Spring Course: Buffalo Bill and the Wild West

I am really excited about the new course I am teaching at Eastern Washington University in the Spring Quarter: History 498/596: Buffalo Bill and the Wild West. The course will meet Wednesday evenings from 5 until 9:30 p.m.

William F. Cody, aka “Buffalo Bill” was America’s first international celebrity. In a public career spanning more than 40 years he appeared before crowds from Spokane to New York City, and from Glasgow to Moscow. His Wild West show parlayed his early life experiences as a buffalo hunter and Army scout into the most popular public entertainment of his era. Along the way he interacted with Teddy Roosevelt and Sitting Bull, Thomas Edison and the Queen of England. He was America’s first international celebrity and many of our western myths were shaped by his Wild West show. But how much of it was true?

In this exciting course we will discover the realities behind the many myths of Buffalo Bill. We will explore Cody and his world via primary and secondary sources, historic and contemporary film, and archival research.

This course builds on a new partnership between the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming and the Public History Program at Eastern Washington University. Students will get the chance to have their work published in the forthcoming Biographical Encyclopedia of the Wild West.

The course is open to both graduates and undergraduates. For more information contact Professor Larry Cebula at LarryCebula@gmail.com.

Serve as a TAH Grant Reviewer!

If you read this blog, you are probably qualified to serve as a proposal reviewer for the Teaching American History program. And I wish you would!

The TAH program is the largest federal program to improve the teaching of American history. To date, the Department of education has awarded over $800 million dollars to schools districts across the nation to fund programs to improve history education. I have been involved in quite a few of these projects and I think this is one of the best things that the DOE does.

Every year there are many hundreds of grant proposals, and the Department of Education relies on external reviewers to read the proposals and help to decide which ones get funded. It is an important job and a big responsibility, and it needs people who are knowledgeable about history and about education and can be relied on to actually read every page of the proposals (they are 25 pages, plus appendices, you will read about 9 of them) and comment upon them critically and fairly. And they will pay you! The full announcement seeking reviewers is below and includes contact information, but feel free to get in touch with me if you want to know more as well:

Subject: Call for 2010 TAH Application Reviewers

The 2010 U.S. Department of Education's Teaching American History (TAH) grant competition is upon us and we NEED your help to review TAH grant applications.

The anticipated grant review dates are April-May, 2010.

You may serve as a TAH grant reviewer if you meet at least (1) one of the following qualifications:
.     A degree in history
.     K-12 history teacher
.     History professor
.     TAH grant director
.     TAH grant partner
.     History scholar
.     Other history-related professional
.     Professional development provider
.     Evaluator or evaluation specialist

Please email your abbreviated résumé (5 pages maximum) to Yianni Alepohoritis at Yianni.Alepohoritis@ed.gov or Adam Bookman at Adam.Bookman@ed.gov no later than February 12, 2010. Please specify in your email whether you are a history, professional development, or evaluation specialist.

If selected, you will serve on a panel with two other reviewers.  This process includes one week of reading applications on your own and two weeks of telephone meetings with your panel.  An honorarium is given to those who complete the grant review. Each reviewer will review about 10 applications. If you are involved in a current 2010 application, you may not serve as a reviewer.

For more information on the TAH program, please visit the program website at http://www.ed.gov/programs/teachinghistory/index.html.

Adam Bookman
Management and Program Analyst
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Innovation and Improvement
Teaching American History Grant Team
Phone (202)-205-5427
Fax (202)-401-8466

2009 Cliopatria Awards in History Blogging

The History News Network has announced the 2009 Cliopatria Awards for excellence in history blogging. Actually they announced the awards some weeks ago at the AHA, and your lazy Northwest History blogger is just getting around to letting you know. If you are looking for some smart history blogging you could hardly do better than to explore these Cliopatria winners:


Best Group Blog: Curious Expeditions

Best Individual and Best New Blog: Georgian London

Best Post: Rachel Leow's "Curating the Oceans: The Future of Singapore's Past," A Historian's Craft, 14 July 2009.

Best Series of Posts: Heather Cox Richardson's "Richardson's Rules of Order," The Historical Society Blog, 20 March 2009.

Best Writer: The Headsman, at Executed Today.

If this whets your appetite, go to the list of previous Cliopatria awards form more fine history blogging.

Help Haiti

Text the word "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross for Haiti relief.

Do it now.

Northwest Archivists, Inc. - Annual Meeting

The Northwest Archivists Annual Meeting is taking place in Seattle April 28-May 1. This year's meeting is the "Western Roundup" a multi-regional gathering that will bring together the Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists, the Northwest Archivists, the Society of California Archivists, and the Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists. There is even a scholarship to help graduate students attend the conference.

Also: The Northwest Archivists have a digital newsletter that features archival job opportunities and events.

Eisenhower Fellowships for Native Students at EWU

I see from my visitor logs that there are some people in native country who read this blog and I wanted to get the word out about a great opportunity for American Indian students at Eastern Washington University. But you need to act fast because the deadline in January 26. Here is the announcement, with the application form, but the short version is that EWU has four scholarships of $10,000 a year available for American Indian students "interested in careers related to transportation" (Eisenhower pushed forward the Interstate Highway Act).

For more information follow the link!