About Us

In 1999, former National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman, William Ferris, brought forth a vision for a nationwide network of major regional centers devoted to research, cultural preservation, public programming and lifelong learning about the history, people, traditions and landscapes that characterize America's regions.

For this purpose, the NEH defined nine major geographic regions of the United States: Pacific, Southwest, Plains, Upper Mississippi Valley, Central, Deep South, South Atlantic, Mid-Atlantic, and New England.

Download a map (3.9 MB pdf) of the NEH designated regions.

Within each region, institutions competed to establish a regional humanities center. In December of 2001, the NEH chose Texas State University-San Marcos to establish the Southwest Regional Humanities Center [more news].

In addition to support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Southwest Regional Humanities Center has received funding from the Albert & Margaret Alkek Foundation of Houston, the Tocker Foundation of Austin, and numerous individual donors.

The Southwest Region

The greater Southwest is a physical region that runs from the piney woods of East Texas to the Gulf Coast, across the rolling Texas Hill Country to the dry deserts of Trans-Pecos West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, southern Colorado, and southern California, and includes the several states of Northern Mexico. For the purpose of establishing the Southwest Regional Humanities Center, the Southwest region is defined by the NEH as these four states: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada.