Campus News - October 15, 2001

Historian pens tales of fact, fiction

By Laurie Mellas-Ramirez

Virginia ScharffOn the eve of battle, Americans turn to the past for answers. They seek strength and refuge in wars won and enemies defeated. They reflect upon lives lost and heroes saluted.

UNM Associate Professor of History Virgina Scharff heeds the call. “As historians we feel an obligation to share the tools. Don’t let us make the decisions – we are much better at the past than the future – but at least we can inform discussion,” she says.

“We need the comfort in knowing that we are not the first to face an event, especially in times like now,” she adds.

An expert on the American west, social theory, women’s and environmental history, for 12 years Scharff has been teaching UNM courses from the freshmen U.S. Survey course to graduate seminars.

An avid reader, she paged her way through the annals of American history as a young girl. As feminism made its mark on the country, Scharff’s mother would profoundly influence her daughter’s career by driving car-pools that included her six children.

“Women were running a defacto transportation system for the entire country,” she notes, adding that she eventually pursued academia “to claim my mother’s life for history.” Scharff’s first book is titled “Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age, (1991).”

Every reader pines to be a writer and Scharff is no exception. She completed her undergraduate degree at Yale and headed for J-school at the University of California at Berkeley. “It was the Watergate era, so I thought I wanted to be a reporter,” she says.

Later, she earned a master’s at the University of Wyoming and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, both in history.

“I’m a Wildcat, which I never tell anyone during basketball season,” she jokes.

A yen to write surfaced once more in the late 70s and early 80s during a period of unemployment. She composed a few short stories and novels “that didn’t go anywhere.” A few years back Scharff was cleaning her office and came upon these “false starts,” which she tossed in the trash, she says.

“Then I had a dream and the characters from the stories were crying out to me saying ‘you can’t throw us out!” Scharff sat down, wrote a paragraph, the paragraph became pages and the rest is history. Harper Collins published her novel “Brown-Eyed Girl” in 2000 under the pen name Virginia Swift.

“I always liked fiction, but I didn’t think I could write dialogue,” she admits.

“You have to learn to listen to the way people really speak – hear real sounding voices in your head. It may sound mentally ill, but it’s still good fiction,” she adds.

Scharff’s second novel, “Bad Company” will be published in May. “The protagonist is a historian who teaches at the University of Wyoming and is a former country western singer,” she says, noting that she has written a song or two and also plays guitar. “I’m really acoustic, but I can plug in. I paid my way through school gigging in low rent bars in California and the Rockies.”

Her latest project is directing UNM’s Center for the Southwest. Ever the storyteller, Scharff says, “We’re kind of inventing as we go along.”

The center encourages interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations among faculty engaged in regional projects.

“I think I have the best job in the world,” she says. That’s a fact.

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