Meredith College Faculty & Students Contribute to History Magazine

A recent issue of a North Carolina Museum of History publication featured the work of students and faculty in Meredith’s Department of History, Political Science, and International Studies. These articles were included in the Fall 2019 edition of the Tar Heel Junior Historian. This volume represents the rigorous scholarship and community engagement of faculty and students in these programs and shines a spotlight on Meredith College’s commitment to academic excellence.

Associate Professor of History Angela Robbins was invited to serve as the conceptual editor for a special women’s history issue, She Changed the World: North Carolina Women Making History. At the same time, since several students in the department were concluding research on the women’s suffrage movement and other women’s history topics, Robbins was able to recommend them as contributors. The magazine’s editor and her staff reviewed and accepted the students’ submissions in summer 2019.

Robbins penned the volume’s introduction, North Carolina Women: Blazing Trails, Breaking Barriers. Senior history major Morgan Johnson wrote an article, Edith Vanderbilt: “Women Have Come Into Their Own,” based on her senior thesis about Vanderbilt’s role as the first woman president of the North Carolina State Fair. Johnson, fellow senior history major Marissa Fowler, and sophomore history major Inaya Rivera collaborated on the piece Women’s Colleges in North Carolina, which stems from their research on college women in the suffrage movement and also highlights Meredith College’s history and traditions.

Professor of History Dan Fountain, who has been collecting oral histories from Meredith alumnae who worked at NASA during the space race – as well as working to establish a state historical marker to honor them – contributed the article Carolina “Math Brains” were “Human Computers.”

In addition, Johnson and alumna Miranda Pikaart, who presented their research on the fight for the ERA in the late 1970s and early 1980s at Celebrating Student Achievement Day 2018, have an article on that topic which will be published in the spring 2020 edition of the magazine.

You can hear these students and others present their research at the Snapshot 2020 symposium on campus April 2 through April 4. The fall 2019 volume of the Tar Heel Junior Historian will be available online later this spring.