From Thursday, September 20th to Friday September 21st, Dr. Mary Beth Norton visited the University of South Carolina's History Department. Dr. Norton began graduate school at Harvard in 1964, and was the first woman professor at Cornell. She has had a long, celebrated career with important books such as Founding Mothers and Fathers, Liberty's Daughters, and In the Devil's Snare, and was a Pulitzer Book Prize Finalist in 1998. Dr. Norton is also the current president of the American Historical Association, the largest and most prestigious association for scholars of the United States.
Dr. Norton is an excellent storyteller and cracked us up multiple times throughout her visits. She also reminded me of my love for history when I heard her many tales from the archives. She is still finding new stories to tell even in a time of digitization--we can learn different things from different copies of the same source (hey guys, your notes in the margins of your stuff might matter someday!)
Dr. Norton and her former student, USC's own Dr. Nicole Maskiell, held a round table for graduate students and I live-tweeted. Below is a version of those tweets in slightly more understandable sentences. If you want to see the original twitter thread, follow this link.
Q: Greatest challenge in graduate school?
A: Being a woman in grad school in 1964! There started out with three women including myself, and then one of us lasted two weeks!
Also, of the three women admitted in the 3 years at Harvard, I kept getting called "Nancy" Apparently only one woman's name was needed.
At the time, colonial history was something you got through "fast" to get to nineteenth and twentieth-century history. The greatest thing that happened to me at Harvard was meeting Bernard Bailyn. [Norton's advisor, an incredibly-well known scholar].
I had never studied colonial history, but for a graduate seminar I chose Massachusetts Reaction to the Stamp Act (little did I know it was done by eeeeveryone)
But that research sent me to the Massachusetts Historical Society and I underwent a conversion experience [to colonial history]. It was like James Otis reached out to me through the archive and said "Norton, why aren't you paying attention to this!?
On meeting Bailyn he said "you and I are the only people in the world who have read all these pamphlets [at the MHS]" and this was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Q: So why not do a dissertation on Otis's sister, Mercy Otis Warren?
A: I would've had no idea how to do women's history in the 60s! I didn't want to be pigeonholed as a woman doing women's topics.
Dr. Maskiell: What was it like being the first woman faculty member at Cornell?
A: First I was at the University of Connecticut (1969) with three female colleagues, and it was very good to have those women. At that time, you could be an assistant professor with TENURE. You only became full professor by publishing a book, but there were so many professors in that time period that you didn't necessarily have to to get tenure.
When it came time to leave Connecticut, I didn't want to teach at schools that talked about women professors/coworkers in a condescending manner. But there were some struggles at Cornell as well, as the first female professor. Meetings would begin with "gentlemen" multiple times, even after my corrections. Another professor said "we can't have a woman in this department, she will seduce us all!"
A male professor said "we can't have a woman in this department, she will seduce us all!"
[sidenote, Dr. Norton is hilarious, a great storyteller, and cracking up the whole room]
Every member of the department came to my job talk. I thought this was normal....It was not.
For five years, Norton was only female professor at Cornell. For the next ten years, there were only two women professors at Cornell. She and the other professor fought many battles together and formed a close bond.
Q: What's your biggest piece of advice for graduate students?
A: Simple. Network, network, network!
I knew one woman whose tenure was denied because she didn't network. She did not have necessary contacts and no one knew who she was.
JOIN THE @AHAhistorians ! It's affordable, especially for graduate students, and you'll meet people at the sessions. It's very important for graduate students to...network!
Important connections are also made through people you meet at the archives.
Q: A student asked about one of her recent articles
A: Dr. Norton said she got the idea from reading a footnote in another book that just mentioned a "midwife and some petitions." She went to the archives to investigate this woman further and turned it into a William and Mary Quarterly article!
Q: Anything on a CV that's a red flag, or an advancement? A: RED FLAGS--Obvious padding on CV. Also, do not assume that readers will get everything important from CV--your cover letter is important! Shape it to where you're going, a generic cover letter won't fly.
ADVANCEMENTS: Become a member of appropriate and relevant associations, people will look for that on your CV. If it's a teaching school, put the teaching paragraph on a cover letter first! Research the university, but don't overdo it.
Also, don't use a generic cover letter for fellowships! Shape it to the fellowship, treat it like a job application! Finally, ALWAYS explain why your topic is important for fellowships, never just assume the readers are experts in your field.
Q: How has the field changed for history, and what do you see as the future of the field for women?
A: It has changed SO much! *laughs*. Dr. Norton then pointed to the sheer number of women in elected positions in the AHA, and how earlier in her career she pushed the AHA to look past R1 schools when nominating committee members, which in the 70s added a lot of women to the AHA. [In the 1970s, not many women taught at R1 universities because many weren't interested in hiring them]
Q: Can you speak on jobs outside academia?
A: The "Where Historian's Work" feature on the AHA website is an amazing innovation on finding and reporting jobs where PhD's are no longer in academia, to help others. You can filter the results! The AHA also has Career Diversity Projects.
Dr. Norton closed out her talk with some advice from Bernard Bailyn, for those who do history that involves going to British archives as well. "Make sure you go through everything in the U.S. BEFORE you go to England for research! It saves you time!"
Komentarze