MEET THE NEW EDITORS
Note:Associate editors work very part-time. Our personnel budget is only $10,500 per year. Dr. Dodge, a full-time faculty member, receives 1-2 course releases per semester to serve as editor (roughly 8-15 hours per week). All positions are funded or underwritten by Westfield State College.
Dr. Mara Dodge is beginning her 10th year of teaching U.S. History at Westfield State College, where she is a full professor. She grew up in Maine, graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. and received her Ph.D. (U.S. History 1865-present) from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1997. She has taught at all grade levels from 3rd grade to high school, including five years of teaching history classes within the Illinois prison system. For many years she coordinated the History Education program at WSC training middle and high school history teachers. She teaches courses in the following areas: Civil War and Reconstruction, Labor and Economic History, U.S. Women’s History, Civil Rights Movements 1945-Present, The Minority Experience, and Introduction to Historical Research and Analysis.
Her areas of research and writing include labor history, women’s history, legal and constitutional history, and the history of crime and punishment. Her book, “Whores and Thieves of the Worst Kind”: Women, Crime, and Prisons, 1835-2000, received an outstanding book award and was republished in 2006. Currently her research focuses on the life of a Holyoke textile union leader, Anna B. Sullivan.
Dr. Fred Cooksey, associate editor, is a professor of English at Holyoke Community College, where he teaches composition, literature, advanced writing, creative nonfiction and journalism. For the past five years, he has also been the faculty adviser to the student newspaper at the college, a position which forced him to learn – and then teach – principles of layout and design for publication. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from George Mason University (Fairfax, Virginia), an M.A. in English, also from George Mason, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has published essays and fiction in the Washington Post Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, and other journals. He is currently at work on a handbook for first-year composition students.
Lynn D. Martin, Associate Editor, is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and has a strong background in journal editing, marketing, design, and production. She was Managing Editor for the Harvard School of Public Health’s journal Health and Human Rights for three years during which she increased the subscription rate by 30%. She helped market two Boston University’s journals, the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics and the American Journal of Law and Medicine, as well as an international journal, Medicine and Global Survival. She has an extensive background in public relations and communications.
Dr. Robert Weir, associate editor, holds a Ph.D. in 19th century American history from the University of Massachusetts. Amherst. He has published five books on the American labor movement: The Changing Landscape of Labor (with Michael Jacobson-Hardy); Beyond Labor's Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor; Knights Unhorsed: Internal Conflict in a Gilded Age Social Movement; The Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor (with James Hanlan) and served as an editor for The Encyclopedia of Social Class in America. Dr. Weir is currently researching The Grateful Dead and American cultural change since 1950 as well as the impact of the Knights of Labor on New Zealand in the late nineteenth century.
He teaches throughout the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts. Among his courses are offerings on American utopianism, American cultural history 1919-1945, labor history, Civil War and Reconstruction, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and folk music and social change. He is a former senior Fulbright scholar (New Zealand) and is a regular columnist for insidehighered.com Dr. Weir has been cited for excellence in teaching on numerous occasions. For over twenty years he was been the principal Celtic music writer for SingOut! Magazine, the nation’s oldest folk music publication.
We also thank our 2009-10 Graduate Assistant: Ryan Bell and Fall ’09 Undergraduate Interns: Matt Afonso, Aaron Labonte, and Christopher Shannon.
Donald French, an Assistant Editor, is currently completing his B.A. in History Education at WSC after 15 years working in telecommunications and customer service. He recently completed a research paper titled "The Wickedness of Their Hearts: Bacon's Rebellion and the Construction of Race in Colonial Virginia.” He was the valedictorian of Holyoke Community College's Class of 2007 and plans to pursue a career in secondary education following graduation. His part-time position is funded by Westfield State College. Donald works 6-7 hours per week.
Ashley Savola, an Assistant Editor, graduated from WSC in 2008 with a B.A. in English and B.S. in Elementary Education. She is currently enrolled in the M.A. in English program at WSC. Upon graduation she plans to pursue a career in Elementary Education in the Western Massachusetts area. She is a graduate assistant whose position is funded by WSC’s Division of Graduate and Continuing Education. Ashley works 6-7 hours per week.
Student Interns. Each semester several undergraduate students serve as interns. Interns for spring 2009 include history majors Jessica Cabral and Celia Demers.