History

Author: aeregan

Ph.D. Student Hallie Knipp awarded research fellowship

April 11, 2024

The Kentucky Historical Society has awarded Ph.D. student Hallie Knipp a Research Fellowship. The fellowship will support travel and residency at the KHS for a period of one week in Summer 2024. The fellowship will support initial research for Knipp’s dissertation prospectus, tentatively titled “Mountain Labors: Contraceptives and Eugenics in 1930s Appalachia.”

Knipp’s research is focused on the history of contraceptives and eugenics in Appalachian coal mining communities during the 1930s. Specifically, Knipp is interested in the experiences of women who were unwittingly used as test subjects in the complex efforts of contraceptive research. While histories of Puerto Rican, Black, and incarcerated women unknowingly used as test subjects have been documented, the contraceptives and eugenics practices tested on so-called “mountain women” has been woefully underrepresented in the historiographical record. This absence, Knipp explains, is not surprising, as both histories of women in coal mining communities and the contraceptive and eugenics movement in Appalachia have been largely ignored.

In Memoriam: Professor Roger Grant

December 6, 2023

Roger Grant, Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor of History, died on November 17, 2023. A native of Albia, Iowa, Roger graduated summa cum laude from Simpson College in Iowa in 1966, and went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri only four years later. His first academic position was at the University of Akron before he moved to Clemson in 1996, where he served as chair of the Department of History for five years. One of the nation’s foremost railroad and transportation scholars, Roger was the author, co-author, or editor of a remarkable forty academic books, including most recently Sunset Cluster: A Shortline Railroad Saga (Indiana University Press). His book Railroads in the Midwest will be published posthumously, also by Indiana University Press. “Roger was one of the leading historians of American railroads with an amazing record of publications, but what his colleagues will remember is his kindness and generosity, especially to new faculty,” Stephanie Barczewski, Chair of the Department of History and Geography, said. “Beyond his academic accomplishments, Roger was instrumental in building community within the department and university. He will be greatly missed.”