7/2/97
ATHENS, Ohio -- In filling the shoes of retiring diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis, Joan Hoff will probably find her new position a snug fit. Gaddis and Hoff, a faculty member at Indiana University since 1981, have had strikingly similar accomplishments throughout their careers.
"[Gaddis] created and left behind a wonderful institution - the Contemporary History Institute," Hoff says, noting the chance to teach U.S. foreign policy and women's history theory at the graduate level through the institute was a reason she was attracted to Ohio University. "It makes for a unique opportunity of teaching you don't find at most universities."
Gaddis, a distinguished professor of history who joined the Ohio University faculty in 1969, is retiring from the university and begins an appointment at Yale University in the fall. Hoff had been president and CEO of the Center for the Study of the Presidency in New York City and editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly since 1995. She had been on leave from Indiana since that time.
Both historians have been awarded the Stuart L. Bernath Prize, given annually for the best book in diplomatic history, and each has been a Fulbright Professor, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
"Another similarity between our careers is that both of us started out writing about the Soviet Union," Hoff says, explaining that in her beginning research, she focused on the inter-war years of the 1920s and 1930s, though Gaddis went on to study the post-1945 era. Hoff served as a delegate to the Fifth Colloquium of American and Soviet Historians to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the recognition of the USSR by the United States in 1984.
Hoff's research interests center on 20th century U.S. foreign policy and politics, the modern presidency, and U.S. women's legal status. She is co-founder of The Journal of Women's History and author of several books, including Nixon Reconsidered.
Hoff has held a variety of notable positions in her fields of interest, including the status of executive secretary of the Organization of American Historians in 1981. In recognition of her research on women's issues, Hoff was appointed to the Advisory Board of a 1979 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) project entitled "Women's History Resources Survey," which explored women's history from colonial times to the late 1970s.
Hoff has also served on numerous advisory boards for organizations such as the American Association for State and Local History Library, ABC-CLIO Bibliographical Services, and the National Security Archive.
Hoff earned a doctorate in American history from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966, a master's degree in Slavic history from Cornell University in 1959, and a bachelor's degree in both European history and journalism from the University of Montana in 1957.