George and Ann RichardsCivil War Era Center

Halee Robinson received her PhD in History and a graduate certificate in African American Studies from Princeton University, and she specializes in the histories of race, punishment, and freedom in the United States. Her dissertation, “‘They taken him away from us’: Race, Punishment, and the Intimate Histories of the Texas Prison System, 1865-1912” explores the effects and consequences of the Texas prison system on the intimate lives of Black, ethnic Mexican, Indigenous, and white people in Texas after the Civil War. In particular, her project illuminates the central role that family and community played not only in the punitive aims of the state, but also in the ways that incarcerated and free people alike resisted state violence and punishment and articulated their own conceptions of justice. Halee received her M.A. in History from Princeton University and her B.A. in History and Political Science from Vanderbilt University. Halee’s research has been supported by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Texas State Historical Association, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, Lamar University’s Center for History and Culture, and the Princeton University Center for Human Values.