The Dissertation Committee for Judith L - The University of Texas at ...

urban development in Texas, but he does not specifically look at any one group of people
or one specific town. 7 Susan W. Hardwick examined the Texas port town, Galveston,
and how ethnic diversity shaped the community of many different levels raising the
possibility of a distinct “American Third Coast” culture region. 8 All these works serve as
models for the present study comparing New Braunfels and San Marcos.
There is one work worth noting very similar in the approach used in this research
project and does not involve Texas, or even an area within the United States. John Cole
and Eric Wolf researched the ecology and ethnicity of two Alpine villages in northern
Italy. Their work examined the Romance speaking village of Tret and compared it to the
German speaking community of St. Felix. The towns both existed virtually side-by-side
on a mountain with only the mountain peak separating them. They researched these two
villages historical background, the use of their physical surroundings in terms of
agriculture and land holdings, and studied how these two places handled change through
the centuries. 9 Thus, the methods employed in this study share a similar approach by one
used in another part of the world. However, instead of researching small mountain
villages in existence for hundreds of years, this work involves the development of two
more recently founded Texas urban centers.
1992): 56-73, “Urban Ethnic Landscape,” Geographical Review, Vol. 85 (October 1995), 518-534, and
Tejano South Texas: A Mexican American Cultural Province, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002, and
James R. Curtis, “Central Business Districts of the Two Laredos,” Geographical Review, Vol. 83, No. 1
(January 1993: 54-65.
7
Christopher S. Davies, “Life at the Edge: Urban and Industrial Evolution of Texas, Frontier Wilderness –
Frontier Space, 1836-1986,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 89 (1986), 443-554.
8
Susan Wiley Hardwick, Mythic Galveston: Reinventing America’s Third Coast, (Baltimore: John Hopkins
Press, 2002).
9
John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf, The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley, (New
York: Academic Press, 1974).
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