Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies

Jason Reed, Jone ProfessorAs part of a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant, the Houston Endowment funded the Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies. The Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies team-teaches the Southwestern Studies courses with the faculty of the Center for the Study of the Southwest, helps organize and present symposia, and assists the Center with other regional projects related to the professor's discipline.

Jason Reed is the Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies and a Professor of Photography at Texas State University. He holds a BA in Geography from the University of Texas and an MFA in Photography from Illinois State University. Before joining the Texas State University faculty in 2008, Reed served as an AmeriCorps member in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the co-founder and lead facilitator of the long-term art and education project Borderland Collective. With a focus on the confluence of land, politics, and visual histories, Reed has created gallery and public space exhibitions at venues such as Artpace in San Antonio, Krannert Museum at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, storefront windows in Miles, Texas, Galerie Reinthaler in Vienna, Austria, La Asamblea Legislativa in Mexico City, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. 

During his three-year appointment, Mr. Reed will develop opportunities for engagement and conversation around photography, storytelling, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. These projects, such as an exhibition by photographer Hope Mora about her hometown Pecos, Texas, and a participatory Migration Stories workshop with artist Mark Menjivar, will bring forward the contemporary challenges, historical complexities, and affirmative joys and successes of borderland communities.