OAH Welcomes New Board Members

Chad Parker

The OAH is pleased to welcome some new faces to the executive board and the nominating board. Joining the executive board are Philip J. Deloria, Martha A. Sandweiss, and Kimberly L. Ibach. New nominating board members include Kimberly L. Phillips, Christine Leigh Heyrman, and Amy J. Kinsel. With the arrival of these new members, the organization further realizes the dedication, experience, and diversity that OAH members have come to expect.

OAH EXECUTIVE BOARD

Philip J. Deloria, a Native American historian, comes to the executive board with a background in history, American studies, mass communications, and music. He most recently wrote Indians in Unexpected Places (2004), which won the John C. Evers Award.  A professor at the University of Michigan, Deloria served on the editorial board of the Journal of American History from 2002 to 2005, the OAH Program Committee in 1999 and 2007, the Ray Allen Billington Prize Committee in 2001, and has been an OAH distinguished lecturer since 1998. Deloria has also worked with the American Historical Association and the American Studies Association. His dedicated service to the profession promises to benefit the OAH as it confronts the challenges ahead.

The second new member, historian of photography Martha A. Sandweiss, has served in numerous positions with the OAH, the Western History Association, the School of American Research, and the Center for American Places. She is winner of the Ray Allen Billington Prize and the William P. Clements Prize for her Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (2002).  She is a professor of American studies and history at Amherst College and brings to the OAH ten years of experience working as a museum curator and director. Sandweiss recently noted, “My background gives me a particular interest in the OAH as an organization that facilitates exchange among historians practicing in a broad range of venues.” No doubt, her diversity of experience and knowledge of the organization will help as she prepares to serve the OAH, which, she argues “offers a critical community of peers and a valuable intellectual forum for those of us working in small institutions.”

Kimberly L. Ibach, a teacher in Casper, Wyoming’s Natrona County School District, provides a new perspective to the OAH Executive Board as well. As a history teacher in Casper, Wyoming, she has been honored with the Tachau Teaching Award and multiple TAH grants. She too has served the OAH over the past decade as she has worked to improve teacher education and expand the reach of the OAH to even more practitioners of history. Her strength lies in her talent in bringing together history students and educators on all levels to improve dialogue and diversity within the profession. 

OAH NOMINATING BOARD

On the nominating board, Kimberly L. Phillips, a professor of history and American studies at the College of William and Mary, provides her expertise not only as a scholar and a teacher, but also as a public historian. Phillips understands her reach saying, “My scholarship, teaching, and community-based history interests in African American, U.S., and women’s cultural and labor history have introduced me to diverse audiences, including K-12 teachers, public historians, National Park Service historians, and museum curators interested in U.S. history.” This background, coupled with her interest in the continued expansion of the OAH to include diverse practitioners of history, should prove valuable to the board’s work.

The second new member of the nominating board, Christine Leigh Heyrman, has been honored with a Bancroft Prize for her Southern Cross: The Beginning of the Bible Belt (1997) and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship among other prestigious awards. A distinguished professor at the University of Delaware, Heyrman has served the profession in a variety of ways. A member of the Journal of American History editorial board from 1989 to 1992, she has also been on various award committees and fellowship committees of the OAH, the National Humanities Center, and the Society of American Historians. She plans to be an enthusiastic advocate of increased “efforts to encourage collaborations between college/university history faculty and history teachers at the secondary level.”

An instructor at Shoreline Community College, Amy J. Kinsel also contributes to the diversity of experience represented on the nominating board. She served on the joint OAH/AHA committee on part-time and adjunct employment from 2003 to 2006 and is currently an editor for H-Adjunct. Consistent with her service to the profession, she argues that “it is important for members of the OAH nominating board to represent all areas of the historical profession.” As a board member, she plans “to nominate candidates for OAH committees who represent historians who pursue research as independent scholars, serve as adjunct and part-time faculty at colleges and universities, and teach at community colleges.”

Every year, the OAH is fortunate to welcome such dedicated and knowledgeable people to the executive board and nominating board. With the diversity represented by these new members, the OAH seems poised to reach out yet again to practitioners of history of all stripes.