By Linnea Anderson, Archivist, Social Welfare History Archives

The fellowships were established in honor of Clarke Chambers, Professor Emeritus of History and the founder of the Social Welfare History Archives, to support use of archival collections in the Social Welfare History Archives and Kautz Family YMCA Archives. The fellowships fund travel to the archives by dissertation writers and early career scholars. The first fellowship was awarded in 1992 and, to date, 115 fellows have visited the archives.  

We are pleased to announce the Clarke Chambers Travel Fellowship awardees for 2014:

• Laura Ansley, Ph.D. Candidate, Lyon G. Tyler Department of History, College of William and Mary. Laura Ansley is researching a dissertation on early 20th Century sex education and morality instruction in the South.  She hopes to use materials in the Social Welfare History Archives to broaden and “complicate” the narrative of Progressive Era sex education by looking beyond the usual Northeastern locus of reform and focusing on a previously underrepresented region.
• Kathleen Gushoney, Vice President / Regional Executive Director of the Metropolitan Oakland Region, YMCA of the East Bay. Kathleen Gushoney is studying the YMCA Indian Guides program for a white paper on the origins of “playing Indian” in U.S. youth development organizations. She is working to advocate an end to the practice of Native American cultural appropriation in favor of more meaningful connections with Indigenous cultures.
• Stefan Huebner, Research Associate at the Chair of Contemporary History, Bundeswehr University Munich, Germany. Stefan Huebner is exploring the role of the YMCA in the development of Western sports in Asia and the assimilation and redefining of Western Protestant amateur sports values in the region.  Hi research looks at interactions between YMCA staff in Asia and local groups and explores how countries in Southwest Asia and South Asia used international sports  to strengthen national identities.
• Luke Jackson, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Georgetown University. Luke Jackson is researching a dissertation on a religious history of the U.S. Christian Commission, specifically its relationship with the YMCA during the Civil War and how its work with soldiers fit into a larger pattern of YMCA programs in a way that reframes the history of both organizations.
• Maia Merin, Ph.D. Candidate, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University. Maia Merin is researching a dissertation on community control of schools in the ethnically and economically diverse Two Bridges neighborhood of New York City in the 1960s. She is using collections in the Social Welfare History Archives to write a history of community organizing around education that will also provide insight into education policy in a large urban district and how the legacy of the Two Bridges experiment can speak to current policy.
• Leslie Ribovich, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Religion, Princeton University. Leslie Ribovich is researching a dissertation on the relationship between the character education movement of the 1980s-1990s and U.S. civil religion. Using sources in Social Welfare History Archives, she is exploring what happened to religious practice and moral education in U.S. public schools after identifiable forms of religion, such as Bible-reading and state-sponsored school prayer, became unconstitutional in the early 1960s.