The Pacific Coast Branch of the AHA
The 98th annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association took place at Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, August 4–7, 2005. The history department at Oregon State University sponsored the meeting. The Corvallis Local Arrangements Committee consisted of Paul Farber and William Robbins, both of Oregon State University. Katherine Morrissey (Univ. of Arizona), and Jose Alamillo (Western Washington State Univ.), co-chaired the program committee. They were aided by program committee members: Nan Alamilla Boyd(Sonoma State Univ.), Lisa Cody (Claremont McKenna Coll.), Chris Conte (Utah State Univ.), Diana Lary (Univ. of British Columbia), Howard Shorr (Portland Community Coll.), and Elliott Young (Lewis & Clark Coll.).
The program, with the theme “Dancing on the Rim: Nations, Borderlands, and Identities,” featured 50 sessions and attracted 201 participants. Topics ranged widely from toxic racism and environmental justice to urban history, gender and racial identities, religious and ethnic histories, nature and wilderness, peace and international justice, and historical memory. Other sessions included papers in Chicano history, working class U.S. history, U.S. relations with East Asia, and Cuban identity. One roundtable honored Elizaabeth Jameson, 2005 president of the PCB. Eileen Boris (Univ. of California at Santa Barbara), addressed the luncheon of the Western Association of Women Historians on the topic “The Wages of Care.” At the annual banquet, Elizabeth Jameson (Univ. of Calgary), gave the presidential address, “Dancing on the Rim, Tiptoeing Through the Minefields: Challenges and Promises of the Borderlands” which appeared in the February 2006 issue of the Pacific Historical Review. In addition to the conference sessions, participants enjoyed a complimentary welcoming reception at the Corvallis Country Club, hosted by the Oregon State University Department of History and a no-host evening of jazz and talk at a downtown Corvallis delicatessen/pub. A dessert reception following the presidential talk was sponsored by Information Resources and by the Department of History, University of Calgary, and by the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Washington State University.
The PCB awarded prizes in 2005: The Louis Knott Koontz Memorial Award for the most outstanding article to appear in the Pacific Historical Review in the previous year to Charlotte Brooks for “Sing Sheng vs. Southwood: Residential Integration in Cold War California”; the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize for an outstanding essay in the PHR by a graduate student was shared by Ryan M. Kray, “The Path to Paradise: Expropriation, Expulsion, and Exclusion in the Making of Palm Springs” (February 2004) and Justin Hart for “Making Democracy Safe for the World: Race, Propaganda, and the Transformation of U.S. Foreign Policy During World War II” (February 2004); the W. Turrentine Jackson Dissertation Award to Lissa Wadewitz (UCLA), for “The Nature of Borders: Salmon and Boundaries in the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin.” for her dissertation; the Norris and Carol Hundley Award to Nikhil Pal Singh for his book, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2004); and the PCB Book Award to Martin Summers for Manliness and Its Discontents; The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930 (University of North Carolina Press).
By mail ballots cast during the summer 2005, the PCB membership chose Linda Biesele Hall (Univ. of New Mexico), as president-elect; Noriko Kawamura (Washington State Univ.), Henry Yu (UCLA and Univ. of British Columbia) and Mina Carson (Oregon State Univ.) as new members of the council; and Karen Leong (Arizona State Univ.) and Robin Walz (Univ. of Alaska Southeast) as new members of the Nominating Committee.
Janet Farrell Brodie
