Margaret Jacobs has been selected as the University of Cambridge’s Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions for 2015-16.
As a Pitt Professor, Jacobs, Chancellor’s Professor of History, will spend a full year at Cambridge University, teaching classes, giving lectures, mentoring graduate students and furthering her own research.
“There are so many archives that I wouldn’t have had access to before,” she said.
Jacobs’ research focuses on the history of women, children, and families in the American West in comparison with other settler societies, including Australia and Canada. She particularly examines cross-cultural dynamics between white and Indigenous women. Her most recent book, “A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World,” was published last fall by University of Nebraska Press. Her work on indigenous people is unique among past historians selected for the professorship, as are her Nebraska ties.
“Professor Jacobs is the first to be appointed from the University of Nebraska,” said Gary Gerstle, Paul Mellon professor of history at Cambridge University. “We believe that she is also the first whose work focuses on indigenous peoples.”
The honor, which is given by a committee of Cambridge faculty, came as a surprise to Jacobs, since the professorship is not something faculty can apply for.
“I didn’t even know it existed,” Jacobs said, adding that when she received an email regarding her selection, “it was a little bit surreal.”
This visiting professorship dates back to 1944, and has been held by some of the most distinguished historians and social scientists in the United States since its inception, Gerstle said.
“A nominee must have achieved the highest standards of scholarship and have acquired an international reputation,” Gerstle said. “Professor Jacobs meets those standards. We are excited that she will be joining us next year.”
Jacobs won the Bancroft Prize, a top award in American history, in 2010 for her book “White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940.”
The list of past Pitt Professors includes Richard Hofstadter and Eric Foner of Columbia University, Gordon Wood of Brown University, Bernard Bailyn and Carol Gilligan of Harvard University, Daniel Rodgers of Princeton University, Mary Beth Norton of Cornell, and David Blight of Yale University.
“The historians who have been invited are so accomplished,” Jacobs said. “I just can’t believe I’m joining that list.”
Gerstle said Jacobs will play an integral role in both the undergraduate and graduate programs, and will be involved in the Cambridge American History Seminar, a weekly seminar at which scholars from across the U.S., U.K., and Europe present current works.
“Through these seminars, she will have an opportunity to meet scholars from all over the world whose interests intersect with hers,” he said.
