Stephen Webre, Ph.D.
October 13, 1946 - September 12, 2022
Professor Emeritus
College of Liberal Arts
Click on Dr. Webre's photo to access his collection
Collection Number: M 450
Biography
Dr. Webre was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) earning a B.A. in History. Following his service in the United States Navy in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in the Canal Zone in Panama during the Vietnam War, he attended Tulane University in New Orleans earning a M.A. in History and a PhD in Latin American History. He was curator of Hispanic manuscripts at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans from 1980-82. He was a professor of History at Louisiana Tech University from 1982 until his retirement with the rank of Professor Emeritus in 2017. During that time, he served variously as Head of the History Department, director of graduate studies in History, Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and held the McGinty Chair in History. He served as an advisor for Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honor Society for many years. Under his leadership the Lambda Rho Chapter at La. Tech won 30 awards and national “best chapter” honors 28 times. Dr. Webre loved trains and traveling and was a talented artist. He was also a strong supporter of foreign study programs, organizing some for Tulane and other universities, and while at Tech participated in the History Department’s program in Florence, Italy, and the Spanish language program in Costa Rica. Working with students provided the greatest satisfaction to him. Those he taught numbered in the thousands, and he often said, “I hope they know that I have cared about each and every one of them.”
Dr. Webre was a member of the Louisiana Historical Association and the Southwest Historical Association, serving as a past president for both. He was also a member of the American Historical Association, the Conference on Latin American History, the Latin American Studies Association, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He was awarded a lifetime membership in the Guatemalan Academy of Geography and History in recognition of his contribution to the field of Guatemalan history. He helped to found the region-wide Congreso de Historiadores Centroamericanos. Dear to his heart was helping to found CIRMA (Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamerica) in Antigua, Guatemala, providing access for all Guatemalans and Central Americans to historical and photographic archives and a library pertaining to the Mesoamerican region. It is one of the programs supported by the Maya Educational Foundation. He was a contributing editor in Central American history to the Handbook of Latin American Studies for the Library of Congress; on the editorial board for Mesoamérica; an editor for El Noticiero Centroamericanista; and most recently editor-in-chief for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American History. He was inducted as a lifetime Fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association and was a recipient of the Louisiana Tech University Foundation Professorship Award. He also received the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Individual Achievement in the Humanities Award for his work with the Readings in Literature and Culture, or RELIC, programs held at public libraries across north Louisiana. Community service was very important to Dr. Webre.
Dr. Webre published numerous journal articles, book chapters and reviews, and made many conference presentations. His first book, José Napoleon Duarte and the Christian Democratic Party in Salvadoran Politics 1960-1972, was published in 1979. He also published two major book-length collections of original scholarship on Guatemala, featuring chapters by promising young historians whose work might not otherwise be known. Most of this work has been published in Spanish. In his words, “It reflects my own notion of the debt I owe to the people whose countries I write about.” Seventeenth-century Guatemala was his special area of interest and the focus of most of his research. A friend once said that he wrote in the most beautiful seventeenth-century Spanish he had ever seen. He loved Guatemala and its people.
Curated works
Dr. Webre's journal articles in Louisiana History Louisiana History Journal
