Angela Robbins wearing a black shirt

Angela Robbins

Chair, Department of History, Political Science, and International Studies; Associate Professor of History

she/her(s)

218 Lux

(919) 760-8825

StrongPoints® Strengths: learner/context/achiever/responsibility/harmony

Profile

In my first career, I taught middle school Social Studies, Language Arts, and Science. When I made the decision to pursue graduate studies, I chose History not only because I have a passion for it but also because I had been inspired by and impressed with my History professors in undergraduate school. Once I acquired my M.A. degree, I started teaching college courses at my alma mater. That experience led me pretty quickly to the discovery that going for the Ph.D. and continuing as an educator was the right fit for me. I have had the good fortune of teaching a variety of students at highly regarded colleges and universities over the past few years – UNC Greensboro, Salem College, and Wake Forest University – and I am excited to be a faculty member at Meredith College given its tradition of providing quality education to women. Teaching not only gives me permission to be a true History geek who devours everything I can about my subjects, but it allows me to connect in a meaningful way to others. While many students take my classes because they need to fulfill a requirement, my hope is that they find lasting inspiration in addition to valuable knowledge, as I did in my own education.

Academic Credentials

Ph.D. in U.S. History, UNCG
B.S. in Middle Grades Education, UNCG
M.A. in Museum Studies, UNCG

Presentations

Featured expert, “Transforming the Workplace: Meredith Experts Reflect on the ‘Great Resignation’—and Where We Go From Here,” Meredith Magazine, Summer 2022.

Lecturer, “End of an ERA?,” Osher LifeLong Learning Institute (two week course), North Carolina State University, June 2022.

“Leaving the World Better than You Found it,” commencement address delivered to the Department of History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, May 2022.

Panelist, “The Meredith Project: Confronting History and Traditions,” Universities Studying Slavery Conference, Guilford College, March 2022.

Organizer and Panelist, “Title IX at 50,” Women’s History Month webinar hosted by Departments of History, Political Science, and International Studies, Exercise and Sports Science, Athletics, and the Office of the Chaplain, Meredith College, March 2022.

Panelist, “Women’s History Month: How do we define leadership?,” podcast hosted by Spartans Speak, UNC-Greensboro Alumni, March 2021.

Panelist, “Progress and Tradition in the 1920s,” webinar hosted by the Triangle Area League of Women Voters, March 2021.

Featured expert, “Understand How the Pandemic Changed the Job Market,” Zippia/The Career Expert, January 2021. Organizer and Mediator, “Collecting Women’s Histories” webinar, Meredith College, November 2020.

Panelist, Friends of the Library: Showing of The Activists, Meredith College, November 2020.

Organizer and Mediator, “Focus on Election 2020” webinar, Meredith College, October 2020.

Organizer, Constitution Day event focused on the 19th Amendment, Meredith College, September 2020.

Panelist, “Campus Conversations: Voting Rights,” Meredith College, September 2020.

Lecturer, “Women of Color in the Suffrage Movement,” Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, North Carolina State University, September 2020.

Organizer and Commentator, “Women’s Equality Day Celebration,” Meredith College, August 2020.

Presenter, “Votes for (Other) Women: The 19th Amendment and Women of Color,” webinar hosted by the Triangle Area League of Women Voters, August 2020.

Panelist, “Will North Carolina be the Next State to Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment?,” State of Things radio program, WUNC, April 2019.

Commentator, “Family and Community Histories,” History Graduate Student Conference, North Carolina State University, March 2019.

Guest presenter, “’Poor but honest and industrious’: Businesswomen in the North Carolina Piedmont, 1865-1900,” Raleigh Civil War Round Table August meeting, North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, August 2018.

Presenter, “’Poor but honest and industrious’: Businesswomen in the North Carolina Piedmont, 1865-1900,” North Carolina Humanities Council, Road Scholars Program presented through Cumberland County Library, Fayetteville, July 2018.

Lecturer, “Aliens or Americans?: The Immigration Debate over Three Centuries,” Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, May – June 2018.

Presenter, “Doing Their Big Bit: North Carolina’s Women on the World War I Home Front,” North Carolina Humanities Council, Road Scholars Program presented through various organizations in 2017 and 2018.

Instructor, “(Re)-Close the Door?: America’s Enduring Immigration Debate,” Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, October 2017.

Scholar-Moderator, “America’s Entry into World War I,” Program and Exhibit Opening, Cumberland County Public Library, Fayetteville, October 2017.

Guest presenter, “’Poor but honest and industrious’: Businesswomen in the North Carolina Piedmont, 1865-1900,” Raleigh Civil War Round Table Symposium, North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, June 2017.

Panelist, “’My life has been out of the ordinary run of woman’s life’: Working Women in the Post-Civil War Economy,” Town of Morrisville History Day, Morrisville, April 2016.

Panelist, “Comments: The (Un)Natural Boundaries of Womanhood,” Graduate Student History Conference, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, April 2016.

Presenter, “’The Biggest Thing Ever Seen or Dreamed of in North Carolina’: Women’s Work on Display at the 1884 Exposition,” North Carolina Humanities Council, Road Scholars Program presented through Warren County Memorial Library, Warrenton, March 2016.

Panelist, “North Carolina’s Women ‘Do Their Bit’ on the Home Front,” North Carolina During the First World War: (Dis)Organizing Southern Inclusiveness panel, American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, January 2016.

Panelist, “Now Let Me Fly: Academic Perspectives on The Invention of Wings,” Summer Reading Program Lecture, Meredith College, September 2014.

Presenter, “What the Law Allowed: Women and the Legal System after the Civil War,” North Carolina Humanities Council, Road Scholars Program presented through Encore Program, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, October 2013.

Presenter, “’Poor but honest and industrious’: Small Businesswomen in the Post-Civil War South,” North Carolina Humanities Council, Road Scholars Program presented through American Association of University Women, Gastonia Chapter, Gastonia, January 2013.

Presenter, “Sorosis and the Woman’s Club Movement,” Presented to Sorosis Chapter, Winston-Salem, September 2011.

Panelist, “’Employment for Ladies?’: North Carolina’s 1884 Exposition and the Economic Roles of Women in the New South,” Southern Association for Women Historians Triennial Conference, Columbia, SC, 2009.

Panelist, “The Protection of the Petticoat: Alice Morgan Person and the Reshaping of Gender Roles in the South, 1882-1913,” Triangle Area Graduate Student History Conference, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 2005.

Research

I completed my dissertation, “Bridging the Old South and the New: Women in the Economic Transformation of the Piedmont of North Carolina, 1865-1920,” in 2010.

Publications

“Alice Morgan Person: ‘My life has been out of the ordinary run of woman’s life,’” in North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, the University of Georgia Press, edited by Michele Gillespie and Sally McMillen, forthcoming (2014).

Book review of Pauli Murray & Caroline Ware: Forty Years of Letters in Black & White, edited by Anne Firor Scott (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), North Carolina Historical Review LXXXV, no. 1 (January 2008), 108-109.

Contributor, “Introduction: North Carolina Women: Blazing Trails, Breaking Barriers,” and “Women’s Colleges in North Carolina,” Tar Heel Junior Historian: North Carolina History for Students, vol. 59 no. 1 (Fall 2019).

 

Conceptual Editor, Tar Heel Junior Historian: North Carolina History for Students, vol. 59 no. 1 (Fall 2019).

 

“Doing Their Big Bit: North Carolina’s Women on the Home Front,” in North Carolina’s Experience During the First World War, University of Tennessee Press, edited by Shepherd W. McKinley and Steven Sabol, 2018.

 

“Historical Background,” Fighting For the ERA: An Oral History of the Women in the Women’s Forum of North Carolina and Their Fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, Women’s Forum of North Carolina, 2018.

 

Contributor and Copy Editor for student submissions, “Online Biographical Dictionary of the Women Suffrage Movement of the United States,” Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000, Part I: Militant Women Suffragists–National Woman’s Party, Alexander Street Press, edited by Jill Zahniser, Thomas Dublin, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, 2017.

 

“Politics Aside: Women and the Vote,” Meredith Magazine, Meredith College, 2017.

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