SOUTHERN
ASSOCIATION FOR WOMEN HISTORIANS
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NEWSLETTER
Fall
2000 Volume
30, No. 3
MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
Congratulations
once more to Sandy Treadwell and to her program committee and
local arrangements team for presenting a terrific program in
Richmond this past June. The Fifth Conference on Women’s
History was a resounding success, and we all left inspired and
challenged by the wonderful sessions and workshops. I was
especially impressed by the slew of favorable comments published
on H-SAWH about the conference. Participants, please do not
forget to submit your papers to Tom Appleton (see announcement)
to be considered for publication in the fifth conference volume.
Sandy Treadwell was not the only SAWH
officer gainfully (frenetically?) employed this spring and
summer. On 1 July 2000 Michele Gillespie passed the secretarial
baton to Melissa Walker. Both Melissa and Michele have spent the
last year ensuring that the transfer of our organizational home
from Wake Forest University to Converse College would occur
smoothly. Thanks to both for a job well done! The secretary is
without a doubt the key position in the SAWH, and we have been
fortunate as an organization to have it filled by a succession of
incredibly capable and personable individuals. Jenny Dunn, a
colleague of Melissa’s at Converse, has generously agreed to
serve as SAWH Treasurer. Jenny is presently Adjunct Instructor in
History at Converse College and Director of Personnel as well as
College Accountant for Spartanburg Methodist College. Welcome!
The results of the elections for 2001 were
announced at the Fifth Southern Conference in June. Jane Turner
Censer of George Mason University was chosen as the new second
Vice President; Thavolia Glymph of Pennsylvania State University,
as the newest Executive Council member; and Angela Hornsby of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as the newest
Graduate Student Executive Council Member. Congratulations to all
three! On the issue of elections, at our November meeting Monica
Tetzlaff was appointed chair of an ad hoc Committee on Elections
and charged to look at the process and nature of the SAWH
selection of officers and council members. She will report
her committee’s findings to the Executive Council at the
2000 SHA meeting in Louisville, and we will be discussing their
recommendations at our Members Meeting. The meeting is
scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Friday, 10 November. We will
have several important recommendations for you to consider, so
please try to be there. Check the SHA program for the room
location.
I am pleased to announce several other
appointments that the Executive Council has made since the
Members Meeting in November. Elizabeth Turner of the University
of Houston-Downtown will join Connie Schulz of the University of
South Carolina as co-editor of the SAWH Oral History Volume, and
Tom Appleton of Eastern Kentucky University will serve as lead
editor for the Fifth Conference volume. Because our
publication interests and demands have proliferated so much in
the last five years, the Executive Council voted in November 1999
to establish an ad hoc Committee on Publications, headed by
Michele Gillespie, to examine issues concerning editorial
policies, publication dates, and volume sales.
Michele will report her committee’s
recommendations at our annual meeting at the SHA.
First Vice President Jacqueline Rouse has
been busy organizing the SAWH reception for the SHA and working
on the SAWH Book Sale with Katherine Johnson from the University
Archives and Records Center at the University of Louisville.
Please contact either Jacqueline or Katherine if you are willing
to help out. Remember, it is never too late to donate books or to
ask your publishers to do so!
Our various and sundry standing committees
have been hard at work as well. Thanks to Angela Boswell
for handing out membership applications in Richmond. As you renew
your membership this year, you might consider giving gift
memberships to graduate students and colleagues. For
applications, write Angela Boswell, Box 7754, Department of
Social Sciences, Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, AR
71999-0001, or e-mail her at BOSWELA@hsu.edu.
Looking forward to our annual meeting in
Louisville in November, the SAWH will again by sponsoring a Job
Strategies Workshop for graduate students. The session is
scheduled for 11:45 a.m. on Thursday, 9 November. We will need
faculty from diverse institutions at all stages of their careers
to participate in small group sessions, so please plan to be
there.
Nancy Hewitt, Professor of History at
Rutgers University, will be giving the annual address. Her talk
is scheduled for Friday, 10 November, at 4:45 p.m. and will be
entitled "Seneca Falls, Suffrage, and the South: Remapping
the Landscape of Women's Rights in America, 1835-1965."
Nancy’s address will be followed by the SAWH Book Sale and
reception. Nancy has provided a summary of her presentation
(see p. 2), which you may want to make available to your
colleagues and students who do not receive the Newsletter:
As this short overview of Nancy’s talk
attests, the SAWH annual address should be the highlight of the
Louisville meeting! What a splendid way to celebrate
the 30th anniversary of our connection with the
Southern Historical Association.
Amy
Thompson McCandless
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The
Southern Association for Women Historians Cordially Invites all
Friends and Sponsors to an Address by
Nancy
Hewitt
Rutgers
University
“Seneca Falls, Suffrage, and the South: Remapping the Landscape of Women's Rights in America, 1835-1965 “
Friday,
November 10, 4:45 P.M.
You
are also invited to a reception honoring
Amy
Thompson McCandless
SAWH
President, 1999-2000
Friday,
November 10, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Members Meeting
The annual Members Meeting, which welcomes all SAWH members, will be held Friday, November 5 from 1 to 2 p.m. Check your SHA program for location.
$$$ BOOK SALE $$$
All members of the SAWH are strongly encouraged to send their donations of books for our FIFTH ANNUAL BOOK SALE to be held during our reception at the Southern Historical Association meeting on Friday, November 10 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Last year’s Book Sale was a tremendous success, and we hope to do even better this year! All proceeds help defray the cost of the annual meeting. You can find some great bargains on books, so bring your checkbooks!
If
you have any books to donate, please send them to:
Katherine
Burger Johnson
University
Archives and Records Center
Ekstrom
Library
University
of Louisville
Louisville,
KY 40292
Seneca
Falls, Suffrage, and the South: Remapping the Landscape of
Women’s Rights in America, 1835-1965
A
Preview from Nancy Hewitt
The
history of women's rights in the United States has been dominated
for more than a century by one brilliant publicist for the cause,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The author of countless speeches, essays,
petitions, letters, and books, Stanton told the tale that best
fit with her own agenda. Of course that agenda changed over
time--from suffrage to marriage reform and self-liberation to
feminist readings of the Bible. Yet Stanton never wavered in her
rendition of the movement's origin or in her claims for the
centrality of suffrage, and historians have largely followed her
lead. Of course, we now know that Stanton, like other--but not
all—white woman's rights advocates, embraced elitist,
nativist, and racist views. Still, this knowledge has led more
often to critiques of her vision than to wholesale rethinkings of
the movement she claimed as her own. It is only through such a
remapping of the movement that the South, conventionally treated
as the racist stepsister of a progressive North, can claim its
rightful (and complicated) place in the landscape of women's
rights. The annual lecture sponsored by the Southern Association
of Women Historians seems like the perfect venue for taking on
that task.
Even
if we accept Stanton's claim that Seneca Falls and suffrage were
the linchpins of first wave woman's rights, we need to seek
the origins of Seneca Falls in Angelina Grimke's decision to
leave the South in 1835 and to stretch the battle for women's
suffrage to embrace the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This
chronological shift immediately returns abolition and civil
rights to center stage in the women's rights movement and
recognizes these movements not simply as seedbeds of feminism but
as ongoing partners in its battles.
Critical
developments in the immediate post-Civil War period reinforce the
centrality of the South and of racial politics to women's rights.
The enfranchisement of African American men, debates over
ratification of the 15th Amendment, and organized attempts by
women to register and vote in the early 1870s recast the politics
of women's rights, yet rarely have these events and their effects
on the larger movement been explored in depth from a southern
perspective. Instead, it has been Stanton and the National
Women's Suffrage Association's attempt to disentangle women's
suffrage from African American rights that has held sway over our
histories of the movement. From this vantage point, although
(white) southerners still play key roles in supporting a
racially-exclusive concept of women's suffrage and in providing
blueprints for excluding people of color from political rights,
it is also southerners--African Americans, Indians, immigrants,
and a few good native-born whites--who produce some of the most
powerful critiques of such exclusions and provide alternate,
community-based, visions of rights.
Combining
the rich literature on women's activism in African American,
American Indian, Mexican-American, Caribbean, and white
communities in the South with what we know of southerners' roles
in national struggles over sex, race and rights, I hope to create
a new sense of the landscape of American women's rights, one in
which the South appears in all its multi-racial, multifaceted,
contradictory, and complex wonder.
SAWH
Welcomes
New Members
Cheri Alder, University of
Southern Mississippi
Karen Anderson, University
of Arizona
Charles Pete Banner-Haley, Colgate
University
Sara B. Bearss, The Library
of Virginia
Patricia Bixel, Maine
Maritime Academy
Muriel Miller Branch, Independent
Scholar
Martha Jane Brazy, University
of South Alabama
Sara Bartlett, Independent
Scholar
Sally Ryan Burgess, University
of Richmond
Sarah Case, University of
California, Santa Barbara
Katherine A. Chavigny, Sweet
Briar College
Kathryn Colwell, Independent
historic preservation planner
Ted DeLaney, Washington and
Lee University
Susan deWees, Pennsylvania
State University
Mary J. Farmer, University
of Louisiana, Lafayette
Natalie M. Fousekis, University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Mary Ann French, University
of Virginia
Wendy Ann Gaudin, New York
University
Francoise N. Hamlin, Yale
University
Genevieve (Ginny) Harlow, James
Madison University
Elizabeth P. Harper, University
of Virginia
Diane D. Kamp, Lake County
Historical Museum
Catherine Kerrison, Villanova
University
LaTonya Thames Leonard, University
of Mississippi
Janet Moore Lindman, Rowan
University
Alecia P. Long, Louisiana
State University
Maria Lourdes Luz, Santa
Ursula University, Brazil
Lucinda H. Mackethan, North
Carolina State University
David B. McCarthy, Duke
University
Kimberly E. Nichols, University
of Memphis
Dana Nielsen, George Mason
University
Cathy Oakley, Florida State
University
Kimberli Phillips, Independent
Scholar
Lisa J. Pruitt, Middle
Tennessee State University
Sue Rowland, Xavier
University (Louisiana)
Molly P. Rozum, University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Cynthia Lynne Shelton, University
of Kentucky
Phyllis L. Smith, Mars Hill
College
Allison Sneider, Rice
University
Elizabeth Sponhelm, Vanderbilt
University
Terry L. Snyder, California
State University, Fullerton
Deborah Thomas, University
of West Georgia
Sarah Thuesen, University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Pat Veasey, York County
Culture and Heritage Commission
Ann Wass, Riversdale
(historic house museum)
Camille Wells, University
of Virginia
Carolyn Whittenburg, College
of William and Mary
Gloria-Yvonne Williams
Barbara Woods
Meet
Incoming Treasurer Jenny Dunn
Jenny
Dunn became SAWH Treasurer on July 1, 2000. Jenny is
an adjunct instructor of history at Converse College and director
of personnel and college accountant at Spartanburg Methodist
College. At SMC, she is also chair of the Renaissance
Scholars Committee which designs, implements and directs a
program for academically talented students. Jenny received
her B.A. in history from the University of Maryland, European
Division, her M.Ed. in educational administration from the
University of South Carolina, and her M.L.A. with a concentration
in history from Converse College. Melissa is delighted to
have Jenny’s support and her financial expertise. Jenny
says, “As accountant and historian, I usually live in two
different worlds. This position brings my interests
together.”
CALL
FOR ESSAYS---SAWH Presenters
Editors of the proceedings volume for the 5th Conference on Southern Women's History, held at the University of Richmond, June 15-17, 2000, invite all persons who presented papers to submit essays for consideration for inclusion in the proceedings volume. The SAWH has a publishing agreement with the University of Missouri Press.
We encourage authors to expand their conference papers into
article-length essays (25-35 pages including footnotes). Submit five
copies of your article by October 15 to:
Anastasia Sims
Department of History
P. O. Box 8054
Georgia Southern University
Statesboro, GA 30460-8054
or
Thomas
H. Appleton
Department of History
Keith Hall 323
Eastern Kentucky University
Richmond, KY 40475-3102
The editors will select manuscripts best suited to the volume and notify authors by December 15. Questions or concerns may be directed to either editor.
If you have questions, please contact Anastatia asims@GaSou.edu or Tom hisappleton@acs.eku.edu
by e-mail.
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Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship
Washington
University announces a new Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Postdoctoral Fellowship Program designed to encourage
interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching across the humanities
and social sciences. Beginning in September 2001, the Fellowship
Program will bring to Washington University a group of new and
recent Ph.D.s who wish to strengthen their own advanced training
and to participate in the university's ongoing interdisciplinary
programs and seminars. The Fellows will receive a two-year
appointment with stipends beginning at $35,000 per year. For more
information see their web site at: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~szwicker/Mellon_Postdoctoral_
Program.html
JOB
OPENINGS
HISTORY.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN/U.S. SOUTH. Tenure-track assistant
professor. Ph.D. in U.S. History required by the
starting date of the position, August 1, 2001. Salary
dependent upon qualifications. Teaching experience in
U.S.survey and/or upper level courses in African-American history
and Southern history preferred. Demonstrated excellence in
research required. Candidates must demonstrate ability to teach
undergraduate and graduate courses in African American, Old
South, New South and U.S. history survey courses. The
Department of History at Georgia Southern has 26 members and
offers both B.A. and M.A. degrees. Initial screening of
selected applicants will occur at the Southern Historical
Association conference in Louisville, Kentucky, November 8-11.
Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, unofficial
transcripts, three letters of recommendation, as well as teaching
evaluations and sample publications to: Prof. Anastatia Sims,
Chair, African-American/U.S. South Search Committee, Department
of History, P.O. Box 8054, Georgia Southern University,
Statesboro, Georgia 30460-8054. Postmark deadline: October
13, 2000. The names of applicants and nominees,
resumes and other general non-evaluative information are subject
to public inspection under the Georgia Open Records Act. Georgia
Southern is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Institution.
Persons who need accommodation(s) in the search process under the
Americans with Disabilities Act should notify the search chair.
COLONIAL LATIN
AMERICAN HISTORY. The History Department of Emory
University invites applications for a tenure-track position at
the rank of assistant professor in Colonial Latin American
history. Ph.D. required; teaching experience and
publications desirable. Preference will be given to
candidates working in sixteenth or seventeenth century history,
although anyone working through the Independence period is also
encouraged to apply. Letter of application, c.v., and three
confidential letters of recommendation should be sent to: Professor
Susan M. Socolow, Chair, Colonial Latin American Search
Committee, Department of History, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
30322. Preliminary interviews will be conducted at the AHA
based on applications received by December 1. Review of all
applications will begin on that date and continue until the
position is filled. Emory University is an AA/EOE.
MODERN BRITAIN.
The Department of History at Emory University invites
application for a tenure-track appointment at the rank of
Assistant Professor in Modern British history, including Ireland
and the British Empire/ Commonwealth. Ph.D. required;
teaching experience and publications desirable. Submit
letter of application, c.v., three letters of recommendation, and
a writing sample to Prof. Heide Fehrenbach, Chair, British
History Search Committee, History Department, Emory University,
Atlanta, GA 30322. Review of applications will begin
on 15 November. Preliminary applications will be conducted
at the AHA based upon applications received by that date. Emory
University is an AA/EOE.
G
E N E R A L A N N O U N C E M E N T S
The Rural and Agricultural Studies Section of the Western Social Science Association seeks paper and session proposals for its 43rd annual conference in Reno, Nevada, 18-21 April 2001. Deadline for submission is December 1, 2000. Panels, roundtable discussions, and papers on any aspect of rural or agricultural study are welcome. Scholars willing to serve as moderators/discussants shold indicate their interests. Submit abstracts (150-word maximum), along with audio-visual needs to Robert Preston, Department of History, Mount St. Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727; telephone (301) 447-5820, ext. 4415, fax (301) 447-42071; email: preston@msmary.edu; or to Stephanie Carpenter, Dept. of History, 6B Faculty Hall, Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky 42071; telphone (270) 762-6576; fax (270) 762-6587; email: Stephanie.carpenter@murraystate.edu.
F. Lee Elzroth, Georgia State University, reports that her institution has announced two major endowments of interest to women’s history scholars. A gift from philanthropists Donna and Michael Coles is designated as an endowment for the Georgia Women’s Movement Archives, now known as the Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women’s Movement Archives. That archives is located in the Special Collections Department at Georgia State. Another gift to the University by Dr. Anne L. Harper established the Anne L. Harper Annual Lecture in Women’s Studies. That fund will enable GSU to invite to campus speakers whose scholarly or professional work focuses on women in politics or political theory.
The Coordinating Council for Women in History and Berkshire Conference of Women Historians are pleased to announce the tenth annual competition for two $500 Graduate Student Awards to assist in the completion of dissertation work. The awards are designated to support either a crucial stage of research or the final year of writing. The CCWH/BERKSHIRE AWARD is for women graduate students in a history department in a U.S. institution, and the CCWH IDA B. WELLS AWARD for a woman graduate student in a U.S institution in any department, but working on a historical topic. Application deadline is October 13, 2000. For more information write to Professor Montserrat Miller, CCWH Awards Committee Chair, History Department, Marshall University, Huntington, WV 25755, or millerm@marshall.edu.
Converse College will host an academic symposium entitled “Southern Women in the Twenty-First Century: A Historical Perspective for a New Millennium,” on March 5 and 6, 2001. Conference speakers will include:
· Jacqueline Jones, Brandeis University, Southern women and the world of work
· Stephanie Shaw, Ohio State University, Southern women, race relations, and civil rights
· Amy McCandless, College of Charleston, Southern women’s education
· Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Emory University, Southern women and feminism
· Sarah Wilkerson-Freeman, Arkansas State University, Southern women and politics
· Anne Goodwyn Jones, University of Florida, Southern women, culture and society
· Nancy Hardesty, Clemson University, Southern women and religion
Former SAWH president, Carol Bleser, Clemson University emeritus, will make summative comments. For more information, contact Joe P. Dunn, Department of History and Politics, Converse College, Spartanburg, SC 29302, (864) 596-9101 or joe.dunn@converse.edu.
The 23rd annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic will take place in Baltimore, Maryland, July 19-22, 2001. The featured theme of the meeting will be "Lived Lives in the Early Republic." Proposals for individual papers or for entire sessions should include a one-page prospectus for each paper and brief c.v.s for all participants. Scholars who would like to serve as chairs or commentators are invited to write to the Program Co-Chairs as well. Unless affiliated with disciplines other than history, panelists are required to be members of SHEAR. Send proposals by January 15, 2001 to Andrew and Mary Cayton, SHEAR Program Co-Chairs, Miami University, caytonar@muohio.edu, (513)529-5542, fax:(513)529-3224.
The 12th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, "Local Knowledge -- Global Knowledge," will be held June 6-9, 2002 at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, USA. The Program Committee welcomes proposals that explore the relationship between local knowledge, global knowledge, the history of women, and the emergence of notions of gender across time and culture. We prefer complete panels, normally three papers, a comment and a chair; one person should not assume the task of chair and comment. The Committee also seeks workshops, roundtables, teaching sessions, and presentations that depart from the traditional conference format. Individual papers will also be considered. No one may appear on the program more than once in any capacity. Deadline for submissions is December 15, 2000. For instructions on proposal format and addresses for submissions, please visit our web site at http://www.berksconference.org.
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E W S O F M E M B E RS
Teresa Ast (Reinhardt College) received the Teacher of the Year Award from Reinhardt in March 2000. In April she presented a paper entitle “American GIs: Changing Attitudes Toward German Soldiers” at the Middle Tennessee State University Holocaust Studies Conference.
Kathryn Holland Braund (Bartram Trail Conference) was recently named president of the Bartram Trail Conference, an organization established in 1975 to locate and mark the route of the eighteenth century Philadelphia naturalist William Bartram through eight Southern states. The Conference works to promote interest in developing the hiking trails and botanical gardens along Bartram’s route as well as to encourage the study, preservation, and interpretation of the William Bartram heritage at both cultural and natural sites in Bartram Trail states. The conference is now planning a meeting for fall 2001. For more information about the BTC, contact Kathryn at khbraund@lakemartin.net.
Victoria Bynum (Southwest Texas State University) received an NEH fellowship this past spring for completion of her forthcoming book, Mississippi’s Longest Civil War: Memory, Race, and the “Free State of Jones” (University of North Carolina Press). She will serve as interim Director for the Center for Multicultural and Gender Studies at Southwest Texas State University during the 2000-2001 academic year.
Starr Morrow Camper (Cleveland Community College) has finished her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina under the direction of Dr. Marcia Synott. Her dissertation analyzed women’s groups in Mecklenburg, Gaston, Cleveland, and Rutherford counties in North Carolina to see how they preserved Old South culture in the New South.
Jeanette Keith (Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania) received an NEH Fellowship for College Teachers for the 1999-2000 year. She was also a visiting fellow at the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University.
Katherine Tucker McGinnis (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) gave a paper entitled “Material Culture, Immaterial Culture: Courtly Dancing as an Economic Motor in Early Modern Italy” at the International Dance Conference, “Terpsichore 1450-1900” in Ghent, Belgium, in April 2000. It appears in the Proceedings of the conference. A shorter version of the paper was given at the North Carolina Colloquium of Medieval and Early Modern Studies in February. From November 1998 to November 1999, she served as representative for the Society of Dance History Scholars to the Building Blocks Committee of the National Initiative for a Networked Culture. In October 1999, she gave a paper entitled “Grace and Gravity: Sixteenth Century Courtly Dancing as a Form of Conspicuous Consumption” at the annual conference of the Group for Early Modern Culture Studies in Coral Gables, Florida.
Sherrie L. McLeroy (independent scholar) has just completed a biography of renowned horticulturist T.V. Munson (1843-1913), known for his work with the phylloxera epidemic in European vineyards.
Deanne Stephens Nuwer (University of Southern Mississippi) has just accepted a position as assistant professor in the history department at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
Rickie Solinger (Independent Scholar) was awarded the CCWH-Prelinger Scholarship Award of $10,000 by the Coordinating Council for Women in History. Solinger recently completed a book entitled Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Abortion, Adoption and Welfare in the United States. She will use the Prelinger Award to support research associated with her study of King v. Smith, the first welfare case ever handled by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Marie Jenkins Schwartz (University of Rhode Island) has written Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South which was published by Harvard University Press in June 2000.
Antoinette Van Zelm (Independent Scholar) copyedited articles for two recent issues of Virginia Magazine of Biography and History. Her article “A Soldier of the Cross in Norfolk, 1865-1876: Chloe Tyler Whittle and Evangelical Womanhood” was published in the Spring 2000 issue of Virginia Cavalcade.
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