Public History M.A. Student Wins National Award

Samantha Vandermeade, a second-year graduate student in Public History, won the James Madison Award for Excellency in Historical Scholarship for her article entitled, “Fort Lipstick and the Making of June Cleaver in American Advertising, 1941-1961.” Her article will be published in vol. 12 of the Madison Historical Review later this spring.

Read Sam’s article in MHR‘s online journal, available now.

In February 2015, Sam presented her research on gendered labor and the sociopolitical expectations of women during WWII and the post-war years at the 20th Southwest English Symposium Trans[inter]disciplinary Humanities Conference, hosted by Arizona State University.

Her work shows how images of wartime working women like Rosie the Riveter  and post-war, ultra-domestic housewives like June Clever were cut from the same cloth: both were created by government and advertising agencies to propagate a specific brand of femininity, which depicted women as either socially tamed sexual objects or mothers.

See an exhibit of Sam’s research.

Sam will be graduating from NC State with her MA in Public History on May 9, 2015. She will head to Arizona State University in the fall to matriculate in its Women’s/Gender Studies Ph.D. program.

Congratulations, Sam!