The Arizona History Convention has put out an updated Call for Papers, which announces their plenary speaker, provides a direct link for proposal submissions, and gives more information about prize money available to graduate students.

Click here for the updated CFP!

Western Washington University is looking for a one-year replacement for the 2022-2023 academic year starting on September 16, 2022.

The History Department at Western Washington University is searching for a one-year replacement position in Indigenous and Public History for the 2022-2023 academic year at the Instructor or Visiting Assistant Professor level. The position begins on September 16, 2022, and the successful candidate will teach six undergraduate courses over three academic quarters. Courses include The Indian in American History survey as well as upper-division courses. ABD or PhD preferred. Courses will be taught in person. WWU is located in Bellingham, WA between Seattle and Vancouver. Interested individuals should reach out to Department Chair Susan Costanzo at susan.costanzo@wwu.edu.

The Department of History at Yale University is looking to hire an assistant or associate or full professor in the history of the U.S. West, including Hawaiʻi and the Pacific, to begin on July 1, 2023. Candidates in all subfields are encouraged to apply. Scholars who work on topics related to race, gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, empire and borderlands, religion, commerce, politics, intellectual history, and the environment are encouraged to apply. Applicants should have demonstrated achievement and/or strong potential for scholarship, undergraduate and graduate teaching, and academic impact. Yale welcomes applications from historians who already hold teaching positions, as well as recent PhDs and those who expect their PhD or equivalent degree by the time of appointment.

Qualifications

PhD or equivalent degree by July 1, 2023

Application Instructions

Applicants should submit an application via http://apply.interfolio.com/107956. They should submit a cover letter, CV, research and teaching interests statements, and a chapter-length writing sample. Please also submit contact information for three individuals who have agreed to provide letters of recommendation, which may be solicited at a later stage. Review of applications will begin September 23 and will continue until the position is filled. For questions regarding this position, please email Dana Lee at dana.lee@yale.edu.

History Camp, an annual one-day event for adults from all walks of life, started in 2014 and now takes place in several cities including Boston, Richmond, and Denver, as well as online for a nationwide audience – History Camp America. 

This year History Camp America will take place online on November 5 from 9am to 5pm ET.

They are looking for our nation’s most interesting and informative history presenters—authors, researchers, and teachers, historians, Park Rangers, and docents—anyone who has a passion for history, is deeply knowledgeable about their topic, and is a seasoned presenter who can capture and hold an audience’s attention.

In 2021, History Camp America had 450+ attendees in 2021 from across the nation as well as Canada and England. 

Apply online by August 20, 2022: https://historycamp.org/presenters/

History Camp is a project of the non-profit organization The Pursuit of History (ThePursuitOfHistory.org), which engages adults in conversation about history and connects them with historic sites in their communities and across the country through innovative in-person and online programming. 

For more information, contact Carrie Lund, Executive Director, Carrie@ThePursuitOfHistory.org.

The National Humanities Center invites applications for academic-year or one-semester residential fellowships. Mid-career, senior, and emerging scholars from all areas of the humanities with a strong record of peer-reviewed work are encouraged to apply.

Scholars from all parts of the globe are eligible; stipends and travel expenses are provided. Fellowship applicants must have a PhD or equivalent scholarly credentials. Fellowships are supported by the Center’s own endowment, private foundation grants, contributions from alumni and friends, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Located in the vibrant Research Triangle region of North Carolina, the Center affords access to the rich cultural and intellectual communities supported by the area’s research institutes, universities, and dynamic arts scene. Fellows enjoy private studies, in-house dining, and superb library services that deliver all research materials.

Applications and all accompanying materials are due by 11:59 p.m. EDT, October 6, 2022. For more information and to apply, please visit: https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/become-a-fellow/.

Application requirements:

Fellowship applicants are asked to complete the online application form and to upload the following documents:

• 1,000-word project proposal
• Short bibliography (up to 2 pages)
• Curriculum vitae (up to 4 pages)
• One-page tentative outline of the structure of the project (if the project is a book, provide an outline of chapters; otherwise, give an outline of the components of the project and their progress to date)

Applicants will also be asked to provide names and contact information for three references. References will receive an email prompt inviting them to upload a letter of recommendation on behalf of the applicant. All letters are also due by October 6, 2022.

Applicants are encouraged to read through the Frequently Asked Questions before beginning their application. Questions can be emailed to fellowships@nationalhumanitiescenter.org.

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Center), one of the premier institutions worldwide devoted to the history, cultures, and environment of the American West, is seeking an energetic and visionary Housel Director of its McCracken Research Library. The McCracken ranks with the likes of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, the Beinecke Library at Yale, The Huntington Library, and the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma in terms of the depth and quality of its Western Americana research collections. Through its collections and services, the Library supports the work of the five Center museums: Draper Natural History Museum; Buffalo Bill Museum; Plains Indian Museum; Whitney Western Art Museum; and Cody Firearms Museum. The McCracken’s rare books, historic photographs, maps, manuscripts, and rich ephemeral collections feature heavily in the museums’ exhibitions and programs and are used extensively by distinguished visiting researchers and curators.

For more information on this position, including qualifications, expectations, and remuneration, please click here: https://bit.ly/3OJWirn

Shared from Melody Webb:

“Robert Utley was a founder and past president of the Western History Association. He died June 7^th, from complications of a simple surgery, at the age of 92. Several years ago, I asked him to write his own obituary because I would undoubtedly forget important aspects of his distinguished career. I’m sending it as he wrote it in his own inimitable style.”

The following includes excerpts from Robert Utley’s obituary, written in July 2013 (with updates from 2015, 2016, 2022). You can also learn more about his work at www.robertutley.net

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Hi Friends and Colleagues:

Melody insists that I write my own obituary, which makes sense. By the time you read this, I will have checked out and perhaps had my ashes scattered over the big rock in Logan Canyon, Utah, where Melody and I first connected in 1973. When and how I died will have to be filled in after I die.

Within a fairly narrow context, I think I have lived a pretty successful professional life. Personally, from my first marriage I have two sons, Donald Warner and Philip Lee. Don is a lawyer and corporate executive, Phil an astrophysicist.

My second marriage, from 1980 to my demise, was highly successful from beginning to end. Melody Webb has been a wonderful wife, a wonderful care-giver to one who lost almost all his hearing, a wonderful friend, and a wonderful professional colleague.

I was born in Arkansas on October 31, 1929, reared in Pennsylvania and Indiana, and obtained my higher education at Purdue (1951) and Indiana (1952) Universities. What launched my career, actually in two worlds, was a fascination with George Armstrong Custer, launched by Errol Flynn in the movie “They Died with Their Boots On.” This at the age of twelve. The Custer addiction, which lasted until my death, led to six summers (1947-52) as a “historical aide” for the National Park Service at Custer Battlefield National Monument. Those were my college years, and they pointed me toward one of the two worlds–a career in the National Park Service.

The other world grew out of my intense desire to write history–about Custer, of course. A self-published brochure at the age of nineteen launched me toward that world. As I begin drafting this obituary…I have published eighteen books; [at the time of this update, June 2015, the number stands at 21] more will have been added to the list by the time you read this. Although I began with Custer (and in 1988 published a biography of him), I expanded my interests to include a variety of aspects of the history of the American West.

At the same time, as one of the organizers of the Western History Association in 1961, I drifted into association with academics. I did not aim my books at the academics but at the general reader, but the academics approved enough to establish my scholarly credibility. A number of my books have won prestigious prizes, and as a sign of academic approval I hold honorary doctoral degrees from Purdue (1972), Indiana (1983), and the University of New Mexico (1976).

In my early years, I cherished an ambition to make a career in the US Army. Narrowly escaping World War II, I hoped for a commission as an ROTC officer after graduating from Purdue University. High blood pressure kept me out of Senior ROTC. With the Korean War in progress, I finished schooling with an exemption from the draft. Then in 1952 I waived the exemption and was drafted. Basic training and Leadership School at Camp Roberts, California, led to assignment to Officers’ Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Six months of brutal training led to a commission of second lieutenant infantry in May 1954. I was a distinguished graduate, second in my class, and as such eligible for a commission in the Regular Army. By that time, my military ambitions had weakened. I spent three months as a tactical officer at OCS and then manipulated the system, through friends, to get assigned as a historian in the historical section of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. There I spent four years, the first three in uniform, the last as a civilian. I relate this long story to make two points: the field-grade officers I worked with in the Pentagon taught me what I should have been taught in graduate school and were responsible for the quality of my historical writing; second, that experience imbued me with a life-long interest in the military, especially the army.

After army service, I made my career in the National Park Service. I served as Regional Historian of the Southwest Region in Santa Fe from 1957 to 1964, when I was summoned to Washington to serve as Chief Historian, 1964-80. I played a major role in the development of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and then in its implementation.

I took early retirement at age fifty in 1980 and returned to Santa Fe to marry Melody. While continuing to write books, I followed her career [in the National Park Service] as a house-husband. After nine years in Santa Fe, Melody switched from history to management and became superintendent of the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park in the Texas hill country. In 1992, she was chosen as assistant superintendent of Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. Those years were very enjoyable for me, although they stressed Melody. In 1996 she took early retirement at age fifty, and we moved back to the Texas Hill Country, settling in Georgetown, 30 miles north of Austin.

In Georgetown, I continued to write, concentrating on the Texas Rangers. Two books resulted: Lone Star Justice: the First Century of the Texas Rangers (Oxford 2002) and Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers (Oxford 2007). Earlier, with my first introduction to a literary agent, Carl Brandt, I published a biography of Sitting Bull, which was enormously successful. The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull (Holt 1993).

From 1977 until 1997, I served on the board of directors of Eastern National Park and Monument Association, twice as chairman. Melody had accompanied me to all the meetings, so knew all about this nonprofit association that supported the national parks. She was a logical chair of the board and served until 2006.

In 2007 Melody and I decided in explore the possibility of moving to a retirement community–a continuum care facility that would support us for life. I insisted that it be in the Phoenix area because that was where all her family lived. We chose what is now (October 2016) called Ví at Grayhawk. We have now lived here since 2009 and have never regretted the choice.

As of this update (October 2016), I have published my 22^nd book, comparing Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly, with Yale University Press. Before that UNM Press published my edited and annotated excerpts from the journals of a frontier army surgeon. I am now working on a book for the University of Oklahoma Press on Civil War generals who went west after the war. For my publications, in April 2015 I was inducted into the Western Writers of America Hall of Fame.

I turned 87 in October 2015, still handicapped by severe hearing loss and severe lack of balance. But not so handicapped that I can’t enjoy Regent cruises. We have taken five since 2011.

In this January 2022 update, I insert the results of a four-day visit to the hospital. It appears that my mortality is definite, but we don’t know when. Melody and I agree two to three years. The explanation involves confusing terminology, so I simply insert what Melody wrote Paul Hutton:

Four days ago, I took Bob to the hospital with shortness of breath. Since the hospital is overflowing with Covid, it was not an easy decision. I’m glad that I did because it was not simply shortness of breath. While he has had an echo-cardiogram every year for years, nothing serious had been found. This time the technician took special care to get just the right picture. It showed that the right side of his heart has stretched to the right. He has heart failure in the right side of the heart only. Apparently, in 2017 when he was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism, it caused a serious and quite rare fatal disease that has taken nearly four years to fully materialize. The simple name is Pulmonary Hypertension. The longer name is Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension (CTEPH).

Bob died on June 7, 2022, in Scottsdale, Arizona, following complications from a simple surgery.

The Arizona History Convention, Inc., invites proposals for papers and presentations for the 2023 Arizona History Convention to be held in Tempe, Arizona on April 13-15, 2023.

The Program Committee welcomes proposals on any topic related to Arizona or southwestern borderlands history. The three-day conference will be a hybrid event, with sessions held both in person and online, allowing presenters and attendees to choose how they wish to participate. 

The deadline for all submissions is September 30, 2022.

For the full CFP and submission instructions, click here: https://bit.ly/3PVwzxn

The 2023 NCPH Annual Meeting will be held at the Hyatt Regency Downtown in Atlanta, Georgia, from April 12-15, 2023. The theme is “To Be Determined,” which “holds space for unknown futures…[while] signaling resolve, commitment, and intention.” Learn more about the theme by reading the full CFP, and submit your final proposal by July 15.

You can submit a topic proposal by June 15 if you’d like feedback or to find co-presenters in advance of the final deadline. 

For the full CFP: https://ncph.org/conference/2023-annual-meeting/calls-for-proposals/

Montana The Magazine of Western History’s editor Diana DiStefano and author Dr. Tracey Hanshew were on hand to receive a Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City in April. The ceremony honored individuals who have made significant contributions to Western heritage through creative works in literature, music, television, and film.

The “Outstanding Magazine Article” winning the award was “`Here she comes wearin’ them britches!’ Saddles, Riding Skirts, and Social Reform in the Turn-of-the-Century Rural West,” published in the Winter 2020 issue of “Montana.” This was the eleventh Wrangler Award for the Montana Historical Society’s magazine.

“This is an extremely prestigious award,” Montana editor Diana DiStefano said. “Tracey’s article tells how rugged terrain, and the rough work of ranching, fomented a change in women’s riding styles from sidesaddles to riding astride and contributed to the women’s reform movements in the American West and nationally.” DiStefano goes on to say, “Hanshew examines these changes in saddlery and dress, women’s labor and recreation, and the larger effects on women’s suffrage and civil rights around the turn of the twentieth century.”

Hanshew is an assistant professor of history at Washington State University Tri-Cities. She is the author of Oklahoma Rodeo Women and recipient of the Muriel H. Wright Award from the Oklahoma Historical Society for her article “Rodeo in Oklahoma is Women’s Business: How Lucille Mulhall’s Fame Created Opportunity in Rodeo,” published in the Chronicles of Oklahoma in April 2015.  

To read the Winter 2020 article, check your local library or order a copy from the Montana Historical Society by calling (406) 444-4708.