Matt Basso Selected as Next Aileen Clyde Professor
August 6, 2021 - Matt Basso, professor of history, has been selected for the 2021-22 Aileen H. Clyde Professorship, which supports faculty who are invested in illuminating the stories and voices of women.
The professorship was created in 2018 to award one history professor each year with funds to support their teaching, research or other activities that publicize and maximize the contents of the Clyde Archive at the Marriott Library. The archive documents and preserves the history of 20th century women whose lives and work helped create social and cultural change.
Basso plans to use the funds from the professorship to add applicable World War II oral histories from the Marriot Library’s collection to the Clyde Archive and continue his research by locating archives around the U.S. that contain primary sources that illuminate the gender history of WWII. He will also use some of the funds to provide honoraria for scholars to speak to his spring 2022 class and the broader public about their research on women, gender and leadership in the United States and to link that research to Clyde archive holdings. Lastly, Basso will teach a course in fall 2021 that links the 20th century to the current pandemic and have his students conduct oral histories to add to the Clyde archive.
A competitive faculty award, it requires interested faculty to submit an application that is reviewed by the Department of History Executive Committee, then the selected professor becomes eligible to receive the professorship honor for up to two years. The recipient commits to teach two classes per year that require students to utilize the archive in their scholarship.
The inaugural Aileen H. Clyde Professor in History was Colleen McDannell, who served two terms and took on the intense task of making the Clyde Archive more accessible to researchers and introduced hundreds of students to the incredible resource.
“It’s been my honor to carry on Aileen Clyde’s great legacy by introducing more students and scholars to the Aileen Clyde 20th Century Women’s Legacy Archive,” said McDannell. “It’s my hope that the professorship will continue and new appointees will raise that national visibility of this incredible resource and help elevate and illuminate the stories and voices of women.”
Basso has dual appointments in history and gender studies and his research interests include the theory and history of masculinity, labor and working-class history, the history of old age, the history of race and ethnicity, the relationship of the military to society, U.S. Western history, the history of Pacific settler societies, and transnational history.
Read Basso’s full bio here.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Jana Cunningham, University of Utah College of Humanities
jana.cunningham@utah.edu | 801-213-0866