Diana Selig, CMC assistant professor of history, has been selected as a Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Academy of Education/Spencer program, one of only 20 from more than 160 candidates nationwide. Established in 1986 by the NAE with a grant from the Spencer Foundation, the program is designed to "enhance the future of research in education by supporting early career scholars working in critical areas of education."
Fellowships of $50,000 are awarded annually for research purposes. In addition to the research opportunities, Selig says she will use the time to revise her manuscript, Cultural Gifts: American Liberals and the Origins of Multiculturalism, 1924-1945, an examination of post-World War I crusades against prejudice in the United States. "It argues that, as early as the 1920s, pluralist thinking made its way into schools, homes, and churches across the country," Selig says.
Selig says she looks forward to the intellectual company afforded by the fellowship. Over the next two years, she will attend meetings and retreats with other fellows and with members of the National Academy of Education. She will also present her research.
Selig earned a bachelor's degree at Yale University, and a doctorate in history from the University of California, Berkeley. Her classes include topics such as American schools, social reform, history of the family, the Great Depression and World War II, and the history of women and politics.
In March, Selig presented a paper, The Next Generation in the South: the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in the Schools, to the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, in Boston. She also will travel this month to Santa Barbara to chair a panel at the annual conference of the Western Association of Women Historians on Structuring Masculinity and Femininity. Additionally, Selig continues coordinating CMC's partnership with the Veterans' History Project of the Library of Congress.
"I encourage my students to grapple with the complexities of the past and their significance for contemporary issues in American life. The study of history can provide the critical skills to ask hard questions about the world around us," Selig says. "It invites us to consider what roles we can play in shaping the history that unfolds today."