Source: The
Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Autumn 2007), at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/whq/38.3/lansing.html,
accessed 10-2-07.
Surveying the Western History AssociationMICHAEL J. LANSING AND DAVID RICH LEWIS |
|
|
Compelling ideas spring from diverse venues. Some come from august settings such as research centers, scholarly gatherings, or colloquiums of experts. Others emerge from casual conversation, informal chatter, or cold beer on a warm evening. As the sun set over the nearby Wellsville Mountains on a beautiful July night in 2003, a brainstorming session on the front stoop of David Rich Lewis's home—defiantly in the latter category—led to the survey and the thoughtful responses you find in this issue of the Western Historical Quarterly. |
1 |
|
The notion of conducting a survey of the Western History Association's (WHA) membership emerged out of two distinct, but related, impulses. First, with major staff changes at the WHQ, we wanted to find out where the publication stood in relation to the membership's expectations for a scholarly journal. Second, as longtime WHA members, we spent years listening to stories murmured in conference corridors and hotel bars about the deep fissures in the organization. Too often cast as schisms involving "old" western historians vs. "new" western historians, young turks vs. senior colleagues, buffs vs. scholars, academic vs. public historians, men vs. women, or whites vs. people of color, the supposed divides seemed consistently poised to push the WHA (and by extension, the WHQ) over the brink. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about what was happening and why. Yet beyond the occasional conference flare-up or whispered anecdote, no one could point to any firm measure of the WHA's membership and orientation. |
2 |
|
That evening in Logan, we realized that we needed to better understand what the WHA had become, as well as how it compared to what members believed it had become, in order to assess what the WHQ should be doing to remain relevant, both for members and for those in the wider historical profession. We needed data to confirm, deny, or transform the anecdotal. While the WHA regularly collected basic subscription information, it hadn't gathered the more detailed demographics that other organizations typically collect on membership forms. So, the scope of the survey that we envisioned kept expanding. |
3 |
|
For context, we went looking for other questionnaires. In 1941, George W. Pierson queried his peers for their opinions of what he called the "Frontier Hypothesis" and the practice of western history. W. N. Davis, Jr. surveyed 375 administrators and professors at American colleges and universities in 1962 to ask if they thought western history was a viable field of study and instruction, and whether it would survive. Nearly thirty years later, Carl Abbott conducted his own survey, finding that western history had survived (though what it—or other regional histories—would look like in the future remained in doubt). And in 1992, Walter Nugent questioned WHA members, editors and publishers, and members of the Western Writers of America about the boundaries and characteristics of "the West."1 We were further heartened to discover that in 1974, WHQ editors S. George Ellsworth and Charles S. Peterson surveyed WHA demographics, reader interests, and responses to WHQ features.2 Additionally, we looked at models like Donald Parman's and Catherine Price's 1989 survey of professional historians on American Indian history, as well as the massive survey of the state of U. S. history undertaken in 1994 by David Thelen, editor of the Journal of American History.3 All of these served as our collective guide as we set out to design an instrument that compiled not only basic WHA demographic data, but also responses to wide-ranging queries about the state of western history and the future of the WHQ. |
4 |
|
During Autumn of 2003, we worked through six drafts of the survey, looking for the questions we could reasonably expect a significant number of WHA members to answer. We crafted quantitative as well as qualitative queries to yield statistically meaningful results and correlations. Then we reached out to a handful of close colleagues for their frank (and confidential) advice.4 What we heard was what we already knew in our hearts—that the "state of the field" and WHQ-related questions were less important in the current atmosphere of the WHA than were demographic details and questions about the organization itself. |
5 |
|
Luckily, one of those colleagues served on the WHA Membership Committee. With our permission, María Montoya brought the survey to the attention of David Wrobel and the rest of the committee.5 Through face-to-face meetings and extended e-mail discussions, Wrobel and the committee reworked parts of our instrument to make it a WHA member survey. With input and support from the WHA Council, and with the help of the executive director, Paul A. Hutton, and his staff assistant, Linda Kay Quintana, the survey was formatted and mailed to WHA members in Spring 2005. The return rate was phenomenal—over 44 percent. With the help of WHA graduate interns Elaine M. Nelson and Lincoln Bramwell at the University of New Mexico, Quintana coded the data and compiled the comments into spreadsheets. From there, Jonathan Foster, a doctoral candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, performed the considerable task of creating graphic information for the data and transferring it into a format that would run cross-tabulation analyses and assess relational significance between the survey's variables.6 |
6 |
|
In many ways, David Wrobel took the best of what we imagined that night in Logan and made it happen. As Membership Committee chair, he invested a tremendous amount of personal time and energy in the survey, working on the fine points of the questions themselves, shepherding it through the WHA Council, and supervising the final analyses. He was also instrumental in organizing the panel discussion, "Where is the Western History Association: Report on a Survey," at the 2006 WHA Conference in St. Louis, an exchange that became the basis for the following essays. Likewise, Kevin J. Fernlund, the WHA's new executive director, helped fund data analysis and posted that information on the WHA webpage—making the conference session, and the discussion that occurred on H-West, possible. |
7 |
|
The survey was far from perfect. Cursory comparison to current WHA membership data suggests that graduate students, for instance, are significantly under-represented as a percentage of the sample. We can surmise the same about other constituencies as well. Still, that should not reflect poorly on the many thoughtful people who took the time to put this survey together. Where we stumbled, we stumbled honestly. What we collectively do with these data and commentaries will ultimately show us who we are as well as help us to determine who we want to become. |
8 |
|
MICHAEL
J. LANSING was visiting assistant editor of the Western Historical
Quarterly from 2003 to 2005 and is currently assistant professor of
history at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, MN. NOTES 1 George Wilson Pierson, "American Historians and the Frontier Hypothesis in 1941 (I)," Wisconsin Magazine of History 26 (September 1942): 36–60, and Pierson, "American Historians and the Frontier Hypothesis in 1941 (II)," Wisconsin Magazine of History 26 (December 1942): 170–85; W. N. Davis, Jr., "Will the West Survive as a Field in American History? A Survey Report," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 50 (March 1964): 672–85; Carl Abbott, "United States Regional History as an Instructional Field: The Practice of College and University History Departments," Western Historical Quarterly 21 (May 1990): 197–217; Walter Nugent, "Where is the American West?" Montana The Magazine of Western History 42 (Summer 1992): 2–23. 2 "Subscriber Survey," WHA Newsletter (Logan, Utah State University, March 1974), removable center insert and "Response to WHQ Survey," WHA Newsletter (Logan, Utah State University, August 1974), 4–5. In 1998, the WHA executive director and Membership Committee distributed a five-question survey with membership renewal forms. The questions included two on primary occupation, one on conference attendance in the last three years, and two open-ended qualitative questions on reasons for non-attendance at conferences, and what activities or programs the WHA could offer to better serve members. WHA graduate assistant Judy Morley reported results to the WHA Council at the 1998 spring meeting in Indianapolis, IN. Of 1,484 membership renewals, 574 (39 percent) responded to the survey, with 76 percent indicating that their interest in the West was primarily connected with what they did to earn a living (including students). Approximately 58 percent listed themselves as professors, students, or teachers, and 54 percent indicated they had attended an annual conference in the last three years. Copies of that survey and Minutes of the 1998 WHA Spring Council Meeting are in the files of the Western Historical Quarterly, Utah State University, Logan, UT. 3 Donald L. Parman and Catherine Price, "A 'Work in Progress': The Emergence of Indian History as a Professional Field," Western Historical Quarterly 20 (May 1989): 185–96 and David Thelen et al., "The Practice of American History: A Special Issue," Journal of American History 81 (December 1994): 933–1217. 4 Many thanks to Anne M. Butler, M. Lawrence Culver, Mark T. Fiege, David G. Gutiérrez, Anne Farrar Hyde, Clyde A. Milner II, María E. Montoya, Sherry L. Smith, Gregory E. Smoak, and one anonymous colleague for their aid at this stage in the process. Professor Peter Galderisi, Department of Political Science, Utah State University, advised us on public survey and statistical methods and techniques. 5 The 2004 WHA Membership Committee consisted of David M. Wrobel (chair), Patricia Nelson Limerick, Gordon Morris Bakken, and María E. Montoya. Lewis and Lansing joined the committee later that year as ex officio members to help create the final survey vehicle. As a result of the survey findings, and in order to better reflect its diverse constituencies, WHA president Walter Nugent expanded the size of the Membership Committee in 2005, adding Lewis, Jennifer Denetdale, and Jonathan Foster as regular members. 6 Foster's work and complete survey data (including written comments) can be found on the WHA website under "Membership". See http://www.umsl.edu/%7Ewha/conf/2005/05_member_info.html (accessed 1 December 2006). For some preliminary figures and a discussion of significant findings, see Jonathan Foster, "WHA 2005 Membership Survey Results," WHA Newsletter (St. Louis, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Fall 2006), 9. A revised presentation summarizing the survey data also follows in this issue of the WHQ. |
|
Where is the WHA and Where Should it
be Going?
|
9 |
|
The first thing that strikes me about the WHA survey is the tremendous response rate. Mailed to the organization's 1,731 members, 763 people completed and returned the survey, a response rate of 44.1 percent. This figure is not just good, it is virtually unprecedented; a 25 percent return rate would have been very good. Survey cynic that I am, I wonder whether such a dramatically high response rate renders the survey results more or less representative of the views of the entire membership. Are the WHA survey respondents akin to those folks who write letters to newspaper editors, that is, those with particularly strong views on issues? Or, are the respondents the ones with more time on their hands, and the non-respondents the really busy western historians? Whatever the case, when nearly half of the members of a professional organization respond to a mailed survey, we can safely conclude that the membership cares deeply about the organization. |
10 |
|
On a less positive note, the survey results underscore some real concerns for the WHA. Less than a third (30.9 percent) of the survey respondents were female and only between 7 percent and 8 percent identified themselves as non-white.3 Other essayists in this forum will address the implications of the survey results with respect to gender and race/ethnicity. Suffice it to say here that more gender balance would strengthen the WHA, and its importance would be enhanced if its membership better reflected the racial and ethnic diversity of faculty and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences in the West and in the nation as a whole. The WHA must strive to be the kind of welcoming and inclusive organization that every historian and historian-in-training interested in events that play out in the western region of the United States, or on earlier western frontiers, should want to be a member of. |
11 |
|
The aging of the organization is also of concern. Over 55 percent of the survey respondents were born in or prior to 1949, making them now 56 or older. Far and away the largest WHA demographic (if the survey results are an accurate mirror of the larger membership), 28.3 percent (216 respondents) is comprised of those born between 1940 and 1949, that is, given that the survey was taken in 2005, those aged 56–65. Another 18.6 percent of respondents were born between 1950 and 1959, making them 46–55 years old. Less than a quarter of respondents (24.2 percent) listed themselves as being 46 or younger. Only 9.3 percent of the respondents were aged 26–35. To put a positive spin on these figures, we can emphasize that the WHA is an organization with a great deal of experience and that WHA members certainly seem to enjoy the benefits of longevity—there are a good number of WHA octogenarians and some nonagenarians too. Clearly, the WHA has benefited enormously from the contributions of its long-serving members and is very fortunate to be able to hold onto them when they retire—153 of the survey respondents, 20.1 percent (one-fifth) are retired. But the organization could also benefit from the influx of larger numbers of less experienced (younger) members. |
12 |
|
Of particular concern, from my perspective as chair of the WHA Membership Committee, is the low number of respondents (only 77, or 10.1 percent) born between 1970 and 1981, that is, aged 24–35, since most graduate students fit into this demographic. WHA records show 193 student members of the organization in spring 2005 and 194 student members in spring 2006. I would be surprised if this number accounts for even half of the history doctoral students in the United States who have a primary interest in historical events playing out in the modern American West or on earlier western frontiers, not to mention the large number of students at the master's level specializing in western history. The current WHA membership could do a better job of bringing the next generations of western historians into the organization. Still, by the same token, the current generation of western history graduate students could have done a better job of responding to the survey. Only 6.2 percent of the survey respondents (47 individuals) listed themselves as doctoral students, a figure that does not come close to reflecting the actual number of doctoral student members of WHA. Perhaps there is something to my supposition that the 55.9 percent of the organization's membership who didn't respond to the survey are the really busy western historians and the non-responsive graduate students are the busiest of all. Perhaps not! |
13 |
|
Current WHA members could, in my estimation, also do a better job of reaching out to the K-12 faculty who are often the first teachers to introduce students to the history of the American West. A scant 2.2 percent of the survey respondents (17) identified as elementary, middle, or high school faculty. My hope is that the Teaching American History (TAH) partnerships between K-12 schools and colleges and universities (which many WHA members are involved with) might help promote an expansion of the K-12 faculty members in WHA. It would be good to see more K-12 teachers at WHA meetings and to see some sessions on teaching western history at the lower grade levels on the WHA annual meeting program. The more general emphasis on pedagogy, evident in WHA programs in recent years should be sustained or even expanded. If recent discussions on H-West are an accurate gauge of the interests and concerns of members, then it is worth noting that we often seek advice from our peers on sources to use in the classroom and we like to discuss our work as teachers. Perhaps future program committees might consider syllabus workshops where experienced faculty, beginning faculty, graduate students, and those working in related fields (such as National Park Service employees, editors/publishers, archivists, museum/historic site staff) could explore the plethora of possibilities for syllabus structuring in specific topical areas. |
14 |
|
Judging from the survey responses, the most popular topical areas in the field of western history are Native American/First Nations (picked by 251 respondents and the first choice of 100 of them), Frontier (which received 206 votes), Environment (175), and Military/Exploration (137). Notably, Exploration as a separate category received an additional 84 votes, and Ethnohistory/Ethnology received 94 votes. Also rating high were Borderlands (110), Cultural and Intellectual (109), Social (101), Women (97) (with 48 additional hits for Gender and Sexuality), Agriculture (92), Political (87), and Public History (81). |
15 |
|
The survey results also show a good distribution of interest across chronological periods: 341 respondents (44.7 percent) listed 19th–20th century as their period of primary interest. The categories of 20th century (94 votes), 19th century (150 votes), and 18th–19th century (139 votes) all rated quite high. However, it was a little surprising to see that only 22 respondents (2.9 percent) chose the period 16th–18th century as their primary period of interest, only 3 designated "Pre-16th century," and only 7 respondents claimed a primary interest in all periods. |
16 |
|
Now what can the survey results suggest to us about the state of the field of western history? In answering this portion of the survey respondents were asked to indicate whether they "Strongly Agreed," "Agreed," were "Neutral," "Disagreed," "Strongly Disagreed," or found a particular question to be "Not Applicable" to them. The answers to these questions indicate a marked incongruity between members' estimation of the field's quality and its prospects. For example, 264 respondents (34.6 percent) "Strongly Agreed" and another 359 (47.1 percent) "Agreed" that "Western history has a significant impact on scholarship in U. S. history." That is, a full 81.7 percent of respondents were confident about the field's positive impact. Regarding the issue of whether the field has a significant impact on scholarship beyond U. S. history and in other disciplines, 15.1 percent "Strongly Agreed" that it does and another 42.3 percent "Agreed" (57.4 percent total for SA and A). Concerning the matter of whether work in western history speaks to the concerns of the interested public, 15.7 percent of respondents "Strongly Agreed" that this was indeed the case and another 50.5 percent "Agreed" (a 66.2 percent total for SA and A). A similarly positive response was provided to the question of whether work in the field of western history speaks to the concerns of those working in museums, libraries, archives, and public programming: 26.6 percent "Strongly Agreed" that it does, and another 49.5 percent "Agreed" (a 76.1 percent total for SA and A). |
17 |
|
But then, when asked whether western history, as reflected in the job market (academic or public), is healthy, only 3.4 percent "Strongly Agreed," while an additional 27.3 percent "Agreed." Nearly a third of respondents (30.5 percent) were "Neutral" on this question, and 16.4 percent "Disagreed" that the job market for western history is healthy, and 2.2 percent "Strongly Disagreed." Thus, nearly half of the respondents (49 percent) were neutral or negative concerning the health of the western history job market. Yet 21.4 percent of respondents "Strongly Agreed" and 57.5 percent "Agreed" (a 78.9 percent positive total) that the field of western history, as reflected in the realm of publishing, is healthy. Only 4.5 percent of respondents (D, 3.5 percent; SD, 1 percent) disagreed that western history scholarship is healthy. |
18 |
|
So western history, in the estimation of the organization's membership, positively impacts U. S. history and scholarship beyond U. S. history and in other disciplines; moreover, western history addresses the concerns of the interested public and those in the public history field, and it is marked by strong scholarship. Nonetheless, the WHA membership is concerned about the future of the field, as reflected in the job market. I agree with the membership. Western history does better than many fields of historical study when it comes to impacting broader scholarly horizons and reaching public audiences. The scholarship in the field, a generation after the infusion of intellectual energy provided by the New Western History, is strong, tremendously varied, and probably more accessible to the general reader than scholarship in other fields. But the western history job market does not look as strong as it did a decade ago. My own anecdotal evidence, gleaned from perusing the AHA Perspectives, the OAH Newsletter, and H-West, is that there are less "straight" western history jobs advertised than used to be the case. But there still seem to be plenty of positions that broadly trained western historians are qualified for: jobs in environmental history, public history, cultural history, race/ethnicity, gender, race-relations, general U. S. history, and urban history, to name a few. The WHA Council and WHA members who participate in the training of graduate students, need to be cognizant of that marked incongruity between assessments of the field's quality and estimates of its prospects. Perhaps future Program Committees might consider sessions on the state of the job market in the field and the state of graduate training, including strategies for ensuring that those at the beginning of their graduate careers as western historians receive training in the kind of combination of fields that will both satisfy their intellectual interests and maximize their potential in the job market. |
19 |
|
The field of western history has taken some important turns in recent decades. It has taken a cultural turn (as have fields closely connected to western history, such as environmental history), with greater attention being paid to topics such as tourism, identity construction, and sexuality. It has taken a global turn, with greater emphasis being placed on trans-national comparative analysis. The field has taken an urban turn, a welcome acknowledgement of the overwhelmingly metropolitan nature of the region and of the centrality of urban settings to the study of modern race and class relations. Western history has turned toward and embraced the field of public history, with a good number of the nation's leading public history programs housed in the West and at institutions with strong western history programs. And, in the last two decades, western history, in keeping with Elliott West's call for western historians to tell a "longer, grimmer, but more interesting story," has fully embraced the twentieth century.4 It's worth taking stock of these turns in the field and considering programmatic possibilities in graduate training that will help keep western history at the cutting edge of scholarship in the United States but also maintain, and even expand, its share of the job market. |
20 |
|
Finally, one wonders what the survey results can tell us about the WHA as an organization, what its members enjoy most and like least about it. When it comes to "Conference Attendance," a full 29 percent of respondents (221 people) did not attend a WHA meeting between 2000 and 2004. Another 17.4 percent (133) attended only one meeting in that period; 16.5 percent (126) attended only two meetings from 2000–2004. Only 11.3 percent of respondents (86) attended three of those five meetings; only 9 percent (69) attended four of them; and only 10.7 percent (82) attended all five annual meetings of the organization between 2000 and 2004. So, less than one-third of respondents attended 60 percent of the organization's meetings in that period.5 These figures raised my survey cynicism to new heights and led me to conclude, based on my own anecdotal evidence of seeing so many of the same faces (a core of several hundred members at least) at all of the meetings between 2000 and 2004, that the members who attend the meetings are generally not the ones who return mailed surveys. |
21 |
|
The WHA has had a fairly stable membership level of a little over 1,700 for several years, and attendance at the last three annual meetings (Las Vegas, 2004; Scottsdale, 2005; and St. Louis, 2006) has averaged well over 900. So, meeting attendance generally adds up to a little over half the number of members. It is important to note that a good number of non-members also attend the annual meetings. The WHA's level of annual meeting attendance is probably higher than that of large umbrella organizations, such as AHA and OAH, and, one suspects, roughly comparable to that of similarly specialized organizations such as the Southern History Association and the American Society for Environmental History. Nonetheless (and assuming that the survey data is more accurate than my memory of friends and colleagues spotted in conference hallways), it would be good for the WHA if a greater percentage of its members attended the annual meetings on a more regular basis. |
22 |
|
How then might conference attendance be boosted? The survey suggests that the factors that draw members to the meetings are, in order of importance: intellectual exchange/collegiality (66.8 percent of respondents found to be the "Most Important" or a "More Important" factor), social collegiality (57.7 percent), the conference program and sessions (52.7 percent), location of the meeting (46.1 percent), and the book exhibits (43.9 percent). Moreover, among the most important factors that draw people to, and keep people in, the organization are, the survey suggests, the Western Historical Quarterly (66.1 percent) and Montana The Magazine of Western History (40.5 percent). However, respondents were less than thrilled by the opportunity to participate in WHA governance (only 8.3 percent "Agreed" or "Strongly Agreed" that this factor was important to them); equally unmoved by conference receptions/presidential lunch/annual banquet (only 8.8 percent found them important), and by conference meals/meetings for special constituencies (only 7.5 percent rated them positively). These last results tend to support the argument that when it comes to formal functions, banquets, etc. less might well be more in the estimation of most WHA members. The organization might consider a presidential address without a luncheon, or the presidential address in place of the banquet speaker. Most members would agree, I suspect, that WHA presidential addresses are generally excellent, while the banquet speakers over the past couple of decades have, with a very few exceptions, been considerably less than excellent and, at times, interminable, embarrassing, insulting, uninspired, uninformed, and inebriated. |
23 |
|
Reflecting on these results, I see an excellent organization buoyed by a stable and responsive membership, strong journals, and excellent scholarship, but one that is aging and needs to pay greater attention to diversity issues, gender balance, a changing job market, and changing expectations concerning the format of scholarly conferences. Surely the wealth of innovative scholarship in the field of western history bodes well for the organization's potential to think creatively about how best to meet the needs of all of its members. And surely the tremendous rate of response and the often passionate responses of WHA members to the 2005 survey suggest that there is an enormous storehouse of passion, goodwill, and creative energy that will serve the organization well as it approaches its half-century anniversary in just a few years time. I am reminded of Frederick Jackson Turner's notion, expressed at the beginning of the 1920s, that American regions/sections could work effectively together—each "as a fit room in a worthy house."6 We have good reason to be confident that the WHA, if its members continue to think long and hard about the issues addressing the organization and understand that different perspectives can be invigorating, will continue to be a fit house for all of its worthy constituencies and one that can expand accordingly to meet the needs of more potential members looking for a professional home. |
24 |
|
DAVID WROBEL is professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the president elect of the American Historical Association/Pacific Coast Branch. NOTES 1 My thanks to Jonathan Foster, a doctoral candidate in western history at UNLV, for his outstanding contributions to the processing of the survey data; David Rich Lewis, for his support, encouragement, and general good cheer during what at times seemed like an absolutely interminable process; Mike Lansing, for prompting the organization to conduct the member survey; the WHA Membership Committee, which, in addition to Foster, Lewis, and myself, includes Gordon Baaken, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Patty Limerick, and María Montoya; the WHA Council; and the WHA Offices at the University of New Mexico and the University of Missouri, St. Louis, for their support of this endeavor. Thanks also to WHA members Flannery Burke, Janet Fireman, Deena González, Ben Johnson, Lansing, and Elliott West (and to committee members Denetdale, Lewis, and Montoya) for participating in the 2006 WHA session on the member survey, and to the 2006 Program Committee co-chairs, Annette Atkins and Marc Rodriguez, for their support of the session. 2 Walter Nugent, "Where is the American West: Report on a Survey," Montana The Magazine of Western History 42 (Summer 1992): 2–23. See also, Walter Nugent's introduction, "Where the West Is and Why People Have Gone There," in Into the West: The Story of Its People (New York, 1999), 3–17. 3 I fully recognize the problematic nature of the multiple categories for racial/ethnic identification in the survey and take full responsibility for this shortcoming. The multiple categories make it difficult to determine definitively the percentage of racial/ethnic "minority" respondents. 4 Elliott West, "A Longer, Grimmer, but More Interesting Story," in Trails Toward a New Western History, ed. Patricia Nelson Limerick, Clyde A. Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin (Lawrence, 1991), 103–11. 5 It is worth noting that the survey was administered prior to the 2005 meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, where attendance was high, about 950—just a little lower than the attendance in Las Vegas in 2004, which was close to 1,000, the highest in nearly a decade. 6 Frederick Jackson Turner, "Sections and Nation," in Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" and Other Essays, ed. John Mack Faragher (New York, 1994), 181–200, quote from 200; first published in Yale Review 12 (October 1922): 1–21. |
|
And now, about the women...MARÍA E. MONTOYAWhen I was asked to join the Membership Committee of the Western History Association, I was reluctant, to say the least. Paul Hutton asked me at the precise moment when I had pretty much made up my mind to leave the WHA and look for a more intellectually and personally welcoming environment at the American Studies Association and Organization of American Historians. From what I had experienced at the meetings in Tulsa and Las Vegas, the WHA of my graduate school days, where generations mixed and people were friendly and open, had given way to a kind of acrimony and chilliness that I found uncomfortable and sad. It's not that I yearned for the old days of dressed up cowboys and bad banquet speakers, but I did pine for a repose of sorts where people could learn to accept one another and co-exist. I agreed to serve on the committee mostly out of nostalgia and loyalty to an institution that has served me well professionally and has provided a meeting space for hanging out with some of my best friends in the profession. I am not sorry I stayed with the WHA and took on this task. Participating in the creation and execution of the survey has been an eye-opening experience and a fruitful one. |
25 |
|
The results from the membership survey reveal the growing pains of the WHA and show an organization that is in transition from a close-knit group of founders who loved the ideas about and place of the West to a more-professionalized academic organization that reflects the diversity of our passion. Much of the conflict and misunderstandings, I believe, can be attributed to generational outlooks and a perceived lack of response and respect on all sides. In looking at the results, it seems to me that the survey presents an opportunity for our new executive director and his staff to build on the knowledge acquired from the survey and continue promoting both growth in membership as well as fostering an intellectual breadth and shared community. |
26 |
|
Of all the interesting themes that emerged from the survey and from the session held in Saint Louis last October, one issue that did not receive specific attention was the role of women and the ways WHA has and has not addressed their needs within the organization. Like its corresponding professional historical organizations, the WHA has been slow to recognize the importance of women within the organization and to put them in leadership positions. I was pleasantly surprised when I did a little research and found that the OAH had elected its first woman president, Louise P. Kellogg, in 1930. Although, in all fairness, it would be another fifty years until they had another female president, Gerda Lerner in 1981. Since the early 1980s, the organization has been fairly balanced in their election of presidents and showcased the work of a wide variety of scholars. On the other hand, the AHA elected only one female president in its first one hundred years of existence and even in the last twenty years has not been the model of gender equality. The WHA, however, waited twenty years after its founding before electing its first female president in 1981, when Mary Lee Spence took the helm. But she was an anomaly; the WHA would not see its next female president nominated and elected until 1987, when Sandra Meyers came to office. In reality, it was not until 1996 with the election of Glenda Riley that a real shift came about in the acceptance of having a female president, and since then there has been a much more balanced representation in the office. Since Glenda Riley's presidency, five of the last twelve presidents have been women. |
27 |
|
The problem of gender inequality and under-representation is even more apparent if we look at the composition of the WHA council. Of the approximately 157 people who have held council positions since 1970, only twenty-two have been women. And of those, seven (as per the WHA Constitution) held their Council positions as ex-officio after their year as president. The ex-president sits for two years, but is not a voting member. So, while it may appear in some years that women are well-represented in the Council, it has often been the case that they are non-voting members. At no point in the WHA history has there ever been a majority of women on the Council and never has there been more than three voting members who are women on the Council. |
28 |
|
This has had important policy and cultural consequences for the WHA. (The same could be said for the lack of ethnic and racial minority voices within the Council where these numbers are even more stark and upsetting.) This lack of diversity and the narrow set of viewpoints represented by the Council and Presidency inhibit the growth and development of the organization as a whole. As many of the written comments in the survey make clear, many in the organization have come to the see the Council as a good old boys (some include girls as well) club that does not reflect the membership and is not responsive to their concerns about the composition and future of the organization. One of the steps already taken has been to make the Council larger and, one hopes, more reflective of the membership's diversity and concerns. |
29 |
|
In addition to their being a question of inequitable gender representation in the WHA, there is, for women, a generational issue as well. If we look at the survey results we see two areas, representing two different age groups, in which women are over-represented relative to their percentage within the organization. The first of these areas is that of women from 50–55. This group is increasing in membership in the WHA and a high percentage of women in this age range responded to the survey. They represent a generation of historians who entered the organization and profession in the late 1970s and early 1980s and shaped the organization in important ways. They were the leaders behind the formation of the Coalition of Western Women's History, as well as the Women's History Breakfast, which has become one of the best-attended events at the WHA meeting. This is also the cohort that took their experiences at the WHA and the Coalition to create the Women of the West Museum, which was eventually folded into the Autry National Center. The intellectual work and exhibits that the Autry has developed represents an important stepping stone in the place of women's and gender history in the study of the American West. The second area in which women are over-represented is the below-30 age group. Clearly young women who are in graduate school or just entering the profession are drawn to the WHA and to the kinds of questions that are being asked and talked about by the membership. Concomitantly, if the WHA wants to be an organization that continues to grow, we need to be mindful of this younger generation that is entering the profession. Although, it may be weighted a little more heavily toward women in the profession, the issues of home and work life that will face them exist regardless of gender. Moreover, shrinking job markets, balancing family and work, and tightening budgets are concerns for all young scholars. It may be time for the Council to take up these larger issues, canvass the membership about its needs and form a task force that will help nurture the future of this organization. |
30 |
|
These two constituencies within the survey deserve attention by the executive director and Council. The cohort of over-50 women are leaders who could assume positions on the Council or Nominating Committee or serve as president. While the organization has elected some women like Virginia Scharff, Marni Sandweiss, Patty Limerick, and Janet Fireman, there exists a fairly large pool of untapped talent that could bring real diversity and leadership to the organization as a whole, and to the Council in particular. As Margaret Jacobs (who may now live to regret the query) asked at the session in Saint Louis: "How does one get involved in a leadership role? I've never been asked to do anything." Clearly, there is an untapped source of potential leaders who would bring a fresh voice and represent the change that is afoot in the organization. |
31 |
|
Generally speaking, women more so than men, said that they came to the WHA meetings in search of fellowship and intellectual exchange. I suspect that much of this camaraderie centers around two events that take place at WHA: the Wednesday sessions sponsored by the Coalition for Western Women's History and the Women's History Breakfast. Both of these events emerged as grassroots movements as women sought to create an intellectual home for themselves within the organization. Denied special sessions within the meetings (unlike the Westerners, the Mormon History Association and others) the Coalition decided to hold a pre-meeting on Wednesdays that could address issues of professional development and research related to women and gender. These sessions were invaluable to those of us young scholars just starting out in the profession. |
32 |
|
Scholars of women and gender also worked to create the CWWH Breakfast, which has become a showcase for scholars touting their success and sharing their anguish over a slowed-down project. It is also the event that every book and journal editor makes sure he or she attends, looking for the best that the profession has to offer in terms of scholarship. The CWWH in 1990 also created the Jensen-Miller Prize for the best article written in Western Women's History. When the CWWH leadership approached the then-president and WHA Council about having the prize sponsored by the WHA the idea was met with complete reluctance. Issues about whether or not an endowment could be created and if the organization really needed another prize were cited as excuses for not sponsoring the prize. The Coalition was not even allowed to hand out the prize at the awards banquet, as it was not a WHA sponsored prize. Out of this rebuff, the prize has thrived and become a centerpiece of the Women's History breakfast and I am not sure that anyone would even want it to be a part of the awards ceremony at this point. But, I certainly can imagine the Council endorsing the creation of an endowment fund for the prize modeled after the immense success of the recently created Hal Rothman Prize in Environmental History. My point is that although women have been systematically excluded from the organization, they have found ways to persist and thrive. But this kind of segregation is unhealthy for the long-term success of the organization. I cannot help but think that the sexist outburst of Bill Kurtis at the awards banquet in Las Vegas would have been met with a more adequate response if there had been more women on the Council, and in general, if women did not already feel so marginalized by the leadership, which seemed more interested in sweeping the transgression away as quickly as possible rather than using the incident as a way to examine how women have felt excluded. |
33 |
|
There is much to be learned from the survey results. If used in a thoughtful and meaningful way, the survey, our discussions in Saint Louis, and this collection of responses can be used by the new executive director and the incoming leadership to steer this organization in a direction that creates a "big tent" that can accommodate diversity in a civil and respectful manner. Creative programming both at the annual meeting and in smaller gatherings sponsored by the WHA could create a community that would reach a broad audience, one in which we would all willingly serve and of which we could all be proud. |
34 |
|
MARÍA E. MONTOYA, associate professor of history at New York University, is the author of Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Problem of Land in the American West. |
|
"Bad Guys"
|
35 |
|
Parents had obviously played a large role in how students had gone about selecting their figures. Celebrities from the past dominated the selection, and there were at least two Princess Dianas. And, then, among the Michael Jordans and Benjamin Franklins, I found a Geronimo. I was delighted. I had found a little boy excited about a person whom I actually considered historical, and he was in my field to boot! Here was evidence that western history had penetrated to K-12 instruction. Students were clearly interested in the West, and maybe that meant teachers and parents were as well. When I talked with the mother of the boy who had chosen Geronimo, she told me that the assignment had been a difficult one for him. He just wasn't interested in any of the people she and his father suggested, and then, she told me, "We discovered bad guys." |
36 |
|
"Bad guys." Forty-six years of the Western History Association, and when it comes time to choose a western history topic, folks are still thinking about cowboys and Indians; white hats and black hats; good guys and bad guys. I know the forces of popular culture are strong. And I know academic historians and buffs alike live in an alternate universe where we pretend that what we do really matters. But, surely, we can do more to educate the general public about how to consider the West in less dichotomous terms. Surely, the least we could accomplish would be to teach people that Indians aren't bad guys, and they never were; that the West has a history just like the East; and that Geronimo is no more a character from the pages of pulp fiction than is Benjamin Franklin. |
37 |
|
Unfortunately, holding the WHA back from tackling problems like this one is the perception that there are bad guys in our very midst. Depending on which members of the association you consult, the bad guys are: "lots of white men" (15), "Good Ole' Boys" (35), and "macho Charlton Heston wannabees" (162) who are "so many decades behind the times as to defy credulity" (543). Alternately, the bad guys are "militants" (470), "toadies or glory kids of the full profs" (35), and "a willful minority" (196) who have mired the organization in an obsession with diversity, "a silly anti-intellectual fad that needs to be dropped from WHA's concerns" (362). |
38 |
|
I suspect that I fall into the second camp. I am an academic at a four-year university, and I think greater racial diversity would bring the WHA up-to-date in comparison with other historical and academic organizations and would be more reflective of the West's population. I am heartened by the suggestions of other members of this roundtable to expand the racial diversity of the organization. Nonetheless, I find myself far more concerned by how polarized these statements suggest the WHA is. How is the organization to accomplish anything—from making governance more transparent, WHA headquarters more accessible, panels more animated, and conferences more fun and engaging—if we greet our peers with suspicion? How is the WHA to move forward if we're all busy looking for the bad guys? |
39 |
|
I can't say that I have the answer, but several survey comments suggest that many members favor a less divisive solution. As one member wrote: "The WHA is at a crossroads. It needs to continue its historical commitment to public history, but it also needs to encourage and sustain the most innovative scholarship at its conferences and its publications. And it need[s] to adopt new governance and foster an institutional culture that is supportive and welcoming to a diverse array of scholars and practitioners. In short, the WHA, for all of its many strengths, needs to change with the times—to hold banquets and convene conferences that foster dialogue, not division; to assemble program sessions that speak to the broader field; and to make room for new perspectives to help chart the future of the organization. The Executive Committee know[s] the challenges ahead and the criticisms it faces—and it needs to address them. This member stands ready to help" (288). Another member's wish list included: "Continue to keep costs as low as possible[;] revamp banquet/awards/address events to increase inclusivity; maintain high standards in accepting papers/panels; but also keep the "big tent" philosophy; cultivate more opportunities for exchange between older & younger members and academics, public historians, & "buffs"; keep things in perspective—it's just an association" (257). The WHA may be split between those interested in querying the hermeneutics of interstitial space and those interested in eating homemade jerky while reenacting the battle of Washita, but I'm more inclined to think that it's full of thoughtful members who are ready to move beyond cartoons about bad guys and good guys. |
40 |
|
How, then, can the organization move forward? While hardly a magic bullet, I submit that cultivating substantive, long-lasting relationships with K-12 teachers would enable the organization to overcome many of the challenges it currently faces. Most K-12 teachers are not ivory tower academics interested in the minutiae of current theory or obscure archival finds, but neither are they ignorant of the demands their students will face if and when they enter college. Most look for compelling stories that will teach their students about the past in a way that students can understand, engage, and remember. Most hope for their students to acquire critical thinking skills and the capacity to contribute to their communities. Many teachers are energetic and enthusiastic about the prospects of improving education. Most want to prep their students as best as they can for higher education and productive adulthood, and, as a result, are educated about a diverse range of college options for their students, from technical schools to community colleges to four-year institutions. |
41 |
|
K-12 teachers could also potentially complement and benefit from the WHA membership. Given that 5.2 percent of the WHA survey respondents identified themselves as instructors at two-year institutions, K-12 teachers might find valuable connections at annual conferences. Many K-12 teachers take advantage of museum and national park education programs. According to the membership survey, 4.8 percent of members are government employees and 3.3 percent are museum employees, and I suspect many would be delighted to talk with K-12 teachers about how to better serve students. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) website, most teachers are young and female, in contrast to WHA members, 73.7 percent of whom were born before 1960 and 68.3 percent of whom are male. According to the NCES website, most teachers are white. Most WHA members are as well; 83.7 percent of survey respondents identified as white, Anglo, Caucasian, or European. Nonetheless, K-12 teachers instruct an ever more diverse selection of students. In short, teachers fall into neither of the camps who have squared off against one another in the WHA. They are receptive to professional development; they connect the disparate communities that have traditionally contributed members to the WHA; their membership would provide greater gender and age diversity for the organization; and they are addressing many of the same issues of racial diversity that currently preoccupy us. |
42 |
|
Given all that the WHA and teachers have to offer one another, why aren't they doing so now? K-12 teachers make up a tiny minority of the current organization. Only 2.2 percent of survey respondents identified themselves as elementary, middle school, or high school teachers. Why aren't K-12 teachers WHA members? Two survey respondents had some theories. As one noted, "... if conferences were NOT during the academic year, attendance could improve—especially among students and those in public (K-12) Education (when I was in public education-nearly impossible to attend)" (359). Another noted that "[h]igh school teachers have little travel $ and have to pay for subs. This makes it difficult to attend conferences during the school year" (523). |
43 |
|
It probably comes as no surprise that time and money are what's keeping teachers from becoming members, and, of course, both are in short supply for everyone. Nonetheless, the organization could do more. If rescheduling the conference is impossible, program committees could conscientiously schedule panels regarding teaching for Saturdays and Sundays. And, surely, some money could be found to sponsor one K-12 teacher a year to attend the annual conference. Of the twenty-two awards offered by the WHA, none are for teachers—no funds for travel to attend the annual conference, no money to pay for substitute teachers, no awards for excellence in teaching at any level, no awards to develop or reward cutting-edge instructional materials. Even if an award went unclaimed, its existence might inspire K-12 teachers to join the organization, or at least attend a conference. |
44 |
|
Changes to the conference program could also encourage membership. If a panel were dedicated to teaching every year, those dedicated to teaching, including those working at the university level, could count on a panel that would be of interest to them. By using alternative formats, panels on teaching could also foster more communication among educators. Museum educators, university professors, government employees, and teachers could discuss how better to serve students productively and consistently. While I certainly appreciated my school visits to Bandelier National Monument as a child, by my fourth field trip, I kind of knew what to expect. Cooperation between varying levels of educators could make field trips more educational as well as more diverse in content. |
45 |
|
In particular, I think panels that bring together teachers of varying levels—an elementary school teacher, a high school teacher, a community college professor, and a four-year professor, for example, would be dynamic, helpful, and energizing. Using list-serves, the web, and e-mail, each teacher could share with the others a lesson plan on a given topic. Then the teacher next in line to inherit a generation of students could comment on the lesson plan of the teacher before them. Elementary school teachers could then comment on lesson plans for prospective teachers that were created by professors at community colleges or four-year universities. In addition to fostering more productive and thoughtful teaching, such full-circle panels might also be wonderful levelers. After working with dozens of elementary school teachers, I've learned a lot about how much more I have to learn as a teacher and a thinker. I doubt any member of the WHA would object to a little more perspective. Learning from people who work every day with a classroom full of five-year-olds is certainly one way to get some. |
46 |
|
Just such a panel could have helped the teacher and the parents of the young Geronimo wannabe whom I found, eyes closed, behind his poster board. The encounter certainly helped me in successive classes when I addressed the history of Native Americans or led class discussions about what it means to think historically. Anyone who has worked in education reform will tell you how daunting and discouraging it can be, but we seem like an organization that needs a challenge. Why not choose a goal that will make the organization reach outward instead of gazing inward, one that will advertise the collegiality and warmth for which the WHA is famous, and one that moves beyond good guys and bad guys? |
47 |
|
FLANNERY BURKE, assistant professor of history, California State University, Northridge, is writing a book about Mabel Dodge Luhan, forthcoming from the University Press of Kansas. |
|
Who's WHA? Patterns of ExclusionDEENA J. GONZÁLEZThe survey and its eager respondents suggest that we need to discern a few more details about membership in the Western History Association (older and retired made up 20 percent of the responses). The compiled data suggests as well a remarkable lack of diverse ethnicities. Only ten respondents cited their ethnicity as "American Indian/Native American" and only eighteen (or 2.4 percent of the membership) are Latino/as (a catch-all category I use here that includes "Hispanics," "Chicano/as," as well as Mexican-Americans). Another critical issue is revealed in the category of gender: only twenty-eight members, of 763 respondents, claim "Women," as their topical area of interest. By contrast, one hundred claim "Native American/First Nations," as their primary research interest. |
48 |
|
Several problems emerge in reviewing these trends. First, the race/ethnic category contained too many choices, including the ever-cheerful, self-referential response, "human." (7 respondents claim membership in the "human race"!) The questions thus elicited responses that one can point to as simply undermining the purpose of the survey. Looking more deeply, however, at the demographic patterns, and at their specific linkages to gender and racial categories, many members appear to have been involved in the WHA for at least a decade (16.4 percent), and in some cases two or three decades (32 percent). These statistics suggest a senior membership (nearly one-half of all respondents) probably trained in eras when race and ethnicity as central categories of analysis existed less than they do today. The need to recognize a membership composition of senior historians and practitioners must also account for the fact that the same respondents have lived through an era (1970–2000) when women were making significant gains in the historical profession.1 These gains seem rather absent in the WHA if we take into account only the current demographic profiles or statistics. Surprisingly, the public, as well as the private, perception that women, and women historians, are changing the discipline of history as never before seems to hold less true in the case of western history if we rely only on one view of these 763 survey responses. The twenty-eight respondents claiming "Women" as their primary area of interest or research are as revealing of the membership in the association as the racial/ethnic absences exhibited in the data. First, and on the opposite side, the scholarship on women, gender, and sexuality has reoriented the field, if not the teaching, of U. S. history of the West as it has also significantly re-shaped all of U. S. history.2 For example, national as well as regional prizes have been awarded for several decades now to historians examining areas of U. S. western women's history and paying attention to gender roles, gender ideology, and sexuality in particular. Susan Johnson, investigating gender and sexual codes among various groups in the western U. S., was awarded the Bancroft Prize for "Best Book"; Linda Gordon's work on Arizona Mexican families adopting Catholic foreign children was awarded several prizes, including the prestigious Bancroft Prize in the field of history.3 |
49 |
|
The gender issue is particularly timely given that the American Historical Association has just completed another significant survey of its women members. From 1971 onward, women's status in the profession has risen. As I noted in a recent AHA panel presentation based on the publication of a new, important article, authored by Linda Kerber, on the status of women in the profession of history (Journal of Women's History 18, no. 1 [2006]), and reviewed two previous and exhaustive compilations on the status of women in the discipline of history (the Rose Report, 1970 and the Lunbeck Report, 2005), I found one conclusion irrefutable.4 Three decades have secured a position for white women in the profession of history, as the same years have ensured the growth of the female graduate student population and have placed women at the forefront of leading trends in the discipline. Somehow, these gains are not reflected in the WHA's survey if we consider them strictly along gender lines. |
50 |
|
Less laudable, and something the WHA survey shares with the recent one on women in the profession, is that across any area of the historical profession, the progress of women of color has faltered. In each and every category marking presence—numbers admitted to graduate school, numbers completing graduate programs, numbers hired in tenure-track positions and promoted through the ranks—an absence is striking. This national problem, or deficiency, matches exactly the one revealed by the data in the WHA's recent survey: women of color, as well as all historians of color, are trailing both in terms of presence in the profession and progress and growth in the discipline.5 |
51 |
|
Historians of color exert little influence, thus, in shaping the types of history taught in schools, the kind of history explored in colleges and universities. The nation is itself impoverished as a result of skewed versions of its own past, because only the "hunters" are telling the tale. As the African proverb would have it: Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. |
52 |
|
There seems to be little institutionalized programming available to help remedy the inequities in the short term, and a heavy dose of optimism propels the profession into believing that time will remedy the gap. It has not proven true, despite the three important decades of improvements for white women. Were this contrast between gains for white women and inequities for historians of color not as blatant as it seems to be, we might continue hoping that some patterns within the WHA would improve on their own, if gradually. |
53 |
|
As a result of invisibility, or of little presence, the relevance of topics that historians of color pursue, and in the case of the WHA, women as well, become minimized or sidelined. The cycle of perpetual marginalization continues because while revision is claimed as a fundamental element in today's U. S. history courses on the West, one has to pose the difficult question: who are the revisionists? What can be said about communities, about popular resistance, about gender relations, about local economies, if the centrality or details of people of color are omitted or treated tangentially when at all? The story of the U. S. West is the story of people of color, who labored, farmed, ranched, danced, and sang, as much as it is about Euro-Americans who conquered, colonized, and claimed the lands (in addition to farming, ranching, laboring, dancing and singing). The geography upon which this "new" western history is constructed once belonged to communities today marginalized in the examination of those same histories. Try as a professor might to be inclusive within this small range of subjects, it is impossible to do so if books and articles are not forthcoming, if sponsored research projects (dollars, fellowships, assistantships) are not underway. |
54 |
|
When challenged, at this year's annual meeting of the WHA, to "call or sound out" tried and proven solutions, rather than decrying the dearth of minority histories, few rose to offer suggestions. Time constraints might explain some of the reluctance, but I would also guess that few solutions are operating in the "Research 1" universities where most western history doctorates are produced. Concerted and decisive action is lacking in a litigious era fearful of acting affirmatively, and if anyone is indeed sitting on committees and working hard to admit worthy graduates of color, or working to promote women of color faculty, they seem to be doing so quietly, without fanfare and without incurring the public burden of having to "prove" credentials that are equal or superior. Recent court cases in Michigan, Texas, and California all doomed affirmative action admissions' programs, and graduate studies are inevitably affected negatively by this trend. In turn, the profession remains in the hands of particular groups of researchers who might be biased, neglectful, or ill-informed when assessing historical events and seeking balanced approaches to explain how something came into being. |
55 |
|
The WHA's survey thus mirrors contemporary characteristics: a senior and established professional cohort, a less-than-impressive number of women historians, or of historians investigating the centrality of women's experiences, and a dismal rate in the organization of historians of color. It is impossible to convince stalwarts who would lend diversity cursory credence, if at all, but there are good reasons to change these patterns. The WHA must thus ask, "To what extent does the WHA reflect the populations of the western United States which form the basis of its study?" As we have seen in immigration studies and immigration history particularly, "sending" regions are as important topics of analysis as are those of "arrival." In this case, a large incongruity exists between the largest regions or training bases for historians of the U. S. West, populated in the majority in many states or cities by people of color, and the official researchers and investigators of those collected historical experiences. To avoid a colonial relationship to the region studied, U. S. historians of the West must take specific steps to remedy the inequities, to allow, if you will, the "lions" to tell their story. |
56 |
|
We would be hard pressed to argue against the conclusion that the association's membership currently mirrors the distressing social and racial inequalities of our time. But that alone is insufficient reasoning for continuing the current and ongoing patterns because the membership of the WHA has enormous impact on the way western history is constructed and received. |
57 |
|
Although U. S. historians of the West might study regions and territories once under the rule of indigenous Americans, as well as briefly under the command of Mexican Americans (American meaning here "of the Americas"), it is assumed that the story of these periods or regions can be written by the pen of those dwelling here now, or informed by documents written by the same. Such is simply not true. The part of the word, "history," containing a "story" is diminished, particularly when native, indigenous studies are rendered via publications as objects or subjects, but its principal actors rarely portrayed as philosophers, artists, linguists, or religious leaders. To accomplish the latter requires versatility in indigenous languages, whether spoken today or in the past, and few historians of the U. S. western experience are linguistically capable in Lakota, Diné, or any of the Pueblo languages (Tewa or Tiwa). In recent years, the trend among Mexicanists trained in México has been to incorporate language training in Nahuatl; a similar accomplishment has propelled women and feminist historians to become trained in social science methodologies, in international studies, as well as in the sciences—all in order to discuss more capably women's lived experiences. In other words, the idea that scholars of Native America in the U. S. master a Native or indigenous language is not outside the realm of possibility because the trend is already underway in other sub-fields of history. |
58 |
|
The WHA should settle for nothing less than this goal: to improve markedly its recruitment and training of historians of color, of women historians, and to establish the blueprint that might therefore serve the entire profession of history. |
59 |
|
DEENA J. GONZÁLEZ is professor and chair of the Department of Chicana/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She edited (with Suzanne Oboler) the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the U.S. (New York, 2005). NOTES 1 See graphs and charts, by race, ethnicity, and gender at Robert B. Townsend, "The Status of Women and Minorities in the History Profession," Perspectives Online 40 (April 2002), http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2002/0204/ (accessed 18 July 2006). The charts report a closing gap in new history PhDs between males (60%) and females (40%), a continuing gap between new history PhDs when race and ethnicity are factored in. For the year 2000, about 10% of all awarded PhDs in the discipline went to ethnic or racial minorities. 2 See Elizabeth Lunbeck, The Status of Women in the Historical Profession, 2005, http://www.historians.org/governance/cwh/2005status/index.cfm (accessed 18 July 2006). 3 See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eguides/amerihist/bancroftlist.html (accessed 22 July 2006). Susan L. Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York, 2000) and Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Cambridge, MA, 1999). 4 See Willie Lee Rose, Patricia Albjerg Graham, Hanna Grey, Carl Schorske, and Page Smith, Report on the AHA Committee on the Status of Women, November 9, 1970, http://www.historians.org/pubs/archives/Rosereport (accessed 18 July 2006). 5 Robert B. Townsend, "Rising Tide of History Undergraduates Contrasts with Declining PhDs: But Demographics of History Students Quite Different from Other Fields," Perspectives Online 43 (December 2005), figure 4: "Racial and Ethnic Minorities among Degree Recipients in History and All Fields at Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate Level, 2002–03," http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2005/0512/0512new2.cfm (accessed 20 July 2006). |
|
Good News, Not So Good News, and Strange CombinationsELLIOTT WESTThe survey sent to the Western History Association members drew a remarkable response, and there is much to be made from the replies. I will leave it to others to crunch the numbers more fully and to consider some of the subtler insights and lessons to be drawn. My hope is modest—to lay out what seem to be a few obvious points and to suggest what might be done with them. |
60 |
|
We might start with two broad goals. We might identify our strengths, but resist overstressing them or getting smug. Rather, we can think about how we might use our strengths and build on them. And we might identify our weaknesses and problems, but resist exaggerating or belaboring them. Rather, we can think about what practical steps are available to us in starting to correct them. |
61 |
|
Looking through the written comments and the results of the survey, a few strengths stand out, and they are no surprise. Things do get interesting, however, when the written comments and the statistical survey are compared. There is a kind of disconnect between what people wrote, getting things off their chests, and what they said when the chips were down and they had to color in one or another of those bubbles to rank what they did and did not like about the WHA. |
62 |
|
Many wrote that they have been put off, especially during the past few years, by divisiveness at our meetings. "The number of historians with chips on their shoulders makes for a confrontational and combative meeting," one wrote, and another thought that meetings have become "deadly, confrontational, too serious, [and] lacking in humor or tolerance" (201, 404). But in the survey, the second strongest attraction for those attending our meetings is "social collegiality." |
63 |
|
Many wrote that they find the programs off-putting. Not enough papers are to their interest. Why and how the panels are turn them off, and conversely what the preferred topics might be, varies considerably. Several thought, as one wrote, that a "willful minority" dominates with "their special brand of social activist 'history' ... ," while on the other side one complained about too much influence from the "conservative cowboy crowd" and the "Charlton Heston wannabees ... " (196, 162). If nothing else, that suggests to me that maybe the programs are more balanced than we give them credit for. As Franklin Roosevelt famously said from the political spectrum of the 1930s, if both the right and the left hated him, he must be doing something right. But then we turn to the survey. While many complained that little in the programs spoke to them, the aspect of our meetings that holds the strongest appeal to us is "intellectual exchange." |
64 |
|
Many wrote that the WHA is losing much of its previously broad base. The feeling is that while our meetings used to be ones of wide-ranging generalists, more and more they are dominated by blinkered career academics, Nit-Pickers of the Purple Sage caught up in narrow issues that only they care about. "We have evolved alas," one member wrote, "from an organization that embraced the amateur as well as the professional historian, into an academic organization" (144). But what do we say in the survey? Barely a third of us are faculty in four-year institutions. Fully six out of ten do not consider themselves primarily western historians. Of that 60 percent, a remarkable one in four (or about one in six of all respondents) is outside the history business altogether. Based on what we say about ourselves, that is, we are no cloister of academics but a mixed bunch with this, and seemingly not much more than this, in common—a considerable interest in the West and its past. |
65 |
|
None of this is necessarily contradictory, of course. Call me Pollyanna, but, especially in light of how we speak through the comments and survey together, we seem to be saying that we have been traditionally open and friendly, but that we could be even more collegial and should temper the recent edginess. We are saying, further, that our programs over the years have been widely appealing and that our membership has been a healthy mix from inside and out of academia, but that our membership is changing, and that we (implying, as I see it, all sides and interests) should work harder at keeping and cultivating that wide appeal and that mixed membership. |
66 |
|
This is not to say there are not weaknesses and problems. The survey and comments show them, too, and generally there are few surprises there either. Many complain of the mechanics of the meetings—costs, venues, what and where and how we eat, plenary presentations, the format of sessions and more. Of all the issues that need addressing, these surely are the most open to experimentation and thus are the most fixable. Some points, true, are less tractable than others. The cost of luncheons and banquets, a perennial source of irritation, is tied somewhat to the quality of the host facility; hotels with space for our sessions (and those amenities that spoil us a bit) make much of their profit in feeding us. Without catering (pun intended) to that need, we would not necessarily be reduced to chilidogs at a La Quinta, but the convention experience would probably suffer. There is certainly room, on the other hand, for considerable change in the setting and occasion for those couple of times over three days when we gather to eat and drink and jaw. How our sessions are conducted is even more open to change and experimentation. The call, that is, is for imagination, specific proposals, and a willingness to try them. |
67 |
|
Two other problems seem more entrenched and tougher to tackle. Many comments point out what the survey makes clear: We need to bring the diversity of the Western History Association much more into line with the diversity of western history. The survey shows the number of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans is far below what it ought to be in an organization of our professed interests and values. Comments suggest that a greater presence of such groups would make the WHA more stimulating, interesting, and vital. Who could possibly deny the first statement? Who could disagree with the second? Given how obvious those points are, the best course would seem to be not to belabor them but rather to come up with specific ideas about how the situation might be corrected. We might consider the "Do unto others" principle. A group of us might attend the annual meeting of the Association of Asian American Studies, for instance, and the National Association for African American Studies, which meets in conjunction with corresponding groups of Asian, Hispanic and Native American studies. We would get to know a little about the group and its members, meet scholars doing work in western history and encourage them to come meet with us. |
68 |
|
Then there is the widespread feeling of a deepening division within the WHA. Although, as mentioned above, we still seem to have much in common and still feel that one of the best things we have going for us is our collegiality, the impression that we are increasingly divided is real and troubling. Several respondents see the organization as a forum, as one put it, for the "instant gratification of ... immediate agendas" of one faction, those so caught up, as another wrote, in "'theory' and the race/class/gender trinity" that they are creating "an intellectual 'closed shop.'" Others say that, to the contrary, the WHA is dominated by an entrenched "old boy" clique and "insider's network" of traditionalists that is too unresponsive to change (227, 299, 518, 255). |
69 |
|
What is most interesting to me, reading the comments and having conversations in the halls during our meetings, is that each group seems convinced that the other is in charge. You don't have to belong to MENSA to know that both cannot be right. This odd situation suggests a leadership that could be more in touch with its members and a membership that could be more in touch with itself. In light of that, a few final thoughts come to mind. Officers and rank and file all need to do more to encourage greater participation in WHA governance. Leaders should periodically use what means are at hand, such as H-West and emails to the membership, to publicize the nuts and bolts of WHA operation. During the panel discussion in St. Louis, for instance, several persons said they had no idea how the nominating committee works and how it comes up with its names. That committee might more assertively ask for advice from members. We have an annual call for papers. Why not an annual call for nominations? (Article VI, section 3 of our constitution, which is now more readily available through the new WHA website, reads that the committee "shall consider suggestions by members." It says also that with only fifty signatures, members can put forward an additional nominee. Given that, plus our rate of voter participation, which is even lower than in national elections, one of us could probably organize to put Daffy Duck on the council.) Certainly officers should thankfully follow up when members volunteer to help with committees and other work—something that comments indicate has not always been done. |
70 |
|
Members, for their part, need to take more initiative, starting with simply asking questions about how the WHA is run. Of the several strange juxtapositions between the comments and the survey, maybe the strangest is this: There are all these written complaints about the WHA being dominated by this group or that, yet when we are asked what draws us to the annual meeting, the reason coming in dead last is "participation in WHA government." Before complaining that the program is too narrow, ask yourself whether you have proposed a session or have encouraged someone whose work you admire to submit a proposal. If you think the WHA is unresponsive, ask whether you have ever attended a business meeting to propose something leaders might respond to. |
71 |
|
As another commonsensical step, we can all take more initiative with divisions that so many are concerned about. We might take more to heart the theme of the 2006 meeting in St. Louis: Making Common Ground. Here is a suggestion for a practical strategy at the next meeting. Choose one of the sessions that, by your particular interests, appeals to you the least. If you don't care for more traditional topics, go to a session most likely to have the most persons wearing large hats and string ties. If you are of the other persuasion, find the one with the most postmodern feel, the Postest with the Mostest. (If you are puzzled by what "postmodern means," write me, and I'll tell you: "I don't know." As a fallback, choose the session with the greatest number of words per paper title.) Afterwards talk to others in the audience and to the presenters. Ask them why they think the panel is worth hearing—why it matters. Ask them why they find western history itself valuable. How have they come to where they are, now, together with you in the same organization? If you have not already, try something similar outside the sessions. I stand ready to spring for buttons to choose at registration: "I Pledge to Connect with the Politically Correct" and "Buy a Buff a Beer." |
72 |
|
One member advises: "Be kind—be inclusive—lighten up!" (131). Amen to that. To bring this full circle, we ought to emphasize our strengths, the collegiality and intellectual stimulation that most of us say draw us to the Western History Association, and use those strengths to face the problems that come to all good organizations that persist through changing times. |
73 |
|
ELLIOTT WEST, Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, is a past president of the Western History Association. |
|
The WHA and the Need to Incorporate ConflictBENJAMIN JOHNSONBefore commenting on some of the results of this survey, I'd like to back up a bit from the specific questions and information to make a more general point about organizations and conflict. I know of no other, nor am I a member of any other, academic organization that has had the kind of continual discussion about its status or has had the level of internal conflict as has the Western History Association. I don't know of another association where people have walked out of a banquet talk, that prompts the kind of acrimonious email exchanges as have happened on H-West, or where there has been an organized petition to the people running the organization expressing concern about annual conferences, governance, and the health of the organization. Moreover, there certainly haven't been many organizations that have taken this level of concern in responding to these grievances, as represented by the extensive survey, the session on the WHA at the 2006 conference in St. Louis, and this forum.1 |
74 |
|
Most of us, I suspect, reflexively assume that this conflict is bad—that if people are unhappy with the organization, they ought to be happy, that the conflict ought to be replaced with harmony. But perhaps this assumption is wrong: surely this conflict and continued public discussion show how attached to some version of western histo |