TGDP presentation by Jim Kearney:March 4, 2026, Texas State Historical Association Convention, “Heinrich von Struve’s Lebensbild.”

Verena Sauer (University of Vienna) visits the TGDP and presents a talk on “Texas German in the minds of its speakers.”

New TGDP publication by Jim Kearney: A Life Portrait by Heinrich von Struve.  Annotated translation of Lebensbild by James C. Kearney with J.T. Koenig. (College Station Texas A&M Press, 2026)

New TGDP publication by Jim Kearney:”German Participation in the Texas Revolution,” in: In the Shadow of Eagles; New Interpretations of the Texas Revolution (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2026)

Live Oaks and Dead Folks. Forty Life Stories of prominent and interesting people who lived in Columbus, TX, and are buried in the Columbus cemeteries. Scripts written by Tracey Wegenhoft, Historical Essays by James Kearney. Self-published by the Nesbitt Memorial Library Foundation, Columbus, TX.

Members of the TGDP organize the The Texas Symposium on Classifying Contact Varieties on the UT Austin campus! Dates: January 15–16, 2026. Location: Harry Ransom Center, Tom Lea Room (HRC 3.206). Description: There is little agreement about which exact types and numbers of structural features should be used to classify a contact variety as a creole rather than another type of contact variety. If one looked at structural features alone, one could perhaps be led to argue that Texas German is creole-like because it has so many structural features in common with Unserdeutsch (Rabaul Creole German), even though the socio-historical backgrounds of the two varieties are drastically different. This symposium brings together a group of scholars to discuss how one can develop an empirical methodology for classifying contact varieties more systematically. For the full schedule and the abstracts, click HERE. 

The TGDP is happy to announce the new release of the ZuMult platform, in collaboration with linguisticbits.de. Besides additional transcribed interviews from the TGDP, an additional annotation layer for Universal Dependency POS tags, and a couple of improvements to the front-end (streamlined navigation, improvements to the KWIC display and more), this new version also contains the historical interviews conducted by Glenn Gilbert in the 1960s with speakers of Texas German. This adds a diachronic dimension to the study of Texas German. The new version is at https://tgdp-zumult.la.utexas.edu/index.jsp.

Atiba Pertilla (German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.) visits the TGDP to discuss progress on the research project sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation and to present a talk on “Exploring the Migrant Connections Corpus” (Jan. 21, 2026).

TGDP presentation by Jim Kearney:January 12, 2026, Colorado County Historical Association, “How small town Columbus built its Archives and Texas Room into one of the finest in the State.”

New TGDP publication!  Boas, Hans C. and Marc Pierce (2025). The for … zu construction in Texas German. In B.R. Page & M. Putnam (eds.), Varieties of German in Contact Settings, 157-184. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [ PDF ]

TGDP presentation: “Wie klang das Texas-Deutsche des 19. Jahrhunderts? Zur Rekonstruktion eines Auswandererdialekts mit Hilfe künstlicher Intelligenz” (How did 19th century Texas German sound? On reconstructing an emigrant dialect with artificial intelligence)(Hans C. Boas). University of Erfurt, Germany, December 9, 2025.

The German National Public Radio (Deutschlandfunk) aired a story on Texas German with an interview with Hans C. Boas, listen to it here.

The Texas German Dialect Project published its 18th annual newsletter, click here for the electronic version.

New TGDP publication: Boas, Hans C. (2025). Towards a systematic methodology for comparing extraterritorial German contact varieties. In R. Szczepaniak, S. Lindenfelser & A. Prediger (eds.), Deutsch als Minderheitensprache in der Welt, 9-49. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. [ PDF ]

Caroline Reher (Technical University of Dortmund) visits the TGDP to deliver a talk on “Zur Vergleichbarkeit und Operationalisierbarkeit von sprachlichen Daten: Eine Fallstudie zu extraterritorialen Varietäten des Deutschen in Chile, Texas und Namibia.” Nov. 12, 2025.

TGDP presentation at the Goethe-Institut Houston: “Stinkkatze und Eichkatze: The history of the German language in Texas.” (Hans C. Boas), Houston, Texas Nov. 20, 2025.

TGDP-presentation at the German Abroad 6 conference: “Kontakt und Wandel des Deutschen in Texas im Kontakt mit dem Englischen.” (Hans C. Boas). Porto Alegre, Brazil. October 1-3, 2025.

TGDP-presentation at the German Abroad 6 conference: “„Zeit“ im Texas-Deutschen – Eine Untersuchung der idiomatischen Lehnübersetzungen im Texas-Deutschen (Margo Blevins & Lena Braun). Porto Alegre, Brazil. October 1-3, 2025.

TGDP-presentation at the German Abroad 6 conference: “Frame-evozierendes Potenzial von machen im Texasdeutschen (Lena Braun & Utpal Pandey). Porto Alegre, Brazil. October 1-3, 2025.

Presentation by TGDP alumn David Huenlich “The MULTICULTURAL & MULTILINGUAL IMMIGRANT HERITAGE OF THE U.S.” at the German Texan Heritage Society, Austin, TX. Oct. 21, 2025.

Prof. Rufus Gouws (Stellenbosch University) visits the TGDP to advise on its ongoing project on compiling a dictionary of Texas German and to give a talk on Dictionary structures in the transition from print to online lexicographic products.

New TGDP publication: Towards a Roadmap for Exploring Past and Present Texas German Voices: A Case Study of German-Indigenous Relations. Yearbook of German American Studies 58/59, 173-214. (Jana Weiss, Hans C. Boas, Margo Blevins, and Verena Sauer).

TGDP presentation by Jim Kearney:October 2, 2025, Nacogdoches, East Texas Historical Association, “How small town Columbus built its Archives and Texas Room into one of the finest in the State.”

TGDP presentation by Jim Kearney:September 19, 2025, Austin, German-Texan Heritage Society Convention, “Adelsverein”

TGDP presentation by Jim Kearney:Cuero, Talk to the DeWitt County Historical Convention about the Waltersdorf book.

Congratulations to TGDP member Dayon Ketchens, who successfully defended his Masters Report entitled “A Discourse Analysis of the Media Surrounding the Multiethnolect.” Also, Dayon will start his Fulbright in Austria year-long fellowship in September. 

TGDP presentation by Jim Kearney:August 21, 2025, Fredericksburg. Dedication of the Mormon Cemetery at Zodiac. “The Depiction of the Mormons commune at Zodiak in Friedrich Armand Strubberg’s historical novel Friedrichsburg.”

TGDP presentation by Jim Kearney:August 10, 2025, Austin, Interview on the Texas Standard about Waltersdorf’s History of DeWitt County.

New TGDP publication: “Texas German“, in the Yearbook of German American Studies Supplemental Issue 6, 159-190 (Hans C. Boas and Marc Pierce).

TGDP presentation at the Humboldt University (Germany): “German contact varieties as a test bed for Construction Grammar.” (Hans C. Boas) (July 17, 2025).

TGDP presentation at the Conference Varieties in Contact: Phenomena – Methods – Theories: “TGDA 2.0 – An enriched Texas German Dialect Corpus for (comparative) corpus analyses” (Hans C. Boas, Margo Blevins, Thomas Schmidt). University of Dortmund, Germany (June 6, 2025).

Official start of the 18-month long research project “Let the People of the Past Speak! Turning Migrant Letters from the 19th Century into Speech”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Together with Atiba Pertilla from the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. and Thomas Schmidt from Linguisticbits (Germany), members of the TGDP will be exploring how 19th century handwritten Texas German letters can be turned into spoken Texas German with the help of artificial intelligence.

TGDP presentation at the Workshop “Archiving Ethnic Voices and Memory: A Roundtable on German Americana” at the 71st Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies in Siegen, Germany. Organized by Jana Weiss (UT Austin), with participation of Hans C. Boas on the founding, evolution, and relevance of the Texas German Dialect Archive for (German) American Studies.

Story on the history of Texas German appears in the German news magazine “Der Spiegel” online: “Mit ‘Howdy’ gruessen, Brahms singen.”

TGDP presentation at the Division on Alsatian Dialectology, University of Strasbourg (France): “250 Years of Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas) (June 17, 2024).

Student Project on Texas Germans! Dr. Jana Weiss and her TA Anthony Hernandez Escobar took their students on a field trip to the Oakwood Cemetery as part of the UGS course “The Texas German Experience” (Fall 2024). The students examined the lives and contributions of notable Texas Germans buried at the Austin cemetery. Check out the student projects here: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/9eecdd9031e44f3e8babc83732d8a738

TGDP presentation at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria): “Documenting and Analyzing Texas German.” (Hans C. Boas, June 24, 2025).