Ford honored for best article published in interdisciplinary journal

Dr. Elyssa Ford, an associate professor of history at Northwest Missouri State University, has been recognized for her article in a peer-reviewed journal publishing scholarly work about the American Midwest.

Ford was announced May 28 as the John E. Miller Prize recipient for the best article of 2023 in Middle West Review.

The article, “‘For Women Only!’: A Radical Message of the Black Middle Class in Kansas City,” discusses The Call, one of the largest and most successful Black newspapers in the country, and its inclusion of stories about Black female college students and other items that aligned with the 1950s model of women as wives and mothers and mirrored the presentation of ideal womanhood appearing in white newspapers. Ford argued that to present Black women and Black families as middle class challenged popular conceptions of Blackness in the era.

Ford joined the Northwest faculty in 2011 and is a social and cultural historian with academic interests in gender, sexuality and the American West. She teaches courses in U.S. history and women’s history in addition to directing the public history and museum studies program at Northwest. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in international studies from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and has a graduate certificate in museum studies, master’s degree and doctorate in history, all from Arizona State University.

She also has authored two books, “Rodeo as Refuge, Rodeo as Rebellion: Gender, Race, and Identity in the American Rodeo” and “Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo.”