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About Us

Basketball players Basketball players, College of Industrial Arts, Denton, ca. 1915. The Woman's Collection, Texas Woman's University.

The Ruthe Winegarten Memorial Foundation for Texas Women's History was founded as a non-profit corporation in 2006 to carry on the legacy of Ruthe Winegarten's passion for women's history, to encourage the study of women in Texas history, and to foster independent scholarship in Texas women's history. The Foundation was certified by the State of Texas in 2006 as a Domestic Nonprofit Corporation. In 2007, the Foundation was declared exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Board of Directors

Nancy Baker Jones, Ph.D., is president of the Ruthe Winegarten Foundation. She and Winegarten wrote Capitol Women: Texas Female Legislators 1923-1999, published by the University of Texas Press in 2000 and winner of the Liz Carpenter Award from the Texas State Historical Association. The two also produced the video history, "Getting Where We've Got to Be: Women in the Texas Legislature," for the Center for the Study of Women and Gender at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In addition, Jones and Winegarten researched and wrote the script for the 7th-grade video, "From Gutsy Mavericks to Quiet Heroes: True Tales of Texas Women," produced by the Foundation for Women's Resources. With Fane Downs, she edited Women & Texas History: Selected Essays, was an associate editor of The New Handbook of Texas, and has taught women's history in the New College at St. Edward's University in Austin.

Teresa Palomo Acosta, poet and writer, is vice president of the Ruthe Winegarten Foundation. She and Winegarten wrote Las Tejanas: 300 Years of History, published by the University of Texas Press in 2003 and awarded the T. R. Fehrenbach Book Award from the Texas Historical Commission. She served as a research associate for The New Handbook of Texas and has taught Mexican American Women's Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Passing Time, Nile & Other Poems, and In the Season of Change. Acosta is a writer at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin.

Cynthia Beeman, an independent scholar from Austin, is secretary of the Ruthe Winegarten Foundation. She retired in 2007 after 21 years at the Texas Historical Commission, where she served as coordinator of the State Marker Program and director of the History Programs Division. In 1990 the Governor's Commission for Women named her one of ten Outstanding Women in Texas Government in recognition of her leadership role in promoting Women's History Month in Texas. Beeman is co-author (with Dan K. Utley) of History Ahead: Stories Beyond the Roadside Markers of Texas, forthcoming from Texas A&M University Press (estimated publication early 2010.)

Melissa Hield, scholar, feminist historian, women's rights activist, and former instructor in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, is treasurer of the Ruthe Winegarten Foundation. Hield has directed and participated in numerous women's studies initiatives, both national and regional, including Texas women's history projects for the Foundation for Women's Resources and People's History in Texas, an organization that brings to life stories of ordinary people and significant social and political movements.

Janelle Dupont, M.A., historian and writer, is a foundation board member. She is co-author of We Can Fly: Stories of Katherine Stinson and Other Gutsy Texas Women. She has researched and written about the woman suffrage movement, freedwomen in post-Civil War Texas, and the WWII woman pilot training program in West Texas. She has taught U.S. history in community colleges and is managing editor of Libraries & the Cultural Record, an international history journal published by the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin.

Portrait of Clio Photo courtesy of Cynthia Beeman

Meet Clio, our muse

Historians are inspired by Clio (or Kleio), the muse of history. One of an honored sorority of goddesses, Clio represents knowledge and memory of the past. Her pantheon also includes Kalliope, epic poetry; Ourania, astronomy; Thaleia, comedy; Melpomene, tragedy; Polyhymnia, religious hymns; Erato, erotic poetry; Euterpe, lyric poetry; and Terpsikhore, choral song and dance.

We happily introduce our Clio, Cynthia Beeman's energetic and affectionate mutt (daughter of a rescue dog), who accompanies us on our journey.