FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 12, 2019

The Western History Association honors new President, President-Elect at

59^th Annual Conference

On October 19 at the 2019 Awards Ceremony in Las Vegas, the Western History Association recognized two distinguished scholars as the future leaders of the organization. Dr. David Wrobel assumed the office of the WHA President, and Dr. Maria Montoya was elected as the next WHA President-Elect.

Dr. David Wrobel is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, David L. Boren Professor (2016-) and Merrick Chair of Western American History (2011-) at the University of Oklahoma (OU). His books include America’s West: A History, 1890-1950 (2017); Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny to the Great Depression (2013); Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West (2002); and The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal (1993). He is working on a “John Steinbeck’s America: A Cultural History, 1930-1968,” and serves as Visiting Scholar for the National Steinbeck Center (Salinas, CA).  

Wrobel serves as an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, was Senior Research Fellow in Western American History at Yale University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Center of the American West, CU-Boulder. He is past president of the American Historical Association’s Pacific Coast Branch, and of Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honor Society. Wrobel teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the West, and modern America. A dedicated promoter of partnerships with K-12 educators, he has participated in and directed numerous teacher institutes, workshops, and colloquia across the country. Prior to OU, Wrobel taught at UNLV, Widener University, Hartwick College, and The College of Wooster.

A Southwest Londoner by origin, Wrobel said, “the region—from southern Nevada to central Oklahoma—has been my home for two decades and the WHA has been my primary professional affiliation for a quarter century.” Wrobel holds master’s and doctoral degrees in American Intellectual History from Ohio University and a BA in history/philosophy from the University of Kent, Canterbury, England.

Wrobel has served the WHA as a member of the Council, Nominating Committee, Program Committee, various prize and award committees, and as Chair of Local Arrangements. “My scholarship,” he notes, “has focused on what the West means to its residents, to the nation, and to the world, but it is hard to express fully just how much the WHA has meant to me over the years.” Wrobel will serve as the WHA President until next year’s conference.

The 59^th Annual WHA Conference was held October 16-19 at the Westgate Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to Dr. Elaine Nelson, WHA Executive Director, the conference attracted over 975 scholars and educators who attended many of the 149 scheduled sessions on subjects ranging from environmental, borderlands, Latinx, LGBTQ, gender, immigration, and Native American and Indigenous history. Nelson noted that the 2019 conference was the third-largest conference in WHA history (and largest since 1995), which she attributes to the field and the leadership. “Record-setting attendance is often a sign that there is a lot of energy surrounding the field of western history,” she said. “But this also speaks to the enthusiasm that members and presenters have for the future leadership. I am very excited to work with the WHA’s newest President and President-Elect. Their dedication to the study of the West and to the organization is inspiring.”

As Wrobel officially assumed the WHA Presidency at the 2019 Awards Ceremony, the association also celebrated its incoming President-Elect, Dr. Maria E. Montoya. She is the Dean of Arts and Sciences at NYU Shanghai and an Associate Professor of History at NYU New York. She will serve as WHA President- Elect until next October.

Montoya has authored articles on the History of the American West, Environmental, Labor and Latina/o history and of the book, Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840-1900.  She is the lead author on the U.S. History textbook, Global Americans: A Social and Global History of the United States (2018). Montoya is finishing up a manuscript, Making the Working Man’s Paradise: Progressive Management of Workers and Their Families in the Colorado Coalfields, which focuses on John D. Rockefeller and Josephine Roche, and their roles in defining the spheres of work and home life during the early twentieth century. Montoya teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in western, labor, U.S., and water history. Prior to teaching at NYU, Maria taught at the University of Colorado and for twelve years at the University of Michigan, where she was the Director of the Latina/o Studies Program.

She recalls, “From the first moment I stepped into Howard Lamar’s class as an undergraduate and found out that I could spend my time learning about the place I came from, I was hooked on the History of the American West.” Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Montoya grew up in Arvada, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. She earned her BA, MA and PhD degrees at Yale University, and in between spent a couple of years at the University of New Mexico working on a master’s degree.

Montoya attended her first WHA meeting in 1988 in Wichita, Kansas, and has rarely missed a meeting since then. “My intellectual journey and my relationship with this organization has led me on a most rewarding career of writing, teaching, and speaking about the place I call home, the American West,” Montoya said. Her service to the WHA includes: Chair of the Membership Committee, the Board of Editors of the Western Historical Quarterly, the Steering Committee for the Coalition of Western Women’s History (CWWH), Chair of the first Jensen-Miller Prize Committee, member of the Hal Rothman Award Committee, and service on the WHA Council. Montoya was also one of the founding members of the Committee on Race in the American West (CRAW), which played a profound role in expanding the WHA’s efforts to be more inclusive in its conference participation, membership, and leadership.

Both Wrobel and Montoya believe the WHA shaped their careers in the historical profession and are honored that the membership selected them to serve in the association’s top leadership roles. “This organization has fostered a deep relationship with scholars and life-long friends who share the same passion,” Montoya said. “I am deeply honored to be chosen as the President-elect of the WHA and I look forward to serving the organization with pride, dedication, and passion for an organization that has been my intellectual home for decades.” Wrobel said, “I am looking forward to this wonderful opportunity to serve…the wonderfully diverse and vibrant constituencies that comprise our shared professional home and family. From K12, community college, small college, and university faculty, both tenure-track and contingent, to graduate and undergraduate students, independent scholars, librarians, archivists, public historians, western writers and artists, and ‘Westerners,’ of all races and ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations, these are the ‘fit rooms’ of our ‘worthy house’ and I’m honored to call it my home.”

Wrobel will preside over the WHA’s affairs during the next twelve months and spearhead the 2020 WHA Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Together with his Program Committee Co-Chairs, Wrobel authored the 2020 Call for Papers, highlighting the responsibility of western historians: “Our understanding of the West as a set of meeting grounds where diverse peoples have come together and interacted in myriad ways, from the most positive and productive to the most violent and destructive, has to be conveyed beyond the confines of the academy to the larger public.” Held October 14-17, “Migrations, Meeting Grounds, and Memory” is the major theme for the 60^th Annual Conference.

Call for Applications, 2020-2021: 

The Tyson Scholars of American Art Program at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Crystal Bridges Museum and the Tyson Scholars Program encourages and supports scholarship that seeks to expand boundaries or traditional categories of investigation into American art. Crystal Bridges invites applications addressing a variety of topics including art history, architecture, visual and material culture, American studies, craft, Indigenous art, Latin American art, American studies, and contemporary art. Projects with an interdisciplinary focus are particularly encouraged. 

The program is open to scholars holding a PhD (or equivalent experience) as well as to PhD candidates. Applicants may be affiliated with a university, museum, or independent. Scholars will be selected on the basis of their potential to advance understanding of American art and to intersect meaningfully with aspects of Crystal Bridges’ collections, architecture, or landscape. 

To support their research, Tyson Scholars have access to the art and library collections of Crystal Bridges as well as the library at the University of Arkansas in nearby Fayetteville. Stipends vary depending on the duration of residency, position as senior scholar, post-doctoral scholar or pre-doctoral scholar, and range from $15,000 to $30,000 per semester. Additional funds for relocation are provided, and research travel funds are available during the residency upon application. Scholars are also provided with housing at one of the Crystal Bridges residences, within easy walking distance from the Museum via wooded trails and approximately 1.5 miles from downtown Bentonville. Scholars have private bed and bathrooms in the house, and share comfortable indoor and outdoor common spaces including an expansive yard, garage, and patio. In addition to housing, Scholars are provided workspace in the curatorial wing of Crystal Bridges’ library. The workspace is an enclosed area shared with other Tyson Scholars. Scholars are provided with basic office supplies, desk space, an office chair, space on a bookshelf, and a locking cabinet with key for personal belongings and files.

Further information about the Tyson Scholars Program, application instructions, and application portal can be found at http://crystalbridges.org/tyson-scholars/. Applications for the 2020-2021 academic year open November 1, 2019 and close January 15, 2020.

About Crystal Bridges:

Opened to the public on November 11, 2011, Crystal Bridges was founded in 2005 by philanthropist Alice Walton. Crystal Bridges’ permanent collection spans five centuries of American art ranging from the Colonial era to the current day. It has particular strengths in colonial through earlytwentieth-century painting and a growing collection of post-war and contemporary art in all media. Crystal Bridges’ research library consists of approximately 60,000 volumes as well as significant manuscript and ephemera holdings. The library also houses a comprehensive collection of American color-plate books from the nineteenth century.

The Tyson Scholars of American Art Program supports full-time scholarship in an expansive definition of American art and visual and material culture from the colonial period to the present. The program was established in 2012 through a $5 million commitment from the Tyson family and Tyson Foods, Inc. Since its inception, the Tyson Scholars program has supported the work of 41 scholars, attracting academic professionals in a variety of disciplines from across the country.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 23, 2019

The Western History Association honors 45 scholars and teachers at
59^th Annual Conference

To learn more about WHA Awards and view the awards program, visit the WHA Awards page!

Gordon Bakken Award of Merit
Jo Tice Bloom, Independent Historian (posthumous)

John Heaton, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Honorary Lifetime Membership
Alfred L. Bush, Retired Curator of Western Americana at the Princeton University Library

Autry Public History Prize
The Pendergast Years: Kansas City in the Jazz Age and Great Depression, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri. Contributors: Jason Roe, David LaCrone.

Caughey Western History Association Prize
Monica Muñoz Martinez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Harvard University Press, 2018)

David J. Weber-Clements Prize
Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, Hopi Runners: Crossing the Terrain between Indian and American (University Press of Kansas, 2018)

Donald L. Fixico Award
Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (Yale University Press, 2018)

Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award
Christopher D. Haveman, ed. Bending Their Way Onward: Creek Indian Removal in Documents (University of Nebraska Press, 2018)

Hal K. Rothman Award
James E. Sherow, The Chisholm Trail: Joseph McCoy’s Great Gamble (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018)

Joan Paterson Kerr Award
James R. Swensen, In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954 (University of Utah Press, 2018)

John C. Ewers Award
Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (Yale University Press, 2018)

Robert G. Athearn Award
Monica Muñoz Martinez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Harvard University Press, 2018)

Robert M. Utley Award
Mark Santiago, A Bad Peace and a Good War: Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018)

Sally and Ken Owens Award
Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Harvard University, 2018)

W. Turrentine-Jackson Award
Megan Black, The Global Interior: Mineral Frontiers and American Power (Harvard University Press, 2018)

Arrell M. Gibson Award
Rodger C. Henderson, “The Piikuni and the U.S. Army's Piegan Expedition: Competing Narratives of the 1870 Massacre on the Marias River,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History (Spring 2018)

Arrington-Prucha Prize
Jay M. Price, “Assembling a Buckle of the Bible Belt: From Enclave to Powerhouse,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains (Spring 2018)

Bert M. Fireman and Janet Fireman Award
Michael A. Hill, “The Myth of Seward’s Folly,” Western Historical Quarterly (Spring 2019)

Bolton-Cutter Award
Alejandra Dubcovsky, “Defying Indian Slavery: Apalachee Voices and Spanish Sources in the Eighteenth-Century Southeast,” William and Mary Quarterly (April 2018)

Jensen-Miller Award
Natalia Molina, “Deportable Citizens: The Decoupling of Race and Citizenship In the Construction of the ‘Anchor Baby,’” in Deportation in the Americas: Histories of Exclusion and Resistance, Kenyon Zimmer and Cristina Salinas, eds. (Texas A&M Press, 2018)

Michael P. Malone Award
Katherine Ellinghaus, “The Moment of Release: The Ideology of Protection and the Twentieth-Century Assimilation Policies of Exemption and Competency in New South Wales and Oklahoma,” Pacific Historical Review (Winter 2018)

Oscar O. Winther Award
Joshua Garrett-Davis, “The Intertribal Drum of Radio: The Indians for Indians Hour and Native American Media, 1941-1951,” Western Historical Quarterly (Autumn 2018)

Ray Allen Billington Award
Megan Asaka, “‘40-Acre Smudge’: Race and Erasure in Prewar Seattle,” Pacific Historical Review (Spring 2018)

Huntington Library-Western History Association Martin Ridge Fellowship
Yvette Saavedra (Assistant Professor, University of Oregon) “Living La Mala Vida: Transgressive Femininities, Morality, and Nationalism in Mexican California, 1810-1850”

Vicki L. Ruiz Award (two awards in 2019)
William Gow, “A Night in Old Chinatown: American Orientalism, China Relief Fundraising, and the 1938 Moon Festival in Los Angeles” Pacific Historical Review (Summer 2018)

Mary E. Mendoza, “Treacherous Terrain: Racial Exclusion and Environmental Control at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” Environmental History (November 2018)

Sara Jackson Award
Katherine Bynum (Ph.D. Candidate, Texas Christian University), “Civil Rights in the ‘City of Hate’: Grassroots Organizing against Police Brutality in Dallas, Texas, 1935-1990”

Walter Rundell Graduate Student Award
Mark Boxell (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Oklahoma), “Red Soil, White Oil: Race, Environment, and the Birth of Petroleum Dependency, 1890-1940”

Charles Redd Center Teaching Western History Award
Alex Barr, Connelly School of the Holy Child

Laura Fenerty, Holy Trinity School

Sandra Garcia, Theodore Roosevelt Middle School

Noël Ingram, DaVinci Communications High School

Louise Pubols Public History Award
Joel Zapata, University of Texas at El Paso

Indian Student Conference Scholarship
Deserea R. Langley, University of California, Davis
Kristen Simmons, University of Chicago

Trennert-Iverson Conference Scholarship
Kerry Goldmann, University of Texas at Dallas

Joseph Schiller, University of Oklahoma

WHA Graduate Student Prize
Anna Toledano, Stanford University

Alika Bourgette, University of Washington

David Krueger, Harvard University

John Legg, Virginia Tech

Sasha Coles, University of California, Santa Barbara

Micaela Valadez, University of Texas at Austin

Taylor Rose, Yale University

Reilly Hatch, University of New Mexico

Juan Mora, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Carolina Ortega, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In August 2019 the American Historical Association published the "Statement from the AHA on Domestic Terrorism, Bigotry, and History." You can read the context of this statement draft and the fine draft on the AHA website. Several governing boards of the AHA Affiliated Societies, including the Western History Association's Council, signed the statement in support of its message.

The WHA Council did not, however, think this statement adequately discusses the historical and contemporary violence again Indigenous peoples in North America.

To this end, the WHA governing body did not believe the AHA Statement adequately addressed the violence perpetrated against Indigenous peoples throughout North American history. At the Fall 2019 Council Meeting on October 16, the WHA Council approved an augmented version of the statement on violence with language that more explicitly recognizes this issue. Please read the full version here of the revised statement here. An excerpt from the statement is included below:

Furthermore, the idea of the U.S. as a “nation of immigrants” ignores a simple truth: the lands we currently identify as North America are Indigenous homelands. Indigenous lifeways grew out of these homelands; Indigenous peoples have stewarded and protected these territories for millennia. Colonial and settler violence removed Indigenous peoples from their ancestral homes and interrupted cultures, but despite displacement, Indigenous peoples have persisted and their responsibility for these territories remains intact, as does tribal sovereignty. Indigenous peoples are of these lands.

An award-winning television production company is searching for passionately curious amateurs and professionals in archaeology, anthropology and history to share their passion with a television audience. We’re looking for experienced hobbyists, mystery lovers and enthusiastic professionals who live to answer the questions of ancient and/or modern worlds. 

Whether you’re a career archaeologist or amateur history sleuth we want to hear from you! *No prior TV experience necessary*

APPLICATION: https://forms.gle/7pVkMW8vFErXV9218 

Questions? Email us at castinghistoryenthusiasts@gmail.com 

#CallforPapers! The 113th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association is now accepting papers. Submit now to participate in “The Past is Always Present” August 6-8, 2020 Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. http://ow.ly/4OQT50wntQC

Application Guidelines for the

PETER E. PALMQUIST MEMORIAL FUND FOR HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

 

INTRODUCTION

Considered one of the most important photo historians of the 20th century, Peter E. Palmquist (1936-2003) had a keen interest in the photography of the American West, California, and Humboldt County before 1950, and the history of women in photography worldwide. He published over 60 books and 340 articles and was a strong proponent of the concept of the independent researcher-writer in the field of photohistory. With co-author Thomas Kailbourn, he won the Caroline Bancroft Western History Prize for their book, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West. Professor Martha Sandweiss, Princeton University, wrote, “He (Peter) established new ways of pursuing the history of photography, and with his collections and research notes soon to be accessible at Yale, he will be speaking to and inspiring new generations of students and researchers forever.” Established by Peter’s lifetime companion, Pam Mendelsohn, this fund supports the study of under-researched women photographers internationally, past and present, and under-researched Western American photographers before 1900.

 

A small panel of outside consultants with professional expertise in the field of photohistory and/or grant reviewing will review the applications in order to determine the awards. Applications will be judged on the quality of the proposal, the ability of the applicant to carry out the project within the proposed budget and timeline, and the significance of the project to the field of photographic history. Each recipient of the award will agree to donate upon completion of the project a copy of the resulting work (i.e., published book, unpublished report, thesis, etc.) to the Humboldt Area Foundation to submit to the Peter Palmquist Archive at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and a report to Humboldt Area Foundation at the end of the grant period. We ask that award recipients acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the Palmquist Memorial Fund in publications or other work products supported by that fund.

 

Past recipients and their projects are featured at www.palmquistgrants.com.

 

RANGE OF AWARDS: $500 - $1,500

 

ELIGIBILITY

Individuals researching Western American photography before 1900 or women in photography as well as nonprofit institutions conducting research in these fields are eligible to apply.

 

TO APPLY

Download the application at www.palmquistgrants.com by clicking the “Application” link at the top right of the page or following this link.

 

Completed applications must be postmarked by: November 1, 2019 by 5:00 pm, and submitted to:

 

Humboldt Area Foundation • 363 Indianola Road, Bayside, CA 95524

Or via email: grants@hafoundation.org

Award Recipients will be notified by January 15, 2020

For more information contact:

Humboldt Area Foundation at (707) 442-2993

Call for Papers for the 63^rd annual Missouri Valley History Conference March 12-14, 2020. 

We are happy to announce a number of significant changes for this year’s conference—including most notably an exciting new venue—and urge you to consult the CFP for more details.  This year’s theme is “Constitutionalism and the American Presidency” but, as always, papers and panels in all historical subfields are welcome.  Please spread the word among your students, colleagues, and friends. 

Proposals for individual papers or panels must be submitted by November 15, 2019 to be considered for the 2020 Program.  Please feel free to contact me with questions at mvhc@unomaha.edu (note the new email address for conference-related communication).  Registration and additional information on lodging and programming will be available online in the coming months via the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s History Department website.  All accepted papers/panels will receive an email notification once approved for the program.  As in the past, the Missouri Valley History Conference is also host to the regional Phi Alpha Theta conference and Society for Military History conference. See the CFP for additional contact information regarding those events.

Thanks for your time and interest.  We look forward to seeing you in Omaha next spring.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t1ptmnylzmd8lox/MVHC%20Call%20for%20Papers%202020.pdf?dl=0

Apply now! The Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin is hiring a scholar at the beginning or advanced Assistant Professor level for a full-time tenure-track position with specialization in any area of the history of Texas and/or the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, the contiguous area on either side of the current border between the U.S. and Mexico. 

http://ow.ly/biwM50vKbFL

The School of History, Philosophy, and Religion at Oregon State University invites applications for a full-time (1.00 FTE), tenure-track, 9-month position as Assistant Professor of Latinx History after 1900, with a specialization in public history. Secondary specializations may include the history of the Pacific Northwest, labor, agriculture, public health, or immigration. Successful applicants will have formal training and experience in aspects of public history such as community and local history, museum studies, historic preservation, digital history, and/or oral history. Please see the full advertisement at: https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=58872