The editors of Perspectives are pleased to announce that Edward T. Linenthal of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and Clara Sue Kidwell of the University of Oklahoma have agreed to serve as contributing editors for the newsletter's Museums and Interpretive Programs column. Linenthal and Kidwell invite submissions to the column that examine the representation of history in museum exhibitions. They are particularly interested in the shaping of and response to controversial exhibits and the ways in which museums have sought to engage various publics in developing exhibitions. Submissions about the changing function of history museums in American culture and submissions that focus on the work of specific museum designers are also welcome. In general, submissions should focus on exhibitions that bring new research or new interpretations to light.

Edward T. Linenthal

Edward T. Linenthal is professor of religion and American culture at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He received his Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1979. Linenthal's books include Symbolic Defense: The Cultural Significance of the Strategic Defense Initiative (1989); Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields (2nd ed., 1993); Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum (1995). He is also coeditor of the forthcoming book American Sacred Space.

Linenthal worked for the National Park Service at the 50th anniversary ceremonies at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, and he delivered the keynote address for the ceremonies there on December 7, 1994. In 1986-87 he was a research fellow in the Defense and Arms Control Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He recently served on the advisory board for the National Air and Space Museum's ill-fated exhibition The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, and he is now writing a chapter about the controversy for a book of essays he is editing on the subject. The essays will be published in summer 1996 by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt.

Clara Sue Kidwell

Clara Sue Kidwell received her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1970. She was an instructor at Haskell Indian Junior College from 1970 to 1972 and an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota from 1972 to 1974. Between 1971 and 1994 Kidwell served as associate professor and professor of Native American studies at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1980–81 she was visiting associate professor of Native American studies at Dartmouth College. From 1993 until July of this year, Kidwell was assistant director of cultural resources at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, in Washington, D.C. Since August Kidwell has been professor of history and director of the Native American Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma.

Kidwell's works include The Choctaws: A Critical Bibliography (with Charles Robert, 1980); "Aztec and European Medicine in the New World, 1521–1600," in Anthropology and Medicine (1982); "Native Knowledge in the Americas," in Osiris (1985); "Systems of Knowledge," in America in 1492 (1991); "Indian Women as Cultural Mediators," in Ethnohistory (1992); and Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818–1918 (1995).

Submission Guidelines

Submissions may be up to 12 double spaced pages in length with no more than five endnotes. A paper copy and a diskette (preferably IBM compatible) should be included for each submission. Authors should forward manuscripts directly to Linenthal or Kidwell. Edward T. Linenthal, Dept. of Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, WI 54901. (414) 424-4407. Clara Sue Kidwell, Dept. of History, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019. (405) 325-2312.