{"id":495,"date":"2024-12-20T20:26:24","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T20:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/emily-marker\/?p=495"},"modified":"2025-01-07T20:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T20:27:13","slug":"read-emily-markers-outgoing-message-as-president-of-the-wsfh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/emily-marker\/read-emily-markers-outgoing-message-as-president-of-the-wsfh\/","title":{"rendered":"Read Emily Marker’s Outgoing Message as President of the WSFH"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/e9d12e3d30c8\/message-from-outgoing-wsfh-president-emily-marker?e=edc5d55b3f<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Greetings! <\/span><\/p>\n

The Western has had quite a year! As we approach the closing of our semi centennial anniversary, let\u2019s take a moment to spotlight the amazing work we have done together in 2024.<\/p>\n

In San Francisco this past November, hundreds of us gathered to celebrate five decades of scholarship and community and the Western\u2019s signature commitment to opening up the profession to those historically marginalized or excluded from it. To mark the occasion, Naomi Andrews, Leslie Tuttle and Sarah K. Miles produced a wonderful short film about the WSFH that was screened at our anniversary bash and that can now be watched here<\/a>. The film tracks the WSFH\u2019s evolution, from its founding mission to promote regional diversity and providing more robust support for graduate student research and professional development, through to 2017, when that mission was expanded to encompass combatting all forms of structural inequality and inequity in the field and the profession, and up to today, as we have backed up our rhetorical commitments to those values with real material resources for ongoing initiatives and programs like WSFH engag\u00e9.e.s and the Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize. The film also provides a fascinating analytical retrospective, based on conference proceedings and programs over the years, that traces the ever-changing contours of the field. If you haven\u2019t had a chance to watch it yet, do check it out!<\/p>\n

For the past few years, WSFH engag\u00e9.e.s has been working on the Bridges Project, which aims to open up dialogues and options that fill the space between historians employed in academia and those employed elsewhere. This year we launched Bridges\u2019 own website<\/a>, where you can find the important white paper, \u201cThe Job Market in French and Francophone History, 2015-2024,\u201d co-authored by Nimisha Barton, Nick Underwood, Christina Carroll and Meredith Scott; Bridges\u2019 growing database of scholars who have volunteered to help folks navigate career exploration outside of the professorate; and other career exploration resources. The site draws from and builds on the past year of the Bridges team\u2019s digital and in-person programming, including a virtual roundtable, \u201cMore than a Safety Net\u2014A Bridge: Flipping the Francophone Conversation on Mentoring Beyond Academia” in fall 2023 and an in-person session on teaching and researching beyond the tenure track at SFHS 2024.<\/p>\n

In 2023, under Andrew Israel Ross, the Western embarked on its first-ever collaboration with SFHS on a joint annual meeting in Detroit in March. To give us all the opportunity to come together during our usual fall meeting time, Andrew and Sarah Horowitz organized a powerful virtual roundtable, \u201cThe Politics of French History in Times of Crisis.\u201d The event provided a forum for people not only to share their concerns about the challenges of teaching in the present moment, but also for concrete solutions to support vulnerable students.<\/p>\n

Some of the roundtable presenters continued that conversation in the latest issue<\/a> of the Journal of the Western Society for French History, <\/em>which is now live! Issue 50 also marks our semi centenary, with a special commemorative feature: the JWSFH MIXTAPE<\/em>. Editors Andrew Daily, Roxanne Panchasi, and Meghan Roberts invited three scholars to look through back issues of the journal and create a \u201cplaylist\u201d of five articles\/papers, one from each decade, according to their own intellectual, professional, and aesthetic tastes. This print feature is a wonderful companion to the retrospective film. Thanks to the JWSFH <\/em>editors for their boundless creativity and innovative spirit, and to Tabetha Ewing, Sarah K. Miles, and Robin Walz for their thoughtful contributions.<\/p>\n

And finally, congratulations<\/span> to our prize winners! Our 2024 Millstone Research Fellowships were awarded to Dakota Ciolkosz<\/strong> (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) for her project, \u201cWaters of Enlightenment: Political Economy, Engineering, and Environment in Eighteenth-Century France,\u201d and Francisco Hern\u00e1ndez Morales<\/strong> (University of Wisconsin, Madison) for his project, \u201cLessons from Exile: Refugee Schooling and Antifascist Culture after the Spanish Civil War in France and Mexico, 1939-1962.\u201d Since we did not have our own standalone conference in 2023, in San Francisco we also celebrated our 2023 Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize winner, Laura Talamente<\/strong> (California State University-Dominguez Hills). Laura\u2019s commitment to democratizing access to higher education and community-building offers a powerful model for us all! The 2024 and 2025 Mission Prize awardees will be celebrated at our next standalone conference in Memphis 2026.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to 2025, we have our boldest collaborative venture yet, a joint conference with SFHS and <\/em>the UK-based Society for the Study of French History (SSFH) in Paris next summer. The conference\u2019s theme, \u201cResistance,\u201d could not be more apt. For some years now, the higher education sector has been pummeled by a multipronged, punishing assault: from within, our own institutional leaders have pursued neoliberal austerity at the expense of the university\u2019s core mission of teaching and research; and from without, political operatives who fear an educated, engaged citizenry have weaponized higher ed in ways that have materially damaged and continue to erode academic freedom. With the incoming US administration, we can surely expect an onslaught of further attacks on academic labor organizing, DEI programs, curricular content, academic programs and entire disciplines, as well as more individualized threats to our international or undocumented students, colleagues, and their families.<\/p>\n

These are formidable challenges indeed, but we do not confront them alone. We are a community, and as a community, we will continue to create new spaces and new ways of coming together, not just to commiserate or stand in solidarity, but to strategize, share tactics, and develop tools and resources to respond to what\u2019s coming. We are a small society, but we are well-resourced with a healthy endowment and an active, engaged membership. Moreover, we are nimble and independent, not beholden to bloated bureaucracies, corporatized boards, and ideological major donors. To wit: within just a few short years, the society\u2019s leadership rewrote the mission, formed WSFH engag\u00e9.e.s, and established a totally new prize that recognizes historically invisible and undervalued work.\u00a0 The Western has been and will continue to be a force for change. However disempowering the past few months, or years, may have felt, we do have power\u2014here\u2014together!<\/p>\n

It has been a tremendous honor to serve as your president. In the coming year, as immediate past president, I will be working on a capital campaign to raise funds to support the Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize indefinitely. If you are interested in working on that with me, please email me at emily.marker@rutgers.edu<\/a>. In the interim, if you are looking for last-minute giving opportunities for 2024 and want to help us kick-off this campaign, you can donate to the Mission Prize here<\/a>. (You can designate the destination of your donation at the \u2018Additional Information\u2019 stage of checkout on the donation page.)<\/p>\n

Thank you all for a wonderful year. Looking forward to more cutting-edge research, intellectual fellowship, and scholarly community in 2025!<\/p>\n

In Solidarity,<\/p>\n

Emily<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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