Patti Loughlin received her B.A. and M.A. in history at Pepperdine University.  She received the Ph.D. in history at Oklahoma State University in 2000.  She teaches women’s history, history of the American West, and twentieth-century U.S. at the University of Central Oklahoma.  Her first book, Hidden Treasures of the American West (2005), examines the lives and texts of three women writers – Angie Debo (historian and best known for And Still the Waters Run), Muriel Wright (public historian and editor of the Chronicles of Oklahoma for over thirty years), and Alice Marriott (anthropologist and author of The Ten Grandmothers) who created careers for themselves on the cusp of the academic world and sought a more popular audience for their writings.Currently, Loughlin is writing a book-length manuscript on the history of the University of Central Oklahoma for Oklahoma’s centennial in 2007.

Linda Reese received her B.A. in history from the University of Oklahoma and her M.A. in education and history from the University of Kansas.  After teaching in New Mexico for several years, she completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Oklahoma in 1991.  She teaches Oklahoma history, women’s history, and twentieth-century U.S. at East Central University.  Her book, Women of Oklahoma, 1890-1920, is a multicultural exploration of gender and the interaction among women in the formative years of the state. Reese is currently researching a book-length study of freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850-1890, as they made the transition from slavery to freedom.