MOMENTS IN HISTORY
NEWSLETTER
August 2024
Faculty Moments
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IN THIS ISSUE
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Media Moments
Current Student Moments
Future Moments Future
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Photos: University of Maryland unless otherwise noted
Alumni Moments
History Has Its Eyes On You
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Freedmen and Southern Society Project Awarded New Grant
history has its eyes on you
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission has awarded a new $125,000 grant to the Freedmen and Southern Society Project to continue its work on the multi-volume Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. The grant, which is for one year beginning August 1, 2024, will support the indexing of Law and Justice, late-stage editorial work on Family and Kinship, and preliminary document selection for Church, School, and Community. For a full list of the newly announced NHPRC awards, click HERE. Photo courtesy of NYPL. Greene Julie Greene was reently named Alumna of the Year at her highschool in Nebraska. Even then Julie was active in pursuing political and social justice. Congratulations Julie! photo Hazkani, Baldwin, Simmons, https://research.umd.edu/articles/faculty-scholars-and-researchers-honored-2024-maryland-research-excellence-celebration
Director of Graduate Studies Quincy Mills Mills
The Department of History is pleased to announce that the History and Library Science & Information Science (HiLS) Dual Degree Program was selected to receive the 2024 Program Award for Graduate Student Mentorship from the University of Maryland Graduate School. The Director of Graduate Studies is Quincy Mills and the Graduate Coordinator is Jodi Hall. According to the award letter: "The award recognizes and honors graduate programs on campus who are setting standards of excellence in mentorship. Your department was chosen based on the following criteria: 1) having a strong Statement of Expectations for Graduate Student Mentoring; and 2) receiving excellent feedback from your graduate students on gradSERU survey questions about the quality of faculty mentoring and advising." The Award was presented at the Graduate School’s Annual Fellowship and Award Celebration on May 14, 2024.
HiLS Wins Program Award for Graduate Student Mentorship
Photo courtesy of AHA
Antoine Borrut, Mikhail Dolbilov, Julie Greene, and Julie Taddeo were honored by UMD's College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) on May 10, 2024. Every year, ARHU gives special recognition to faculty members who have published a book during the academic year. Antoine Borrut published Between Memory and Power: The Syrian Space under the Late Umayyads and Early Abbasids (c. 72-193/692-809). Mikhail Dolbilov published Zhizn' tvorimogo romana: Ot avanteksta kontekstu ‘Anny Kareninoi’ the Russian translation of his monograph Life of a Novel Being Created: From the Avantexte toward the Context of Anna Karenina. Julie Greene published with co-editors Eileen Boris, Heidi Gottfried, and Joo-Cheong Tham, Global Labor Migration: New Directions. Julie Taddeo published with co-editor Jo Parnell Writing Australian History On-Screen: Television and Film Period Dramas "Down Under."
ARHU Authors Celebrated
Department of History faculty members Melinda Baldwin, Shay Hazkani, Hayim Lapin, and Jeremy Simmons were recognized for their "distinct and notable" research accomplishments at the 2024 Maryland Research Excellence Celebration. Shay Hazkani was the ARHU nominee who accepted his award on stage. The event was held April 16, 2024 at The Hotel in College Park. Read more information HERE.
Photo courtesy of ARHU.
Research Excellence
HISTORY HAS ITS EYES ON YOU
Rob Chiles has been elected to the New York Academy of History, a not-for-profit organization whose "membership is by invitation only and is limited to people with a demonstrated record of accomplishment in New York history." He joined the organization as a new fellow at their bi-annual meeting in Manhattan on April 11, 2024.
Beginning in September 2024, Martina Biondi will be a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in UMD’s Department of History and the University of Venice. She is working on a project entitled "HICAMA - History of Care in the Maghreb: Infectious diseases, healthcare infrastructures and international aid (1956-1999)." Biondi’s research interests focus on gender history, the history of public health, and political and solidarity networks in and beyond Morocco, North Africa, and the Middle East. Biondi's Department of History faculty host and advisor will be Peter Wien.
media moments
Rick Bell was interviewed on May 28, 2024 for an NPR story "Activists call to rename the Francis Scott Key Bridge because he owned enslaved people." Rick addressed the effort to rename Francis Scott Key Hall on UMD's campus in a discussion about renaming the Key Bridge in Baltimore. Read the article HERE. Chris Bonner with project staff and advisory board that includes many ARHU faculty and staff, helped craft the report submitted by The 1856 Project (also known as "Universities Studying Slavery at the University of Maryland"). The Project recognizes that the history of slavery is inextricably linked to the story of America and of the University of Maryland. Learn more about The Project and the report HERE. Holly Brewer was featured in the April 16, 2024 edition of MarylandToday discussing her work drafting an amicus brief submitted to the US Supreme Court in the recent case considering presidential immunity. She worked as part of a team at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. Read the MarylandToday story HERE. You can also read the brief HERE. Holly also had an article published in the June 23, 2024 edition of Washington Monthly titled "The Supreme Court Keeps Misfiring on Guns." Read the article HERE. In addition, Holly published an op-ed in the July 2, 2024 edition of MarylandToday titled "The Supreme Court Turns the President Into a King." Read the op-ed HERE. Sarah Cameron was interviewed about her research on the Aral Sea on "The World," a co-production of PRX (Public Radio International) and WGBH in Boston, MA. The episode aired May 22, 2024. Listen to the interview HERE. Sarah was also interviewed about her research on the Aral Sea on Kyzylorda TV (a Kazakhstani news channel). You can watch the Kazakh-language episode HERE.
Sabrina Baron published a book eview in Renaissance Quarterly titled "Review of Lorenz Böninger Niccolò di Lorenzo della Magna and the Social World of Florentine Printing, ca. 1470–93. I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021. 209 pp. $49.95" which appears in Volume 76.3 (2023). Holly Brewer published two important articles based on her work to create amicus briefs for the US Supreme Court addressing crucial current issues. She published an op-ed on the Court's ruling regarding presidential immunity in the July 2, 2024 edition of The New Republic titled "The Supreme Court Turns the President Into a King." See the full article HERE. Holly also had an article she co-authored with Laura F. Edwards published in the June 23, 2024 edition of Washington Monthly titled "The Supreme Court Keeps Misfiring on Guns." Read that article HERE. Jeffrey Herf published "The Problem of Underestimation Yet Again," as part of a symposium on responses to October 7 in the journal Antisemitism Studies. Read the response HERE. On July 8, 2024 the online magazine Quillette published Jeffrey's essay "An Interrupted Genocide." The essay grew out of a visit to the sites of the October 7 attacks in Israel. Read the essay HERE.
PUBLISHING
faculty moments
FACULTY MOMENTS
Photo courtesy of Sarah Cameron
Sarah Cameron speaking on the disappearance of Utah's Great Salt Lake in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
Antoine Borrut was an organizer of and a speaker at the conference Framing the First Millennium on June 14 &15, 2024. The paper he gave was titled “Situating Islam: Periodization and Regimes of Historicity in the First Millennium.” Sarah Cameron was the keynote speaker for the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She spoke on June 7, 2024, in a talk entitled “Studying Central Asia in the Age of Climate Change.” Also in June Sarah delivered a lecture on the disappearance of Utah’s Great Salt Lake to students at Oghuzhan Engineering and Technology University in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Ahmet Karamustafa moderated a session at the conference Framing the First Millennium held June 14-15, 2024. On April 29, 2024, Piotr Kosicki in a UMD Maryland Global Classrooms' course “Borders and Memory Making in Times of War” hosted with a Ukrainian colleague their end-of-year symposium. The symposium showcased student projects. Read more about the symposium HERE. Karin Rosemblatt hosted a RECSLAC Graduate Workshop at UMD July 22-26, 2024. Graduate work presented at the workshop was focused on the history of science and technology in Latin America. Jayson Porter was a presenter at the workshop. At the 2024 annual meeting of the Business History Conference in Providence, RI David Sicilia co-presented (with Fernando Chaddad) a paper titled, “When Theory Collided With Financial Markets: the Saga of Paul Samuelson and Commodities Corporation." David also served as discussant on a panel titled “Social Entrepreneurship, Corporate Philanthropy, and Community Finance”; chaired a session titled "Conceptualizing the Corporation”; and was an invited panelist on a session titled “Careers in Business History." Jeremy Simmons gave a paper at the conference Framing the First Millennium June 14-15 titled “How Do We Solve a Problem Like India? Figuring Jambudvipa within an Afro-Eurasian First Millennium”. Julie Taddeo was featured in a History Hack podcast discussing the third season of the TV show Bridgerton, the Regency era, and feminist issues in the show. You can listen to the podcast HERE. Stefano Villani gave the keynote address at a conference John and/or Giovanni Florio: Tradition and Innovation in Florain Studies. The conference was held at Sapienze Università in Rome on June 13 & 14, 2024. Stefano's address was titled "Imagined Identities: Children of Italian Exiles in Seventeenth Century England."
PRESENTING
Photo courtesy Jeopardy! Productions
Robert Bland (PhD 2017 Advisor Leslie Rowland) is the new Digital Media Editor for The Journal of the Civil War Era. Rob is an assistant professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Julie Choi (BA 2020 Double Major History and Government and Politics), a US Department of State Rangel Scholar, is now a Fulbright US Student Program English teaching assistant in South Korea, . where she works with North Korean defectors. She will begin a master’s program in Fall 2025. Read more in the MarylandToday article HERE. Julia Grafstein (BA 2024) has published a chapter of her honors thesis. The article is titled "'The Burden of Blame': Coalition-Building in the Transgender Movement from the 1970s through the 1990s," Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal, 5, no. 2 (2024): 29-70. Read the article HERE. Isaac Hirsch (BA 2014) competed in QuizBowl as an undergraduate and has now moved on to major competitive game shows. He just completed a nine-day run as champion on season 40 of Jeopardy! where he won $215,390 + $3000, Previously he was a winner on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and The Chase. His father, Steve Hirsch, was a contestant on season 2 of Jeopardy! See the story in MarylandToday HERE. See also the story in The MoCo Show HERE. Melissa Kravetz (PhD 2011) has edited a new book which will be published December 3, 2024 titled The Memoir of Ilse Seger: Wife, Mother, Hostage, Nazi Resister (Indiana University Press). She is publishing a memoir written by Ilse Seger, who with her husband Gerhardt, was an early victim of the Nazis. Melissa is associate professor of History and co-director of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Minor at Longwood University in Farmville, VA. Allen Madarang (BA 2023) and Charlie Hackett (BA 2023) published "Inventory of the Estate of Isaac Franklin, 1847," Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 4,.5 (2023): 82-85. Christina Morina (PhD 2007 Advisor Jeffrey Herf) has been awarded the 2024 German Non-Fiction Prize Prize from the Stiftung Buchkultur und Leseförderung (Foundation for Book Culture and the Promotion of Reading). Christina has been a professor of history at Bielefeld University since 2019.
ALUMNI MOMENTS
Awards and Honors Brian Sarginger ARHU Nominee for Grad School's Outstanding GA Award Department Dissertation Awards Caitlin Kennedy Advisor Julie Greene Jack Werner Advisor Julie Greene Department Summer Research Awards Caitlin Kennedy Advisor Julie Greene Leah Rasmussen Advisor Sarah Cameron Jack Werner Advisor Julie Greene E.B. and Jean Smith Prize in Political History Eugene Charles Fanning Advisor Julie Greene Andrea N. Gutmann Fuentes Advisor Karin Rosemblatt Walter Rundell Jr. Memorial Award Sophie Hess Advisor Richard Bell Research Awards for MA Students Marjorie Antonio Advisor Colleen Woods Alexandra Kadis Advisor Julie Taddeo Rigby Phillips Advisor Clare Lyons ARHU/Graduate School Awards Ann G. Wylie Fellowship Lauren Cain Advisor Robyn Muncy Kader Smail Advisor Antoine Borrut ARHU Travel Awards Saban Agalar Advisor Ahmet Karamustafa Caitlin Kennedy Advisor Julie Greene Sophie Hess Advisor Richard Bell Hannah Nolan Advisor Holly Brewer Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Award Caroline Angle Maguire Advisors Paul Landau and Peter Wien Hannah Nolan Advisor Holly Brewer International Conference Student Support Award Hannah Nolan Advisor Holly Brewer External Awards Dar Ben Gacem Tunisian Research Fellowship Caroline Angle Maguire Advisors Paul Landau and Peter Wien Arts for All Inaugural Faculty and Graduate Student Fellowship. Marjorie Antonio Advisor Colleen Woods American Association of University Women (AAUW) Fellowship Veliye Ay Advisor Ahmet Karamustafa 2023 Patrick Scott Award for Best Graduate Paper from the Victorians Institute Alexandra Kadis Advisor Julie Taddeo American University Carmel Institute Award for Russian Language Acquisition Leah Rasmussen Advisor Sarah Cameron 1. Fulbright-García Robles Fellowship 2. Travel Grant from the University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies Anna Wenzel Advisor David Sartorius
graduate moments
Presenting & Publishing Caroline Angle Maguire Advisors Paul Landau and Peter Wien Organized the 2023 AIMS (American Institute for Maghrib Studies) Graduate Student Writing Workshop Dylan Bails Advisor Holly Brewer Part of the author team with Salomeé Ayers-Sánchez, Camilia Bell, Summer Matthes, Victorianna Mejia, Briana Pineda, and Zoe Rivera published an article "From Paper to Personhood: Enslaved, Free, and Disabled Black Experiences from the Peter Daybook, Georgetown, D.C., 1796-1799," Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 5.1 (2024): 65-73. Lauren Cain Advisor Robyn Muncy Presented on a roundtable "Doing Digital History in Public: Accessibility, Sustainability, and Platform Affordances in Digital Projects," at the Society for History in the Federal Government's annual meeting Brice Bowrey Advisor David Sicilia Organized and presented on a roundtable "Doing Digital History in Public: Accessibility, Sustainability, and Platform Affordances in Digital Projects," at the Society for History in the Federal Government's annual meeting Tobin Johnson Advisor Ahmet Karamustafa Presented a conference paper titled "Interfaith Friendships in Early Ottoman History" at GOSECA: Bridging East and West: Interdisciplinary Insights from East Europe and Eurasia (University of Pittsburgh) Emily Irvine Advisor Thomas Zeller Featured in a news story that recently ran on Kazakhstani TV; see the story HERE. Alexandra Kadis Advisor Julie Taddeo 1. Presented a paper titled “Japanese Acrobats on the Victorian Stage: Athletes or Popular Entertainments?” at the Northeast Popular Culture Association's 2023 Conference 2. Presented a paper titled “Japanese Acrobats as Athletes on the Victorian Stage, 1867-1870” at the Victorians Institute's Hard Times 2023 Conference at NC State University, Raleigh, NC Jane Polcen Advisor Michael Ross Presented a paper at the Temple University James A. Barnes Graduate Student History Conference in Philadelphia, PA titled "The Death of Nicholas Snowden: The Systemic Curse of Lynching in Maryland in 1885." Jordan Sly Advisor Stefano Villani 1. Co-published a book of essays titled Libraries Without Borders: New Directions in Library History (ALA Editions, 2023) 2. Published a review of the monumental collection eds. John Morrill, et. al. Letters, Writing, and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell in the journal English Studies Alan Wierdak Advisor Julie Greene 1. Presented at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference in Saratoga Springs, NY. 2. Conducting a weekly segment on the Labor Heritage Power Hour on WPFW every Thursday where films from the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Division collection are discussed. .Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Sarah Cameron and Leah Rasmussen in Kazakhstan
Karen Jones Board Chair
Next page photos of Phi Alpha Theta induction; History Department at Maryland Day 2024; and History Honors showcase all courtesy of Kate Keane.
john Davis
Julia Grafstein has been awarded the University Libraries and College of Information 2024 IDEA ( Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) Award for Undergraduate Research. She submitted a portion of her History Honors thesis, "Alienation and Alliances: Transgender Coalition-Building from the 1970s through the 1990s." Read the portion of her thesis HERE on DRUM. See the award announcement from UMD Libraries HERE. Department of History Honors student Thomas Wolfson has been awarded the 2024 Winston Family Honors Best Student Paper Award for Best Honors Thesis. The title of Thomas' thesis is "The Journey to Ratification: Maryland and the Fifteenth Amendment." Mason Yang (History Honors) has been awarded the 2024 UMD Library Award for Undergraduate Research. Mason received the award for his research paper written in an independent study supervised by Bernard Cooperman titled “A Self-Portrait of Success: The Images of Jewish Masculinity in 1940s America.” Mason is currently working in an internship with the White House Historical Association, Washington, DC. The paper is available HERE on DRUM. See the award announcement from the Library HERE. Oreet Zimand has been awarded a US Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study one of 14 critical languages: Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Turkish or Urdu. Oreet will study Russian in Kyrgyzstan. Body text Body text
Karen Jones
John Davis Executive Director
undergraduate moments
undergraduate Moments
The Department of History received the sad news that Josh Bearden (PhD 2019 Advisor Clare Lyons) passed away on April 14. 2024. Josh was a venturesome scholar who came to Maryland with an MA in History from Samford University, where he wrote an MA thesis that, according to Clare Lyons, "challenged the conventional wisdom about the emergence of policing of sodomy in early eighteen-century London." At UMD, "his dissertation explored the racial, gender, and sexual politics of early Georgia." The thesis was titled “Intimate Entanglement: The Gendered Politics of Race and Family in the Gulf South.” While writing his dissertation Josh took a faculty position at Los Medanos College in the Bay Area, where he was instrumental in developing queer history curriculum for the History Department. Josh served as President of the Faculty Senate and was promoted to Associate Professor. "In recent years he spent time with his family in his native Georgia while he faced health challenges. Josh was a generous colleague and friend to many in the Department of History at UMD.
IN MEMORIaM
future moments
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GIVE
University of Maryland Department of History 2115 Francis Scott Key Hall College Park, MD 20742 301-405-4265 hist-web@umd.edu © Copyright, UMD Department of History, 2024 Sabrina Alcorn Baron, Media Manager
UMD DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY 2115 Francis Scott Key Hall College Park, MD 20742 301-405-4365 history-web@umd.edu