William Blair Announces Retirement Richards Center Executive Director and Walter L
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VOLUME 14 | 2019 WILLIAM BLAIR ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT Richards Center executive director and Walter L. and Helen P. Ferree Professor of Middle American History William Blair will retire in June after twenty-one years at Penn State. Blair, a Penn State graduate, joined the Department of History faculty in 1998. As the director of the Richards Center, he oversaw its growth into one of the leading sites for the study of the Civil War era in the country. In 2003, George and Ann Richards endowed the center with a naming gift. Two years later, Blair spearheaded Larry and Gretchen McCabe the center’s successful application for a We the People challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that Larry McCabe Laid to Rest contributed $4,000,000 to the center’s endowment. During his Long-time Richards Center supporter Larry tenure, the center has received more than $9,000,000 in pledges, McCabe was laid to rest on Friday, July 6 providing critical support for the Center’s mission to promote in a mass of Christian Burial funeral at St. the advancement of Civil War era studies, enhance graduate Alexis Roman Catholic Church in Wexford, education at Penn State, and provide internship opportunities Pennsylvania. He had passed away July 1, for undergraduates. The Center also has served as a pipeline for following a brief illness. He earned his Bachelor establishing four endowed professorships in the Department William Blair, Richards Center Director and of Arts from Penn State in 1957, majoring in Ferree Professor of Middle American History of History. Political Science and History, and subsequently Under Blair’s leadership, the Richards Center has spurred Civil War era scholarship through its signature earned a law degree from the University of lecture/book series and peer-reviewed journal. The Steven (’69) and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Pittsburgh in 1960. Following law school and Book series have produced more than 50 lectures and 10 books on Civil War era topics since 1998. McCabe served in the U.S. Army, during which he met and married his wife, Gretchen, Blair also published over 200 authors during his editorship of Civil War History from 2000 to 2010 and to whom he was married for 54 years. the Journal of the Civil War Era from 2011 through 2015. He was the founding editor of the JCWE, which was recognized by the Library Journal as one of the top ten new periodicals in the nation during For 20-plus years, the McCabes have provided 2011. In addition to promoting scholarship in the history of the Civil War era, Blair and the Richards invaluable support to the Richards Center, Center also assisted teacher education on the history of race, slavery, and the slave trade through the establishing an undergraduate fund, graduate UNESCO Breaking the Silence program. For undergraduates, the Center during his tenure has placed fund, and director’s fund over that time. roughly fifty interns at historic sites throughout the country, with about a third of those individuals They also co-funded the McCabe Greer finding careers in the academy or in public history. Professorship in the American Civil War Era Blair earned his PhD at Penn State in 1995. He is the author or editor of half a dozen books, including, and have provided support for the college’s Paterno Liberal Arts Undergraduate Fellowship most recently, With Malice Toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (UNC Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize in 2015. Blair earned numerous awards for Program. McCabe received the college’s his scholarship and teaching at Penn State, including the Welch Alumni Award and the Class of 1993 Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2011 in Distinction in the Humanities Award, both received from the College of the Liberal Arts in 2003 and recognition of these initiatives. “Larry and 2009, and The President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration in 2011. In addition, the Gretchen have been pioneers for what became Society of Civil War Historians presented him with its lifetime achievement award during the Southern the Richards Center,” said Center director Historical Association annual meeting in November. In recognition of his scholarship and service to the William Blair. “In 1998, they stepped in during university and the history profession, he was appointed the Walter L. and Helen P. Feree Professor of a critical moment and created a professorship Middle American History in 2015. History Department Head Michael Kulikowski reflected, “Under that became a cornerstone of the center. Their Bill’s leadership, the Richards Center became one of the main sites for innovative, groundbreaking vision and support have been instrumental research on the Civil War era, meaningfully expanding the boundaries of what studying the Civil War in helping us become a research entity with a national reputation. Larry will be very much can mean.” In retirement, Blair will complete his latest book manuscript, Murders and Outrages, which chronicles the vast extent of violence committed against freedpeople in the South, as recorded by the missed.” Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction, and wrap up a second book on one hundred years of black history at what is now Arlington National Cemetery. Singer CRYSTAL SANDERS BECOMES Receives Welch DIRECTOR OF AFRICANA Award RESEARCH CENTER The Richards Center’s On July 1, Crystal Sanders, associate professor of Barby Singer received History and African American Studies, assumed the Welch Alumni the directorship of Penn State’s Africana Research Relations Award for Barby Singer Center (ARC). The ARC supports research into 2018 at the College the lives and experiences of Africans across Africa of the Liberal Arts’ annual Alumni Awards and in the African diaspora across the globe, Ceremony on April 19. The Alumni Society deepening and broadening Penn State’s teaching established the award in 2002 to recognize Penn and outreach missions. Sanders first came to Penn State faculty and staff who significantly enhance State as a postdoctoral fellow in the ARC and connections between the College and its alumni. has been an affiliate of the center since joining The award recognizes her outstanding work in the Penn State faculty in 2012. She is also one planning the Center’s annual donor events and of the organizers of the Richards Center’s annual her stewardship of the Center’s endowments. Emerging Scholars Undergraduate Mentoring Singer joined the Richards Center in 2005, and Program, which helps to prepare talented scholars since her arrival she has been instrumental in from under-represented backgrounds for graduate planning and executing the center’s programming study and careers in the academy. In a statement and alumni outreach. to Penn State News, Dean Susan Welch said, “I am delighted that Crystal has agreed to become 2018 SCWH Conference the next director of the Africana Research Center. I have no doubt that the contributions Visits Pittsburgh she makes as ARC’s next leader will mirror the Crystal Sanders, Associate Professor of History and African The Society of Civil War scholarly contributions she has already made as American Studies and Director, Africana Research Center Historians (SCWH) hosted a post-doctoral fellow and faculty affiliate of the its sixth biennial conference center. I know that, under her leadership, the at the Omni William ARC will enhance its stature inside and outside Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, of the University.” Pennsylvania, May 31-June 2, 2018. The conference featured 26 panels and roundtables and attracted 230 attendees, including 56 Center to Host Conference to graduate students. Doctoral candidate Cecily Mark Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage Zander and Penn State alumni Jonathan White Associate Professor of History Cathleen Cahill and Lisa Tetrault, Associate Professor of History (BA, ’01), Jonathan Berkey (PhD, ’03), Andrew at Carnegie Mellon University, are partnering with the Richards Center to host a workshop at Slap (XX, ’00), Jonathan Steplyk (MA, ’09), University Park to mark the centennial of the women’s suffrage in the United States. Women Timothy Orr (PhD, ’10), Antwain Hunter (PhD, gained the right to vote with the 1920 ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which had ’15), William Cossen (PhD, ’16), and Evan Rothera first passed Congress in 1919. The Richards Center will provide financial and organizational (PhD, ’17) all presented papers at the conference. support for the event. The SCWH promotes the integration of military, The conference seeks to reconnect the Nineteenth Amendment to Reconstruction and to resituate social, political, and other fields of history in the women’s suffrage in a much broader landscape of women’s rights. In most histories, the nineteenth- Civil War era while bringing together historians, century women’s rights movement is too often cast as focused mainly on the single goal of women’s graduate students, and professionals who suffrage. The goal of the workshop is to present fresh work that places the suffrage movement interpret history at a variety of public institutions. within the context of a broad array of women’s rights demands following the Civil War. These The Richards Center serves as the organizer of demands included sovereignty over their bodies and control of reproduction, economic autonomy, the biennial meeting. and reform of marriage laws, just to name a few. The conference seeks to shift historical scholarship away from suffrage-heavy narratives of women’s right to a more comprehensive examination of the vast array of post-Civil War women’s rights movements. This upcoming workshop is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities We the People grant. 2 2019 RICHARDS CIVIL WAR ERA CENTer NewSLETTer RICHARDS CENTER POSTDOCTORAL Lang Wins Tom Watson FELLOW DARA WALKER JOINS FACULTY Brown Book Dara Walker arrived at Penn State in July as the 2018-19 Richards Center/ Africana Research Center Postdoctoral Fellow.