There are a few spots left for the Spring Meeting! This weekend retreat will offer an opportunity to join with other historians in taking stock of the challenges facing higher education today. And, as is our tradition, the weekend will also feature some exciting new scholarship in women’s history.

Friday night’s program opens with a welcome reception at 6:00pm. Libations may be in high demand for our evening program, a discussion of Chris Lorenz’s recent article from Critical Inquiry, “If You’re So Smart, Why Are You under Surveillance? Universities, Neoliberalism, and New Public Management.” (A PDF of the article will be sent on May 19th to all who have registered by then.) Ardis Cameron, University of Southern Maine, will facilitate the discussion. Saturday night’s program will feature two scholars working in the field of beauty culture. Brenda Elsey, Hofstra University, will give a paper entitled, “‘I have united all Chileans:’” Augusto Pinochet and the Miss Universe Contest of 1987.” Karen Tice, University of Kentucky, will give a paper based on her new book, Queens of Academe.  Her talk is entitled, “Queens of Academe: Student Bodies and the Politics of Race.”

The Spring “Little Berks” will be held in at the Guest House Retreat and Conference Center in lovely Chester, Connecticut, on June 1-3, 2012. The rate for the weekend (inclusive of food, beverages, and lodging) is $292 per person based on double occupancy. A few single rooms may be available at the price of $384.

To view the facility: http://guesthousecenter.org/

As the website puts it: the “Guest House is a delightful new retreat and conference center in the scenic Connecticut River Valley. We offer spacious guest rooms with private bathrooms, superb cuisine, and amenities that range from a grand piano in our lobby to wireless internet in every room. Guests can focus on their work without distractions, while enjoying a nurturing and comfortable environment.

Our facility is a beautifully renovated country inn on private wooded land, adjacent to a state forest with hiking trails and two neighboring lakes. Conveniently located midway between New York City and Boston, Guest House is easily reachable via major highways or by train.”

To reserve a room, please take these two steps:

1)   send an email to Kathi Kern at kern@uky.edu (please be sure to mention the name of your roommate or if you need assistance finding a roommate)

2)   send a deposit of $100 (made out to the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians) to Berks treasurer Ardis Cameron at:  24 Pond Road, South Portland, ME 04106. Your deposit needs to be received by May 19^th. The balance can be paid by cash or check at the conference.

The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians will underwrite the cost of graduate students by 50% and untenured faculty (who lack institutional funding) at the rate of 30%. If you qualify in one of these categories, please indicate your request of a scholarship when registering. All scholarship requests need to be received no later than May 19.

For directions and travel information:

http://guesthousecenter.org/page/4441-Location

Hope to see you there!

All best,

Kathi Kern

Secretary, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians

Histories on the Edge/Histoires sur la brèche

University of Toronto: May 22-25, 2014

Proposals due Jan 15, 2013

For the first time in its history, the Berkshire Conference on Women’s History (also known as the “Big Berks”) will be held outside of the United States, at the University of Toronto, on May 22-25, 2014. The major theme of the conference is Histories on the Edge/Histoires sur la brèche.

Our theme reflects the growing internationalization of this triennial conference. It recognizes the precariousness of a world in which the edged-out millions demand transformation, as well as the intellectual edges scholars have crossed, re-created, and worked to bridge in the academy and outside of it. We invite all modes of critical thinking and work that represents a wide range of historical methodologies. In addition to established historical approaches and sources, we seek sessions using other evidence, such as visual and material artifacts, sonic objects, oral traditions, and affective archives. We encourage methodological risk-taking and hope for a mix of established and newer approaches. We especially invite conversations across centuries, cultures, locales, and generations. We welcome media panels that bridge historical and contemporary work related to art, image, film, and other types of cultural production and cultural institutions.

The conference in Canada prompts conceptual, historical and analytic engagement with critical edges – sharpening, unsettling, de-centring, decolonizing histories in a global context. Edges are spatial: impenetrable borders, stifling boundaries or protective borders and spaces of smooth entry. Edges evoke the creative and the avant-garde. Entangled in the idea of edges are rough encounters, jagged conflicts as well as intimate exchanges. It speaks to the alternative spaces the “edged-out” have carved for themselves and to efforts made to create a common ground, or commons, on which to make oppositional histories.

As a nation-state shaped by imperialist histories and its own colonial dynamics, past and present, Canada itself sits on the edge of a powerful if, perhaps, waning American empire. Like other white settler societies, it is a colonial state that has operated through dispossessing First Nations peoples, guarding the edges of white citizenship, and endorsing patriarchal models of assimilation; yet, this history unfolds and is resisted in myriad ways. Its historical trajectory, on the edges of empire, includes colonization first by the French with the resulting ongoing Francophone presence, and later the British. Its distinctive features include socialized medicine, same-sex marriage, and official but contested multiculturalism. On Anishinabe land, Toronto, a creative, cosmopolitan, and contested city, is both “home” and “elsewhere” for many of its diasporic residents. What better place to consider edges as sites of hope, excitement, and possibility but also of danger, displacement, struggle, and exile?

Histories on the Edge/Histoires sur la brèche invites contributions from the edges because change so often emerges from such sites, however slowly, painfully or partially. Many scholars who write about the “edged-out” seek to talk back to the powerful or challenge the empowered by listening to others. This conference is interested in de-centring US scholarly dominance by inviting histories of the Caribbean and Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, and Indigenous, francophone and diasporic cultures around the world. We welcome papers that destabilize the white, able-bodied, liberal citizen subject through focus on bodies and objects on edges of all kinds. The theme also invites work that queers gender and sexual binaries. How can we historicize emergent, residual, and ongoing gender constructs such as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ as well as gender performances, sexual practices, and social identifications that challenge binary modes of gender and sexuality?

Arnar, Anna Sigridur.  The Book as Instrument: Stephane Mallarmé, the Artist’s Book, and the Transformation of Print Culture (University of Chicago Press).

Blackwell, Maylie.  ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement (University of Texas Press).

Guidotti-Hernández, Nicole.  Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries (Duke University Press).

Haulman, Kate.  The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press).

Martin, Meredith.  Dairy Queens: The Politics of Pastoral Architecture from Catherine de Medici to Marie-Antoinette (Harvard University Press).

Raiford, Leigh.  Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press).

Ramsey, Kate.  The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (University of Chicago Press).

Sharma, Jayeeta.  Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Duke University Press).

Director of Education

Overview

The National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) seeks a Director of Education (the Director) with proven experience in developing and presenting programs and projects for women, families and youth, seniors, and others that interpret the Museum’s mission for and to the public, with special emphasis on the history of women of all ages.  This individual will be an innovative, flexible and motivated team player with a strong knowledge of best practices for museum education.  The Director of Education (the Director) will be a part-time staff position (evolving into full-time) reporting directly to the President & CEO.

NWHM, founded in 1996, is dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and celebrating the diverse historic contributions of women, and integrating this rich heritage fully into our nation’s history. With a national membership of over 50,000 and a web presence with twenty-one online exhibitions, legislation is pending in Congress that will provide a permanent site for the building adjacent to the National Mall alongside our nation’s most iconic museums. It is a non-partisan organization that transcends political debate.

As the museum evolves from an online/virtual museum to a bricks and mortar fully integrated museum,  we will use innovative and engaging means including permanent and online exhibitions, educational programs, and outreach efforts to communicate the breadth of women’s experiences and accomplishments to the widest possible audience. The sharing of this knowledge will illuminate and encourage women and men, people of all classes, races and cultures to move into the future with respect, equal confidence, greater partnership, and opportunity.

Recently the NWHM received a significant grant from the Hearst Foundation to fund the establishment of a Scholarly Advisory Committee, which will draw from the experience of national scholars in Women’s history.  The Director of Education will work closely with this committee and with the staff and Board of Directors to craft and execute a dynamic and enriching education program for the Museum.

Position Description & Responsibilities

The Director of Education will:

• Work closely with the current and future staff to develop a robust education program aimed at men and women of all ages.  As a senior leadership position, the Director will also be expected to contribute to the Museum’s strategic planning, communications and public relations, and fundraising efforts.

• Together with the President & CEO and the Scholarly Advisory Committee, envision, plan, develop, and coordinate all educational programs for diverse audiences including women and men of all ages and backgrounds, school children, teachers, community groups, the general public, and those with disabilities and special needs.

• Develop new and innovative educational programs and curriculum that meet or exceed national standards.

• Support the development and external affairs departments with content for grant proposals, marketing materials and provide input on sources for funding of educational programming.

• In cooperation with other Museum staff, develop content delivery systems (materials, web applications, exhibits, traditional media, classes etc.) to advance the educational mission of the Museum

• Manage school program bookings (full-time activity).

• Work with Museum staff to track and evaluate education program participation and outcomes, by participant

• Annually evaluate the education program and make specific recommendations for improvement to the program

• Establish system to maintain a database of all education program activity and participation

• Teach on-site or remote courses as needed throughout the year (full-time activity).

• Develop and maintain an annual budget for the education department (full-time activity).

• Train and manage additional education department staff as required

• Be an advocate for the Museum and its mission at all times

• Serve as coordinator and liaison to the National Scholars Committee and the Scholarly Advisory Council on all education department matters and liaison to the Board of Directors as necessary.

• Other duties as required

Qualifications

Qualified applicants must have a Doctoral degree in Women’s History or Women’s Studies.  Successful candidates must have at least 8-10 years experience working in a museum environment with a minimum of 5 years experience in museum education or related experience and experience in web based educational content and design.

Salary commensurate with experience.

To apply: Send resume and cover letter to Nikki Emser programdirector@nwhm.org
703.461.1920
nwhm.org

An inter- and multidisciplinary journal, Frontiers welcomes submissions of creative works such as artwork, fiction, and poetry, as well as scholarly papers.  Works must be original, and not published or under consideration for publication elsewhere.  For submission guidelines, please consult the websites sponsored by the University of Nebraska Press and Arizona State University, where Frontiers is currently housed:

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Frontiers,673226.aspx

http://www.asu.edu/clas/asuhistory2/frontiers/

All special issue submissions and questions should be directed to frontiers@osu.edu.  The guest editor for this special issue, Mytheli Sreenivas, and the new-editors of Frontiers, Guisela Latorre and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu also can be reached at the following address:

Editors of Frontiers

Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Ohio State University

286 University Hall

230 North Oval Mall

Columbus, OH 43210

Submission Date for Special Issue:  June 15, 2012

All other submissions, not related to the Special Issue, should be directed to Arizona State University before May 11, 2012.  After May 12, 2012, all submissions should be sent to Ohio State University.

Nadia Jones-Gailani:
The opportunity to present at the ‘Little Berks’ before generations of leading women and gender historians, and alongside noted scholar Claudia Koonz, was truly an honour.  Koonz began the session by exploring the ways in which veiling is portrayed in the European media, followed by my paper examining negotiations of the political and personal meanings of veiling in Canada. Our papers opened up a dialogue on the multiple meanings and messages of veiling, and the powerful use of the hijab as both a personal and political statement.  This paper is part of my dissertation research, which looks at ethno-religious difference in Iraqi diasporic communities in Toronto and Detroit, with a focus on the ways in which women negotiate hyphen identity and their continued links to the homeland.  The experience of the ‘Little Berks’ as a graduate student was very positive, as we were made to feel at home in this tradition of bringing together women in a space that invited relaxation, shared confidences, and intellectual stimulation.  The beauty of the location, and the lively discussions following panel talks and the business meeting made for an eventful and enlightening initiation into the organization!

Lisa Ndejuru:
Lisa was invited to the little berks in connection with her involvement in the Montreal Life Stories project at Concordia University (http://www.lifestoriesmontreal.ca/). She followed colleague, Anna Sheftel, who discussed her experiences working with survivors of mass violence, and research that took her to Bihać, a city in the northwest of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 2005, to research wartime memory in the region. As one of the founding members, and committee coordinators of the Montreal Life Stories project, Lisa has also been centrally involved in the Rwandan working group and with various performance-based workshops that draw on oral narratives and experiment with different ways of creating dialogue around such difficult stories. In addition to discussing these efforts, she talked about the challenge of translating these tragic and powerful stories into theatre meant to be both political and therapeutic for performers and audience. She found the whole experience, including some pointed questions about the project, very interesting, adding that it had prompted her to reflect on various strategies for narrating memories of genocide through this form of storytelling.

Also shown: Michele Mitchell and Berks Treasurer, Ardis Cameron

Book Prize

The Berkshire Conference now awards two book prizes. One prize is for a first book in any field of history written by a woman who is normally resident in North America. This prize is not restricted by historical field. The other prize is also for a first book written by a woman normally resident in North America, but it will be awarded to a book that deals substantially with the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality. Only one copy of a book needs to be submitted; if relevant, it will be considered for both prizes. Textbooks, juveniles, documentary collections, fiction, poetry, and collections of essays are not eligible for either prize.

For this year’s competition, each entry must be published during the period January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2011. If a book carries a copyright date that is different from the publication date, but the actual publication date falls within the window of eligibility, please include a letter of explanation from the publisher.

Deadline: January 15, 2012

Submissions for the book prize should be sent to:

Serena Zabin

History Department, Leighton Hall

Carleton College

1 N College St,

Northfield, MN, 55057

For more information on the book prize please contact Serena Zabin at szabin@carleton.edu

Article Prize

We invite Journal Editors and Authors to submit articles published in the year 2011 for consideration for the Berkshire Conference Article Prizes. The Berkshire Conference now awards two Article Prizes. One prize is for an article in any field of history published in 2011 by a woman who is normally resident in North America. This prize is not restricted by field. The other prize is for an article in the fields of the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality, published in 2011 by a woman who is normally resident in North America. If appropriate, an article will be considered for both prizes.

Deadline: January 15, 2012

Three (3) copies of the article should be sent to:

Faye Dudden

Department of History, 318 Alumni Hall

Colgate University

Hamilton, NY 13346

We can accept photo-copies, offprints of the article, or pdf’s attached to email. If you are sending copies or offprints, please send three. Do not send the entire journal in which the article appears. Information on previous years’ winners can be found at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians’ web site (www.berksconference.org). Articles may be nominated by journals or by the author herself; journals may nominate more than one article. Jointly published articles are acceptable, as are articles that have appeared in collections, but only if they were published for the first time in 2011. They must not be reprints of articles published in previous years. Journals should indicated in a cover letter that they are submitting articles for the prize competition, and include a contact phone number and e-mail address at the journal. Submissions coming directly from authors should contain a contact address (including e-mail) for the author. Winners are notified in early summer and will be publicly acknowledged in an official announcement on the Berkshire website and other public sites. The winning author shall also receive a $500 award.

For further information, please contact Faye Dudden at fdudden@colgate.edu.

In her thought-provoking and compelling article, Sherry L. Smith invites readers to consider how groups and nations can acknowledge monumental historical injustices and what role history and historians play. Focusing on the Native peoples of the American West, Smith asks whether reconciliation or restitution can begin to address the human rights abuses to which American Indians have been subjected. She offers no easy answers, but in a wide-ranging analysis of examples from across the globe and case studies from the history of the U.S. West, Smith outlines a variety of possible approaches and demonstrates that, on occasion and however imperfectly, people of good will have found ways to redress historical wrongs. Moreover, history has been a crucial element in the effort, as victims of human rights violations challenged existing narratives of the national story, and as historians validated those challenges. We applaud Sherry Smith for an article that tackles a big and important historical topic from a transnational perspective, with precisely rendered examples and thoughtful insights at every turn, all of it presented in appealing prose.

Congratulations to Christina Snyder, winner of the 2010 Book Prize of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians for her Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Harvard University Press, 2010).

In a very impressive pool of first books, Christina Snyder’s Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America stands out for its bold argument, elegant prose, and subtle analysis. Snyder’s work completely overturns assumptions about slavery in the American South. The genesis of that region’s plantation slavery was not African slavery but rather that of native Americans. For hundreds of years, including the entire colonial era, Indian slavery in the south was based on ideas of kin rather than race. Even as racial slavery became increasingly common among white southerners, Indians’ notions of slavery remained relatively fluid. Only in the wake of large-scale political and economic crises at the turn of the nineteenth century did southern Indians begin to embrace the notion of racial slavery. This is a big book that convincingly explains an enormous shift in captivity and slavery. Yet even for non-specialists, this book has a lot to offer. Snyder is an excellent guide through the shifting intersections of captivity and race that mark southern slavery. She sensitively brings the reader into the cultural logic of southern Indian slavery. Finally, Slavery in Indian Country is beautifully written, especially in the multiple passages in which she impressively invokes both the richness and the horror of ritual.

An honorable mention to Jennifer Guglielmo, runner-up for the 2010 Book Prize of the Berkshire Conference of Women’s Historians for her Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010)

Jennifer Guglielmo’s book Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) is an accomplished contribution to immigration, political, and gender history. Based on impressive research in both English and Italian sources, _Living the Revolution_ focuses on an under-studied group of women who shaped the political landscape not only of New York or of Italian-Americans from 1880-1954 but also of the politics of dissent all over the United States during that period. Guglielmo sensitively connects what we might today call “kitchen table politics” to street and organizational activism, usefully blurring the dividing line between public and private. The book is comprehensive in its coverage of the shifting racial identities of Italian immigrants in America; the participation of Italian women in transnational forms of anarchism and other radical politics; the cooperation with other women in the labor movement and industrial feminism; and the complicated reactions of Italian women to fascism. Over the generations that Guglielmo analyzes, Italian women both worked with men and through their own separate organizations in ways that reveal a great deal about gender and activism within the context of community organizing. The book does not shy away from confronting the ways in which the gradual recognition of their whiteness eventually led significant numbers of Italian-American women to protect their accrued white privilege through hostility toward racial others, especially African-Americans. The book is well-written, achieves a balanced focus on individuals, groups, and larger communities, and takes into account the large historiography on American women’s activism during the last decades of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century.

Department of History

ARTS AND SCIENCE

New York University

The Department of History at New York University invites applications for a position in 19th-century US history, including transnational approaches. This is a full-time, tenure-track position at the level of assistant professor. Appointment will begin September 1, 2012, pending budgetary and administrative approval.

The department especially encourages applications from candidates working on slavery, foreign policy, gender, or, political economy. Please apply online at http://history.fas.nyu.edu/page/employment, via the “Employment Opportunities” link to submit a letter of application, cv, and three referees. We will begin reviewing applications on December 12, 2011.

NYU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

Book Prize

Congratulations to Christina Snyder, winner of the 2010 Book Prize of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians for her Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Harvard University Press, 2010).

The Berkshire Conference now awards two book prizes. One prize is for a first book in any field of history written by a woman who is normally resident in North America.  This prize is not restricted by historical field.  The other prize is also for a first book written by a woman normally resident in North America, but it will be awarded to a book that deals substantially with the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality.  Only one copy of a book needs to be submitted; if relevant, it will be considered for both prizes.  Textbooks, juveniles, documentary collections, fiction, poetry, and collections of essays are not eligible for either prize.

For this year’s competition, each entry must be published during the period January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2011.  If a book carries a copyright date that is different from the publication date, but the actual publication date falls within the window of eligibility, please include a letter of explanation from the publisher.

Deadline:  January 15, 2012

Submissions for the book prize should be sent to:

Serena Zabin

History Department, Leighton Hall

Carleton College

1 N College St,

Northfield, MN, 55057

For more information on the book prize please contact Serena Zabin at szabin@carleton.edu

Article Prize

Congratulations to Sherry L. Smith, winner of the Article Prize of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians for 2010 for her “Reconciliation and Restitution in the American West,” Western Historical Quarterly, 41 (Spring 2010): 4-25.

We invite Journal Editors and Authors to submit articles published in the year 2011 for consideration for the Berkshire Conference Article Prizes. The Berkshire Conference now awards two Article Prizes. One prize is for an article in any field of history published in 2011 by a woman who is normally resident in North America. This prize is not restricted by field. The other prize is for an article in the fields of the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality, published in 2011 by a woman who is normally resident in North America. If appropriate, an article will be considered for both prizes.

Deadline:  January 15, 2012

Three (3) copies of the article should be sent to:

Faye Dudden

Department of History, 318 Alumni Hall

Colgate University

Hamilton, NY 13346

We can accept photo-copies, offprints of the article, or pdf’s attached to email. If you are sending copies or offprints, please send three. Do not send the entire journal in which the article appears. Information on previous years’ winners can be found at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians’ web site (www.berksconference.org). Articles may be nominated by journals or by the author herself; journals may nominate more than one article. Jointly published articles are acceptable, as are articles that have appeared in collections, but only if they were published for the first time in 2011. They must not be reprints of articles published in previous years. Journals should indicated in a cover letter that they are submitting articles for the prize competition, and include a contact phone number and e-mail address at the journal. Submissions coming directly from authors should contain a contact address (including e-mail) for the author. Winners are notified in early summer and will be publicly acknowledged in an official announcement on the Berkshire website and other public sites. The winning author shall also receive a $500 award.

For further information, please contact Faye Dudden at fdudden@colgate.edu.