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OAH and Indiana University Rebuilds Diversity Fellowship Program
The Organization of American Historians, in collaboration with Indiana University's Department of History and College of Arts and Sciences, is pleased to announce a cosponsored Diversity Fellowship for beginning, minority graduate students in American history. Michael McGerr, Associate Dean of IU's College of Arts and Sciences, was "very pleased that the [IU] Department of History and the OAH have been able to work so readily together to implement this fellowship program. I am confident the fellowship will enrich both the graduate program of the department and work of the OAH, and contribute to the greater diversity of the historical profession." A national search will begin in 2003. Applicants must be planning to work toward a Ph.D. and will receive tuition and support for five to six years. In return, the OAH-IU Diversity Fellow will serve two years as a graduate assistant with the OAH and one or two as an associate instructor in Indiana University's history department.
OAH and National Park Service Announce Third Jamestown Scholar
The Organization of American Historians and the National Park Service (NPS) are pleased to announce Ms. Anna Agbe-Davies, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Pennsylvania, as the next Jamestown Scholar. Ms. Agbe-Davies's dissertation topic, "Up in Smoke: Pipe Production, Tobacco Consumption, and Bacon's Rebellion," examines "late seventeenth-century Virginia in the emergence and transformation of the modern world using the manufacture, distribution, and use of Chesapeake-area clay pipes." She seeks to understand local social relationships, including race and ethnicity, during the turbulent era of Bacon's Rebellion.
The OAH-NPS Jamestown Scholarships, provide support for Ph.D. candidates writing dissertations on Jamestown related topics. One Jamestown Scholarship remains and will be awarded in the winter of 2002. Applications are due 1 December 2002. For further information about the OAH-NPS Jamestown Scholarship Program, please contact Heather Huyck at the National Park Service, (757) 564-0896.
REPORTS OF OAH COMMITTEES
Minority Historians and Minority History Committee Report
The Committee on Minority Historians and Minority History read applications for the Huggins-Quarles prize. There were over twenty high quality applications, and two $1,000 awards were given. At the spring conference in Los Angeles, the proposal for a summer institute to recruit students of color to the history profession was discussed. The OAH is committed to the formation of an institute to recruit and provide courses and guidance for young people of color who might want to join the historical profession.
Another topic of concern is the name of the committee. "Minority" is quickly growing outdated as a term for particular groups. Latinos, for example, are in the majority in some parts of the country. African Americans have long felt that the term is diminutive. The committee should, perhaps, be called the Committee on Africana, Latino, Asian, and Native American Historians (ALANA) and ALANA history. This matter will be discussed at future meetings.
--Charles Pete Banner-Haley
International Committee Report
The committee reports the following actions as agreed upon in its meeting at the 2001 OAH Annual Meeting:
- OAH Foreign-Language Book Prize. Concerning the second and third prize books that Ohio State University Press is committed to publishing: Fasce's A Family in Stars and Stripes: The Great War and Corporate Culture in America has been finished and sent to the press; Rossignol's The Nationalist Ferment: At the Origins of American Foreign Policy, 1789-1812 is nearing completion. University of Notre Dame Press is committed to publishing the fourth, Heffer's The United States and the Pacific: The Story of a Frontier. We are currently working on finding a publisher for the fifth, Won Lee's U.S. Korean Relations and Japan in East Asia's Cold War and continuing to investigate further ways to subsidize the program and help with the remaining and future books.
- Strengthening institutional ties with foreign-based U.S. historians . Ferdinando Fasce is discussing with the Associazione Italiana Studi Nord-Americani (AISNA) the possibility of establishing an agreement providing for associate membership to the OAH at half the ordinary membership fee for the members of the AISNA. Other such initiatives are under consideration.
- New concrete programs for internationalization. Allan Winkler is proceeding with the Salzburg proposal and is working with James O. Horton, OAH Executive Board member, with Salzburg people both in Washington and Salzburg. As to the Rockefeller project, Peter Kraemer is discussing the plan with the Rockefeller Archive Center for a conference on the virtues and pitfalls of researching global or non-U.S. topics in American repositories.
--Ferdinando Fasce
OAH Newsletter Editorial Board
The past year was a productive one for the board. Through ongoing discussions
with the managing editor, Michael Regoli, and then associate editor, Roark
Atkinson, followed by a series of e-mail exchanges, we inaugurated an informal
interview committee. Special thanks should go to board members Bryan LeBeau
and Rebecca Sharpless, whose vigorous energies helped bring this new feature
of the Newsletter to fruition. The committee's mandate is to arrange--and in most cases conduct--interviews with notable individuals from around the country who have contributed the field of American history, especially those who have expanded the sphere of historical inquiry beyond the academy. The interview series has become one of the main features of the Newsletter, beginning with Lawrence Levine's interview of NEH Chair William Ferris in February 1998. The committee has already helped to produce two interviews and has others lined up in the future. Besides the editorial board members, the interview committee includes Joyce Appleby, UCLA; Robert Cherny, San Francisco State University (SFSU); Paul Longmore, SFSU; Barbara Loomis, SFSU; Ronald Grele, Columbia University; and has recently added Michael H. Ebner, Lake Forest College. We hope that more members from institutions on the East Coast and the South will join this endeavor in the future.
Beyond this significant contribution, the board continues to offer advice and feedback on various article submissions, and has offered suggestions for future articles. It has also suggested ways to improve this publication, which is the chief instrument of communication to the membership. Suggestions can always be sent to <newsletter@oah.org>.
--Harvard Sitkoff
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