Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are central to the way we think today. But to get where we are, many of our colleagues have put in years of hard and often thankless labor. The Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize, a new award from the Western Society for French History, sets out to recognize that work and its vital contribution to reshaping our field. I chatted online with Dr. Christy Pichichero, current WSFH president, and Dr. Emily Marker, chair of the Mission Prize committee, to find out more about this award.

Ian: Where did the vision for the Mission Prize come from?

Christy: Since its formation in 1974, the Western [Society for French History] has been dedicated to uplifting the work of junior scholars, women and minority groups who felt excluded from other spaces. Some of us realized that after many decades those central values were not being fully acted upon in ways that spoke to the needs of our community of scholars. Emily, myself, Jennifer Boittin, Andrew Ross and Robin Walz were brought together into a committee to rewrite the society’s mission < https://www.wsfh.org/mission-charter >

Emily: From the get-go, the idea was not just to come up with a new text, but to back that up with something that would be transformational for the field and for our colleagues—to show how this work is valued by a professional society as a critical part of what it means to be a scholar of France and the Francophone world. That was our idea—to put the society's money where its values are.

Christy: Absolutely! And I am excited that we will be offering up to three awards of $2,000 each this year.

Ian: What led to the change of name to the Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize?

Emily: As soon as we heard about Tyler’s passing, I started getting messages from a lot of WSFH folks – members of the Governing Council as well as the general membership – about the possibility of awarding him the prize posthumously, or, alternatively, potentially renaming the prize after him. As a scholar, a mentor, a teacher, and an administrator, Tyler Stovall embodied the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in French history, in US higher education, in our professional societies from the Western to AHA...

Christy: In fact, we talked about Tyler when we first imagined the prize and the types of work that we sought to acknowledge and celebrate. And he had already been nominated by multiple people for the inaugural prize. Tyler was a true mensch and pioneer. His work was a labor of the intellect and of the soul. As an African-American man in the professoriate and one of very few in his generation in our field, he recognized and fought to overcome inequities himself along his path to becoming the remarkable leader that he was.

Ian: What is new about this prize? How do you see it fitting into the larger picture of what prizes have been doing in the past?

Christy: If you think about the majority of prizes in our profession, they're mainly focused on research— travel grants, book prizes, article prizes, paper prizes. That is really only uplifting a part of what we do. There are very few panels, papers and books about the teaching part of what we do, which is such a critical service to society. Leadership comes in different forms, many of which are under-acknowledged to the point of invisibility: mentoring students, introducing people to archival work, to museums, to thinking about the world in a different way. We wanted to call attention to this critical work, whether in universities, liberal arts colleges, two year institutions, archives, libraries or museums. A lot of those folks in the latter categories do not have access to winning a prize.

Emily: The Mission Prize recognizes folks who are committed to combating structural inequality in our field through every aspect of what we do as scholars— research, teaching, service, and other forms of engagement, community, advocacy and activist work. The idea is really to see a holistic commitment.

Ian: And who is eligible for the prize?

Emily: Really anyone who's been employed in any capacity in the past year by an institution of higher education or a public facing institution like museums, archives or libraries, anywhere in the world. The call is purposefully drawn broadly to include folks who adjunct and might not have permanent employment and are bouncing around different institutions engaged with French and Francophone history. We're eager and hopeful to get applications from Europe, Africa, the larger Francophone world...

Christy: Right, it's a global prize, and nominees and self nominees only need to have a Master's degree or above. So those eligibility requirements are purposefully broad and it's our true hope that we get nominations from people doing a wide variety of different things to promote equity and inclusion in the study of the Francophone world. The spaces and ways in which one might do that are are infinite really!

Ian: That's a great place to jump to my next question - what kind of work will the prize be celebrating ? Could you give us some examples?

Christy: We're interested in learning from our nominees because they can also become examples to others. If these people have adopted the motto of ‘being the change that they would like to see’, we want to publicize and celebrate that so that others might want to do something similar in their own space—or take an idea from one of these prize winners and build it into something else. It’s worth going back to the mission statement of the Western < https://www.wsfh.org/mission-charter>. Are you supplying people with these tools of empowerment ? Are you creating greater equity in in the study of the Francophone world? How does your work really blossom in and contribute to to those spaces and to those broader efforts?

Emily: I'm loath to narrow it down because the sky's the limit when it comes to our imagination of the kind of work we'd like to recognize. I think what we'd love to see is work across these different aspects of mentorship, teaching or research, advocacy, activism in a home institution, and other public facing spaces. It's really hard to think of something that would not count in terms of advancing these values!

Ian: So the prize committee will be looking for things beyond research, in the sense that there are so many prizes that already exist that are focused very narrowly on research?

Emily: Yes, nominees who don't have research as part of the work they've been doing will be just as compelling as anyone else. It’s truly open to any combination. In terms of honoring people's research, what I would love to see is a connection between research interests and the way we translate that into teaching and mentorship and the rest of our scholarly persona.

Christy: What that means practically speaking is that people's portfolios are going to look really different. And we’re excited about the creativity that people will bring to helping us to understand what they do, how they do it, and why they're doing it.

Ian: Ultimately, what impact are you hoping this prize will have on the field as a whole?

Emily: One thing I would love is that anyone encountering the call for nominations—whether it's through the AHA or the CCWH or elsewhere— take our call seriously and spend 15 minutes or so thinking about who they know that's doing this work. To effect widespread cultural change, we need all of our colleagues to spend some time thinking about these values, these practices, these activities, and so, for me that is the primary impact I hope it has.

Christy: This work often goes unpaid and can be thankless except for the fact that you have this deeper commitment to a sense of social justice. It’s very powerful to say: “We see you, we celebrate you, and we are going to offer you a check that you can use to pursue further projects”. I was fortunate last year to win a Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence at George Mason University and it came with a budget that will help move me forward in my research. So the blood, sweat and tears I invested in diversity, equity and inclusion in my university during this critical year of the pandemic, and the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and Brianna Taylor and George Floyd, is visible and can empower me to do my research and work on another part of of my career. We hope these awards will offer an opening to people to find the next thing for themselves and be celebrated for what they have achieved. I would love to have this prize be part of conversations in community colleges and at conferences of language teachers and all these different organizations that are connected to education about the Francophone world.

Nominations for the Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize are due annually in December. Self-nominations are strongly encouraged.

For more information see the WSFH website < https://www.wsfh.org/mission-prize>

or email [email protected] .