I regretfully write to inform you that Dr. Carol O'Connor, notable western history scholar and prominent WHA member, died on November 10, 2022, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was 76 years old. O'Connor was involved in the organization since the late 1980s and has participated in numerous conferences in addition to serving on WHA committees such as the Caughey and Malone award committees.

You can learn more about Dr. O'Connor's life and career in her obituary below.

Carol Ann O'Connor, 1946-2022

Carol Ann O’Connor notable historian of urban America and the North American West died in Tulsa, Oklahoma on November 10, 2022 of complications from Lewy body dementia. Born on February 14, 1946 in Evanston, Illinois, she was age 76 at her death. A 1967 graduate of Manhattanville College, O’Connor brought a lifelong interest in local and community studies to her professional career. As a graduate student at Yale where she completed her Ph. D. in 1976, O’Connor gravitated to the subject of her hometown and produced the book, A Sort of Utopia: Scarsdale, 1891-1981 published in 1983. During 25 years on the faculty at Utah State University, her interests shifted westward. Along with her husband and colleague, Clyde A. Milner II, and Martha A. Sandweiss who recently retired from Princeton University, O’Connor coedited the Oxford History of the American West (1994) and wrote the chapter “A Region of Cities.” That volume received international reviews and recognition as well as two prominent book awards. In collaboration with her husband, she also co-authored As Big as the West: The Pioneer Life of Granville Stuart published by Oxford University Press in 2009. At Utah State in 1999, students in campus government and the honors program invited her to present the 24th annual Last Lecture. She was the first woman to do so and took the occasion to explain her love of history and her devotion to teaching as well as her hope that her personal journey provide worthwhile insights for other women. In that spirit combined with her warm smile and bountiful humor, generations of undergrad and graduate students as well as faculty colleagues can attest to her generous support of their work.

In 2002, O’Connor became professor of history at Arkansas State University where she served as associate dean and then dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences before her retirement in 2012. She then moved in 2014 to Albuquerque, New Mexico and eventually in 2021 to Tulsa. Oklahoma. Her interest in the daily administration of a university will not surprise those who knew her as a graduate student. During the first year of coeducation at Yale College, O’Connor lived in Vanderbilt Hall as a freshman counselor followed by two years as a graduate resident in Saybrook College. She also had her 1977 wedding to Clyde Milner on the Yale campus in Connecticut Hall under the care of the New Haven Quaker meeting. Their daughter, Dr. Catherine Milner, a neonatologist in Tulsa, graduated from Guilford, a Quaker college in Greensboro, NC before beginning her medical studies at Oklahoma State University. Their son Charles Milner studied physics at Yale and then completed his master’s degree in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. He presently is a manager and software engineer for YouTube. Carol O’Connor is survived by her husband; two brothers – John O’Connor of Alpharetta, Georgia and Brian O’Connor of Fairport, New York; two daughters-in-law – Dr. Megan Woslager, M.D. of Tulsa, Oklahoma and Dr. Ashley Tallevi, Ph.D. of Mamaroneck, New York; and two granddaughters – Madeleine Marie Milner and Caryl Ann Milner. Her parents Joseph and Veronica O’Connor predeceased her as did an older brother Terence O’Connor.

Contributions to honor Carol O’Connor are requested for Planned Parenthood Federation of America (see https://www.plannedparenthood.org) or to the Albuquerque Friends Meeting (Quakers) P.O. Box 25462, Albuquerque, NM 87125-5462. A memorial service at the Albuquerque Friends Meeting will be scheduled at a future date.

The Autry Museum of the American West is now accepting applications for their research fellowships. The Autry offers one fellowship exclusively to UCLA graduate students, as well two others open to Ph.D. candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and independent scholars from across the U.S. Research Fellows must be U.S. citizens and in-residence at the Autry during June, July, August, or September 2023. 

Interested applicants should apply by the January 30, 2023 deadline.

For more information on the different fellowships available, as well as application procedures and fellowship expectations, please visit the Autry's Fellowships page here.

The Colorado State University Water Resources Archive is now welcoming applications for the Water Scholar Award. This annual award grants funding to researchers whose work on western water would benefit from access to the collection. The award is intended to help offset the expenses of researchers engaged in studies that will benefit from access to the holdings of the Water Resources Archive as well as costs associated with presentations, publications, or other products resulting from that research. For the 2023 award, the total amount of funding is capped at $3,200.

Applications are due January 31. Additional information and application details can be found here.

About the Colorado State University Water Resources Archive:

Part of the Colorado State University Libraries and in partnership with the Colorado Water Center, the Water Resources Archive consists of collections from individuals and organizations that have been instrumental in the development of water resources in Colorado and the West. Subject areas include water resources management, irrigation, engineering, law and legislation, endangered species, and more.

The Montana Historical Society Publications Program seeks an energetic and talented person to work as an Associate Editor on their quarterly journal, Montana The Magazine of Western History, and Montana Historical Society Press Books. If you have a passion for Montana and Western History, this position may be for you. 

Qualifications include a master's degree or a Ph.D. in History, Native American Studies, journalism, or other related liberal arts fields and two years of related experience in scholarly publishing. Experience in manuscript editing, historical writing, and Western/Montana history is strongly preferred.

The application deadline is November 25, 2022. For more information on how to apply for this position, primary responsibilities, and salary and benefits, please refer to the full job announcement here. 

Montana The Magazine of Western History is now accepting submissions for their Emerging Scholar Article Contest. Enter your manuscript for a chance to win a $1,000 prize, receive a free trip to the 2023 Montana History Conference, and have your article featured in Montana The Magazine of Western History.

Manuscript submissions do not need to focus on Montana history specifically, but must be unpublished original works that address a topic of historical relevance to the American West. For more information on the magazine and its scope, visit their website here. 

The submission deadline is January 8, 2023. To learn more about the opportunity and to submit your article, please refer to the submission website here. 

The Utah Division of State History is now accepting proposals for The Peoples of Utah Revisited initiative. The initiative seeks to widen the lens on Utah's history and amplify marginalized voices from Utah's past and present. Research from history, diversity studies, social sciences, and the humanities is welcome, and the initiative also offers publishing opportunities for student work. 

The Utah Division of State History will be hosting two virtual meetings to explain more about these opportunities. Both sessions will cover the same information.

Option 1: November 18 (Friday) at 1:00-2:30

Sign up here to receive this meeting link

Option 2: November 21 (Monday) at 12:30-2:00

Sign up here to receive this meeting link

For more details regarding this opportunity, including submission guidelines, please find the full call for papers here. 

The Department of History at Texas Christian University is now accepting applications for a tenure-track assistant or associate professor of the 20th century United States who specializes in Mexican American, Latinx, and/or Borderlands history, to begin August 2023. Candidates must possess a completed Ph.D. at the time of application.

The application deadline is November 9, 2022, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

For more information on the position and how to apply, please visit the original job post here: https://jobs.tcu.edu/en-us/job/498266/assistant-or-associate-professor-of-history

The Department of History in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor in the U.S. West to start in August 2023. This is a standard nine-month faculty appointment.

Candidates in all subfields, including race, gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, religion, commerce, politics, transnational, and environmental history, are all encouraged to apply. 

The application deadline is November 15, 2022, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

For additional inquiries about the position, please visit the original job posting here or contact the search committee chair, Michael Pierce, at mpierce@uark.edu

California State University, Long Beach is now accepting applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor of History position in United States history, with emphases on U.S. Borderlands, defined as the United States Southwest and/or Caribbean borders. 

Application review begins November 1, 2022, but the position will remain open until filled. 

Interested applicants can find more information on qualifications, expected duties, and application instructions here: https://bit.ly/3SFBdAo

William A. Dobak was born on June 22, 1943. In 1966 he graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. in International Affairs. From there he crossed the Missouri River and undertook graduate studies at the University of Kansas. During the academic year he served as a copy editor at American Studies; for three summers he worked as a seasonal ranger at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. At the Newberry Library in Chicago, he held a fellowship at the Center for the American Indian (now the D’Arcy McNickle Center) from 1975 to 1976.

Resuming graduate studies in 1991, he completed a dissertation on the economic life of Fort Riley; the published work, Fort Riley and Its Neighbors: Military Money and Western Development, 1853-1895, received the Edward A. Tihen Award from the Kansas State Historical Society. After working as an archives technician at the National Archives, Dobak gained employment with the United States Army Center of Military History. With Thomas D. Phillips, he co-authored The Black Regulars, 1866-1898, winner of the Robert M. Utley Prize. His final book, Freedom By the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862-1867, appeared in 2011. This publication won the Richard Leopold Prize for best book written by a U.S. government historian and was a runner-up for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. A member of the Western History Association for nearly three decades, Dobak served on the editorial board of the Western Historical Quarterly. He authored twelve scholarly articles on topics such as bison, the fur trade, and the enlisted soldiers of the United States Army. The latter appear in the Western Historical Quarterly, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Kansas History, the Journal of the Early Republic, and other publications.  

After a protracted clash with stage IV pancreatic adenocarcinoma, he died at home in Hyattsville, MD, on September 16, 2022. He is survived by his wife Catharine R. Franklin.