The Southern Association for Women Historians is an American professional society for asserting the female slant on southern history and promoting women historians in the south. Formed in 1970, the organization has more than 700 members.
Mission
The Southern Association for Women Historians is an American nonprofitprofessional association formed in 1970 in Louisville, Kentucky. The organization has more than 700 members. The SAWH exists "to stimulate interest in the study of southern history and women’s history, to advance the status of women in the historical profession in the South, to provide a forum for women historians to discuss issues of professional concern, and to publicize and promote issues of concern to SAWH members."
History
In December 1969, a group of women historians associated with the American Historical Association formed an independent association, the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession. At a November 1970 meeting of the Southern Historical Association, several women who had attended that previous meeting formed the Southern Association of Women Historians in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1983, it was renamed to the Southern Association for Women Historians. Their first conference was in June 1988 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The conference has been held every three years since then. The talks at these conferences have been well received. Several volumes of original scholarship have resulted from the conference papers. In 1989, they established the A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize for the bestscholarly article on Southern women's history, and in 1992 established the Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Prize for the best graduate student paper submitted to their conference. In addition to these prizes, the SAWH gives two book awards annually: the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize for the best published book in southern women's history, broadly construed, and the Willie Lee Rose Prize, for the best book on any topic in southern history written by a woman.
Learning Opportunity
The Southern Association for Women Historians encourage people to discuss these type of groups and the history of black women historians in class. They have created resourced where one can discuss women's and southern history in mainly higher education institutions.
