‘Round the Big Bend: A Study Tour of the Towns around Big Bend National Park

Guides: Stephen Fox, Joe Holley

Next May, the Seminar will travel to one of Texas’s most remote and compelling regions. We will explore the towns and extraordinary landscapes surrounding Big Bend National Park, including Marfa, Marathon, Fort Davis, Alpine, and Terlingua. Even if you’ve visited this area before, you’ll want to join us for a fresh look at this region.

Will the skies still be as dark as ever? Will a border wall have altered the landscape? What will become of Marfa’s ever-evolving art scene? Who is investing in—and reshaping—the region? These are questions we will consider as we encounter the Big Bend not only as a place of remarkable history and natural beauty, but as a landscape undergoing change.

The tour will originate in Midland, which in itself, is rich in history and architecture. We will then travel by motorcoach and enjoy three nights at the Hotel Saint George in Marfa, and a final night at the Gage Hotel in Marathon.  Itinerary and pricing available in September.

Guides:

Stephen Fox is an architectural historian and a lecturer at the Rice University School of Architecture. He is also a lecturer at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston and a fellow of the Anchorage Foundation of Texas. Fox’s work is focused on architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially that of Houston and Texas. In his scholarship, he examines the ways that architecture engages such social constructs as class identity, cultural distinction, and regional differentiation.

Joe Holley, a longtime columnist and editorial writer for the Houston Chronicle, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2017 and 2023 and a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2022. The author of eight books that are mostly about Texas, he’s been an editorial-page editor in San Diego, Calif., a speechwriter for Gov. Ann Richards, a staff writer for The Washington Post and the Chronicle’s “Native Texan” columnist since 2013.  A Waco native, he is an alumnus of Abilene Christian University, the University of Texas at Austin and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Please email [email protected] or call/text (713) 666-9000 to be placed on an interest list for this study tour.