Elizabeth McRae, an associate professor of history at Western Carolina University, has been chosen to hold the university’s Creighton Sossomon Professorship in History for the next three years. McRae is a WCU alumna who received her master’s degree in history at the university in 1996. She also holds a master’s degree in secondary social science education from Marymount University in Virginia and a doctorate in American history from the University of Georgia. She joined the WCU faculty in 2000 and previously served as director of the Secondary Social Science Education Program for 10 years. Elizabeth McRae received her master’s degree in history at WCU in 1996. McRae’s teaching and research interests center on the intersection of race, gender and politics in America and in the modern South. She has published articles in recent collections on Southern women’s history and in the Georgia Historical Quarterly, Carologue and the North Carolina Historical Review. Her book Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of Jim Crow will be published in 2017 by Oxford University Press. McRae is co-director of “Mountain Lives, Mountain People,” an oral history training program involving students at Smoky Mountain High School. The Sossomon Professorship was established in honor of late history professor emeritus D. Creighton Sossomon. The position is designed to strengthen the faculty in the Department of History by providing a salary supplement to retain outstanding teachers-scholars in American, English or European history. By Randall Holcombe This article is reprinted from The Reporter, Western Carolina University Faculty and Staff News
