501-918-3025
calsfoundation@cals.org
calsfoundation@cals.org
The CALS David Stricklin Research Fellowship Experience: Olivia Paschal, 2024
Academics spend a lot of time applying for grants to fund our research—often ones that are tenuous matches at best for our projects, ones that we have to massage our research proposal to fit into. I didn’t have that problem for the Stricklin Research Fellowship. It’s the only research grant offered by an archival research institution in Arkansas. It’s for an institution—the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in the Bobby L. Roberts Library of History & Art at the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS)—whose collections are vitally important to my dissertation, which is about the rise of northwest Arkansas and its major industries (Walmart, Tyson and poultry, and J. B. Hunt and trucking) in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Receiving the Stricklin Research Fellowship was important not just in making my trip to the Butler Center financially possible, but also because it meant that in-state experts had read my research proposal and thought it was interesting and valuable work. As an Arkansan studying Arkansas, that means more to me than any amount of money could.
The research experience at the Butler Center was everything I could have hoped for. I spent most of my time in the Clinton Gubernatorial Collection, which is meticulously organized and extremely thorough. I was interested in understanding how the Clinton administration’s relationship with the businesses and industries in the state’s northwest corner developed over the course of his governorship—and the collection delivered. One of the most useful parts of the collection was being able to see inter-agency communications between the governor’s office and different state commissions and agencies, such as the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, the Department of Pollution Control and Ecology, and the Department of Health. I also found a large amount of material that I hope to develop into a conference paper or journal article about the State of Arkansas working with Walmart on its Buy America program, which was not widely reported at the time and I think has been largely missed by historians.
A highlight of the week I spent in the Research Room at the CALS Roberts Library was lunch with David Stricklin (former director of the Butler Center), Bobby Roberts (former director of CALS), and Glenn Whaley (current manager of the Roberts Library). We got Bobby and Glenn reminiscing on their time in the Clinton gubernatorial administration, and David and I discovered a web of shared connections stretching all the way to Durham, North Carolina. It was such a pleasure to talk with them and get their feedback on my project—and advice about grad school and what comes next. There also happened to be another graduate student in the Clinton papers the week I was there, Henry Tonks, who is working on a dissertation about the New Democrats. My dissertation benefited not just from the time I spent in the archives, but from the larger conceptual and framing conversations I had with so many folks who have expertise (both lived and studied) in the people, places, and politics I’m researching.
The intellectual environment and the material I found in the archives this summer were so good that I came back to the Butler Center just a couple of weeks later to continue my research—and grab lunch with David. I’ll be back again in the fall to hit all the archival material that I couldn’t get to on my first visit, as well as collecting oral histories for my dissertation. Thank you to David, Glenn, Brian Robertson, Steve Teske, Bobby, and the whole CALS team for making my time there so wonderful.
By Olivia Paschal, PhD candidate at the University of Virginia, Corcoran Department of History
The David Stricklin Research Fellowship was established in honor of former CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies director David Stricklin to assist students, teachers, and other researchers in using materials held by the Butler Center. Learn more about it here.
