Amy Millstone, professor
of French literature at the University of South Carolina, was one of the
prime movers in the Western Society for French History during the 1980s
and 1990s. She served on the governing council and distinguished herself
in regular conference presentations as a scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
French popular culture. Through her singular energies and enthusiasm,
Amy drew together diverse resources and personalities. In the process,
she helped orchestrate some of the most memorable moments in the society's
history. In 1989, Amy arranged for the free use of two executive jets
to fly a talented group of musicians from the University of South Carolina
to perform on Napoleonic-era instruments at the New Orleans meeting, a
highlight of the society's bicentennial commemorations. In 1996, she literally
saved the annual meetings in Charlotte, North Carolina by agreeing to
step in as local arrangements coordinator when the UNC coordinator could
not fulfill the obligation. She secured a distinguished panel of guest
speakers, arranged hotel accommodations, and even stuffed conference packets
in the last hours before the conference. At the same meetings in 1996,
she dazzled participants with a multi-media presentation, which explored
the fin-de-siècle chanson, Paris landmarks and working-class identities.
Her efforts were all the more impressive because she was in the last stages
of a valiant battle with leukemia. Her life's work on the nineteeth-century
right-wing author and independent woman, Gyp, was brought short by her
untimely death in January 1997, but her legacy continues as a consequence
of her generous bequest to the WSFH.
The Millstone Research Fellowship, made possible by a bequest from
the Millstone family, recognizes her vision of the intellectual process
as a fundamentally social exercise, promoted by the exchange of ideas
in person as well as in print.