Current events are better understood through historical context. Such is the case with annual meeting session “Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Lessons Learned from Integrating Minorities and Women in the U.S. Military,” today’s “Session of the Week.”

Scholars in this session will present papers on race relations in the military in the 1970s, sex discrimination in the Army Nurse Corps in the 1950s, the challenges of integrating women into the U.S. military, and updates on the end of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

The details of the session follow below:

Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Lessons Learned from Integrating Minorities and Women in the U.S. Military
Sponsors: Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History and Coordinating Council for Women in History
Date: Sunday, January 8, 8:30—10:30 a.m.
Location: Iowa Room (Chicago Marriott Downtown)

Chair: Douglas Walter Bristol Jr., University of Southern Mississippi

Papers:
Making Integration Work: The U.S. Military’s Race Relations Initiatives of the 1970s
Douglas Walter Bristol Jr., University of Southern Mississippi

Update on Ending the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Movement
David Hall, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network

Elusive Integration: The Challenges of Integrating Women into the U.S. Military
Tanya L. Roth, Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School

Does the Sex of the Practitioner Matter? Sex Discrimination, Nursing, and the Army Nurse Corps in the 1950s
Charissa J. Threat, Northeastern University

In an effort to highlight the diverse range of scholarship at the upcoming annual meeting, we’re highlighting different sessions here on the blog each week. Check out other sessions we’ve recently profiled, including:

• Crowdsourcing History
• Turning Your Dissertation into a Book
• Whither the Future of the History Textbook
• Historians and the Obama Narrative
• The Future is Here: Pioneers Discuss the Future of the Digital Humanities
• Fukushima: An International Perspective on Nuclear Accidents
• Did We Go Wrong? The Past and Prospects of the History Profession

This post first appeared on AHA Today.