Spring Nominees
The
new Executive Council members will be elected at the Spring Meeting Luncheon,
Saturday, April 17, 2004. Award winners will also be announced at the
luncheon.
Executive Council Nominees
Award Nominees
Executive
Council Nominees
President
Gary R. Hess is Distinguished Research Professor of History at Bowling Green State Univerýsity, where he has taught since 1964. A specialist in U.S. Foreign Relations, Professor Hess has written principally on American foreign policy in South and Southeast Asia, including the Vietnam War. He served as President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1991. His most recent book, Presidential Decisions for War: Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2001. At Bowling Green University, he regularly teaches courses on U.S. National Security Policy since 1945, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, America and the World 1890–1945, and honors courses in American history. He has directed twelve Ph.D. dissertations (three in progress) and forty M.A. theses. He was Chair of the History Department for fifteen years and has served on numerous University committees. He received the University Olscamp Research Award in 1988, the Distinguished Faculty Service Award in 1997, and was the first recipient of the Distinguished Career Award in 2000. He has been a four-time Fulbright Scholar/Lecturer in India, held the Burns Distinguished Professorship at the University of Hawaii in 1993, and served on the Board of Editors of Diplomatic History from 1997 to 2000.
Representatives from a Public History Institution
M. Christine Anderson is Associate Professor of History and co-director of Gender and Diversity Studies at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. She received an A.B. in History from Kenyon College and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Her teaching and research focus on U.S. women’s history and African American History. Her current research project, “Sisters, Mothers, and Fathers: The Orphanage in Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati” examines the ways that gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and class shaped relations between asylum managers and those forced to rely on institutional child care as well as among institutions in the urban polity. She has published in the Journal of Women’s History, Ohio History, Ohio Valley History, and Women’s Studies International Forum. Anderson serves as a membership coordinator of the Coordinating Council for Women in History and on the program committee of the Conference on the History of Women Religious.
Harry Jebsen Jr. received his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati, working under Zane Miller in Urban History. He was a Professor of History at Texas Tech University from 1969 to 1981 before returning to Ohio to become Dean of Arts and Science at Capital University. In 1988 he became Provost and served in that capacity until 1995, when he returned to teaching. He teaches American History since 1945, American Immigration History, and the History of Sports in America. He is working at present on a biographical study of Charles Comiskey, the first owner of the Chicago White Sox, cofounder with Ban Johnson of the American League, and a central figure in the Black Sox Scandal of 1919.
Representatives from a Private College
Munrey Gerlach is the Executive Director of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center and is a public historian. Dr. Gerlach received his D.Phil. from New College, Oxford University. He has served as University Archivist theses reviewer at San Diego State University, Special Assistant to the president of San Diego State University, Special Assistant to the President of Brown University and Assistant Secretary of the Corporation of Brown University, and Director of Rhode Island Historical Society. He has served on numerous professional committees. His publications include entries for the New Dictionary of National Biography, and British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social Thought in the Late Victorian Age, as well as various reviews, magazine and journal articles, and university publications.
Ruby Rogers has worked in the field of state and local history since receiving her M.A. in History Museum Studies from the New York State University College at Oneonta in 1972. After positions in New York, Minnesota, and Michigan, she joined the staff of the Cincinnati Historical society in 1988. In addition to administering the Historical Society Library, she coordinates an annual lecture series, serves as managing editor of Ohio Valley History, and participates in research and planning for exhibits and public programs. Her professional activities have included serving as president of the Ohio Museum Association and a member of the national council for the American Association for State and Local History.
Award Nominees
Outstanding Dissertation
Kevin P. Bower, University of Cincinnati, “Relief, Reform, and Youth: The National Youth Administration in Ohio, 1935-1943,” .nder the guidance of Roger Daniels. Initially organized beneath the Works Progress Administration, the NYA aimed first to sustain the educations of underprivileged youth, but later began training that same constituency in war-related industries. Under the leadership of Aubrey Williams, the NYA reflected progressive New Deal sensibilities such as federal government encouragment of grass-roots community. This disposition, Bower shows, was only partly reflected on the ground in the various branches of local NYA organization.
James F. Guy, Kent State University, “The Public Life of a Private Man: Samuel Ward, 1725-1776,” under the guidance of Kim Gruenwald. Born of a stock of early settlers in a colony renowned for accommodating dissenters, Samuel Ward became a central figure in the commercial, cultural, and political development of Rhode Island in the age of Revolution. Guy’s study reinforces our impression of Rhode Island both as a home to religious diversity and a site of fundamental conflicts over what sort of property should have pride of place in a new-born, but rapidly growing, society.
Outstanding Publication
Clifton Crais, The Politics of Evil: Magic, State Power, and the Political Imagination in South Africa (Cambridge University Press): This book is a study of state formation and resistance in South Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines technologies of colonialism and state control, and also discusses how indigenous concepts of power, authority, and evil shaped popular resistance to colonial power and the apartheid system.
James Huffman, A Yankee in Meiji Japan: The Crusading Journalist Edward H. House (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers): This book is both a biography of American journalist Edward House and a general history of Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century. House was the United States’ first regular correspondent in Meiji Japan, and he played a leading role in shaping American perceptions of Japan.
Yihong Pan, Tempered in the Revolutionary Furnance: China’s Youth in the Rustication Movement (Lexington Books): This book tells the story of Chinese middle school graduates sent to the countryside during China’s Rustification Movement. Initiated under Mao Zedong, this program required some seventeen million urban students to live and work in the countryside between 1953 and 1980.
Robert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States (Ohio University Press): This book documents American corporations’ extensive use of strikebreaking agencies to end strikes and undermine labor unions. Covering the period from the Civil War to the present, it sheds light on a seldom-studied yet crucial aspect of labor-management relations.
Public History Award
Attic to Archive
Pickaway County Historical and Genealogical Society
This archival project moved county court records from fairly inaccessible, haphazard storage to a searchable, organized body of documents. Volunteers gave time to move, sort and organize thousands of pieces of paper to create a new archive useful to researchers.
Cincinnati: A Work of Art
Bicentennial Committee of the School for Creative and Performing Arts
(Elaine Eckstein, Joy Fowler, and Dean Potter)
This exhibit shares the history of Cincinnati’s diverse arts legacy. The display included student-generated audio-visuals, art exhibits, and live performances in every arts discipline, including first-person impressions of significant Cincinnatians. The project teamed high school and college students, school staff, and community arts professionals.
Civil War Encampment
Hayes Presidential Center (Dr. Murney Gerlach, Tom Culbertson, Nancy Kleinhenz,
Kim Fleitz)
The encampment held at Spiegel Grove shares Civil War history with the public through a re-creation of a battle in which Hayes was involved, performances of music of the era, displays of period clothing, and other activities. Visitors to the two-day event are also invited to tour the thirty-one-room historic Hayes Home, Museum, and Library.
Manor House Water Management and Garden Restoration
Project
Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens (Harry P. Lynch, Bill Binnie, Mark Gilles)
This project restored the Great Garden at the former estate of F. A. Seiberling. The plans for the original garden were researched and reconstructed through this project. Re-introduced after an absence of more than fifty years the garden lets visitors experience the estate as it was.
Ohio’s Founding Fathers
Fred
J. Milligan
This book includes biographies of the thirty-five delegates to the 1802 convention which decided Ohio should become a state and twenty of their contemporaries who made important contributions to the creation of the state government. This book of biographies includes extensive footnotes and indexing to aid researchers.
One Saturday Afternoon
Black River Historical Society (Tom Koba, Jennifer
Wertz, Carolyn and Frank Sipkovsky)
“One Saturday Afternoon: The Story of the 1924 Lorain/Sandusky Tornado” is a seven-minute documentary which shares historic photos and stories of the tornado in the words of citizens who lived the events of that day. The production also uses Cleveland weatherman Dick Goddard to describe the storm’s approach and impact.
Our Journey Begins: A Trip on the Ohio & Erie
Canal
Peninsula Library and Historical Society
This exhibit shares the canal history of the region by treating visitors to an imaginary trip on the canal. Utilizing a relatively small space and budget, the exhibit encourages students to learn about a part of Ohio’s transportation history.
W. Huston Moores’ 50 from the ’50s
Clark County Historical Society (Kasey Eichenshr, Robert Fuhrman, Tamara
Wait, Virginia Weygandt)
This exhibit of photographs from the Moore’s collection in the Clark County Historical Society’s archives shares memories of Clark County from the decade of the 1950s. The exhibit utilizes artifacts from the Clark County collection with the photos to emphasize aspects of local and national history of the era.