Major Works
- Lucy Somerville Howorth: New Deal Lawyer, Politician and Feminist from the South (2003) co-author
- Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives (2003, 2009) co-editor with Elizabeth Payne, two volumes of essays
- Ellen Woodward: New Deal Advocate for Women (1995)
- Pat Harrison: The New Deal; Years (1978)
Biography of Martha Swain
Martha Swain lives in Starkville, Mississippi. She attended Starkville High School and earned her bachelor’s degree from Mississippi State College (now Mississippi State University). She earned a Masters and a Ph.D. in History from Vanderbilt University.
She taught high school in Florida, spending 6 summers on the staff of the History Department at Stetson University. She also worked at Rutgers University for one summer.
Swain then moved to Texas, and for twenty-one years she was on the faculty of Texas Woman’s University. After returning to Starkville in 1995, she taught at Mississippi State University. She is professor emeritus at Texas Women’s University.
In addition to her non-fiction books covering the New Deal, she is also the co-editor of two volumes of essays, Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives (2003, 2009) and has written numerous book chapters and journal articles.
She is a past president of the Southern Association for Women Historians and the recipient of a distinguished senior faculty award at Texas Woman’s University.
Among her awards are the 1994 Eudora Welty book prize at Mississippi University for Women, the 2002 Dunbar Rowland Award from the Mississippi Historical Society for lifetime contributions to Mississippi History, and the 2004 Mississippi Humanities Council’s Chair’s Award for contributions to public humanities programs.
She served as president of the Mississippi Historical Society in 2005-06 and is a long-time member of the review board of the Journal of Mississippi History. She also has been a member of the board of review of the Journal of Southern History.