The Tombstone Epitaph National Edition, an internationally circulated monthly journal of Old West history, seeks a new editor.  Founded in historic Tombstone, Arizona, in 1880, The Epitaph is Arizona’s oldest continuously published newspaper and is devoted to chronicling and promoting the history of the American West.

The ideal candidate should have a strong background in the history of the Old West, a solid understanding of 19th century American history, and relationships with contributors in the field.  The applicant should possess the editorial skills necessary for all aspects of the production of a monthly print publication, including the ability to meet all production deadlines.

 This is a hands-on position.  The editor solicits, receives, and edits historical features from established and new contributors, selects stories and artwork for publication, and prepares all content for submission to the publication’s computer designer.  The editor may contribute his/her own articles covering Tombstone or Old West history.  The 20-page paper typically runs three or four historical features each month.  Monthly columns include: Letters to the Editor; a Frontier Fare food column; YesterWest; Wandering the West; and Just Around the Bend.  Content for some of the standing features is compiled and/or written by the editor.

 The editor also supervises The Epitaph website, www.tombstoneepitaph.com, preparing monthly content updates drawn from the print publication. Other administrative duties include helping with advertising, marketing, and the paper’s social media presence. 

 The Epitaph maintains an historic newspaper museum in Tombstone, Arizona, which is open seven days a week.  Staff include a professional graphics designer and a web designer who work remotely, along with an office manager and two retail staff who handle subscriptions and are located in Tombstone.  The National Edition does not report on current Tombstone events – these are covered independently by the local edition of The Tombstone Epitaph, published by journalism students at the University of Arizona.

 Preference will be given to candidates who reside in the Southwest. The job is considered part-time, with teleworking arrangements possible.  Interested candidates should send their resume (including publication history) and a writing sample to Epitaph owner Robert Love at editor@ok-corral.com.  Questions: call 301-656-1662.  Application deadline is April 30, 2017.

THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN  Seeks Articles on LGBTQ Public History

In light of the LGTBQ theme study recently released by the National Park Service, The Public Historian invites proposals for articles to be published in a special issue of the journal on LGTBQ public history to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. A broad range of proposals focused on LGBTQ public history in North America and beyond are encouraged, including community-based projects, oral history, digital history and new media, museum exhibits, archival initiatives, collective memory, and public history education and training. Proposals for alternative formats, such as reports from the field, interviews with practitioners, and roundtable discussions, will also be welcome. Proposals, which should be no longer than one double-spaced page, should be submitted to The Public Historian at scase@history.ucsb.edu and to the guest editor, Melinda Marie Jetté, at jettem@franklinpierce.edu. The deadline for submission of proposals is April 26, 2017. Selected authors will be notified by May 24, 2017. Articles will be due by January 1, 2018. Publication of the special issue of The Public Historian will be in 2019 (Volume 41).

The Midwestern History Association Conference in June: the response to the call-for-proposals for the Third Annual Midwestern History Association conference was overwhelming! From those proposals, 80 presentations have been selected for the final schedule, which can be found at the link below. Please spread word of the conference to your friends and colleagues and join us in Michigan on June 7. Remember, the conference is free and open to everyone and Michigan craft beer and snacks are provided by the Hauenstein Center at Grand Valley State University. For more information visit www.midwesternhistory.com

Midwestern History Conference Tentative Schedule

           As historians, we study change, but that doesn’t make it easier for us to handle. For the Western History Association, we are now dealing with a transition in executive directors and home offices. After five years under the stewardship of John Heaton at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, the WHA will, as of July 1, 2017, be housed at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, with the position of executive director being taken up by Elaine Nelson.

Happily, the transition promises to be a smooth one. Thanks to the
leadership of Heaton, our association is in very good shape. All members owe an enormous debt to him for guiding the WHA so ably. We wish the budgetary situation in Alaska had not precluded his university from continuing to host the WHA and from his remaining as executive director. We are delighted, though, to have Elaine Nelson on board to shepherd the WHA through its next chapter. Elaine has a long history with our association, having worked for it as a graduate student when it was led by Paul Hutton at the University of New Mexico. She has maintained her dedication to the WHA since joining the faculty at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Her university has made a substantial commitment to the WHA, which, together with Elaine’s energy, enthusiasm, and all around good sense, augurs great things for our organization.

 Stephen Aron, WHA President

The Coalition seeks to appoint a new Recorder and a Website & Media Chair for the organization as soon as possible. Please read the descriptions and time commitments below and consider volunteering for these important positions.

The Coalition seeks to appoint a new Recorder for the organization by March 1.

As the “Recorder” (a title which might soon be updated), this individual takes and distributes minutes during Business Meetings and Steering Committee Meetings, drafts meeting agendas, updates committee files and protocols for committee chairs on an annual basis, communicates with the membership about the annual Steering Committee election, and manages the membership database. This individual should be organized and approach the position in the spirit of collaboration. She/he/ze will work closely with the Treasurer, Website Coordinator, and Steering Committee Chair to carry out the mission of the Coalition.

Time commitment: The time commitment for the “Recorder” varies. The most concentrated work takes place between August and October, in preparation of the annual Western History Association conference. There is also a good amount of post-conference work that needs to take place in late-January/early-February.'

Interested? There is a “Recorder Timeline” available if you would like to see the list of duties and how they correlate to a monthly calendar.
Please contact cdcahill@unm.edu or cwwh.west@gmail.com to inquire.

The Coalition seeks to appoint a new Website and Media Chair for the organization by March 1:

The “Website and Media Chair” is a working title for a “working” committee which we anticipate will become a CWWH Standing Committee. This position could be occupied by a current graduate student.

As the Website and Media Chair, this individual will serve as the main coordinator for the Website and Media Committee. She/he/ze will be in charge of updating and maintaining the CWWH website. This person will also collaborate with the rest of the Website and Media Committee with the purpose of distributing information about the Coalition through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. She/he/ze will work closely with the Recorder, Steering Committee Chair, and Newsletter Editor to carry out the mission of the Coalition and promote its activities.

Time commitment: The time commitment for the Website and Media Chair will vary from month-to-month. The most concentrated work takes place in late-January/early-February to account for website updates regarding award recipients, new committee appointments, the Steering Committee election, etc. There is also a little work that needs to be completed prior to the WHA in which the CWWH Website should reflect Coalition-related activities and meetings that will take place at the conference.

Interested? There is a “Website and Media Chair Timeline” available if you would like to see the list of duties and how they correlate to a monthly calendar.
Please contact cdcahill@unm.edu or cwwh.west@gmail.com to inquire.

AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER

The Bernard L. Majewski Research Fellowship is funded by an endowment provided through the generosity of Mrs. Thelma Majewski and is intended to provide research support for a recognized scholar in the history of economic geology and to facilitate the Fellow's use of archival collections in the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. The Fellow shall be appointed for a period of one calendar year. During this time the Fellow will carry the title of the Bernard L. Majewski Research Fellow and represent the University of Wyoming as such. Administration of the Fellowship will be the responsibility of the Director, American Heritage Center.

All application materials must be received by the selection committee on or before March 15, 2017, to be considered for the 2017 Fellowship.

Research Fields

The Fellowship is intended to support research in the history of economic geology. For the purposes of the Fellowship, economic geology is defined as the activities of exploration and development of petroleum, base, precious and industrial minerals, including basic geological research. Acceptable related fields include: history, oral history, and historical archaeology pertaining to economic geology, environment and natural resources history, and business or economic history related to economic geology. The American Heritage Center maintains many archival collections, which can be used by the Fellow as source material in conducting historical research. Research projects which integrate archival data with data gathered from other sources (such as historical archaeology and the earth sciences) are also encouraged.

Selection Committee

The Fellow will be selected by a committee comprised of faculty from the American Heritage Center and various University of Wyoming academic departments. The Fellow will be selected at the beginning of each year and will receive prompt notification of their selection. Research supported by the Fellowship should be conducted by the Fellow within one year of notification.

Qualifications

The Fellow will be a recognized scholar in one of the fields of research outlined. The Fellow should have a record of publication in the field or show significant potential for publication. Emerging scholars, members of under-represented communities, and multi-disciplinary researchers are encouraged to apply. Selection of the Fellow will be made by the Selection Committee, as previously described, and will be on the basis of scholarly merit with no consideration of race, sex, ethnic background, or financial need. The Committee shall, however, consider the applicant's ability to complete the research project and bring it to publication in a timely fashion.

Application

Applicants for the Fellowship should submit to the committee, prior to the application deadline, the following materials:

• a research proposal of 2-3 pages outlining the specific research project proposed, the archival collections to be used for this research, and proposed publications which the research will support
• a statement of the proposed timeline for the research project from initiation to completion
• a resume including a list of publications authored by the applicant and copies of two of the author's most recent publications which pertain to the proposed research, if applicable.

All application materials must be received by the selection committee on or before March 15, 2017 to be considered for the 2017 Fellowship. Submit your application to ahcref@uwyo.edu.

Obligations of the Fellow

The Fellow will receive a stipend of $2,500 which will be used to defray research costs at the American Heritage Center, travel and other expenses associated with this research, or publication costs resulting from this research. The Fellow will be responsible for scheduling and conducting the research within one year of receipt of the award and for making timely progress toward publication of the results of the research. The Fellow will also be expected to provide a general interest lecture in their field of research during their fellowship. The lecture may be aimed at audience groups including students, faculty, and the public.

The Fellowship stipend will be paid in two disbursements: $500 upon the applicant's acceptance of the Fellowship, and, $2,000 upon completion of the first research session at the American Heritage Center.

 Reference Department
American Heritage Center
University of Wyoming
Dept. 3924
1000 E University Avenue
Laramie, WY 82071

307-766-3756
ahcref@uwyo.edu
ahc.uwyo.edu

Call for Papers: "Transnationalisms, Transgressions, Translations"

The 12th Conference of the International Federation for Research on Women’s History/ Federation Internationale Pour la Recherche en Histoire des Femmes (IFRWH/FIRHF) will be held August 12-15, 2018 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, the home of the current President, Eileen Boris. This will be the first time that this international gathering of historians of women and gender will assemble in the United States. 

The theme, “Transnationalisms, Transgressions, Translations: Conversations and Controversies,” probes the meanings of boundaries and frameworks, narratives and epistemologies, analytic terms and foundational categories, global, national and local understandings, interactions and power relations across time and space. We are open to proposals for complete panels (chair, commentator, three papers) as well as individual papers, roundtables, conversations, workshops, and non-traditional forms of presentation.

Submissions due March 15, 2017.
Please visit http://www.femst.ucsb.edu/ifrwh/call for more information and for the submission link. Send inquiries to: ifrwh18@gmail.com.

The Western History Association stands with the American Historical Association, and more than 20 other scholarly organizations Condemning the Executive Order Restricting Entry to the United States

The American Historical Association strongly condemns the executive order issued by President Donald J. Trump on January 27 purportedly “protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States.” Historians look first to evidence: deaths from terrorism in the United States in the last fifteen years have come at the hands of native-born citizens and people from countries other than the seven singled out for exclusion in the order. Attention to evidence raises the question as to whether the order actually speaks to the dangers of foreign terrorism.

It is more clear that the order will have a significant and detrimental impact on thousands of innocent people, whether inhabitants of refugee camps across the world who have waited months or even years for interviews scheduled in the coming month (now canceled), travelers en route to the United States with valid visas or other documentation, or other categories of residents of the United States, including many of our students and colleagues.

The AHA urges the policy community to learn from our nation’s history. Formulating or analyzing policy by historical analogy admittedly can be dangerous; context matters. But the past does provide warnings, especially given advantages of hindsight. What we have seen before can help us understand possible implications of the executive order. The most striking example of American refusal to admit refugees was during the 1930s, when Jews and others fled Nazi Germany. A combination of hostility toward a particular religious group combined with suspicions of disloyalty and potential subversion by supposed radicals anxious to undermine our democracy contributed to exclusionist administrative procedures that slammed shut the doors on millions of refugees. Many were subsequently systematically murdered as part of the German “final solution to the Jewish question.” Ironically, President Trump issued his executive order on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Conversely, when refugees have found their way to our shores, the United States has benefited from their talents and energy. Our own discipline has been enriched by individuals fleeing their homelands. The distinguished historian of Germany Hajo Holborn arrived in 1934 from Germany. Gerda Lerner, a major force in the rise of women’s history, fled Austria in 1939. Civil War historian Gabor Boritt found refuge in the United States after participating in the 1956 uprising in Hungary. More recently, immigration scholar Maria Cristina Garcia fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba with her parents in 1961. The list is long and could be replicated in nearly every discipline.

We have good reason to fear that the executive order will harm historians and historical research both in the United States and abroad. The AHA represents teachers and researchers who study and teach history throughout the world. Essential to that endeavor are interactions with foreign colleagues and access to archives and conferences overseas. The executive order threatens global scholarly networks our members have built up over decades. It establishes a religious test for scholars, favoring Christians over Muslims from the affected countries; and it jeopardizes both travel and the exchange of ideas upon which all scholarship ultimately depends. It directly threatens individuals currently studying history in our universities and colleges, as well as our ability to attract international students in the future. It also raises the possibility that other countries may retaliate by imposing similar restrictions on American teachers and students. By banning these nations’ best and brightest from attending American universities, the executive order is likely to increase anti-Americanism among their next generation of leaders, with fearsome consequences for our future national security.

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, like many of his colleagues before and since, did think historically in ways that should inform consideration of President Trump’s executive order. In a 1989 dissent (Skinner v. Railway Executives Association), Justice Marshall observed: “History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in time of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. The World War II Relocation–camp cases and the Red Scare and McCarthy-era internal subversion cases are only the most extreme reminders that when we allow fundamental freedoms to be sacrificed in the name of real or perceived exigency, we invariably come to regret it.”

This post has been updated to list the following affiliated societies’ endorsement of the above statement:
American Association for State and Local History
American Society for Environmental History
Association for Israel Studies
Berkshire Conference of Women Historians
Business History Conference
Central European History Society
Chinese Historians in the United States
Committee on LGBT History
Conference on Asian History
Conference on Latin American History
Coordinating Council for Women in History
Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction
New England Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Society for Advancing the History of South Asia
Society for Italian Historical Studies
Southern Historical Association
Urban History Association
Western Association of Women Historians
Western History Association
World History Association

2018 Call for Papers
58^th Annual Conference of the Western History Association
October 17-20, 2018, San Antonio, Texas

 REIMAGINING RACE AND ETHNICITY
IN THE WEST

 From October17-20, 2018 the Western History Association will meet in San Antonio, Texas and the theme is “Reimagining Race and Ethnicity in the West.” The program committee invites papers and presentations that explore the historical origins, legacy, and construction of race and ethnicity in the North American West. We especially welcome panels that address the complex intersections of race, gender, class, and ethnicity from a variety of perspectives. Fundamental to histories of race and ethnicity are issues of authority, and considering recent events, this warrants a very timely and meaningful conference theme. Histories of race and ethnicities remain vital to any understanding of Western history. Social, cultural, and political movements have often prompted social change, reform, and the expansion of democracy. San Antonio, a city once steeped in Davy Crockett’s revolutionary spirit, is complicated by a history in which Tejanos, Mexicans, and Americans sacrificed their lives for independence. Originally, the Payaya Nation referred to this place as Yanaguana, or “refreshing waters.” Later, Spanish settlers changed the Indigenous name to San Antonio, after patron Saint Anthony of Padua, a Saint devoted to the recovery of lost items. San Antonio’s rich history is central to the conference theme. Throughout the centuries, this region has witnessed a collision of empires, numerous wars, and systems of colonization—a place known for its tragedies, victories, and second chances. As our host site for the 2018 WHA conference, San Antonio represents a place of convergence where historians can recover the significance and stories of how race and ethnicity transformed the West.

In addition to traditional paper sessions, we welcome submissions that integrate creative formats and seek to expand conference participation through invitations to scholars, teachers, students, and the public. We request full session submissions, and will consider individual papers. All panel submissions must designate one person as their main contact. The program committee assumes that every presenter listed in a proposed session has consented to participate in the conference. For all proposals, panel or individual, each presenter must include a one-paragraph abstract, a one-page c.v., with mailing address, phone, email, and indicate their AV equipment needs. Panel submissions also require a 250-word abstract outlining the purpose and title of their proposed session. Electronic submissions are required and should be sent, with supporting materials, as a single PDF document to 2018 Program Committee Co-Chairs, Kent Blansett and Farina King at wha2018callforpapers@gmail.com. The submission deadline is September 1, 2017 for individual papers and December 1, 2017 for organized panels.

 

Dear Colleagues,

The Nominating Committee seeks your input in creating a slate of candidates for this year's Western History Association election. Please submit nominations for: WHA President-elect, two Council members, and two members of the Nominating Committee. 

From the WHA Constitution and Bylaws:
The President presides at all meetings of the Western History Association and the Council during the President's year of service. The President makes appointments to committees and designates committee chairs. The President encourages the establishment of affiliated organization status between other appropriate organizations and the WHA.

The Council consists of the President, the President-elect, Executive Director, and seven elected members. The Council presents a complete report of actions and activities to the membership at the annual business meeting. Elected Council members serve three-year terms.

The Nominating Committee consists of five elected members each serving two-year terms. The Nominating Committee seeks suggestions from WHA members by February 15 each year and prepares the slate of candidates for President-elect, Council, and Nominating Committee. 

Candidates for all elected positions need to be members in good standing.

Please email your nominations for President-elect, Council, and Nominating Committee by February 15 to any member of the Nominating Committee listed below.

On behalf of the Nominating Committee, thank you!

Josh Reid, Chair (2017)
University of Washington
jlreid@uw.edu

 Susan Gray (2017)
Arizona State University
segray@asu.edu

 Leisl Carr-Childers (2018)
University of Northern Iowa
leisl.carr-childers@uni.edu

 George Díaz (2018)
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
george.diaz@utrgv.edu

Lori Lahlum (2018)
Minnesota State University, Mankato
lori.lahlum@mnsu.edu