Fall 2006 Volume 37, No
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SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION FOR WOMEN HISTORIANS Annual Address and NEWSLETTER Reception Details Inside Fall 2006 Volume 37, No. 3 Mentoring in the SAWH The SAWH is excited to announce a new mentoring initiative. A mentoring toolkit will debut soon on the To start the workshop off, the panelists described their SAWH Web site (http://www.hnet.org/~sawh/sawh.htm). experiences with mentoring, both as recipients of advice and Volunteers from throughout the organization are as advisors themselves. They sprinkled their comments with contributing to the toolkit, providing advice on a variety of suggestions of strategies and resources. All agreed on the topics of interest to graduate students and new professionals. importance of individual initiative in gathering advice and Are you working on turning your dissertation into a book? support. The larger discussion among workshop attendees Anne Scott will have some advice for you via this new echoed this point and also identified areas where more veteran resource. You will find many other useful and engagingly SAWH members can contribute: directing graduate students written essays in the toolkit. toward departmental and campus-wide programs that prepare students for professional life; outlining for students the “ins Mentoring has long been a subject of interest and concern and outs” of how the system works at their institutions and for the SAWH and its members. Through the years, the within the profession as a whole; providing young faculty with association has informally fostered numerous mentoring information about helpful resources on campus, especially relationships and has sponsored mentoring activities at its those concerning family-related issues; and encouraging the triennial conference. Subscribers to H-SAWH have American Historical Association and the Organization of discussed mentoring in online forums as well. American Historians to develop more mentoring workshops. Over the past few years, the SAWH Executive Council has An important issue raised at the workshop was the reciprocal discussed ways that the organization can do even more to nature of the mentoring relationship. Mentees have an encourage and support graduate students and young obligation to acknowledge the advice and support that they professionals through mentoring. In January 2006, receive, and to return the favor by serving the profession President Glenda Gilmore put together an Ad Hoc similarly when able to do so. To this end, Elizabeth Payne of Committee on Mentoring, and the committee has spent the the University of Mississippi will contribute a mentoring last several months meeting in cyberspace and at the SAWH “code of expectations” section to the toolkit. conference. The members of the committee are Jessica Brannon-Wranosky, Carole Bucy, Claudrena Harold, Kelly Be sure to take advantage of this new resource. We’ll have Kennington, Marion Roydhouse, Lee Thompson, and features on “choosing a graduate program,” “presenting at Antoinette van Zelm (chair). conferences,” “completing your dissertation,” “the academic job market,” “alternatives to the academic job market,” The committee is pursuing three priorities: developing the “minority faculty experiences,” “teaching venues and Web-based toolkit on mentoring, exploring the cultures,” and “juggling family and career”—plus many more. establishment of a system of pairing mentors and mentees, We will phase in new topics over time, and we hope and promoting mentoring opportunities more aggressively eventually to incorporate an interactive aspect to the toolkit as in available resources. well. The Mentoring Workshop held at the 2006 SAWH Please feel free to contact me or any members of the conference provided a wonderful opportunity for members Mentoring Committee with your ideas or questions about the to brainstorm about mentoring. Marion Roydhouse chaired toolkit or other mentoring initiatives. the workshop, and panel members included professionals at all stages of their careers: Yvonne Davis Frear of Texas Antoinette G. van Zelm Southern University, Shannon L. Frystak of West Virginia [email protected] University, Janet Coryell of Western Michigan University, and Suzanne Lebsock of Rutgers University. Fall 2006 Page 1 attendees to congregate in those areas. In addition to the (Not the) President’s Message graduate barbecue, a reception was held at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and The big news, of course, is recapping our successful seventh Culture in downtown Baltimore where scholars could interact conference at the University of Maryland, Baltimore socially as well as tour the museum exhibits. County. I decided that the membership might have had I was very pleased to find a broad range of topics in enough of the president talking about how great things the plenary sessions, presentations and workshops. Each were, so I asked a first-time attendee to gives us her conference day included workshops on topics pertinent to thoughts on the conference. Barbara C. White is an M.A. historians such as adjunct teaching, successful grant-writing candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University. She was and careers in public history. As a graduate student, I found game enough to take my up on my offer to write the the workshops particularly helpful as I look down the road to President’s Message. I asked her to introduce herself to our planning my career and found the advice offered by members and give us her thoughts on the conference and experienced historians to be invaluable. our organization. See you in Birmingham, where we will be Although the workshops and social events were honored to hear Anne Firor Scott at our annual Presidential helpful, my primary objective in attending the conference was Address, and we will have another memorable reception, to attend the conference sessions. Topics for this conference this year organized by our First V.P. Cindy Kierner. covered a wide variety of scholarship in Southern Women’s history and I chose to attend sessions that matched my Glenda Gilmore interests as well as those where I had no background in an effort to expand my knowledge. Attending the conference At the SAWH Conference sessions offers graduate students a tremendous opportunity to Barbara C. White not only hear the latest scholarship on a variety of topics but also to see how other scholars approach their research. As a relatively new graduate student, I find this to be invaluable. I I am currently a M.A. candidate in the history was able to glean several ideas on how to approach my project program at Virginia Commonwealth University. I came to from listening to conference papers as well as the commentary graduate school to follow my passion for history after many and suggestions delivered by panel participants. years working in business and technology and hope to The SAWH conference on Women’s History is an pursue my PhD following my graduation from VCU. When excellent way for seasoned scholars as well as graduate I began my education, my interests were focused on the students to share ideas and promote the study of southern antebellum South, the Civil War and the New South. My women’s history. I recommended the SAWH and future interests have since evolved to focus on Southern Women. I conferences to my fellow graduate students and look forward recently completed an interesting research project on to continued involvement with the SAWH and the next women indentured servants in Chesapeake Virginia that conference in 2009. examined motivations for women to emigrate as indentured servants and the social and legal issues they faced as indentured women in Virginia. I am currently embarking on research for my master’s thesis that will examine women’s suffrage We Need Your Books! in Virginia in the early twentieth century with a focus on Do you have extra books sitting around your office in need of contributions made by Adele Clark. a new home? Want to free up some space and help a worthy The Seventh SAWH conference was held June 8 th - cause at the same time? The SAWH is soliciting contributions 10 th , 2006 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. of unused books for its annual book sale. All proceeds from As a graduate history student at Virginia Commonwealth this event will be used to support SAWH activities and University and a recent member of the SAWH, I was very programs. If you have books, please send them to: excited to attend my first SAWH conference and looked Dr. Victoria E. Ott forward to the opportunity to network with fellow Birmingham-Southern College historians, graduate students and pioneers in Southern Box 549031 Women’s history. The conference pamphlet promised Birmingham, AL 35254 “learning in a casual setting” and I hoped that I would have the opportunity to discuss my project with other scholars who held similar interests. Early in the conference the SAWH offered a barbecue in honor of the graduate students that was open to all attendees and provided a relaxed social setting to meet other students and scholars. Although I was able to talk with a few folks, it would have been helpful if the barbecue had been organized by areas of interest to encourage people to discuss their projects. A suggestion might be to set up tables or locations with areas of interest to encourage Fall 2006 Page 2 New Members: AnnouAnnounnnncemencemencements:ts: Catherine Allgor, University of California-Riverside Katharine Antolini, West Virginia University The Southern Textile Heritage Association is an association Heidi Ardizzone, University of Notre Dame interested in exploring the cotton and textile industry in the Marise Bachand, University of Western Ontario South. Its goal is to heighten awareness of the contributions Evan P. Bennett, College of William and Mary made by southern cotton mill workers, men and women, and Robert Bonner, Dartmouth College residents in mill towns. Membership in the association is $30 Cristina Bryan, National Trust for Historic Preservation a year.