PAST AND PRESENT

 

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY                                   UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES                            VOLUME 11, SPRING 2006

 

THE VIEW FROM THE CHAIR

For the History Department, 2005–2006 has been a year of change.  In December, Rita Hettinger, our head secretary and Unit Business Manager, retired after twenty-four years in the Department.  Her successor is Jon-Paul Moody, who came to us from UofL’s Department of Environmental Health and Safety.  Then, at the end of this month, our Colonial and Revolutionary U.S. and Military Historian Wayne Lee will leave to take up an appointment at the University of North Carolina.  In July, Yuxin Ma of Armstrong Atlantic State University will join us as UofL’s new historian of East Asia.  We welcome Jon-Paul and Yuxin to the Department.

It has also been a year of accomplishment.  Since the last newsletter, Professors Ann Allen, Christine Ehrick, Raphael Njoku, Bruce Tyler, and Mark Blum, and I have all published books.  Ed Rademaker, one of our most popular part-time instructors, received a President’s Award for Teaching.  Our students have distinguished themselves as well.  Their achievements are detailed elsewhere in the newsletter, but I would like to single out for mention two History majors who received prestigious scholarships: Kelly Schaller, who in the summer of 2005 went to Cambridge University on an English-Speaking Union Scholarship; and Elizabeth Russell, who has won UofL’s Mary Churchill Humphrey Scholarship for two years of graduate study at Oxford University in 2006–2008. 

Next year will be special for us, as 2007 marks the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Department of History.  One of our graduate students, Michella Marino, is writing a history of the Department.  If any alumni wish to share memories or reminiscences with Ms. Marino, please write to me (Department of History, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292) or email me (john.mcleod@louisville.edu).

As always, we are grateful for your continuing support.  All gifts, big and small, are put to good use to benefit our students, programs, and faculty development.  I am particularly pleased to acknowledge the generosity of George and Marjory Yater.  Mr. Yater, a distinguished local historian and author of Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio, the definitive history of Louisville, died in January of this year, and Mrs. Yater passed away in 1998.  They very kindly remembered the Department of History with generous bequests.  We have used their gifts to establish the new Marjory H. and George H. Yater Fund, which will provide programmatic support for students and faculty.

And now, read on, and see what is happening in your Department.

 

John McLeod

 

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR GRADUATES

The following History majors graduated from UofL in 2005–6:

 

Spring 2006

Alisa Pearl Atkinson

Holly Christine Broda

Jennifer Elizabeth Bush

Shannon Kimberly Carnell  cum laude

Brittany Jane Casper

Catherine Anne Crabb

Lindsay Elizabeth Dalton

Bonita Marie Emerick  cum laude

Stephanie A. Forcht

Erin Elizabeth Fortney

Sherri Shonte Harris  magna cum laude

Adam Edmund Hendershot  cum laude

Nicholas Alexander Howard

Stephen Paul Hutchens

Lyndsey R.Kirchner

Jennifer Lynn Knight

William Joseph Korfhage

Jay Patrick Luckett

Katherine Carole Markham

Jason Thomas Martin

Laura A. McCammon

Travis Stuart McClain  cum laude

Sarah Corinne Nash

Bradley Robert Palmer  magna cum laude

Christopher Patrick Petzold

Brandon Daniel Riddle  cum laude

Keric Cleophus Alvin Seals

James Albert Shacklett

Peter Robert Soper  cum laude

Seth L. Stewart

Jennifer Kumari Tucker

Michael Flynn Turner

Michael Douglass Worful

 

Fall 2005

Tara Renee Adams  magna cum laude

Matthew Dehaven Bargo

Brandi Nicole Bowling

Samuel Bradley

Mark J. Clem

Steven H. Haynes

Nicholas Gerald Johnson

Jeffery John Kisegy

Michael Clinton Mansfield

Melissa A. Offutt

Timothy E. Quinlan

Shane Thomas Snelling

James J. Uptain

Samantha B. Watson

 

Summer 2005

Adam Wayne Floyd

Aaron Maurice Gasaway

Lisanna Marie Lawson

Kathryn Grace Mbaye

Sarah Elizabeth McPherson

Jeffery Laverne Morrell

Kenneth A. Reynolds

Amber Aleece Schoenbachler  cum laude

Brent Joseph Scobey

Irving Dale Smith

Laura Lynn Thomas

Jeremy Todd Whitney

 

The following graduate students have recently earned their MAs in History:

 

Spring 2006

John Joseph Baldi

Wade Franklin Richardson

 

Fall 2005

Bryan Shane Bush

Noah G. Huffman

Anne Reeves

 

Summer 2005

Robert Manson Peters

 

STUDENT NEWS

Donald Baker has been selected as the 2006 winner of the Thomas Kennedy Helm, Jr. Colonial History Fellowship, sponsored by the Society for Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

 

Nicole Cissell has been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Loretta Green has been awarded a $1000 Thomas Hamilton Graduate Scholarship in U.S. History for 2006–7 and a $1000 Jurdem Graduate Scholarship.

 

Erin Henle has been selected to receive the 2006–7 Senior History Major Award.

 

Jacob Lee won two first places in the Graduate Division at two different conferences this spring: the Bluegrass History Conference at the University of Kentucky and the 2006 Kentucky Regional Conference of Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honors Society, for his paper, “Colonel Reuben T. Durrett, the Filson Club, and Historical Memory in Postbellum Kentucky.”  Jacob also received a History Department travel grant to conduct research for his MA thesis on the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation on Unionist sentiment in Kentucky during the Civil War. This past year, Jacob was awarded a $1000 Thomas Hamilton Graduate Scholarship in U.S. History for 2006–7 and a $1000 Jurdem Graduate Scholarship.

 

Jana Leighty has been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Michella Marino received a History Department travel grant to attend the Oral History Association annual meeting held in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Michella is working on oral history in her work on women during World War II.  Michella has also  been awarded the History Department’s Second Year Graduate Assistantship as well as a 2006–7 Ryant Memorial Award.

 

Katherine McGregor has been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Jarett Melville has been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Lisa Modica has been awarded the History Department’s First Year Graduate Assistantship for 2006–7.

 

Sara Mudd has been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Bradley Palmer was awarded the 2006 Mary K. Tachau Award for Excellence in History.

 

Christina Patten, a history major, was accepted into the NSCS International Scholar Laureate Program.  As a result she is participating in an archaeological excavation in China this spring.  Christina has also been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Kimberly Powers received a History Department Travel Award to attend an eight-week Russian program at the School of Russian and Asian Studies in Moscow.  Kimberly has also been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Lindsey Puckett has been selected to receive the 2006–7 History Department Assistantship.

 

Anne Reeves won the best paper award in the Graduate Division at the annual meeting of the Kentucky Association of the Teachers of History.  Her paper, “At Work in the Fields: An Essay into the Work Lives of Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Labouring Women,” was produced under the direction of John Cumbler.  She also won the George C. Herring Award for the best paper by a graduate student in Kentucky, administered by the University of Kentucky.

 

Elizabeth Russell was awarded the Mary Churchill Humphrey Scholarship to study at Oxford University in 2006–8.

Cody Sharp has been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Michael Slaton has been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Peter Soper received a History Department Travel Award to participate in an internship at Fort Knox on work related to his MA thesis on twentieth-century American military and political history.  Peter has also been selected to receive a $1000 Jurdem Graduate Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

Matthew Stanley has been awarded the 2006–7 Filson Historical Society Internship.

 

James Williams has been selected to receive a Harry L. and Cecilia H. Smith Endowed Scholarship for 2006–7.

 

RITA HETTINGER RETIRES

After twenty-four years of service to the History Department faculty and students, Rita Hettinger has retired.  She will be sorely missed.  To commemorate the occasion, Professor Ann Allen composed the following poem, which she read at Rita’s retirement party.  We include it here as it expresses feelings that many of us in the Department share.

 

To Rita, on Her Retirement

            From Ann

 

Dear Rita, each and every day,

You’ve guided us along the way.

At 9 AM, when we come in,

You greet us with a friendly grin,

And then remind us, one by one,

Of something that we haven’t done!

Perhaps a book order is late,

Or a C.V. is out of date.

We must not miss a vital meeting,

Or we must sign a birthday greeting,

Or else a candidate is due,

To visit for an interview.

But always, there’s so much to do!

And thanks to you, all runs precisely.

No one but you can nag so nicely.

 

Dear Rita, you’re the one to whom,

We turn whenever crises loom.

It’s you who acted as our tutor

As we acquired each new computer.

You understand the mysteries

Of travel forms and AWPs.

It’s you who do the paperwork,

And know where hidden secrets lurk.

With gifts and cards and smiles and flowers,

You’ve livened all our weary hours.

With cookies, candy, brownies, cakes,

You’ve sweetened all our coffee breaks.

The Christmas pot-luck - what a feast!

It lasted for a week, at least.

Through all the days, weeks, months, and years,

We’ve shared our joys and shared our tears.

 

Dear Rita, we will surely lack

Your smiling face, and want you back!

But then, we’ll hear the dreadful news

That you are somewhere on a cruise,

Enjoying scenic panoramas,

While sailing down to the Bahamas,

Or basking somewhere in the sun,

Where there is nothing to be done!

So then good-bye, and good luck too,

And may our blessings go with you.

 

GOTTSCHALK LECTURE

Since 1987, the History Department has hosted the Louis R. Gottschalk Lectures, which promote the study of History by inviting distinguished historians to UofL.  Gottschalk (1899–1975) was a noted historian of the American and French Revolutions.  He authored seven books, and served as president of the American Historical Association in 1953.  Dr. Gottschalk taught at UofL from 1923 to 1927, when he moved to the University of Chicago. 

This past year we were fortunate to host two excellent Gottschalk Lecturers, both of whom delivered stimulating talks to audiences including UofL faculty and students, and a diverse cross-section of the greater Louisville community.

 

On November 14, 2005, the Department of History and the Latin American Studies Program were honored to host Dr. Jose Moya, professor of History at UCLA and director of the “Forum on Migration” at Barnard College in New York City. A distinguished scholar of the history of immigration both in Latin America and globally, Moya is the author of numerous publications including the award-winning book Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (California, 1998). Dr. Moya gave the History Department’s Fall 2005 Gottschalk Lecture, speaking on the topic of “Migration and Modernity in the Western Hemisphere”, an engaging and insightful lecture on the role of European immigration in shaping nineteenth-century modernity in the Americas. Dr. Moya also gave a number of other presentations, in both English and Spanish, to other groups on campus earlier in the day.

            On March 6, Dr. Toyin Falola, The Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History at The University of Texas at Austin, presented a Gottschalk lecture on “A History of African History.” Falola’s lecture traced the historical development of African history in the context of change.  According to Falola, modern “African history was conceived in the wombs of colonialism.” For clarity, this underlines the radical change brought by western-style literacy on the way African history was recorded in precolonial Africa.

            Overall, Falola, a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, author of more than sixteen books, and editor or co-editor of fifty-six others, explains that the recent successes recorded in the development of African history cannot be fully accounted for without the contributions of non-African historians of Africa and the remarkable growth of African Studies in the United States since the late 1940s.

 

WELCOME  JON-PAUL MOODY

History Department Welcomes New Unit Business Manager

Hi, my name is Jon-Paul Moody, the new Unit Business Manager for the History Department.  My responsibilities involve management of the office and assistance to the Chair and Faculty.  I handle the reconciliation of the History budget which includes payroll, travel reimbursements, grant management and purchases; assist with the creation of our course schedule and hiring of our Part-time Instructors.  In addition, I supervise staff and students. 

            I have been at the University for 21 years and am very excited to work in an academic unit.  It has been a great change from my previous positions in the Department of Environmental Health & Safety and the Bursar’s Office.   I replaced Rita Hettinger who retired in December 2005 after 24 years in the History Department.  Her organizational skills made learning my job much easier.  I have been able to build on the established systems and make the various processes easier for our Chair, Faculty and staff.  My working relationship with Lee Keeling, our other staff person, has been great!  Her knowledge of the History Department has been a tremendous asset.  As I continue to learn, each day is different and there is always something new.  I am blessed to be working in the History Department.

 

HISTORY FACULTY PUBLISH A RECORD NUMBER OF BOOKS

Since January of 2005, eleven of our History Department faculty members have published books: Bruce Adams, Tiny Revolutions in Russia; Karen Spierling, Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva; Thomas Mackey, Pursuing Johns; John Cumbler, Northeast and Midwest United States: An Environmental History; Lee Shai Weissbach, Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History; Ann Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe 1890-1970; Christine Ehrick, The Shield of the Weak; Raphael Njoku, Culture and Customs of Morocco; Bruce Tyler, Louisville in World War II; Mark Blum, Continuity, Quantum, Continuum, and Dialectic: The Foundational Logics of Western Historical Thinking; and most recently, John McLeod, African Elites in India.

 

A FOND FAREWELL TO WAYNE LEE

“In my mind [and body] I’m going to Carolina”

As some of you know, I’m departing the University of Louisville this summer to accept a job at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  It is not without regret that I leave Louisville.  I have come to respect the department very highly, and I have greatly enjoyed the students.  We have some very fine undergraduates and graduate students, and teaching here has been its own reward.

Wayne E. Lee

 

HISTORY DEPARTMENT WELCOMES NEW FACULTY

Yuxin Ma received her PhD in East Asian History from the University of Minnesota in 2003 and for the past three years she has taught as an Assistant Professor at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia.  Ma’s research interests are in modern China and women/gender issues in East Asia.  She is currently revising a manuscript based on her dissertation, which explores Chinese women’s print media from the late Qing to the Republican period.

            She has placed articles in Japan Studies Review (2002), Twentieth Century China (2003) The Journal of Georgia Association of Historians (2003), Gender Issue (2005) and Studies on Asia (2006).  She has an article to appear in Women’s History Review (2007), and a book chapter to appear in Feminist Locations, a book contracted to the University of Georgia Press.  Her hobbies are fitness exercise, swimming and skating.

 

FACULTY NEWS

Bruce Adams presented a paper at the Australasian Association for European History Conference in Melbourne, Australia last July.  His essay on that topic will appear in a Kennan Institute book on Russian migrations this year.  Bruce continues to edit the Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian, Soviet, and Eurasian History, volume six of which was published this year.  He was also interviewed on the Voice of America's hour-long, live call-in show “Talk to America” last August.  The topic of the show was Bruce’s recent book, Tiny Revolutions in Russia. Most importantly, Bruce's third grandchild, Logan Friend Adams, was born the week before Christmas. As Joseph Stalin said in 1936, “Life is getting better, comrades.  Life is becoming more joyful.”

 

Mark Blum published his book, Continuity, Quantum, Continuum, and Dialectic: The Foundational Logics of Western Historical Thinking (Peter Lang, 2006).  This volume is the fruition of years of research, and both Hayden White and the Husserlian scholar Robert Sokolowski have endorsed the text.  He also published an article in Analecta Husserliana this past year that is a thematic condensation of the book.

 

Glenn Crothers published one book chapter, one journal article, and two encyclopedia entries, and delivered four conference presentations.  In addition to his work at the UofL, Glenn is the Director of Research at The Filson Historical Society, and he has accepted a position as associate editor for the journal Ohio Valley History.

 

Christine Ehrick published her first book, The Shield of the Weak: Feminism and the State in Uruguay, 1903–1933 in June of 2005 with the University of New Mexico Press.  In March of 2006, she presented a paper at the Latin American Studies Association Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

 

Benjamin Harrison team-taught a course on “War and Conscience” for the Honors Program this past spring.  The course focused on American pacifism during wartime in an effort to provoke students to engage, think critically about, and question, some of the basic assumptions on which our society is based.

 

Robert Kebric delivered a presentation and chaired a panel at the Fourth Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanites at Honolulu in January.  He has served as a consultant to Lucent Press for two encyclopedias, one on Ancient Greece and the other on Mesopotamia. 

 

Tracy K’Meyer was selected as program chair for the Oral History Association national meeting in Little Rock, October 2006.  On July 1, Professor K’Meyer will become Vice Chair of the Department of History.

 

Wayne Lee ran the field school last summer in Virginia, and spent a month in the mountains of northern Albania researching the ethnography and history of the tribal people who live there.  He has served as an associate editor for Peter Karsten, et al., eds, Encyclopedia of War and American Society, 3 vols. (New York: Sage Publications, 2005).  He also published an article, “From Gentility to Atrocity: The Continental Army's Ways of War,” Army History 62 (Winter 2006): 4–19.

 

Scott Levi delivered papers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and at the annual conference of the American Historical Association in Philadelphia.  This past year he was appointed a Soros Foundation Open Society Institute Central Asia Research and Training Initiative International Scholar. 

 

Thomas Mackey has been awarded a travel grant from the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina to work in the collections there. This research will advance his work on his next monograph on legal culture in the nineteenth-century United States.

 

John McLeod published his latest book, African Elites in India:  Habshi Amarat, this spring.  The book, which Dr McLeod co-edited with Dr Kenneth X. Robbins, is a groundbreaking series of essays on the experience of Africans who rose to power in India between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.  The Indian launch of the book was held in Goa, India, in January, and the U.S. launch took place at the Smithsonian Institution on June 10.

 

Raphael Njoku For Raphael, 2005 was a year of harvests.  Among other things, he celebrated the arrival of his second daughter Chinelo (The Lord thinks for me).  Chinelo arrived in October along with his first book Culture and Customs of North Africa: Morocco (Greenwood, 2005).  He also published two journal articles and three book chapters. To crown the year, he received one of six prestigious Schomburg Center Residence Fellowships.  This means that in 2007, he will have the opportunity to see President Bill Clinton’s NY office, while pursuing a study on African Masks and Masquerades and the Carnivals of the Black Diaspora at the rich Schomburg Library in Harlem, New York!

 

Karen Spierling published “Making Use of God’s Remedies: Negotiating the Material Care of Children in Reformation Geneva” in The Sixteenth Century Journal.  Beginning July 1, Professor Spierling will take over as the Director of Graduate Studies for the History Department.

 

Bruce Tyler published this past year his fourth book, Louisville in World War II (Arcadia Publishing, 2005) and an article, “King Kong and Racial Imagery,” in a major edited volume, King Kong Cometh.  He currently has a selection of his WW II photographs on display at the Louisville Free Public Library in the Bernheim Gallery.  He has recently been interviewed on WFPL “State of Affairs” and he twice appeared on the WHAS “Denton Randal” talk show to discuss his book.

 

Lee Shai Weissbach published his study Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History (Yale University Press, 2005). During this past academic year, Prof. Weissbach has been invited to lecture on the topic of his research all over the country.  Prof. Weissbach has begun work on a new project, based on the writings of a Jewish memoirist who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the 2006–7 academic year, Prof. Weissbach has been selected by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board to serve as a Senior Scholar in Israel, and will be spending his sabbatical leave at the University of Haifa. 

 

ALUMNI NEWS

What ever happened to your fellow classmates from UofL?  How has your degree in History helped you in your career?  Past and Present would like to hear from our History alumni.

 

Jennifer Cole earned her MLS at the University of Pittsburgh and is now working at Princeton University in their Archives Division.

 

Aaron Coleman is now ABD at the University of Kentucky.

 

Robert Goebel and Robert Symon are assisting the Farmington Historic Home Association in their preparations for the forthcoming Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial.

 

Katherine Burger Johnson (MA 1993) is the Archivist for the Manuscript Collection at the University Archives and Records Center and the Archivist/Curator of the History Collections of the UofL Kornhauser Health Sciences Library.  This past year she published a book chapter and presented a paper at the University of London, both on the subject of medical personnel in World War I.  She has also served as a consulting scholar for two branches of the Louisville Free Public Library and served on a review committee for the National Endowment for the Humanities.  She was promoted to Associate Professor in July 2005.

 

James Markert (BA 1997) published his second novel this past year, a suspense thriller set in Kentucky, titled Eyes in the Darkness.  James is currently working on two more novels, Unseen Enemy and The Requiem Rose, and is keeping himself busy working as a tennis pro at the Louisville Tennis Club.

 

Joseph Oglesby (BA 1953), Kentucky playwright, journalist best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize nominee, has published a new book, Dinner with D. W. Griffith and other Memories.  The novel is a collection of sixteen stories that recount the author’s “adventures and misadventures” growing up in Kentucky in the 1930s and 40s.

 

Aaron Purcell received his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in May 2006.

 

David Wilkins (MA 2004) is currently a law student at Saint Louis University, and has recently received two honors.  David won the Judge Robert Dowd Award for Outstanding Appellate Advocacy for his performance in the school’s annual Moot Court competition, and he was also named managing editor of the Saint Louis University Public Law Review.  This summer David will be working for the St. Louis Circuit Attorney.

 

THANK YOU…

Our expenses continue to rise faster than our funding.  The History Department depends upon the generosity of our alumni and friends.  We greatly appreciate your help in the past and hope that you can continue to help us in the future.  Donations can be big or small and can be directed to anything of your choosing, from the costs associated with this newsletter, to scholarships for promising students, to renovations in Gottschalk Hall, to the creation of endowed professorships in special fields.  You can make a one-time gift, an annual pledge, or a planned or deferred gift.  All gifts are tax-deductible within the guidelines of the Internal Revenue Code.

 

If you would like to support the History Department, please contact Mr. Christopher Miller of the UofL Development Office, (502) 852-1248, or cem@louisville.edu, or visit the Development Department’s website at www.give.louisville.edu.  Please be sure to tell them that you want to direct your gift to the History Department.

 

We are very grateful to the following alumni and friends for their generous donations to the Department:

 

David Bonham,Ellen Bonham, Charles Bockwell Jr.

Mary Brockwell, Rhonda Burnett, Matthew Church, Tony Clark, Nina Coyle, Richard Cushing, Dennis Cusick, James Dendy Jr., Pamela Dockery, Henry Enck, Thomas Garner, Bobby Garner, Mark Hampton Jr., Barbara Hartung, Susan Herlin, Paul Howe, John Klus, Maria Luescher, James Mackenzie, James Markert, Donald Miller, David Morgan,  John Neidert, Alton Neurath, John Scheer, Paul Sehlinger, Stephen Sheek, John Wagner, Gary Warren, Donald White, Aaron Yates

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Department of History                                                  

University of Louisville

Louisville, KY  40292

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Past and Present is edited by Professor Scott Levi.  Please send any comments or contributions to scott.levi@louisville.edu, or Dr. Scott Levi, Department of History, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292.