{"id":177082,"date":"2021-09-13T07:45:57","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T11:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=177082"},"modified":"2021-09-13T09:24:49","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T13:24:49","slug":"micki-mcelya-awarded-a-public-scholars-fellowship-to-explore-the-1968-miss-america-pageant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/09\/micki-mcelya-awarded-a-public-scholars-fellowship-to-explore-the-1968-miss-america-pageant\/","title":{"rendered":"Micki McElya Awarded a Public Scholars Fellowship to Explore the 1968 Miss America Pageant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Micki\u00a0McElya, professor of history at UConn, has been awarded a\u00a0Public Scholars Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0<\/span>NEH Public Scholars program<\/span><\/a>\u00a0supports the creation of well-researched nonfiction books in the humanities written for the broad public.\u00a0The award will enable\u00a0McElya\u00a0to work on\u00a0her upcoming\u00a0book examining beauty, feminism, race, women\u2019s rights, and politics in the twentieth-century U.S. through the events of the 1968 Miss America Pageant.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time,\u00a0many\u00a0Americans\u00a0viewed the\u00a0Miss America Pageant, a national event that had occurred at the same\u00a0time each year\u00a0since 1921, as a representation of what was considered beautiful or wholesome in the United States, says\u00a0McElya.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But in\u00a01968,\u00a0in\u00a0the midst of\u00a0the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and radical protests across the nation and the world, women\u2019s liberation activists protested the\u00a0Pageant\u00a0as both a symbol and\u00a0a\u00a0vehicle for the oppression of women.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The group<\/span>\u00a0rejected\u00a0the idea of a beauty contest and sought women\u2019s\u00a0liberation from a system they saw represented in the pageant, one of inequality, the objectification of women, capitalist exploitation, war, and imperialism, says\u00a0McElya.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time,\u00a0the first Miss Black America\u00a0Pageant was held\u00a0to celebrate the beauty of Black women\u00a0and\u00a0challenge\u00a0the Miss America organization, which had never had a\u00a0Black\u00a0state\u00a0finalist.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

McElya\u2019s\u00a0book,\u00a0<\/span>No More Miss America! How Protesting the 1968 Pageant Changed a Nation,\u00a0<\/span><\/i>explores the two protests and the women who participate\u00a0in the pageant.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe women who participate in these pageants are often written off\u00a0in history books, their motivations are not made clear, and they\u2019re even accused of potentially participating in their own\u00a0oppression,\u201d says\u00a0McElya.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne purpose\u00a0of this book is to show these women in the same fully-formed way, with clear motives and understandings, that the activists of the 1960s and 1970s get.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The book\u00a0is a character-driven work of narrative history examining beauty, feminism, race, women\u2019s rights, and politics in the twentieth-century U.S.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>I’m grateful to NEH,\u00a0<\/span>to my department head Mark Healey,<\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0to\u00a0CLAS for facilitating me accepting the award because\u00a0th<\/span>is award\u00a0gives\u00a0me a chance to really explore my writerly voice and methodology,\u201d\u00a0McElya\u00a0says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI get to spend time pushing my historical imagination. I love this history so much and I think it\u2019s so important\u00a0to have the\u00a0opportunity to share that beyond the classroom as well as\u00a0with academics.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The book is\u00a0expected\u00a0to be published by Avid Reader in\u00a0late 2023.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The award will enable McElya to work on her forthcoming book exploring two foundational protests during the 1968 Miss America Pageant. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":177085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2214],"class_list":["post-177082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 02:02:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177082"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177170,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177082\/revisions\/177170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/177085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177082"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=177082"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=177082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}