Article Published at Prairie Voices Website

Back in the days of my Masters program, I took a class title "Problems in American History 1877-1917". Seeing that I am really, really interested in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (and the fact that graduate classes that interested me were at times few and far between), I decided to sign up. I hoped that industrialization, unionization, or some other similar topic would be on tap. I checked the book list online and found that this was not to be.

The book list included a wide variety of books about women on the frontier. I have to confess that I generally do not have a big interest in women's or gender history, but seeing the other classes on the schedule that particular semester, I decided to stick it out.

The main paper for the class turned out to be a case study that tested the validity of any claim made by one of the authors we had to read during the class. I was not terrible interested in the assignment, but at least we got to choose the topic ourselves. I proceeded to utilize the texts from the course (as well as some other outside readings) to investigate whether women had more job opportunities open to them in the American West. From what I could find, it seemed that the job opportunities were quite similar with those available in the Northeast or the South. This was the main argument of the paper.

I left the paper alone for about four years. When I began my studies at UND, I decided to send an abstract of the paper to the Northern Great Plains History Conference, which was then being held in Grand Forks. I got on the program and read this paper. I also sent it to Emporia University in Kansas, to see if they would publish it in one of their journals. While I did not get it into the publication I first inquired about, they did agree to post it as an open-access article on their website. While it's not the American Historical Review or The Historian, it is a publication that can go on the CV. The moral of the story is that papers for classes that may not seem to be worth much can actually add to one's professional vitae, which definitely helps in job searches.

2011 Merrifield Prize Winning Paper

Back in April, I submitted a paper that I wrote in the fall semester on Baptists in Grand Forks during the Progressive and World War I eras.  The submissions had to make use of the Special Collections at the Chester Fritz Library on the campus of the University of North Dakota.  Mine utilized that collection extensively, so I decided to submit, in spite of finding out about the competition about two days before the deadline. 

Here is the press release regarding the outcome of the competition.  I would post the entire paper on my site, but I submitted it to a journal, and I don't know how the journal in question would view that kind of thing.  Here is a link to a revised portion of the paper that I previously posted on this site and that won the best graduate paper at the 2011 Red River Valley History Conference.  I will post another revision of another portion after I read it at the 2011 Northern Great Plains History Conference.

I Get to Go to Mankato!

I get to go to Mankato!! I know it sounds too exciting to be true.  Mankato, for those of you who may not be familiar is a city in southern Minnesota.  Back in March, I sent in a paper proposal for the upcoming 2011 edition of the Northern Great Plains History Conference.  I presented at the same conference when it was held in Grand Forks last October.  Last year's presentation was my first ever presentation at a professional history conference.  Some conferences seem to be open only to established historians that already have earned doctorates. The NGPHC, however, is a generalist conference that opens its doors to students.  My paper last year discussed women in the West and the type of work that they did.  The paper was reasonably well-received, which was a major concern, considering it was the first time that I had presented at such a conference (I had so much as sat in on only one conference previous to my presentation, so I was a bit nervous).

These presentations at academic conferences and colloquia are some of the basic expectations for obtaining faculty positions in the field of higher eduction, in addition to actual publications.  Therefore, I sent in my proposal in an attempt to get another line on my CV (a fancy acronym for "curriculum vitae--the hopefully very long academic resume).  In April, I received my official acceptance to the program, which will be held from September 21-24 of this year.  My paper will discuss North Dakota Baptists and their nativist (a fancy word for anti-foreign and anti-Catholic) sentiments, and is tied to the paper that I already posted on this site related to North Dakota Baptists and World War I. 

My presentation is tentatively scheduled for a session on "Religion"--imagine that.  There appears to be only one other paper in this session, which will be on nuns in Southern Black communities during the mid-twentieth century.  These conferences are a great opportunity to get positive feedback on work in progress.  I am hoping to do some more work during the summer to expand this research beyond a single church to see if the conclusions that I reached previously are more widely applicable.  I will post the completed paper on this site after its presentation in September.