S2E17 Stephanie Hinnershitz - National World War II Museum, New Orleans

Our guest today is Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz, a Senior Historian at the Institute for War and Democracy at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. Steph joined the World War II Museum team after serving as the American History and Diversity Studies Fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point and then Research Advisor for the Air Command and Staff College School of Professional Education at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. She did tenure-track stints at Valdosta State University and Cleveland State University as well. Steph earned her BA in History from Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania, her MA in American and International History at Temple University, and her PhD in American History at the University of Maryland.

She is a prolific scholar. Her first book, Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900-1968 (Rutgers University Press). She followed that monograph with A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South (UNC Press), which won the Silver Nautilus Award for Journalism and Investigative Reporting. Her most recent book is Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor in World War II (University of Pennsylvania Press), which won the Philip Taft Labor History Award from the Labor ad Working Class History Association and Cornell University Labor Relations School. Steph’s work has been funded by the Army Heritage and Education Center, the Social Science Research Council, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, the Office of Diversity at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Library of Congress, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Steph has transcended the academic world to the world of public history, has experienced being laid off from a tenure-track position, managed an academic marriage, and recently went to Poland on a WW2 Museum tour, her first trip to Europe! She's a first-generation college graduate as well - we had a blast talking with Steph (a little Beyoncé, too!). You'll enjoy it! And a shout-out to Brenda's Bar-Be-Que Pit in Montgomery, Alabama!

Rec.: 10/07/2022