NEWS

UNC faculty member elected to lead Organization of American Historians

By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Members of the Organization of American Historians, one of the top associations of historians in the world, have voted Dr. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the group’s president-elect. She will serve as 97^th president of the 9,000-member organization in 2003-2004.

Director of UNC’s Southern Oral History Program and Julia Cherry Spruill professor of history, Hall was founding president of the Labor and Working Class History Association and is currently president of the Southern Historical Association. Her research interests include U.S. women’s history, Southern history, labor history and 20^th century U.S. social, cultural and intellectual history.

She is the author of two prize-winning books and many articles and has won numerous awards, including a National Humanities Medal and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

"I am honored by this opportunity to serve such an important and effective organization," Hall said. "In the years since I entered the profession, the OAH has become ever more diverse and wide-ranging. As director of the Southern Oral history Program -- now part of the Center for the Study of the American South -- I have always tried to make historical research accessible and engaging to a broad audience, and that is also one of OAH’s major goals."

During her year as group president, she said, she will seek to strengthen the organization’s public role.

"I would like to see the OAH intensify its efforts to support public school teachers and enhance the teaching of history in the public schools," Hall said. "We must also grapple effectively with at least three major challenges. They are nurturing the next generation of scholars in an era of downsizing, protecting the ever-increasing ranks of adjunct faculty members from the super-exploitation to which many are now subjected and maintaining access to public records against renewed efforts atgovernmental secrecy."

Beyond that, she said, she will pursue the organization’s core mission of improving the teaching and research lives of its members and the vitality and diversity of the profession.

Founded in 1907, the Organization of American Historians is the nation’s largest professional association dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. Its members include college and university professors, secondary school teachers, public historians, archivists and graduate students in the United States and abroad.

- 30 -

Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/depts/history/faculty/american.html

Note: Hall can be reached at (919) 962-8076.

Contact: David Williamson, 962-8596