Melissa Walker
Dr. Walker retired in May 2017.
Dr. Walker is an award-winning teacher and scholar. She was the first faculty member at Converse to hold the George Dean Johnson, Jr. Chair in History. In 2007, the Carnegie Foundation for Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education named her the South Carolina Professor of the Year. In recognition of her work at Converse, she received the O’Herron Award for Faculty Excellence in 2002 and the Kathryne Amelia Brown Award for outstanding teaching at Converse in 2001 as well as the Scholarly and Creative Achievement Award in 2007. She taught a wide variety of courses in US History including The New South, The American Revolution in the Southern Backcountry, US Women’s History, African American History, and others.
She also worked with K-12 history teachers. In addition to teaching graduate courses for current and aspiring teachers, in 2004, she served as the master scholar for a Teaching American History grant sponsored by the US Department of Education. In this capacity, she provided public school teachers with instruction in American history. In summer 2007 and again in 2009, she led workshops for teachers from across the country who came to Converse to study the American Revolution in the Southern Backcountry. This workshop was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks in American History and Culture Workshop program.
Dr. Walker is also an active scholar. She edited the agriculture volume of The New Encyclopedia for Southern Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). In 2007, her book Southern Farmers and Their Stories was published by the University Press of Kentucky. The book was awarded a prestigious Outstanding Academic Title Award from Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries for its overall excellence in scholarship and its value to undergraduate students. Her first book, All We Knew Was to Farm: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, 1919-1941, was published by John Hopkins University Press in 2000. The Southern Association for Women Historians awarded the book the Willie Lee Rose Prize for the best book in Southern history authored by a woman.
She is co-editor of Southern Women at the Millennium, an edited collection of essays drawn from a 2001 conference she helped organize at Converse. Her edited collection of oral histories, Country Women Cope with Hard Times, was published by University of South Carolina Press in 2004. She also co-edited a book called Work Family and Faith: Rural Southern Women in the Twentieth Century with Dr. Rebecca Sharpless of Texas Christian University. Her book, The Battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens: The American Revolution in the Southern Backcountry, grew out of the course she teaches in January term. Her most recent book, Kansas Boy: The Memoir of A.J. Bolinger, was a project she co-edited with the late Converse President Dr. Jeff Barker.
Dr. Walker received numerous grants to fund her research, most recently from the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College and from the Schlesinger Library of Women’s History at Harvard University. She is past-president of the Southern Association for Women Historians and the Agricultural History Society. She served on the editorial board of the Journal of Southern History and the executive committee of the Southern Historical Association. She served on several community boards including the board of Hub City Writers Project, a Spartanburg literary arts organization.
Click here to watch Dr. Walker’s TEDx Spartanburg talk about Hub City Writers Project.
In 2011, Dr. Walker was one of two recipients to receive the Alumni Citation, the highest award given by her alma mater, Maryville College. In her retirement, Dr. Walker works as a life coach, specializing in working with women facing life transitions and clients in higher education. She and her husband live in Spartanburg and stay in touch with Converse colleagues and alumni.
Curriculum Vitae
Read more about Dr. Walker’s activities and accomplishments:
Melissa Walker – Emerita George Dean Johnson, Jr. Professor of History