News
Ahmet Akturk Triumphs over Dissertation Defense
Yesterday, Ahmet Akturk successfully defended his dissertation, "Imagining Kurdish Identity in Mandatory Syria: Finding a Nation in Exile."
Mr. Akturk’s committee was made up of Professor Joel Gordon, Professor Richard Sonn, and Professor Nikolay Antov.
Soon-to-be Dr. Akturk heads off this summer to take up a tenure-track position in modern Middle Eastern history at Georgia Southern University.
Congratulations, Ahmet!
Posted: 5/15/2013
Elliott West Elected Member of the American Antiquarian Society
More good news from the HIST propaganda machine! Distinguished Professor Elliott West has been elected to the august ranks of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), the nation’s oldest historical organization founded in 1812. Since 1812 approximately three thousand notables have been chosen for membership. Professor West is the fourth Arkansan. He follows the lead of federal judge Morris S. Arnold, former director of Crystal Bridges Robert Gene Workman, and Alice Walton. Members of the AAS are elected from among scholars, educators, writers, publishers, collectors, librarians, curators, journalists, civic leaders and lay persons with an interest in American history.
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) library houses the largest and most accessible collection of printed materials from first contact through 1876 in what is now the United States, the West Indies and parts of Canada. The library is located in Worcester, Massachusetts: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/
Posted: 5/9/2013
Internship Opportunity: Lowell Historical Museum
The Lowell Historical Museum is seeking a volunteer for an Internship to work with the director to coordinate new programs, grants and report to grantors.
Requires: Good written and in person communication skills, a degree in history or the humanities, a passion for history, and an attention to detail, experience in public relations is a plus.
Hours are flexible; this position is a non-paid internship, short or long-term, board membership maybe possible for the right applicant.
To apply please send resume to:
Elizabeth Estes, Director
Lizmusic55@aol.com
Lowell Historical Museum
304 Jackson Pl.
Lowell, AR 72745
479-770-0191
Posted: 4/24/2013
History has a Newly-Minted PhD
Congratulations to Dr. Scott Cashion who has just defended his dissertation " 'And So We Moved Quietly': Southern Methodist University and Desegregation, 1950-1970" under the direction of Professor Charles Robinson, II. In his dissertation, Dr. Cashion argued that the desegregation process at SMU was a more controlled and quiet process compared to other private and public universities in the South even though SMU was one of the first private universities in the south to desegregate, and began the process a decade before its companion institutions like Emory and Vanderbilt. Professors Calvin White and Patrick G. Williams also served on the committee.
Dr. Cashion plans to stay at his current positions working with both Northwest Arkansas Community College and the University of Arkansas Fort Smith.
Posted: 4/19/2013
James Gigantino Signs a Book Contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press
Professor James Gigantino has recently signed a contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press to publish his book, Freedom and Slavery in the Garden of America: African Americans and Abolition in New Jersey, 1775-1861, as part of its Early American Studies series that is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Gigantino’s book explores slavery’s long life and slow death in New Jersey. He vividly shows how northerners clung tightly to slavery, participated in the domestic slave trade, and twisted the state’s abolition laws into helping them create new forms of bondage. His work questions much of what historians know about early America by problematizing the long-held notion of a “free north.” This allows him to challenge historical understandings of the formation of free black communities, the second abolition movement, and divisions among the states leading up to the Civil War. PENN Press’s faculty editorial board describes Professor Gigantino’s forthcoming book as “groundbreaking.”
Posted: 4/18/2013
Professor Woods's Latest Reviewed this Past Friday in the "Wall Street Journal"
In a lengthy review of Shadow Warrior published in the Friday, April 12 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Professor of Politics and History at Emory University Harvey Klehr praises Randall Woods’s latest tome for its meticulous research and riveting representation of the controversial Vietnam-era director of the C.I.A. William Colby. You may find the entire review of Shadow Warrior at the link provided below:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323296504578398543839629674.html
Congratulations, Randall! U of AR HIST dominates ost-1945 U.S. diplomacy!
Posted:
Laurence Hare Signs Contract with the University of Toronto Press
Professor Laurence Hare has recently signed a contract with the University of Toronto Press to publish his book, Excavating Nations: Archaeology, Museums, and the German-Danish Borderlands, as part of Toronto’s German and European Studies Series. Hare’s book explores the connections between archaeology and nationalism in the embattled borderlands of Schleswig-Holstein during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning with the founding of the first museums in the 1830s and ending with the Nazi appropriation of regional antiquities, this work is the first to tell the whole story of the German and Danish scholars who claimed and contested common heritages for diverging nationalist ends. As Hare argues, the tense dynamic of cooperation and conflict in this region not only shaped the emergence of professional archaeology, but also made the borderlands a focal point in the creation of German and Scandinavian identities.
Posted: 4/15/2013
Historians Sweep Up More Prize Money
The Department of History is pleased to announce yet again another sweep of Fulbright College prize and fellowship money.
- James Gigantino has won the 2013 Robert C. and Sandra Connor Endowed Faculty Fellowship to support the career advancement of faculty who provide the highest quality of teaching, research and service to the College
- Daniel Sutherland has won the 2013 Nolan Faculty Award to support the career advancement of faculty who provide the highest quality teaching, research and service to the College
- Patrick Williams has won the 2013 John E. King Award for Outstanding Service, both on account of his great commitment to teaching and mentoring as well as his work as Editor of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly
Congratulations, Patrick, Dan, and Jim!
Posted: 4/9/2013
Historians Win Two Honors College Interdisciplinary Colloquia Grants
The Department of History is pleased to announce that two of its faculty members, Professor Andrea Arrington and Professor Laurence Hare, have won Honors College Interdisciplinary Colloquia Grants. The two courses, “Health and Gender in Sub-Saharan Africa” and “Opera, Nations, and Empires,” will be taught by a team of faculty possessing expertise in various aspects of the colloquium. Below, you will find brief descriptions of each Honors colloquium as well as the names of the teaching-teams, all of whom are winners in the 2013 Interdisciplinary Honors Colloquia competition.
Health and Gender in Sub-Saharan Africa:
This course, to be taught with fellow University faculty, Andrea Arrington (History), Sabrina Billings (World Languages, Literature, and Cultures) and Kristen Jozkowski (Health, Human Performance, and Recreation), allows students the opportunity to think about concepts and practices of health and healing from an African perspective. A major focus of the course will be on how "public health" is defined, and who gets to define it, as we examine the role of the Western world in the discourse of global/African public health. Students will consider changing definitions and practices of health, hygiene, and medicine, starting with colonial expansion and the ways that Western models of health and hygiene were applied to Africans, and what Africans chose to accept and reject from those models. They will be asked to critically assess the extent to which a Western lens is applied when conceptualizing public health; to achieve this, we will introduce the varied and sometimes competing concepts of health that influence the state of public health policies, practices, and discourse in the West and in Africa. Gender will serve as a crucial analytical tool as we encourage our students to think about the ways that public health is gendered and how health and healing is differently defined and experienced by men and women. In addition to introducing students to health topics in Sub-Saharan Africa, the course also allows students the opportunity to learn about the five core area of the discipline of public health (social and behavioral science, epidemiology, environmental health, biostatistics, and health care administration).
Opera, Nations, and Empires:
This course, to be taught with fellow Fulbright faculty, Laurence Hare (History), Martin Nedbal (Music), and Jennifer Hoyer (World Languages and Literatures), will provide a cultural-historical overview of the changing concepts of the Western “Self” and the non-Western “Other” through an exploration of six German-language operas. The artists under study include Mozart, Weber, Strauss, Wagner, and Lehár. The course will focus on the ways in which artists and intellectuals conceptualized and portrayed Westerners as distinct from non-Western groups, how the depictions of the non-Western “Other” provided a foil for defining the Western identity, and how Western works about non-Western places, peoples, and cultures participated in Western imperialism and racism. At the same time, it will encourage students to place the works in their historical contexts, first through theoretical readings such as Edward Said’s Orientalism and Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, second through primary source materials related to the artists under study (e.g. letters, prose writings, etc.), and finally through considerations of broader currents in contemporary literature and art.
Congratulations, Andrea, Laurence, Sabrina, Kristen, Jennifer, and Martin!
Posted: 4/8/2013
Three History Professors Win Fulbright Awards
The Department of History is pleased to announce that three faculty members have won awards in the annual Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences prize competition:
Fulbright College Outstanding Advisor Award goes to Professor Calvin White
Fulbright College Master Teacher Award goes to Professor Michael Pierce
Fulbright College Master Researcher Award goes to Professor Jeannie Whayne
Profs. Whayne, Pierce, and White will received their awards at the spring meeting of the Fulbright College Faculty (Thursday, April 11, 3:30 pm, Giffels Auditorium).
Congratulations, Michael, Calvin, and Jeannie!
Posted: 4/2/2013
Professor Nikolay Antov Wins Seat in NEH Summer Institute
Continuing his record in winning the National Endowment for the Humanities favor, Professor Nikolay Antov has earned a place in an NEH Summer Institute, “Empires and Interactions across the Early Modern World, 1400-1800," which will be held at Saint Louis University, June 3-28, 2013. Historians Charles Parker (Saint Louis University) and Ahmet Karamustafa (University of Maryland, College Park) will direct “Empires and Interactions,” a seminar offering new theoretical approaches to world history by setting up encounters between societies as a framework for understanding historical developments. During the first week, the institute examines economies of scale and East Asian empires and cultural interaction as a strategy for apprehending the global past. Week two focuses on two major theaters of empire building in the early modern world: the Asian landmass and the Atlantic basin. Lectures and discussion cover the Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire, and the Safavid Empires, followed by European empires in the Atlantic. Week three explores two corollaries of imperial expansion throughout the early modern world: missionary enterprise and biological exchanges. Lectures and discussion cover Islamicization and Christianization in the early modern world; the diffusion of plants, animals, and disease pathogens that affected food supply; reordered populations; and altered ecosystems. In the last week, lectures and discussion shift to the transmission of knowledge across cultural boundaries and the range of intellectual exchanges between Europeans and Asians in cartography, astronomy, and art.
Congratulations, Nikolay!
Posted: 4/4/2013
Professor Nikolay Antov Wins a National Endowment for the Humanities Advanced Fellowship for Research in Turkey (ARIT-NEH)
The Department of History is proud to announce that historian of the Ottoman Empire, Nikolay Antov, has won the prestigious and highly competitive National Endowment for the Humanities Advanced Fellowship for Research in Turkey. Professor Antov will spend the 2013-2014 academic year in Turkey, where he will have access to the scholarly holdings of the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), which maintains two research institutes in the country. The ARIT Istanbul library concentrates on Byzantine and Ottoman Turkey and facilitates archival research in the city. The ARIT Ankara focuses on art, archaeology, and ancient history in its library, and serves Turkish and American archaeologists through its programs. Both centers have residential facilities for fellows and provide general assistance as well as introductions to colleagues, institutions, and authorities in Turkey.
During his year as a N.E.H. Fellow in Turkey, Professor Antov will research and write his book, "Imperial Expansion, Colonization, and Conversion to Islam in the Islamic World's `Wild West': The Formation of the Muslim Community in Ottoman Deliorman (N.E. Balkans): 15th – 16th c." Antov's work on the "Wild West" of the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, is compelling because his analysis focuses on the confrontation between imperial expansion—the process of Turcoman colonization—and the conversion to Islam of a borderlands region. Importantly, Professor Antov interrogates sources for what they reveal about heterodox religious beliefs in Deliorman, such as those expressed by sufi mystics who established themselves as religious leaders in this frontier zone as well the piety of Turcoman pastoral nomads. In terms of his source base, Antov deploys a variety of archival manuscripts, largely consisting of the official documents of the Ottoman state: legal texts and tax records. This past summer, Professor Antov spent three months working in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul, where he mined a new genre, sufi hagiography, to flesh out the more cultural aspects of his work on Islamic heterodoxy in Deliorman. This new archival material will enable him to analyze how the cult of heterodox saints, both in written and architectural form, worked to create spiritual identities in this religiously contested region.
Congratulations, Nikolay!
Posted: 3/27/2013
Two History ABD Studens Win the 2013 Hudson Doctoral Prize in the Humanities
Doctoral candidates Rebecca Howard and Matthew Parnell have won the 2013 James J. Hudson Doctoral Prize in the Humanities. The Hudson Prize goes to outstanding students who have completed all requirements for the degree except the dissertation. The Prize comes with an award of $1,500.
Rebecca Howard is finishing her dissertation, “Brothers of a Common Cause: Reckoning and Reconciliation in Post-Civil War Northwest Arkansas,” under the supervision of Professor Jeannie Whayne. “Brothers of a Common Cause” explores how communities in Northwest Arkansas reconciled and rebuilt after the guerilla war that characterized the Civil War in the region. The war was brutal, but though ill-will lingered, violence declined, communities rebuilt, and Unionists and Confederate families found themselves linked by marriage, business, and mutual protection surprisingly quickly once the war was over. Ms. Howard has conducted research at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where she accessed—and continues to make brilliant use of—the Veterans Pension Applications Collection. Mining the Pension Applications Collection has led Ms. Howard to an untold story of Union involvement of Ozark soldiers, both in terms of military engagement but also in terms of the social history of warfare in Northwest Arkansas. Ms. Howard is also a Doctoral Academy Fellow and winner of various fellowships, including the Blair Graduate Fellowship, the Gordon McNeil Paper Prize, the James J. Hudson Prize in Military History, and the Mary Hudgins Research Award for students working in the field of Arkansas History.
Matthew Parnell is completing his dissertation, "Youth…Power…Egypt: The Development of al-Shabab as a Sociopolitical Force in Egypt, 1882-1923," under the supervision of Professor Joel Gordon. “Youth…Power…Egypt” examines the conflict between the British imperial government in Egypt and an emerging youth culture in urban spaces like Cairo and Alexandria. Mr. Parnell reconstructs revolutionary "youth" (al-shabab) by analyzing an intriguing array of source material: literary works, music, journalism, governmental documents, and political writings of the al-shabab's leaders. His dissertation will unearth tensions between British rule and Egyptian identity, modernization and Islam, youth culture and anti-colonialism, popular culture and revolutionary impetus. Parnell currently is in Cairo on a prestigious international fellowship given out by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). His work has also been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship to Egypt (2010-2011). Mr. Parnell recently presented his research on Egyptian masculinity and youth culture in the early twentieth century at the top international meeting in the field: Middle East Studies Association in Washington, D.C. (November 2012).
As the historians of Fulbright are well aware, our doctoral candidates are simply the best!
Congratulations, Matt and Becky! And Go, HIST, go!
Posted: 3/15/2013
New Online Tool for Students
A new online tool -- PhDs.org -- allows students to compare graduate schools across the nation according to graphs created from the 2010 National Research Council's data set on doctoral programs. Students can break down information on prospective graduate schools according to a number of different factors, and the Department of History at the University of Arkansas fares well.
According to PhDs.org, UofA HIST ranks in the top 52 (a range of 23 to 52) in terms of research productivity, and is first among her benchmarks in terms of publications per faculty member. This rating reflects the fantastic productivity of the U of AR historians, who have published 23 monographs, 6 edited volumes, 2 textbooks, and 1 cd with scholarly text from 2005-2012.
Posted: 3/12/2013
Professor Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon headed to Cambridge University
History is pleased to announce that Professor Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon has won the 2013-2014 Wolfson College Fellowship at Cambridge University. At Cambridge, Prof. Grob-Fitzgibbon will research and write his fourth book: "Imperial Europeans, Post-Imperial Euroskeptics: Britain and the European Continent at the End of Empire." The Wolfson College Fellowship provides full research leave for the academic year and access to all the libraries and special collections of Cambridge University.
For information on Wolfson College itself, see: http://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/
Congratulations, Ben!
Posted: 3/11/2013
History Honors Society Spring Membership Drive
The Department of History is proud to announce its spring 2013 Phi Alpha Theta Membership Drive. Phi Alpha Theta, a History honors society with over 350,000 members, was founded at the University of Arkansas on March 17, 1921.
If you would like to join Phi Alpha Theta, please come to the HIST Department (MAIN 416) and bring your membership application form and a check for $40 made out to Phi Alpha Theta. The deadline is Monday, April 1, 2013.
For information on Phi Alpha Theta, see:
http://phialphatheta.org/
Posted: 3/8/2013
Arkansas Alumna Awarded Tenure and Promoted to Associate Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University
Arkansas Alumna Aneilya Barnes (Ph.D., 2007) has just been awarded tenure and will be promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University.
Dr. Aneilya Barnes's research focuses on the Christianization of ancient Rome and the roles of women in the early Church, especially through the lens of Rome's sacred spaces and shifting landscape. She has authored several peer-reviewed articles on late-antique Roman architectural history, including her essay “Female Patronage and Episcopal Authority in Late Antiquity,” which is forthcoming in the edited volume Envisioning the Medieval Bishop (Brepols). She also has a textbook, Comparative Cultures: World Civilization to 1500, that is scheduled to be in print in the coming year. Additionally, she continues to work on her manuscript, Gender and Domestic Space in the First Christian Basilicas. Her upper-level courses include the history of early Christianity, imperial Rome, and the early Islamic world.
Posted: 2/22/2013
Call For Papers
Society of European Historians' 2nd Annual Undergraduate Research Workshop
"Defining Europe: Boundaries, Cultures, and Identities."
The Society of European Historians is looking for submissions for its workshop on April 17th. The goal of this workshop is to create a relaxed, constructive environment for undergraduate students to present research, on a topic of their choice, to a council of graduate and professional reviewers. Undergraduate students from any field are invited to submit proposals to participate in this workshop. Students may submit proposals for research papers or poster presentations. Selected participants will then present at the conference on Wednesday, April 17th beginning at 1:30.
Suggested topics might include, but are not limited to, the following items:
- Internationalism in Europe and the Origins of Cosmopolitanism
- Military Conquest and Alliances in the Defining of Europe
- Becoming European: How Politics, Economics, and Culture Construct Identity
- Is Western Civilization a European Tradition?
- The Ambiguous Eastern Boundary
- The EU: Defining Europe through Inclusion and Exclusion
- Europe and the Euro: An Economic Answer?
- Migration, Integration, and Cultural Tension in Europe
Proposals should be 150-250 words, outline the topic, and how it relates to the workshop's theme. A successful proposal should also include sources, category (poster or paper), as well as personal contact information. Proposals should be submitted electronically to: seh@uark.edu by 5:00 pm on Friday, March 1st.
Important Dates:
- March 1st: Proposals Due
- April 10th: Projects Due
- April 17th: Presentations
If you have any questions, contact us at seh@uark.edu.
Posted: 2/15/2013
Please Welcome the Newest Historian
Congratulations go out to Michael and Amy McCoy.
Allison Nicole McCoy
was born February 5, 2013, at 2:14 pm, weighing in at 10 lbs 12 oz.
Mom and baby are doing well; daddy and big sister, Ava, are on cloud nine.
Posted: 2/5/2013
History Wins Yet Another Fulbright College Dissertation Research Award
History is proud to announce yet another research prize. Doctoral candidate Aaron Moulton has won the 2013 Fulbright College Dissertation Research Award. Distinguished Professor Randall Woods is supervising Mr. Moulton's dissertation, which is entitled: "The Transnational 'Cold' War in Central America and the Caribbean: Revolutionary Exiles, Counterrevolutionary Exiles, Dictators, and the United States, 1944-1954." In the dissertation, Moulton tackles a fascinating episode in the history of the Cold War: the 1954 U.S.-sponsored coup in Guatemala. Instead of centering his analysis on the C.I.A. and President Truman, Moulton will reach into the Caribbean and mine its rich archival sources to present a more nuanced study of dictatorship and anti-dictatorship movements in the region as well as the intellectual culture of leftists and exiles who opposed—and undermined—the regimes of powerful autocrats.
Congratulations, Aaron!
Posted: 1/17/2013
Historian Wins Fulbright College Summer Research Stipend
HIST continues its record of sweeping up all of the College’s prize money. Labor historian Michael Pierce has won the 2013 Fulbright College Summer Research Stipend. Professor Pierce will use the stipend to complete the archival phase of his new book project, The Arkansas Labor Movement. In The Arkansas Labor Movement, Pierce argues that labor played a central role in creating a biracial political alliance in favor of civil rights. His theory contradicts the prevailing historical wisdom which maintains that McCarthyism destroyed the biracial efforts of organized labor to push a Civil Rights agenda. Therefore, any advances made between blacks and whites in the 1930s and 1940s were overwhelmed by the racial push-back of the 1950s. Importantly, Professor Pierce is the first labor historian to visit these charged issues in decades, and his research is at center stage in current scholarly discussions about the nature of the civil rights movement, its causes, and its relationship to the working class and the labor movement.
Congratulations, Michael, and go HIST, go!
Posted: 1/16/2013
Graduate Student Work Recognized in Art Bulletin
The most recent issue of The Art Bulletin (university access required), a leading journal in the field of art histroy, features a lengthy review of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville Arkansas, with a passage on the "fascinating small exhibition" on the Arkansas Traveler that was co-curated by history doctoral student Louise M. Hancox. The exhibit itself was based upon the work of Hancox for her doctoral dissertation, which she is completing under the direction of Professor Beth Schweiger. Not only did Hancox write the exhibit labels, but she also selected and located the pieces used at Crystal Bridge to tell their own version of the tale of the Arkansas Traveler. The Arkansas Traveler was based upon the humorous tales of Colonel Sanford Faulker about his journeys through Arkansas and interactions with her savvy inhabitants. The story was immortalized in performance, song, painting, and other media, and as the exhibit co-curated by Hancox makes clear, the traveler held great resonance in the 1840s as it was incorporated into the political discussions surrounding the presidential election. It went on to be a touchstone for larger discussions about southern identity.
Posted: 1/4/2013
History Welcomes Its Newest Historian
Dr. Calvin White and his wife Shatara are proud to announce the birth of their daughter
Monroe Adeline Catherine White
Born: Saturday, December 1, 2012Time: 8:40 pm
Weight: 7 lbs 10 oz.
Length: 19 in.
Mom and baby are home and doing well; dad, while sleep deprived, seems to be doing ok, as well.
Posted: 12/5/2012
Two History Students Awarded SURF Grants
Two history students--Stuart Bailey and James Brown--have been awarded SURF grants from the Arkansas Department of Education. The SURF grants will help the students to engage in research for their honors theses in history.
Stuart Bailey, an honors student and double major in history and German, working with Dr. Laurence Hare on an honors thesis entitled, “The Road to Fahrvergnügen: Volkswagen and Car Culture in Postwar Germany.” In the thesis, Stuart traces the growth of the iconic international automaker and its innovations in design and advertising in order to shed new light on consumerism and “Americanization” in postwar Germany. Bailey will use his SURF grant to travel to Volkswagen’s North American headquarters in Chattanooga, TN, to learn about German corporate practice in the United States.
Professor Brogi is guiding James Brown's honor's thesis -- “Greece and Europe Since 1947: History and Identity.” Brown intends to visit the Lyndon B. Johnson, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman libraries with his SURF. His honor's thesis will examine the evolution of Greek identity during the Cold War, contrasting it with similar processes in greater Europe and placing particular emphasis on the role of anti-Americanism in the development of Greek xenophobia and a broader national consciousness. Brown is pursuing majors in History, International Relations, and Political Science.
Posted: 11/30/2012
Doctoral Candidate wins SHAFR Research Grant
Doctoral candidate Aaron Moulton has won the Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grant, awarded through the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). The Samuel Flagg Bemis Grant supports doctoral students whose dissertations cover aspects of U.S. foreign relations history. Mr. Moulton will use the grant to conduct research in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico.
SHAFR is the leading organization for historians of American foreign relations. Mr. Moulton will receive the research grant at SHAFR’s luncheon held during the American Historical Association (AHA) Annual Meeting in New Orleans this January.
The grant is named after Samuel Flagg Bemis, one of the most prominent scholars of U.S. diplomatic history. Bemis’s 1943 work, The Latin American Policy of the United States, remains a foundational text on U.S.-Latin American relations.
Congratulations, Aaron!
Posted: 11/27/2012
Graduate Student Wins Presidential Library Grant
Aaron Moulton, ABD in history, has won the 2012 Harry S. Truman Library Institute Research Grant. Moulton will use the grant to support archival work for his dissertation "The Transnational 'Cold' War in Central America and the Caribbean: Revolutionary Exiles, Counterrevolutionary Exiles, Dictators, and the United States, 1944-1954." The dissertation, under the direction of Professors Randall Woods and Kathryn Sloan, presents an international history of the battles between transnational networks of revolutionaries, presidents, counterrevolutionaries, and dictators in the larger Caribbean Basin in the 1940s and 1950s. Ultimately, he argues that dictators utilized counterrevolutionary exiles and U.S. resources to contain revolutionary exiles and presidents int heir own "backyard." By the early 1950s, dictators and counterrevolutionary exiles targeted Guatemala, the sole remaining 'mecca' for revolutionary exiles seeking to eliminate the dictatorships of Rafael Trujillo and Anastasio Somoza. Their attempts to remove Guatemala emerged form a regional conflict and goals independent of the US-USSR bipolar Cold War, serving as an important foundation for the infamous 1953-1954 US-sponsored coup.
Posted: 11/13/2012
U of AR Historian Proves Why History Matters in the New York Times
In the October 22, 2012, Opinion Pages of the New York Times, Arkansas historian Robert Finlay responds to the review of a book by Chrystia Freeland entitled The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent. In her book, Freeland draws a parallel between the rulers of the Venetian Republic and the increasingly privileged 1 percent in the United States. Not content to let this pass, Finlay answers this presentist view of La Serenissima by countering that unlike the economic elite in this country, the Venetian nobles remained obsessively concerned with sustaining and placating those excluded from their ranks. If the 1 percent of the United States is not to self-destruct, Finlay argues, it would do well to follow the example of the Venetian elite.
For the entire letter to the Editor of the New York Times, click on the below link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/opinion/take-a-cue-from-venice.html?emc=eta1
Posted: 10/25/2012
Professor Alessandro Brogi Wins Book Award for "Confronting America"
The Department of History is pleased to announce that Professor Alessandro Brogi has won the 2012 Smith Book Award given by the European Section of the Southern Historical Association (SHA). The SHA bestowed its top European prize on Professor Brogi’s latest tome: Confronting America: The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). The Smith Award recognizes the best book published in European history by a Southern press, a member of the SHA’s European Section, or a faculty member of a Southern College or University.
The Smith Award Selection Committee was unanimous in its decision to award the prize to Confronting America. Committee members hailed Brogi’s erudite monograph as a “tour de force that weaves together diplomatic history with intellectual trends in the U.S., France, and Italy to illuminate the complex relationship among high culture, mass culture, economic trends, and diplomacy in the various phases of the Cold War.” In the Committee’s assessment, Confronting America “transforms our understanding of the Cold War” and is also “highly readable and accessible, even for non-specialists, with a broad appeal for general readers.”
Professor Brogi will receive the Smith Book Award this November at the annual meeting of the SHA in Mobile, Alabama.
Posted: 10/17/2012
Four Fellows for SEC Academic Leadership Development Program Named by Provost
Four University of Arkansas faculty members have been named as Fellows of the Southeastern Conference Academic Leadership Development Program for 2012-2013. The four are: Michael Looper, professor and head of animal science department in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Science; Jeannie Hulen, associate professor of ceramics and chair of the art department in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences;, Calvin White, Jr., assistant professor of history and director of the African and African American Studies program in the Fulbright College; and Matthew Waller, professor of supply chain management and chair of supply chain management in the Sam M. Walton College of Business.
The program identifies and mentors the next generation of academic leaders SEC schools. Fellows participate in two regional workshops as well as in programs specific to each campus over the course of the academic year.
“The ALDP Fellows represent the strength, talent, and expertise of the faculty at the University of Arkansas,” said Sharon Gaber, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. “I could not be more pleased with the group and appreciate their interest in the leadership program. They are excellent representatives of the University and its academic leaders.”
The program is in its fifth year and was an early initiative of the leadership of the SEC academic consortium. When the academic consortium was absorbed into the SEC, the presidents and chancellors chose to continue the leadership development program within the SEC academic initiatives. The four individuals participating for the 2012-13 year are recently appointed to their roles as departmental chairs or academic program directors.
Michael Looper was appointed as head of the animal science department head in September 2011. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Arkansas and his doctorate from Oklahoma State University. Prior to his appointment, Looper was a research animal scientist for the United States Department of Agriculture. He served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and as an assistant professor and extension research specialist at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.
Jeannie Hulen was appointed as department chair of the art department in 2010. She joined department in 2002 and was promoted to associate professor in 2008. She earned a bachelor of fine arts from the Kansas City Art Institute and a master of fine arts in ceramics from Louisiana State University. Her curatorial projects have included organizing major symposia on the contemporary movements in the field of ceramics, serving as an invited art juror for eight exhibitions and art festivals. A member of the University of Arkansas Public Arts Oversight Committee, Hulen has also served as a resident artist at the Graduate Institute of Applied Arts at the Tainan National University in Tainan, Taiwan.
Calvin White, Jr. was appointed director of African and African American Studies in July 2011. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Central Arkansas and his doctorate from the University of Mississippi. He joined the history department as an assistant professor in 2007. White’s scholarship emphasizes Southern and African American religion and his first book, The Rise to Respectability: Race, Religion, and the Church of God in Christ, was published this year by the University of Arkansas Press. He has been nominated for the Imhoff Award for Outstanding Teaching and Student Mentorship and the Omni Center Award for Social Justice and Outreach. White serves on the university-wide Silas B. Hunt Legacy Selection Committee and the Martin Luther King Day Planning Committee. His departmental service includes service on the planning and fiscal committee and the executive committee. He served as a Gilder-Lehrman Fellow at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York.
Matthew Waller was appointed as the first chair of the newly created supply chain management department in July 2011. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Pennsylvania State University. Waller joined the management and logistics department at the U of A in 1995 after teaching for one year as a visiting assistant professor. He was promoted to full professor in 2007. Waller holds the Garrison Endowed Chair in Supply Chain Management and is co-editor of the Journal of Business Logistics. In 2008, he was the director of the Walton College of Business Executive MBA program in Shanghai, China. He has served as a management consultant to Hewlett-Packard, General Mills, Southwestern Energy, and J.B. Hunt. His opinion pieces have appeared in The Financial Times and in the Wall Street Journal Asia. Waller was the founder and first president of the Northwest Arkansas Roundtable of the Council of Supply Chain Management professionals. Besides serving as a faculty senator, Waller has served on numerous departmental committees.
The Fellows all received strong recommendations from their deans and were selected through a nomination process among faculty who are serving in administrative roles in their departments. The Fellows will attend workshops, along with colleagues from across the Southeastern Conference, at the University of Tennessee in October and at the University of Florida in February.
Kathy Van Laningham, vice provost for planning, serves as the liaison to the Academic Leadership Development Program for the University of Arkansas. She was elected to serve a two-year term as chair of the liaison group beginning this year.
Posted: 10/17/2012
Willard B. Gatewood, Jr. Residence Hall Dedication
Historians were pleased to celebrate one of their own on Monday October 1, with the dedication of the Willard B. Gatewood, Jr. Reisdence Hall. At a lovely ceremony attended by Gatewood's family, friends, fellow administrators, and many of his colleagues from the history department, Chancellor Gearhart honored Gatewood for his work as Chancellor at the University of Arkansas, his founding of the University of Arkansas Press, and his triumphing of the Sturgis Fellowships for undergraduates. Professor Lynda Coon spoke of his many accomplishments as a scholar, award-winning teacher, and history's first endowed chair including his term as President of the Southern Historical Association, his many books, his 25 doctoral students, and over 30 MAs. Gatewood's widow, son, grandchildren, and daughter attended the event. Gatewood's daughter, Ellis Elliott, concluded the ceremony with the moving observation that it was entirely fitting that her father, who was so treasured by the students and graduate students of the university, should be remembered with a residence hall dedicated to student living and learning.
Posted: 10/1/2012