Rate My Professor Rebecca Sharpless

Rebecca Sharpless holds a Ph.D. in American Studies/Women's Studies from Emory University (1993), an M.A. in American Studies from Baylor University (1983), and a B.A. in English, magna cum laude, from Baylor University (1978). Her academic interests center on women in America and the South, Texas, food, sexuality, labor, and oral history. She has published influential works including Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960 (2010), Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940 (1999), and Rock beneath the Sand: Country Churches in Texas (2003, with Lois E. Myers and Clark G. Baker). She co-edited Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives (2015, with Elizabeth Hayes Turner and Stephanie Cole) and Work, Family, and Faith: Rural Southern Women in the Twentieth Century (2006, with Melissa Walker), as well as the Handbook of Oral History (2006, with Lois E. Myers and Thomas L. Charlton). Her scholarship has shaped understandings of rural women's labor, domestic service, foodways, and Southern social history.

In her career, Sharpless advanced to Professor of History in 2015, following roles as Associate Professor (2010-2015) and Assistant Professor (2006-2010), and served as Director of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History from 1993 to 2006. She earned prestigious honors, including the Bennett H. Wall Award from the Southern Historical Association (2012) for Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens, the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize and Liz Carpenter Award from the Texas State Historical Association (2000) for Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices, another Liz Carpenter Award (2016), the Wise Woman Award for teaching and mentoring (2011), and the Arthur W. Thompson Award (2012). Sharpless has influenced her field through leadership as President of the Oral History Association (2006), President of the Southern Association for Women Historians (2013), Executive Council member of the Texas State Historical Association (2010-2016), and editorial board service for the Journal of Southern History (2011-2016). She has given notable public lectures, such as the Charles L. Wood Lecture in Agricultural History at Texas Tech University (2016).