U. professor named president of Western Society for French History

Earlier this year, Emily Marker, an associate professor in the Department of History at Rutgers—Camden, was appointed president of the Western Society for French History (WSFH).

The organization focuses on French and Francophone studies and is dedicated to encouraging greater diversity in approaches to the different elements of French history, according to the WSFH mission and charter. 

Marker spoke to The Daily Targum about her work at Rutgers and with the WSFH over the years, culminating in her rise to the role of president this year. 

She said the WSFH was founded in 1974 to challenge the prominent French historical society of the time and its culture of elitism.

Marker said she has been involved with the organization for more than 10 years and delivered her first paper for the group as a graduate student at a conference during an annual meeting in 2013.

Since then, she has accomplished rewriting the chapter's mission statement with the outgoing president, as well as several other innovations.

She was elected vice president in 2023. In this role, Marker said she was the chair of the organization's Millstone Fellowship Committee, which oversees the distribution of fellowships and judges participants' work.

"(The committee) awards two $5,000 fellowships to graduate students and early career scholars for short-term research in either mainland or overseas France, as well as the paper prize committee, which awarded six paper prizes to both graduate students and faculty presenters from the 2022 and 2023 annual conferences," Marker said.

She said that, in her new role as president, her responsibilities included leading the program committee for its yearly assembly, which will also be the WSFH's semicentennial gathering this year.

Marker also said she hopes to continue the endeavors of past presidents by expanding the organization's focus to help educators deal with the pressures they face from higher-ups at their educational institutions.

"This seems especially urgent now, as narratives of austerity have squeezed budgets, accelerated adjunctification and pushed the academic job market off a cliff," Marker said. "At the very same time, (we) seem to be facing unprecedented, shamelessly political attacks on tenure, academic freedom, whole academic disciplines devoted to the study of power and marginalized groups and (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs."

Aside from the WSFH, Marker said she holds a multitude of roles at Rutgers. She said her primary focus is teaching European and global history to graduate and undergraduate students while focusing on colonialism, decolonization, capitalism, as well as France and its empire and the African diaspora in Europe and beyond.

She said that outside of the classroom, she is a board member of the Center for European Studies and a member of the executive committee for the Center for Africana Studies at Rutgers—Camden.

Marker said that despite societal notions that a history major is impractical, she finds it to be a great discipline for students, especially as some individuals are steered into choosing studies they might not be interested in or enjoy.

"History majors go on to work in any number of job sectors — law, public policy, philanthropy, education, nonprofits, government, finance, international development, etc. — and the field itself will suffer if we don't recruit diverse students who bring critical, invaluable perspectives to the study of the past," Marker said.