Join me for another inspiring conversation with Chris DeCristofaro, co-host of The Library Pros Podcast and now Assistant Director at the Half Hollow Hills Community Library in Dix Hill, New York! We talk about technology, experimentation, community engagement, and more!
Enjoy this encore presentation of Becoming Veterans with Dr. Sarah Parry Myers!
Dr. Sarah Parry Myers is an Associate Professor of History at Messiah University in central Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on 20th century United States history, gender, public history, and military history. She is the recent recipient of a Dialogues on the Experience of War grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, focused on generating dialogue with female veterans. Sarah’s work has appeared in edited collections released by Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge, and her book Earning Their Wings: The WASPs of World War II and Their Fight for Veteran Recognition, recently released from the University of North Carolina Press, explores the history of the Women Airforce Service Pilots—and this book is the subject of our conversation today!
Kieran Hixon has over 16 years of experience offering professional development, both in-person and online, for rural libraries throughout the United States.
Kieran serves nationally on committees as a rural library expert and has broad experience working in rural public libraries, and serves as Senior Rural and Small Library Consultant for the Colorado State Library.
Kieran is passionate about rural libraries and is known for his high energy, humorous stories, and insightful examples when providing instruction.
Former Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL) President, long-standing ARSL Board Member, and Rural Library Expert, Kieran is Co-lead of the Outstanding in Their Field Leadership Institute.
Take a listen to my earlier conversation with Kieran and Dr. Sharon Morris from Season One!
Growing up to be a certified bookseller in Germany, and acquiring a European Master’s Degree in Literature and Publishing/Marketing, Simone Kirk never gave libraries much thought, since reading books, and having to give them back, seemed pretty cruel to this passionate reader. Her goal to work in the publishing industry in Germany was redirected with a move to Star City, Arkansas in 2004.
After arriving in this very rural area of the States, she became the Branch Manager at the Star City Branch Library, which changed everything! Simone fell in love with libraries, and decided to put her knowledge of book selling, marketing, and customer service training to work. Simone is constantly trying to invent new ways to serve her community, developing programs, and spread her love for literacy in Southeast Arkansas. She has been a member of Arkansas Library Paraprofessionals (ALPS) since 2009, is still active as an ALPS Representative, and served as ALPS Chair in 2018.
Welcome to Season 7 of the show, and Happy New Year!
If you are just joining the show, welcome! I'm glad you are here. Plans for this season include conversations with some of my favorite people in the library profession - exciting! Today's discussion focuses on how libraries are an expanding universe of opportunity.
The studies referenced in today's episode:
Check out my conversations with David Johnson and Shelby Fleming from the Fayetteville Public Library!
Dr. Stan Fisher is a captain in the U.S. Navy and an assistant professor of naval and American history at the United States Naval Academy. Before transitioning to classroom, he accumulated over 2,500 flight hours as a Navy pilot, mainly in SH-60B & MH-60R Seahawk helicopters. He earned a commission through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1997 and has multiple deployments on frigates, cruisers, and aircraft carriers. Fisher has also served as a weapons and tactics instructor, squadron maintenance officer, and operational test director. Additionally, he has completed tours of duty in engineering and acquisitions at the Naval Air Systems Command. He is a past recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship and earned his PhD from the University of Maryland.
Today we talk about all of those things, as well as his recent book, Sustaining the Carrier War: The Deployment of U.S. Naval Air Power to the Pacific, published in 2023 by Naval Institute Press.
Crystal Gates is the Executive Director of the North Little Rock Public Library in Arkansas. She has a proven track record of enhancing library services, having previously led the Jackson Parish Library in Louisiana to national recognition as a 3 Star Library in 2014 and 2015.
Gates holds key positions in numerous professional organizations, including serving as President of the Southeastern Library Association, Arkansas’ ALA Chapter Councilor, Treasurer of Advocates for All Arkansas Libraries, in addition to serving on ALA’s Committee on Diversity and the Chapter Relations Committee.
Dr. Jason Lantzer serves as the Assistant Director of the Butler University Honors Program. An historian by training, his research and writing interests generally center on religion, politics, and law, with some work about Disney thrown in for good measure. He is the author of eight books, including Dwight Eisenhower & the Holocaust (DeGruyter, 2023), Mainline Christianity: The Past and Future of America’s Majority Faith (NYU 2012), Dis-History: Uses of the Past at Walt Disney’s Worlds (TPP, 2017), and Rebel Bulldog: The Story of One Family, Two States, and the Civil War (Indiana Historical Society Press, 2017), numerous book chapters and articles. He is a three-time graduate of Indiana University (BA, MA, PhD).
Cari Dubiel is the Assistant Director of the Twinsburg Public Library in Twinsburg, Ohio and is the author of the Author's Guide to Libraries, which is the subject of our conversation today. Enjoy!
Terrence G. Peterson is Assistant Professor of History at Florida International University. He researches and teaches on France, modern Europe, and their connections to the wider world, with a particular focus on war, empire, and migration. His first book, Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency, was just published with Cornell University Press. His current work focuses on the Rivesaltes Camp in Southern France, which the French government used to detain a wide array of migrant populations from 1939 to 2007.
My guests today are Katelyn Knox and Allison van Deventer, who recognized each other as kindred spirits during grad school at UCLA. Katelyn went on to land a tenure-track job at the University of Central Arkansas and eventually published a book based on her dissertation. She developed a "Dissertation-to-Book Boot Camp" to help other authors get through the difficulties she experienced during this process. After the first year, she brought Allison in to help. Together they ran the course for several years, revising it along the way, and then pitched it as a book to the University of Chicago Press. That project became The Dissertation-to-Book Workbook, and is the subject of our conversation today!
Join me for a fascinating tour through the Napoleonic era this week with the professor who has made it his life's work, Dr. Alexander Mikaberidze.
Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of History and Ruth Herrin Noel Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University-Shreveport. He has written and edited over two dozen books, including the award winning The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History (2020) which has been translated into five languages. He has served as one of the editors of the multi-volume Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars (2023).
Welcome to Season Six of The Modern Scholar Podcast!
In this episode we nerd out with our FIRST EVER repeat guest—the wonderful and creative Alycia Asai from the Civics and Coffee podcast!
Alycia first appeared during Season Two, and I would encourage you all to taken a listen to that conversation here. Since that time, Alycia completed her MA in History from Sonoma State University, and in this episode we explore her graduate journey, her work as a podcaster, and her plans for the future!
Also—take a listen to Alycia's episode exploring history conferences, which we reference near the end of our conversation. It is a fantastic discussion of steps we can all take to make the most of our conference experience.
For more information about the show, visit our website here. Learn more about your host, Philip Shackelford, at his website here, as well as his book, Rise of the Mavericks. As always, thank you all for listening!
Today we are celebrating EPISODE ONE HUNDRED of The Modern Scholar Podcast!
It's hard to believe we are here already, and thanks goes out to all the wonderful guests and the great conversations that have characterized this series.
Today the fun continues with a brief look at how to get the most out of the academic conference experience—definitely an episode to share with your students—followed by some very generous cameos from previous guests helping to celebrate 100 episodes!
Enjoy!
Join me for a little bit of a different episode this week as we mark Episode 99 with a Q&A, some brief cameos from previous guests, and a quick reminder about National Library Week coming up April 7-13!
David Johnson has been a proud Fayetteville community member for over 20 years. Originally from Little Rock, he received his undergraduate and masters degree from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and his Master of Library Science degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In 2012, he returned to the nationally recognized Fayetteville Public Library after fifteen years with Tyson Foods where he held various leadership positions in information systems, sales and marketing, and research and development.
Along with the wonderful staff at the library, Johnson shares a passion and enthusiasm for serving his community, and strives to provide exceptional library programs and services that Fayetteville citizens deserve and expect. The Fayetteville Public Library was named “Library of the Year” in 2005 by Library Journal and serves the residents of Fayetteville, Washington County, and Northwest Arkansas.
Due to the incredible growth of the Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas region, FPL underwent a large expansion project that was completed in January 2021 and doubled the size of the library to 190,000 square feet The expansion includes the addition of an expanded youth department, the Teaching Kitchen, Center for Innovation, Event Center, Art and Movement Room, and much more!
John Amble is the Editorial Director of the Modern War Institute at West Point and Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project. He is also a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Before assuming his current role, John served as managing editor of War on the Rocks, a digital media outlet featuring commentary on global security, foreign affairs, and strategy. He holds a BA from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Intelligence and International Security from King’s College London, where he also conducted PhD research in the Middle Eastern Studies program. He has been featured in print and broadcast media in the United States, Canada, and the Middle East, and his work has appeared in various academic journals and other outlets. He also is the co-editor of Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict, which was released by Potomac Books in 2018. He researches and writes primarily on terrorism, intelligence, the Middle East, and the military. We should note, the views that John shares with us today are his alone and do not necessarily represent West Point, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.
M. Girard Dorsey is Professor of History, Program Coordinator of Justice Studies, and core faculty of Medical Humanities, Society, & Ethics at the University of New Hampshire, focusing on military and medical history. Under the name Marion Girard, she is author of A Strange and Formidable Weapon. Her most recent book is Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II.
Dr. Sarah Parry Myers is an Associate Professor of History at Messiah University in central Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on 20th century United States history, gender, public history, and military history. She is the recent recipient of a Dialogues on the Experience of War grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, focused on generating dialogue with female veterans. Sarah’s work has appeared in edited collections released by Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge, and her book Earning Their Wings: The WASPs of World War II and Their Fight for Veteran Recognition, recently released from the University of North Carolina Press, explores the history of the Women Airforce Service Pilots—and this book is the subject of our conversation today!
Steve Biernacki is the Executive Director of the South Arkansas Historical Preservation Society, following roles as Executive Director of City Connections in Little Rock, AR and various positions with the Habitat for Humanity of Central Arkansas. Steve is here to talk about the world of nonprofits and community leadership - so don't miss this conversation!