University of Alabama Press