I am happy to report that my book review, “Review of ‘The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc’,” The Journal of Modern History 95 (March 2023): 199-200, has been published and is available online at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/723330.
Suzannah Lipscomb’s The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) is a very interesting book.
And, it is always nice to think back to the province of Languedoc, which figured prominently in my dissertation research and my first historical monograph, Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
The Air Force Historical Research Agency of the United States Air Force is currently hiring Historians.
Recent graduates (within the past two years) with a B.A., M.A., or Ph.D. in History are eligible for these positions.
Northern Illinois University students and recent graduates in History who are interested in these or similar professional positions should contact me via email at bsandberg@niu.edu to discuss preparing for careers in Public History.
According to the job description: “This is a formal Air Force position for the Air Force Historical Research Agency, established under the PALACE ACQUIRE program. It is centrally managed and funded by the Civilian Career Management Directorate and administered by the History and Museums Civilian Career Program. Interns receive formal, informal, and/or on-the-job training in the discipline and assignments.”
For more information, see the full job description on the USAJobs website.
The Renaissance Society of America has issued a call for proposals for its RSA High School Teaching Grants.
High school teachers are invited to submit innovative teaching projects in the field of Renaissance Studies for consideration for these grants, which offer a monetary grant and travel expenses to the next RSA conference.
Northern Illinois University graduates who are serving as high school teachers in Illinois should feel free to contact me via email at bsandberg@niu.edu to coordinate on their teaching projects in Renaissance Studies.
Here is the call for proposals from the Renaissance Society of America:
We are pleased to announce that the Committee on Renaissance Studies for High School Students is once again calling for proposals for innovative teaching projects in Renaissance studies by RSA members who are high school teachers.
In 2019, the RSA Board of Directors formed an interdisciplinary committee made up of members who all have experience teaching at the secondary level. The members of this committee include Susan Forscher Weiss (Professor Emerita, Modern Languages and Musicology, Johns Hopkins University), Lorenzo Buonanno (Assistant Professor of Art, University of Massachusetts, Boston), Monica Calabritto (Associate Professor of Italian, Hunter College/CUNY), and Lawrence Rhu (Professor Emeritus of English, University of South Carolina).
These innovative teaching projects might include, but are not limited to, such activities as attending a theatrical or musical performance, bringing visiting specialists to the school to work with students, studying early modern art objects in a museum or texts at a collection of manuscripts or rare books. Whatever the proposed project, there is an expectation that it would result in work done by the students that could be shared in some form on the RSA website to serve as a model for other teachers and students. We would also expect that the teachers leading these projects would present an account of their experience at the RSA Annual Meeting in Chicago in March 2024 or Boston in March 2025 (conference travel and lodging expenses will be covered for grant winners).
Our membership is committed to ensuring the future of the society and one of the ways we are doing that, thanks to the contributions of a generous donor and numerous RSA members, is by promoting the study of the Renaissance among the next generation of students. We will award two grants this year, each of approximately $2500 (plus travel expenses to the RSA conference). Do spread the word among your colleagues and friends who are secondary school teachers, and please feel free to e-mail us at rsa@rsa.org with any questions you may have or with ideas about how to promote Renaissance studies in the schools.
Please click on this link to access the application, which will be due on June 22. The winners will be announced on July 17, and their projects will take place during the 2023–24 academic year.
The Nation magazine is offering Student Writing Fellowships for current undergraduate students in the United States. Ten Student Writing Fellowships will be offered.
Here is the call for applications from The Nation:
The Nation Fund for Independent Journalism is accepting applications for ten Student Writing Fellow spots for an eight-month fellowship program. This program offers college students the opportunity to write for The Nation and to work with professional editors and writers to develop skills critical for a meaningful career in journalism.
Through this concentrated period, fellows will receive editorial and fact-checking training, mentorship, networking opportunities, and support in publishing their writing. Student journalists will apply to be trained and report on specific, dedicated subject areas/beats, all with mentoring by relevant veteran writers who will offer both hard-learned advice and invaluable contacts.
The broad scope of this project is to show what matters most to young people at this highly fraught historical moment through deeply-reported enterprise journalism. Training sessions will focus on substantive reporting techniques and how to get beyond sensationalized profiles and horse-race coverage of politics. The project will tap into the lived experiences of young people and will focus on the development of a distinctive narrative voice. During the summer and fall of 2023, students will publish at least two long-form reported stories on their stated areas of interest.
Subject Areas: 1. Racial Justice 2. Labor 3. Abortion rights 4. Sports 5. Climate 6. Immigration 7. War & Peace/US Foreign-Policy 8. Technology 9. + 10. US Politics & young people
Requirements The Fellowship will run from April 10 to December 15, 2023. Fellows will participate in online editorial sessions and conversations with Nation editorial staff and special guests. Fellows will also have a series of one-on-one editorial meetings as their article moves through the editorial process. Fellows work remotely from their own campuses. Fellows will receive a $1,500 stipend, plus compensation for articles upon publication. Students need to be enrolled in college in the fall of 2023 to be eligible.
Application Applicants must submit the following: 1. A cover letter of not-more-than 250 words telling us why you want to become a StudentNation Fellow and which subject areas you’d be most interested in. (Pick up to three.) 2. One published piece of journalism (a link to the piece is fine). 3. A resume.
Applications will be accepted until 5:00pm EST, March 31, 2023. Application materials should be in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) format and emailed to studentfellow@thenationfund.org. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Applicants will be informed of their status by April 7.
Eligibility Any matriculating undergraduate students at all two and four-year schools in the United States, Canada or Mexico who will still be enrolled through the fall, 2023 semester. Previous StudentNation Fellows ineligible. For questions, email studentfellow@thenationfund.org.
The Nation Fund for Independent Journalism welcomes all applicants, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or veteran status.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is hiring a Program Specialist with the Office of Digital Humanities.
The NEH indicates that “The Office of Digital Humanities (ODH) offers grant programs that fund project teams experimenting with digital technologies to develop new methodologies for humanities research, teaching and learning, public engagement, and scholarly communications. ODH funds those studying digital technology from a humanistic perspective and humanists seeking to create digital publications. Another major goal of ODH is to increase capacity of the humanities in applying digital methods.”
According to the job description, “The Program Specialist acts as an expert in matters pertaining to digital humanities, library, and museum-related grants, and grant-funded research.”
This position would be perfect for a recent graduate of a M.A. or Ph.D. Program in History. The job announcement indicates that a Ph.D. is preferred, but not required.
For more information on this position, see the job description at USA Jobs.
Any Northern Illinois University graduate students or recent M.A.s and Ph.D.s interested in this position should contact me via email.
The Graduate Programs in History at Northern Illinois University prepare graduate students for positions in Digital Humanities and Public History. For information on NIU’s graduate programs in History, see the Department of History’s website.
Graduate students employed as teaching and research assistants at the University of Chicago have voted overwhelmingly to unionize.
According to Inside Higher Ed, “University of Chicago graduate student workers have voted 1,696 to 155 to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board announced Thursday evening.”
This is the latest in a series of unionization initiatives at universities across the nation. Graduate assistants, adjunct instructors, and faculty members have successfully unionized in many of those institutions.
Within the State of Illinois, the graduate assistants at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign successfully unionized in 2003. Graduate assistants at many other universities have been seeking to unionize, and Northwestern University graduate students recently voted to form a union. The faculty of University of Illinois at Chicago and Northern Illinois University are unionized and have recently renegotiated their contracts.
The French government and its Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, have survived a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly. Borne heads a government led by President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party (formerly known as La République en Marche !).
The no-confidence vote had been triggered by the government’s use of Article 49.3 of the French Constitution, a rarely used provision which allows for governmental passage of certain bills without a vote of the full National Assembly.
Roger Cohen reports that “The French National Assembly rejected a no-confidence motion against the government of President Emmanuel Macron, ensuring that a fiercely contested bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62 becomes the law of the land.”
Cohen notes that “Lawmakers were also voting on a second, and final, no-confidence motion filed by the far-right National Rally party. It has virtually no chance of passing, as most opposition lawmakers vowed not to support a motion put forward by the far right. The first motion received 278 votes, nine short of the 287 needed to pass. The close result reflected widespread anger at the overhaul to the pension law, at Mr. Macron for his apparent aloofness and at the way the measure was rammed through Parliament last week without a full vote on the bill itself.”
President Macron’s sweeping pension reform proposal has been highly controversial, provoking protests across France over the past several months. Macron has been accused of arbitrary rule and tyranny over his use of Article 49.3 to pass this major pension reform.
For more on this breaking news, see reporting in the New York Times and Le Monde. I will try to post additional resources as they become available.
For broader historical context on French political culture and protest culture, see Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (1986).
The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) is hiring a Cataloger of Western Manuscripts.
Recent Ph.D.s in medieval and early modern history may be interested in this position.
The job description reads:
The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) invites applications for the full-time, benefit-eligible position of Cataloger of Western Manuscripts. This is a three-year, grant-funded position.
The Cataloger will participate in HMML’s effort to catalog Western manuscripts and to support the creation of authority files by HMML’s metadata librarian. The Cataloger will focus primarily on the migration and correction of legacy data for microfilmed manuscript collections. This position is supervised by and reports to the Director of Cataloging.
Founded in 1965, HMML holds the world’s largest archive of manuscript photographs in both microfilm and digital format. HMML identifies manuscript collections around the world that need photographic preservation and online access. Its archives now contain more than 500,000 complete manuscripts, ranging in size from large codices of hundreds of folios to brief documents consisting of just a few leaves.
Visit hmml.org to learn more about the places, people and communities that have been part of HMML’s global story, and the manuscripts in HMML’s digital and microfilm collections.
Located on the campus of Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, HMML is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation that contracts with the Order of Saint Benedict (OSB) for employees and employee services.
For more information, see the full job description on H-Net.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is hiring 5 Historians in Hawaii. The position is open to candidates with a B.A. in History and those with a M.A. in History may be especially competitive for these positions.
“The mission of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is to provide the fullest possible accounting for our mission personnel from our Nation’s past conflicts to their families and our Nation. DPAA personnel research, investigate, recover, & identify remains of DoD personnel unaccounted for from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, & the Iraq conflicts and Persian Gulf War. The Director, DPAA (SES-111), reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD(P)).”
Any Northern Illinois University students or recent graduates in History who are interested in applying for one of these positions should contact me via email to discuss the application process.
Brian Sandberg: Historical Perspectives 