Announcement from the University of North Carolina Press:

UNC Press announces the publication of Writing Kit Carson:  Fallen Heroes in a Changing West by Susan Lee Johnson. For more information on exam copies and how to purchase, see below.

Writing Kit Carson

Fallen Heroes in a Changing West

Susan Lee Johnson

 

In this critical biography, Susan Lee Johnson braids together lives over time and space, telling tales of two white women who, in the 1960s, wrote books about the fabled frontiersman Christopher "Kit" Carson: Quantrille McClung, a Denver librarian who compiled the Carson-Bent-Boggs Genealogy, and Kansas-born but Washington, D.C.- and Chicago-based Bernice Blackwelder, a singer on stage and radio, a CIA employee, and the author of Great Westerner: The Story of Kit Carson. In the 1970s, as once-celebrated figures like Carson were falling headlong from grace, these two amateur historians kept weaving stories of western white men, including those who married American Indian and Spanish Mexican women, just as Carson had wed Singing Grass, Making Out Road, and Josefa Jaramillo.

Johnson’s multilayered biography reveals the nature of relationships between women historians and male historical subjects and between history buffs and professional historians. It explores the practice of history in the context of everyday life, the seductions of gender in the context of racialized power, and the strange contours of twentieth-century relationships predicated on nineteenth-century pasts. On the surface, it tells a story of lives tangled across generation and geography. Underneath run probing questions about how we know about the past and how that knowledge is shaped by the conditions of our knowing.

 

"A remarkably thoughtful, subtle, genre-bending study that weaves history and historiography, politics, and memoir, into an eloquent whole."

--Emma Donoghue, author of Room and The Pull of the Stars

"This is a work of daunting originality, one that only a skilled and experienced historian could attempt. Susan Johnson tells her tale with imagination, daring, and grace."

--Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896

528 pages  $29.95  hardcover

Published in association with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas

For more information and to read an excerpt, visit the book page.

Electronic exam copies are also now available and are free to instructors.
Visit the For Educators page on our website for details.

And, when you visit our site, take advantage of our current online promotion – save 40 percent off any UNC Press book – and if your order totals $75.00, shipping is FREE.   Visit www.uncpress.org   – and use promo code 01DAH40 at checkout.

Book Reviewers/Media:  PDFs are available for book reviewers and other media.  To make your request, contact publicity@uncpress.org.

The fight for women’s suffrage. Transportation canals that helped shape the nation. Folklore that’s important to local communities. Locations on the National Register of Historic Places.

These are the themes of four nationwide roadside marker grant programs funded by the William G. Pomeroy Foundation. One of the Foundation’s main initiatives is to help people celebrate their community’s history by providing grants for roadside markers and plaques.

As you plan for 2021, consider how your community, region or state’s history and folklore may tie in to one of these marker grant programs. If you work with students, this may be the perfect opportunity to involve them in a research project that will have an impact.

To learn more about the Pomeroy Foundation and its nationwide marker grant programs, visit wgpfoundation.org. Program guidelines and how to apply are available at the following links:

 National Register Signage Grant Program

 Historic Transportation Canals Marker Grant Program

 Legends & Lore Marker Grant Program

 National Votes for Women Trail

Since 2006, the Pomeroy Foundation has funded more than 1,300 markers and plaques nationwide. Marker grants are open to local, state and federal government entities, nonprofit academic institutions and 501(c)(3) organizations. Grants cover the cost of a cast aluminum marker, pole and shipping.

Contact Us

Are you currently involved with a marker program, or are a representative of a nonprofit or government organization and would like to start your own marker program? Let’s connect. Email Ms. Deryn Pomeroy, Director of Strategic Initiatives, at deryn@wgpfoundation.org. For general questions about applying for a marker grant, email info@wgpfoundation.org.

The Council on America’s Military Past is looking for a few good authors! The ideal paper will be related to America’s military past at the intersection of military history and historic preservation, and might feature old posts (forts, ships and airplanes), battles or battlefields, biographies, units, or equipment. Papers should conform to the Chicago Manual of style, with footnotes, and run between five and ten thousand words.

Please go to http://campjamp.org/publications or email the editor at editorjamp@gmail.com with questions or submissions. The Journal – JAMP – is a peer reviewed publication that goes to press three times a year in print and electronic form and dates from 1966.

This position is being advertised for the Environmental Management Group, in the Columbia-Cascades Area Office in Yakima, Washington.

Historian, GS-0170-11

1 Position

Permanent, Full-time

Salary: $64,649 to $84,049 per year

Moving expenses are not authorized

Announcements Open: 01/07/2021 to 01/21/2021

BOR-21-MP-11001853-NS is opened to current Federal employees serving under competitive service career or career-conditional appointments, former Federal employees with reinstatement eligibility, persons eligible under CTAP & ICTAP, current or former time-limited employees eligible under the Land Management Workforce Flexibility Act, VEOA eligible veterans or persons eligible for non-competitive appointment under special appointing authorities (such as 30% Disabled Veterans, VRA, Schedule A, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps VISTA, etc.).

USAJOBS - Job Announcement

BOR-21-DE-11001854-NS is opened to all United States Citizens and Nationals.

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of History

The Department of History at James Madison University invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor of history with a specialization in Latina/o – Latinx history and the dynamics of shifting boundaries of race and ethnicity in the United States. The department especially welcomes applicants whose research and teaching focus on gender and sexuality and/or migration. The successful candidate will teach courses in large and small classroom  settings that serve general education, American Studies, the history major, interdisciplinary minors and the department’s MA program.

This position forms part of a first-of-its-kind initiative at James Madison University: a cohort hire of six outstanding, tenure-track faculty working collaboratively in several interconnected areas, which include social justice, minority cultures and politics, racial equity, non-Western thought, and critical race studies. Scholars hired into this cohort will be appointed in six of the College’s ten departments:

Sociology and Anthropology; History; Political Science; Justice Studies; Philosophy and Religion; and Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication.

A complete description of this cohort hire may be found here: http://joblink.jmu.edu/postings/8052.

We seek excellent applicants within particular disciplines, but also scholars and teachers eager to work across them, both within the College and beyond. Arriving as a cohort with broadly shared interests, successful candidates will enhance existing strengths in Latinx, African American, African diaspora, ethnic and global studies. Candidates must demonstrate commitment to collaboration in building an equitable and inclusive environment and to supporting diversity initiatives with their research, teaching and service. The position will begin in August 2021, and PhD in hand is preferred.

To apply go to http://joblink.jmu.edu/postings/8052 or visit JobLink.jmu.edu and reference posting number F1517. Salary shall be commensurate with experience.

James Madison University is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating and supporting a diverse and inclusive work and educational community that is free of all forms of discrimination. This institution does not tolerate discrimination or harassment on the basis of age, color, disability, gender identity or expression, genetic information, national origin, parental status, political affiliation, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or veteran status. Anyone having questions concerning discrimination should contact the Office for Equal Opportunity: (540) 568-6991.

From the NCPH and AASLH:

Troubling reports of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in museums, historic sites, parks and educational institutions have been made public over the last few years. NCPH and AASLH have partnered to develop a survey to gather information in order to develop better policies for organizations and to create support networks to aid survivors.  The survey is only as useful as the data we gather, so please help us accumulate a wide range of responses from public historians across the country representing different stages in their careers; the spectrum of gender, race, sexual orientation and gender presentation; and varied institutions. This will be critical to our success. 

You can access the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VFK3Q8K

For more on the background and goals of the survey, who should participate, what respondents should expect, and how to share please read this post on History@Work: https://ncph.org/history-at-work/survey-on-sexual-harassment-and-gender-discrimination-in-public-history/

Sites of armed conflict are part of our American heritage - how can your students help preserve a battlefield or associated historic site and share its stories with and for communities today? 

The National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program wants organizations involved in heritage education to know that Battlefield Preservation Planning Grants are available to help. These grants are awarded annually and competitively to State, local, and tribal governments, other public entities, non-profit organizations, and educational institutions. Eligible projects must focus on planning for, interpreting, and protecting battlefields and historic sites associated with armed conflicts on American soil from any time period in history. Grants fund two-year projects involving research, documentation, oral history, community engagement activities, interpretation and education, preservation planning, and more. They do not require matching funds. 

The 2021 competition is now open until February 12, 2021. The funding announcement and application materials are available at https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=329813. 

You can learn more at https://www.nps.gov/subjects/battlefields/battlefield-planning-grants.htm, or sign up for a free webinar: 

American Battlefield Protection Program staff welcome your questions, and invites you to contact us about your ideas for proposals, at abpp@nps.gov. 

The New-York Historical Society is now accepting applications for its fellowship program for the 2021–2022 academic year. Leveraging its rich collections documenting American history from the perspective of New York City, New-York Historical’s fellowships—open to scholars at various times during their academic careers—provide scholars with deep resources and an intellectual community to develop new research and publications.

The New-York Historical Society offers several long- and short-term fellowships during the academic year. Fellowships are open to scholars at various times during their academic careers. Applicants are advised that they may not participate in external employment while holding a fellowship. In other words, fellows are fully in residence during the term of their fellowships. See below for instructions and application checklists for each fellowship. The application deadline for most fellowships is January 15, 2021.

For more information, please visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/library/fellowships

Click here for a list of FAQs about the Fellowship program.

Call for Papers for the 4th Annual Workshop:

“New and Emerging Studies of the Spanish Colonial Borderlands”

This workshop seeks to bring together five advanced graduate students in the field of the Spanish Borderlands to bolster intellectual exchange and create community among graduate students and interested faculty working on similar or related topics. Successful workshop presentation proposals should highlight new and emerging research on the Spanish Borderlands and focus on some aspect of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Florida or related areas from the sixteenth through the mid-nineteenth century.

Papers will be organized into one hour sessions derived from larger dissertation chapters. Workshopping of the papers by participants and organizers will follow. Participants agree to submit a 25-35 page, footnoted paper by March 1, 2021 and attend the all-day online workshop on March 12, 2021.

For full consideration a proposal, bibliography, and CV must be submitted by December 5th, 2020, to workshop chairs UCR History Department faculty Alejandra Dubcovsky and Steven Hackel at steven.hackel@ucr.edu. Paper proposals should be no more than 300 words and include a separate two-page bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Please put all materials in a single pdf/word document. The organizers will respond by December 20, 2020.

The workshop will be held virtually Friday March 12, 2021

Organized with generous support from the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute Seminar on Borderlands History, The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, UC Riverside.

Job opportunity! See their requirements below:

The Macalester College Department of History invites applications for a Modern U.S. Historian with a specialization in African-American history to serve as Chair of the Department. The position will be filled at the level of advanced Associate or Full Professor to begin Fall of 2021. A Ph.D. is required. Primary teaching responsibilities include courses in the history of African Americans and the African Diaspora in the United States, including the nature and persistence of racial inequality and its consequences; modern U.S. history courses (1861-present); and classes that complement and enhance the department's curriculum.

Review of applications will begin November 23, 2020, and will continue until the position is filled. To apply, electronically submit a c.v., cover letter, a writing sample, a diversity statement (see guidelines below), representative course syllabi, and the names and contact information of three references to Academic Jobs Online. We will follow up with requests for letters of reference as we proceed with our search. In your cover letter, please discuss any previous experience you have chairing a department or equivalent administrative experience.

Macalester College is committed to student and faculty diversity, equity, and inclusion. Strong candidates will have a record of experience or demonstrated commitment to teaching diverse students. In addition to the materials noted above, applicants should also submit a diversity statement (no longer than two pages) that discusses past experiences and/or potential future contributions to inclusive excellence in the areas of research, teaching, service, and/or outreach. In the diversity statement, applicants should reflect upon their experience and vision regarding the teaching and mentorship of students from diverse backgrounds.

For further information about the position, contact the department chair, Linda Sturtz (lsturtz@macalester.edu), or visit the College's website (www.macalester.edu). The search process will be adapted to meet public health standards during the pandemic. Macalester College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college in the vibrant Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area, with a population of approximately three million people and home to numerous colleges and universities, including the University of Minnesota. Macalester's diverse student body comprises over 2000 undergraduates from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and 95 nations. The College maintains a longstanding commitment to academic excellence with a special emphasis on internationalism, multiculturalism, and service to society. As an Equal Opportunity employer supportive of affirmative efforts to achieve diversity among its faculty, Macalester College strongly encourages applications from women and members of underrepresented minority groups.