Ann E. McCleary
Associate Professor of History, State University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA 30118
office phone: 678-839-6041
email: amcclear@westga.edu
Education
PhD American Civilization, Brown University, May 1996
Dissertation: "Shaping a New Role for the Rural Woman: The Home Demonstration Club Movement in Augusta County, Virginia, 1917-1940"
M.A. American Civilization, Brown University, 1977
B.A. History, Phi Beta Kappa and departmental honors, Occidental College, 1976
Current Positions
State University of West Georgia, History Department, Carrollton, Georgia, September 1997 to present. ♦Associate Professor of History. Teach survey courses in U.S. History and upper-level and graduate courses in public history and museum studies.
♦ Coordinator of Public History program and Museum Studies Certificate, in association with the Atlanta History Center.
♦ Director of Center for Public History. to “research document, preserve, and promote public discussion of the history and cultural, architectural, and folklife resources of the broader west Georgia region.”
Previous Teaching Experience
♦ James Madison University, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Department of History, Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1992-7. Part-time faculty, 1984-1992.
♦ Mary Baldwin College, Adult Degree Program, Staunton, Virginia 24401
Adjunct Faculty, History and Art History, 1992-1997.
♦ Brown University, American Civilization Department, Providence, Rhode Island.
Instructor, 1980-1981; Teaching Assistant, 1976-1978.
Awards and Fellowships
Governor’s Award for the Humanities, Georgia Humanities Council, May 2005.
Certificate of Commendation, American Association for State and Local History, for CD “Everybody’s Tuned to the Radio,” project director, 2004.
Humanities Fellowship, Virginia Foundation for Humanities and Public Policy, Charlottesville, Virginia Spring 1996
Summer Fellow, Historic Deerfield Summer Fellowship Program in Early American History and Decorative Arts, Deerfield, Massachusetts, Summer 1975
Publications“The Turnpike Towns,” in The Valley Turnpike, edited by Warren Hofstra and Karl Raitz, commissioned by the Center for the Study of American Places, under consideration by University of Virginia Press.
"Reassessing the Home Demonstration Club Program in Virginia,” in process, for collection of essays edited by Chris Arndt and Joseph Whitehorne, under consideration by University of Virginia Press.
“A Place in the City: Revisiting the Curb Market,” accepted for publication in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, summer 2006.
“Seizing the Opportunity: Home Demonstration Curb Markets in Virginia,” in Work, Family, and Faith: Southern Women in the Twentieth Century, edited by Melissa Walker and Rebecca Sharpless, University of Missouri Press, January 2006.
“Collaborators and Colleagues: Training Public History Students,” with Rebecca Bailey, in History News, American Association for State and Local History, fall 2005.
“Developing Collaborative Public History Programs,” with Pam Meister, American Historical Association Perspectives, February 2005.
Changing Times: Studying Communities in Carroll County, A teachers resource packet produced by the Center for Public History, State University of West Georgia, with funding from the Georgia Humanities Council, December 2000.
"Forging a Regional Identity: The Development of Rural Vernacular Architecture in the Central Shenandoah Valley, 1790-1850," in Kenneth Kooks and Warren Hofstra, editors, After the Backcountry, University of Tennessee Press, 2000.
Entries for "The Valley of Virginia, "Augusta County," "Rockingham County," "Waynesboro" and "Harrisonburg" for A Guide to the Architecture of Western Virginia, edited by Anne Carter Lee, part of a series of guidebooks to state architecture sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians and published by Oxford University Press, publication in process.
“Changing Times: Stories and Images of Carroll County through the Twentieth Century,” Georgia Heritage, Spring 2000.
"Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Warm Springs, and the New Deal in Georgia" and the "Eleanor Roosevelt School" in Cotton Mills, Planned Communities, and the New Deal: Vernacular Architecture and Landscapes of the New South, Vernacular Architecture Forum, May 1999.
"'A Highly Prosperous Village:' A History of Mt. Sidney," Augusta County Historical Bulletin, Augusta County Historical Society, Fall 1998.
"Home Demonstration Women Go to Market," Augusta County Historical Bulletin, Augusta County Historical Society, May 1998.
"Home Demonstration Clubs and the Crafts Revival in Virginia Between the Two World Wars," essay for exhibit catalog on the Crafts Revival in the Southeastern United States, for the McKissick Museum.
"Ethnic Influences on the Early Architecture of the Shenandoah Valley," in Michael Puglisi, Diversity and Accommodation: Essays on the Cultural Composition of the Virginia Frontier, University of Tennessee Press, 1997.
"Portrait of a River Town: Port Republic, Virginia," Potomac Chronicle I, Vol 1, Winter 1995.
"Folklore of Games: Classroom Suggestions," Stitches: Newsletter for the Appalachian Teachers' Network, April 1993.
"Improving the Country Home: Elsie Moffett, the Tuesday Club, and the Establishment of Home Demonstration Work in Augusta County," Augusta County Historical Bulletin, Spring 1993.
"The Plecker-Wise House," Augusta County Historical Bulletin 26, Fall 1990.
"Augusta County Schools Selected for State's First Thematic Nomination," Notes on Virginia, Spring 1985.
"Public Education in Augusta County, Parts I-III" Augusta County Historical Bulletin, Spring 1985, Fall 1985, Spring 1986.
"Preach a Little, Paint a Little, and Drink a Little: The Work of Green Berry Jones," Augusta County Historical Bulletin,1986.
The Shenandoah Valley Regional Preservation Plan, Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Richmond, VA, 1985.
Historic Resources of Augusta County, Virginia, Eighteenth Century to Present, Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 1983.
"Doing the Carpentry and Joiners Work," Augusta County Historical Bulletin, Spring 1983.
"Old Houses of Augusta County," Augusta County Historical Bulletin, Fall 1983.
"Vernacular Architecture and the Archaeologist," Proceedings from the Conference on Uplands Archaeology, James Madison University, 1983.
"Domesticity and the Farm Woman," Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture I, University of Missouri Press, 1982.
Books in ProcessShaping a New Role for the Rural Woman: The Home Demonstration Club Movement in Rural Virginia, 1910-1940. Book manuscript under consideration by University of Tennessee Press.
Changing Times: Stories and Images of the West Georgia Piedmont in the Twentieth Century.. Preparation of a book-length manuscript based on our exhibit and oral history project for University of Georgia Press, with graduate student co-authors.
Recent Book Reviews
Mama Learned Us To Work, by LuAnn Jones, for Mississippi Historical Review, March 2004.
Vernacular Architecture, by Henry Glassie, for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2002.
Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940, for the Western Historical Quarterly, 2001.
Roots and Evergreen: the Letters of Ina Dillard Russell, for the Journal of Southern History, 2001.
All We Knew Was to Farm: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, for the North Carolina Historical Review, 2002.
Conference and Invited PresentationsPanel Member, “Applied Ethnomusicology Projects in the Southeastern U.S.,” Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting, Atlanta, November 2005.
“‘Buzzing Centers of Action’: Farm Women’s Curb Markets in the 1930s,” Vernacular Architecture Forum Annual Meeting, Tucson, April 2005.
“Biscuits, Cornbread, and Teacakes,” co-authored with Nikki Patterson, National Council on Public History Annual Meeting, Kansas City, April 2005.
“The Turnpike Towns,” at conference on the Valley Turnpike, sponsored by Shenandoah University, Winchester, Virginia, June 2004.
Commentator on entire conference, “Bringing the North Carolina Backcountry to the Public,” sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Old Salem, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, September 2004.
“Vernacular Architecture in the Shenandoah Valley,” Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts Summer Institute, July 2004, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Panel Member, “Teaching Public History to Undergraduates: Opportunities and Challenges,” National Council on Public History Annual Meeting, Victoria, British Columbia, April 2004.
“Developing Successful Internship Programs,” Georgia Association of Museums and Galleries, Rome, GA, January 2004.
“Bringing Oral Histories to Life: A Workshop on Baking, Memory, and Public History,” with Helen Chambers, pre-conference workshop for the Southern Foodways Alliance Conference on Appalachian Foodways, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi,October 2003.
Panel Member, “Whose Georgia is it Anyway?”, National Council for Public History Annual Meeting, Houston, Texas, April 2003.
Panel Member, “Using History to Build Community,” Organization of American Historians/National Council on Public History annual meeting, Washington D.C., April 2002.
“Rights and Responsibilities of Students and Educators to Document and Help Preserve Their Community’s History,” at Summer 2002 Teacher Institute, Georgia Historical Society and the Coastal Georgia Historical Society, St. Simons Island, Georgia, July 2002.
“Villa Rica Goldfields,” National Council for Public History Annual Meeting, Ottawa, Canada, April 2001.
“Surviving the Great Depression: Farm Women’s Contributions to the Rural South,” West Georgia History Department Spring Semester Colloquium, Carrollton, Georgia, April 2001.
“Collecting a Rural Community’s Memories: Older People and the Carroll County Oral History Program,” Southeastern Regional Student Convention in Gerontology and Geriatrics, Dahlonega, Georgia, March 2001.
“Changing Times: Documenting Community History,” Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia, October 2000.
“Farm Women and Domesticity: Competing Visions of Womanhood in Georgia and Virginia,” Rural Women’s Studies Association Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota,June 2000.
Panel member, “The Changing Role (s) of History and Its Practitioners in American Public Life,” Georgia Association of Historians Annual Meeting, Albany, Georgia, April 2000.
"Building the New South : Martha Berry as Progressive Reformer," Georgia Women of Achievement Annual Meeting, Rome, Georgia, March 1999.
"Sparking Change in Rural Communities: World War I and the Development of Women's Home Demonstration Work in Virginia," Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, 4 April 1998.
"Reinterpreting the Life of Martha Berry," with Amy Storey Simon, presented at the Annual Meeting of the Georgia Association of Historians, April 1998.
"The Home Demonstration Curb Market in Augusta County," Augusta County Historical Society Annual Meeting, Staunton, Virginia, 23 November 1997.
"Reassessing the Home Demonstration Club Program and Its Impact on Rural Women and Communities: A Case Study of Augusta County," Shenandoah Valley Regional Studies Seminar, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, 21 November 1997.
"To Reach out in Service to the Community: Home Demonstration Club Members in Virginia between the Two World Wars," Sixth Conference on Rural and Farm Women in Historic Perspective, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, September 20, 1997.
"Reviving Rural Community in Virginia in the Years Between the Two World Wars," A Symposium on Culture-History of the Mountainous Eastern United States, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, May 17, 1997.
"Home Demonstration Women Go to Market: Curb Markets in Virginia in the 1930s," Berkshire Conference for Women's Historians, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, June 1996.
"Modernizing the Farm Home: The Extension Service and Rural Women in Virginia," Vernacular Architecture Forum Annual Meeting, Kansas City, Kansas, May 1996.
"Reviving the Rural Arts: Home Demonstration Clubs and the Southern Craft Revival between the Two World Wars," American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,November 1995
Panel member, "Home Demonstration Work and Social Change in The Rural Community," Fifth Conference on Rural and Farm Women in Historical Perspective, Washington D.C., December 1994.
"Interpreting Rural Women at Historic Sites," organizer/moderator at the Fifth Conference on Rural/Farm Women in Historical Perspective, December 1994.
"Cultivating New Ground: Home Demonstration Agents Meet the Country Women in Western Virginia, 1917-1940," Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Louisville, KY, November 1994.
"Home Demonstration Agents and Housing Reform in Western Virginia," American Studies Association Meeting, Nashville, Tennessee, October 1994.
"The Home Demonstration Club Movement and Domestic Reform on the Farm in Rural Virginia, 1910-1940," Ninth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, New York, June 1993.
"Domestic Architecture and the Spatial Organization of Women's Work," at conference entitled "From Sun to Setting Sun: Keeping House in the Nineteenth Century," Woodrow Wilson Birthplace Museum, Staunton, Virginia, March 27, 1993.
"Collaboration with University Resources," Virginia Association of Museums Annual Meeting, Roanoke, Virginia, April 1991.
"Building a Special Events Program," Association of Living History Farms and Museums Southeast Regional Meeting, Staunton, Virginia, February 1991.
"Educating the Farm Woman: The Early Home Demonstration Club Movement in Augusta County, Virginia," lecture-discussion series on "Exploring Virginia's Agricultural Heritage," funded by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Staunton, VA, March 1990.
"Scotch-Irish Women in Augusta County," Ulster Heritage Symposium, Staunton, Virginia, June 1986.
"Domesticity and the Farm Woman: A Study of Virginia Farm Women Through Architecture and Material Culture," Symposium on "Women and the South," funded by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities," Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, 1985.
"The Impact of the Home Economics Movement in Rural Households in Augusta County, Virginia, 1900 - 1940," Symposium on "Modern Living: Popular Housing in Industrial America," Winterthur Museum, April 1983.
Public History Projects and Programs
Director, Center for Public History, State University of West Georgia, 1999-present. Projects I have directed through the Center, include:
♦ Biscuits and Cornbread: Exploring Georgia Piedmont Baking Traditions, oral history project, traveling exhibit, and publication 2002-present
♦ Weaving Yarns: Textile Mill History Project, oral histories, archives, and public programs on textile and apparel mill history in western Georgia, 2004-present
♦ “Everyone’s Tuned to the Radio: Rural Music Traditions in the Georgia Piedmont” and “I Hear a Sweet Voice Calling,” CD compilations of regional music, concerts, and school programs, 2000-present
♦ Williams-Mitchell Farm Documentation Project and Interpretive/Management Plan, 2002-2005.
♦ Banning Textile Mill documentation project, September 1999 to 2004.
♦ Carroll County Middle Schools Oral History Project, April 2001-present
♦ Teacher Activities Packet Production: “Changing Times: Studying Communities in Carroll County,” funded by the Georgia Humanities Council and the SUWG College of Education, January through December 2000.
♦ Regional history research and oral history project: "Exploring Carroll County's Rural Heritage in the Twentieth Century,"1999-2000
♦ Villa Rica Gold Mine Park Proposal, Fall 1999.
♦ Oral history project: "Examining Carroll County's Experiences during the Second World War, 1999.
Project Director, "The Future of Rural Virginia," Virginia Foundation for Humanities and Public Policy, Charlottesville, VA, October 1996-June 1997.
Additional community history projects, including:
♦ Oral History consultant, Athens-Clark County Public History, spring-summer 2001.
♦ Developed and taught course on "Early Life in the Shenandoah Valley" for an annual summer inter-generational elderhostel, Massanetta Springs Conference Center, Harrisonburg, Virginia, July 1994 through July 1999
♦ Developed and led tour of Augusta County architecture for "18th and 19th Century Virginia Architecture," University of Virginia Continuing Education, June 1998
♦ Planned, coordinated, and taught summer teachers institute on "Rural Life and Traditional Arts in the Shenandoah Valley," funded by the Virginia Foundation for Humanities and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, at James Madison University, June 1997
♦ Coordinated two days of field trips on 19th century Shenandoah Valley architecture and traditional arts for the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts Summer Institute on the Southern Backcountry, July 1994 and July 1997; presentation at the 2000 Institute in Winston-Salem, NC
♦ Developed and led one-day study tours for the Smithsonian Associates Programs on various topics, including the Germany and Scots-Irish legacy of the Shenandoah Valley, Maple-Sugar making in Monterey County, Changing Agricultural Practices in the Shenandoah Valley, and others, 1988 through 1997
♦ Developed and taught annual summer course on American history for an international exchange program at Mary Baldwin College, with students from Doshisha Women's College (Kyoto, Japan), annually from August 1992 to August 1998
Museum ExperienceCurator of Research and Programs and Chief Curator, Museum of American Frontier Culture, Staunton, Virginia, 1985-1992.
Exhibits and interpretive experience
♦ Curator, “It Was Passed Down from Generation to Generation: Baking Traditions in the West Georgia Piedmont,” a traveling exhibit produced January 2004.
♦ Visiting Curator, Glenn Burnie Museum, Winchester, Virginia, fall 2000-2. Curating two exhibit vignettes on Shenandoah Valley housing and home life during the 19th and 20th centuries.
♦ Curator, Changing Times: Stories and Images of Carroll County through the Twentieth Century, Center for Public History, 1999.
♦ MUSE consultant, Georgia Association of Museums and Galleries, 2000-present. Consult with museums in Georgia about specific issues they are facing and prepare written reports for these museums, including the Polk County Historical Society and the Old Mill Museum in Moreland.
♦ Project scholar, Yesterdays Tomorrows, Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibit Services and the Georgia Humanities Council, 2000-1.
♦ Curator, University History exhibits, State University of West Georgia, 1998-2000. Developed and maintain exhibits on university history.
♦ Research and script writing for Martha Berry Museum, Berry College, Rome, Georgia and EXPLUS Incorporated Exhibit Design Co., Dulles, VA, September 1997-May 1998.
♦ Research Consultant, NEH sponsored exhibit project on the Crafts Revival in the Southeastern United States, 1900-1940, McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, May-November 1995.
♦ Research Consultant, "History of Staunton and the Presbyterian Manse in the 1850s," Woodrow Wilson Birthplace and Museum, Staunton, Virginia, Winter 1996.
♦ Visiting Curator, “Keeping Traditions Alive: Folk Crafts in the Shenandoah Valley,” Harrisonburg-Rockingham County Historical Society, January through June 1993. Conducted primary research (including oral histories) of women weavers in the region, selected items for exhibit, prepared the exhibit text, and helped install the exhibit.
♦ Costumed Interpreter, Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, Mass., 1976.
♦ Summer Fellow, Historic Deerfield Summer Fellowship Program, Deerfield, Massachusetts, summer 1975.
Historic Preservation Experience
Architectural Historian, Virginia Department of Historic Resources, in field office at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, 1978-1985.
Preservation Institute: Nantucket, summer 1977. University of Florida at Gainesville summer program in historic preservation on Nantucket Island.
Director, Field School in Architectural Survey and Historic Preservation, James Madison University, Summer 1986.
Consulted on historic preservation projects, including:
♦ Architectural survey, historical research, and preparation of a National Register nomination for the village of Mt. Sidney, Augusta County, Virginia, for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, September 1997-May 1999.
♦ Supervision of architectural survey and survey report preparation for the town of Monterey, Highland County, Virginia, funded by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, September 1996-August 1997
♦ Participant in interdisciplinary team, with an archaeologist and Civil War historian, in preparing a national register historic district nomination for the Cool Springs Battlefield, Clarke County, VA., Spring and summer 1995
♦ Prepared numerous architectural sections for Section 106 review projects for the Archaeology Lab, James Madison University, 1980-1996.
Professional and Community Service
Internship Coordinator, Georgia Association for Museums and Galleries, 2002-present.
Board Member and Chair, Curriculum and Training Committee, National Council on Public History, 2005-2008.
Awards Committee, Oral History Association, 2004.
Editorial Board, Augusta Historical Quarterly, 2000-present.
Board member (1986-9 and 2001-4), Education Committee Chair (2001 to present), and Annual Meeting Coordinator, 1988, Staunton, Virginia, Vernacular Architecture Forum,
Committee co-chair on publicity and membership, Rural Womens Studies Association, beginning October 1997.
Coordinator, Shenandoah Valley Regional Studies Seminar, monthly research seminar at James Madison University, 1988 to 1997.
President, Augusta County Historical Society, 1995-1997 Also chair of landmarks committee, 1988-present, and board member, 1988-1997.
Comments on paper sessions at professional conferences, including, in recent years, National Council on Public History, Vernacular Architecture Forum, Rural Womens Studies Association, and Georgia Association of Historians Annual Meeting
Professional Memberships
Agricultural History Society, , American Association of Museums
American Association for State and Local History,
American Folklore Society, American Studies Association,
Georgia Association of Archivists
Georgia Association of Museums and Galleries,
Oral History Association, National Council on Public History,
Rural Women's Studies Association
Vernacular Architecture Forum