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Source: Press Release
Historians in the News
1-29-15

Claire Strom to Step Down as Editor of Agricultural History

Dr. Claire Strom, editor of Agricultural History, announced today that she will be ending her term as editor in December 2016. Strom has served as editor of the journal since 2003. Agricultural History is published by the Agricultural History Society, which is the second-oldest professional historical organization in the United States. The journal has begun its eighty-ninth year of publication.

Agricultural History Society President Sally McMurry reflected on Strom’s tenure leading the journal. “Claire has provided exceptional leadership as journal editor, making sure that it has continued to be the journal of record in the fields of agricultural and rural history, but also expanding its reach to feature important work in related fields such as environmental, food, and animal history.” Under Strom’s editorship, the journal has also become both more selective and more international, in terms of both its authors and subjects. McMurry noted that Strom “has also instituted innovative and well received features such as a series on primary source materials for agricultural historians, and an embrace of the changing technological realities of the publishing world.” 

Strom, who will have overseen the journal for more than thirteen years when she steps down, is a nationally known historian of American agriculture. Her first book, Profiting from the Plains: The Great Northern Railway and Corporate Development of the American West, was published in 2003. In 2009, the University of Georgia Press published Making Catfish Bait Out of Government Boys: The Fight Against Cattle Ticks and the Transformation of the Yeoman South as part of its Environmental History and the American South Series. Strom succeeded R. Douglas Hurt as Agricultural History’s editor in 2003.  She is currently the Rapetti-Trunzo Chair of History and Director of General Education at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. 

The Agricultural History Society will announce a Call for Proposals for a new editor in the coming days.