MEET THE FILMMAKERS

Ellen C. Temple has been involved with researching, writing and publishing about Women in Texas History for 50 years, including writing columns for the Diboll Free Press and publishing two pioneering books: Citizens at Last: the Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas, edited by Judith MacArthur and Ruthe Winegarten, and Jane Y. McCallum: Diaries and writings of a Texas Suffragist by Janet Humphrey,  both of which remain in print in the Texas A&M series Ellen C. Temple Classics of Texas Women’s History. It was her understanding that the exciting story of the Texas fight for woman’s vote has remained largely invisible that led her into documentary film making, ET Films, and the production of Citizens at Last with renowned filmmaker Nancy Schiesari. 

 

In her decades of work with the Texas State Historical Association, Ellen endowed the Liz Carpenter Award in 1992 given annually for the best scholarly book on the history of women and Texas in honor of her friend Liz Carpenter, who was a maker of history. A member of TSHA’s Handbook of Texas Women Advisory Board, she earned her B.A degree from the University of Texas at Austin, with honors, in English and history, and her M.A. degree in English is from SFASU in Nacogdoches. She recently endowed the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History at UT.  Ellen served as an Ann Richards appointee to the UT Board of Regents, 1991-1997 and was recently elected to the Texas Institute of Letters. She has 4 children and 6 nearly perfect grandchildren.