The Pacific Coast Branch of the AHA
The AHA Council, meeting in San Francisco in January 2002 endorsed the revision of Article II of the constitution of the Pacific Coast Branch (PCB) to clarify the purposes of the organization, specifically: “The purposes of the organization shall be the advancement of the interests of the American Historical Association, and the promotion of the historical interests of the membership with special emphasis on the United States, western Canada, Mexico, the Pacific Rim, and their inter-relationships.”
At the 2002 annual meeting of the PCB, held in August at Tucson, nearly 150 individuals participated in 37 academic sessions. The program also included two luncheon speakers—one sponsored by the Western Association of Women Historians and another honoring the hundredth anniversary of the PCB—and one banquet address by President Thomas Alexander.
The following prizes were awarded during the year: the Louis Knott Koontz Memorial Award for the most deserving article to appear in the Pacific Historical Review in the volume year 2001 to Evan Ward for his August 2001 article, “The Ghosts of William Walker: Conquest of Land and Water as Central Themes in the History of the Colorado River Delta”; the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize for an outstanding essay by a graduate student to Robert B. Campbell for his article, “Newlands, Old Lands: Native American Labor, Agrarian Ideology and the Progressive-Era State in the Making of the Newlands Reclamation Project, 1902–1926”; the W. Turrentine Jackson Dissertation Award to Jessica B. Teisch (Univ. of California at Berkeley) for her dissertation, “Engineering Progress: Californians and the Making of a Global Economy”; the Norris and Carol Hundley Award to Henry Yu for his book Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2002); the PCB Book Award jointly to Daniel Herman for his book, Hunting and the American Imagination (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001) and to Adel Perry, for the book, On the Edge of Empire (University of Toronto Press, 2001).
Election: By mail ballots cast during the summer 2002, the PCB membership chose Roger L. Nichols (Univ. of Arizona), as president-elect; David Yoo (Claremont McKenna College), Katherine G. Morrissey (Univ. of Arizona), and Albert S. Broussard (Texas A&M Univ.), as members of the Council; and Cheryl A. Koos (California State Univ. at Los Angeles), Michael J. Gonzales (Univ. of San Diego), and Carl Abbott (Portland State Univ.) as members of the Nominating Committee.
Finances: As of December 31, 2002, the PCB held $142,210 in endowment funds for the Pacific Historical Review, the Louis Knott Koontz Award, the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize, the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize, the W. Turrentine Jackson Dissertation Award, and the PCB Reserve Fund. Total assets owned by the Branch as of December 31, 2001, were valued at $176,536. For the fiscal year, July 1, 2001, to June 30, 2002, the income for the Pacific Historical Review (which had a circulation of 1,350 in December 2001) was $103,957, and expenses (including a $3,500 subsidy to the PHR editorial office and a $4,829 royalty payment to the PCB) totaled $69,824.
W. David Baird
