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Robert Perkinson is a historian and Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is the author of Texas Tough: The Rise of a Prison Empire.
Perkinson joined the American Studies department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2001. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in areas such as crime and punishment, Southern and Western history, race and class, and American empire.
His book, Texas Tough, addresses the history of American punishment, race, economy, and politics in the United States, with an emphasis on Texas—the most locked-down state in the United States. Texas Tough was awarded the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for nonfiction in 2011.
He is currently directing the State of Hawai‘i's and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s efforts to host the Obama Presidential Center in Honolulu.
Perkinson received his B.A. with honors in History, with a minor in Ethnic Studies in 1994 from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he also served as a political columnist for the Boulder Weekly and editorial assistant for Critical Asian Studies in Boulder, Colorado. He attended Yale University and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies, where he also co-founded the Student Legal Action Movement. His dissertation is titled The Birth of the Texas Prison Empire, 1865-1915.
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