MOMENTS IN HISTORY
NEWSLETTER
APRIL 2023
Faculty in Action
14
IN THIS ISSUE
07
19
08
Media Moments
Current Students
Forward Looks
03
Alumni
History Has Its Eyes On You
11
Julia Grafstein Chosen for Winston Family Award for Best Departmental Honors Thesis Julia Grafstein has been awarded the Winston Family Award for Best Departmental Honors Thesis. Established by Roger (’76, ’79) and Karen Winston (’75), the annual Winston Honors Writing Awards recognize the best essays, research papers, and theses written by UMD Honors students .Advised by Kate Keane, Julia's thesis explores a largely unexamined part of American history: the activism of transpeople in the 1970s and 1990s as they sought to fight discrimination, secure legal rights, and improve health care. Using a wide range of primary sources, Julia's thesis adds an important analysis to the presumed unity in the "LGBTQ" coalition as she identifies critical moments of conflict in the queer community and the women's movement.
history has its eyes on you
'Dr. Chiles was so engaging and really cared if you grasped the material."
inspiring
"His dedication to representing all Americans, especially the struggle of marginalized communities is unaparalleled..."
The Department of History is delighted to announce that Rob Chiles has been selected to receive the Donna B. Hamilton Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in a General Education Course. Awards are based solely on student nominations and are solicited from across campus. From the many nominations received, the selection committee was most impressed by the student experience in Rob's courses HIST200 and HIST201. Here is an excerpt from a student nomination: “Dr. Chiles was so engaging and really cared if you grasped the material. He would take time to make sure we also observed identities who are often left out of history even sometimes in the course structure. He was inspiring and always full of energy.” Rob will receive a cash award and will be acknowledged at the Office of Undergraduate Studies Recognition Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, May 2, 2023, at 3:00 pm, in the Prince George’s Room in the Stamp Student Union. orem 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.
engaging
dedicated
"He was inspiring and always full of energy."
Shay Hazkani Receives 2023-2024 NEH Fellowship for Scholars Conducting Field-Based Humanities Research in Palestine Shay Hazkani has been awarded a 2023-2024 NEH Fellowship for Scholars Conducting Field-Based Humanities Research in Palestine. The Fellowship is administered by the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC). PARC promotes academic research on Palestine by US researchers and assists in disseminating those research findings. Shay has also been awarded the Concordia University Library / Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies Best Book in Israel Studies Award for his recent book Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (Stanford University Press, 2021).
History has its eyes on you
James Gilbert, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, has received an appointment to participate in the New York University Graduate Center Writer's Institute for 2023-24. He will work on novel and short story fiction with eleven others in a seminar led by Andre Aciman." Karin Rosemblatt was awarded a Faculty-Student Research Award from the UMD Graduate School. The grant will support travel to Mexico during Summer 2023 for Karin and a graduate student to conduct research for a book project exploring how 20th century anthropologists, archaeologists, and ethnohistorians established truths regarding the pre-Columbian history of Mexico. This grant will support archival research for Karin's current book project, a book of essays examining public controversies in which archaeologists and anthropologists debated the contours of pre-Columbian history and the effects of the Spanish Conquest. The book seeks to understand the value of the past for the Mexican state and Mexicans more broadly. Jeremy Simmons has won a fellowship at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. He will be in residence at IAS in Princeton for the Spring 2024 term. During this time, he will be finishing up his book on the consumption of commodities traded across the Indian Ocean in antiquity. Stefano Villani has won a UMD Graduate School Faculty-Student Research Award for a project with PhD student Jordan S. Sly. The project is titled "Narrating a massacre. Samuel Morland and the Waldensian slaughter of 1655 between propaganda, religion and diplomacy." The project investigates the 1655 massacre of the Protestant Waldensian minority in the Piedmontese valleys of Northern Italy by troops of the Duke of Savoy. These communities claimed a direct continuity with the Waldensians, a medieval heretical group. Still, the Dutch Republic, the Protestant Swiss cantons, and England reacted in defense of the persecuted Waldensians. Oliver Cromwell sent diplomat Samuel Morland to stop the massacres and re-establish toleration for these communities. After returning to England, Morland published the History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piemont in 1658, which served as a record of his diplomatic mission and a celebration of the Waldensian church's ancient history. Two distinct projects will directly stem from and benefit from this funding: 1) the research, analysis, and creation of a digital Humanities project with the aim of coding a digital edition of the 1658 work, History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piemont. This digital edition will function as both an accessible digital text and a densely annotated concordance and scholarly work; 2) support for the dissertation research of Jordan Sly.
UMD History faculty appeared in a variety of media outlets from print to podcasts. Chris Bonner's recent book, Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship (University of Pennsylvania Press, paperback Feb 2023) is reviewed as part of an essay by Manish Sinha in the April 20, 2023 issue of The New York Review of Books. The review essay is titled "The Beautiful Struggle," and considers books on the subject of Black freedom and citizenship after the US civil war. The reviewer writes: "One of the strengths of Bonner’s book lies in his recovering of the ideas and lives of the largely unknown Black activists involved in these conventions, like Samuel H. Davis and William C. Munroe." See the full review HERE. Julie Greene and Shay Hazkani were featured in the Friday, April 14, 2023 edition of MarylandToday as part of Faculty Accolades. See the publication HERE. Piotr Kosicki's podcast on the New Books Network has a new episode. Piotr interviews the long-time director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, Piotr Cywiński. The podcast is available through iTunes and other podcast services, or directly at this LINK. Julie Taddeo's recent publication, her monograph, Rape in Period Drama Television (Lexington, 2023) was featured by the ARHU Dean in her #ARHUBookends series. In the lead up to the Coronation of Britain's new king, Charles III, Julie was interviewed by the popular Spanish publication, Mujer Hoy. See the interview HERE. Julie will also be featured in the iHeartRadio Podcast for One Day University as she discusses British Royal history in an episode that will air on May 4.
media moments
Rick Bell delivered the keynote address at the Remember the Pearl symposium in Washington, DC on April 15, 2023, an event to mark the 175th anniversary of the 1848 Pearl Escape, the largest nonviolent escape attempt from American slavery. On April 19, he traveled to New York to deliver work in progress to faculty and students at Brooklyn College. His paper was titled: “Taking Liberties: Streetcars and Street Fights in Jim Crow New York.” Piotr Kosicki on April 12, spoke as part of a Baltimore County Public Library panel entitled "Understanding the War in Ukraine--One Year On." On April 3, Piotr gave a paper at a conference organized by the German Historical Institute in Rome entitled "Anatomy of a Show Trial: Polish Pogroms, Transnational Catholic Networks, and Stalinism after Stalin." On March 31, Piotr delivered the plenary lecture for a conference at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University in Ukraine, entitled "How a 'Marshall Plan for Ukraine' can benefit from the experience of Christian Democracy after World War II." David Sicilia opened the recent annual meeting of the Business History Conference in Detroit by officially announcing the Henry Kaufman Financial History Fellowship Program that he chairs. David was also a panelist on a roundtable on "The Great Inflation" [of the 1970s] and served as chair and commentator for a panel titled "Reinventions in U.S.-China Trade Relations." Stefano Villani chaired a panel at the 16th Lavy Colloquium of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore organized by Prof. Paweł Maciejko on 'Christian Kabbalah' on April 17, 2023. He also participated in the Renaissance Society of America annual conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March. He presented a paper on "Observing Religious Diversity in Seventeenth-Century Europe" in one of the panels organized by EMoDiR (Early Modern Religious Dissents and Radicalism) and was the discussant for a panel organized by the Euronews project. Peter Wien attended a conference in Hamburg, Germany, titled Iraq Twenty Years after the US Invasion: Memory Politics, Governance and Protests. He presented a paper on "Local, national and international agendas of heritage and archival record preservation." Peter is the president of TARII (The Academic Research Institute in Iraq), which belongs to CAORC (the Council of American Overseas Research enters). Thomas Zeller at the annual meeting of the American Society for Environmental History in Boston from March 22-25, was one of three presenters from the Department of History. Justin Shapiro (PhD 2020 Advisor: Thomas Zeller) gave a paper on "The Carbon Dioxide Effects Research and Assessment Program (CDERA): Federal Climate Research Efforts in the United States, 1975-1981," Sophie Hess (PhD Student Advisor Rick Bell) presented on "Red Soil and White Water: Iron Extraction and the Landscape of Settler Colonial Violence in Eighteenth-Century Maryland," and Tom talked about "Loving Parks, Embracing Highways: Bernard DeVoto on Wilderness and Roads."
UMD History faculty members are constantly presenting their research at conferences, public lectures, invited talks, and other venues,
faculty in action
New Approaches to the Russian Civil War: Empire and the Birth of the Soviet Order was a one-day conference held Friday, April 21, 2023. The conference was sponsored by the Maya Brin Residency Program, Russian Department, SLLC, and ARHU. UMD History faculty Sarah Cameron, Marsha Rozenblit, Mikhail Dolbilov, and Piotr Kosicki paricipated. . u
Elizabeth Mattingly Conner announces publication of Knowledge Construction in Late Antiquity by De Gruyter of a collection of essays based on papers presented at a workshop organized by UMD in January 2021 (also recently published open access with funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation). Hayim Lapin and Antoine Borrut assisted in organizing the workshop. The volume is edited by the workshop organizer Monika Amsler (formerly a post-doc at UMD funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation), and includes an article Elizabeth wrote entitled "Leading Sources of Knowledge at the Monastery: Isidore of Pelusium." Read the article HERE. Piotr Kosicki published a review essay about the Catholic Church in the April 7, 2023 issue of the Times Literary Supplement, entitled "More to it than the Pope." See the review HERE. Julie Taddeo edited a Special Issue of the Journal of Popular Television (April 2023) on the Netflix series, Bridgerton. She and her fellow contributors examine how the popular period TV series interrogates race, feminism, sexuality, and gender issues in Regency England, as well as the fandom culture that surrounds Bridgerton and how academics can use Bridgerton for public history purposes. Stefano Villani has published two book reviews: on Mathilde Monge and Natalia Muchnik's Early Modern Diasporas: A European History (Routledge, 2022), in Società e Storia 179 (2023): 176-177); and on Hannah Marcus's Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), in Rivista di Storia e letteratura religiosa, 58 (2022): 326-330.
Rehan Staton, (UMD History BA 2020), is about to graduate from Harvard Law School. He was recently featured in The Washington Post for his efforts raising money to benefit maintenance workers and other service employees at Harvard. Rehan will graduate from law school in May 2023. He was the commencement speaker at the Department of History graduation ceremony when he got his degree from UMD. See the full article HERE.
alumni
The UMD College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) nominated Jessica Wicks-Allen's (PhD 2022, Advisor: Leslie Rowland) dissertation for the 2023 Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award from the Graduate School at the University of Maryland. Jessica's dissertation, titled "'If I Am Free, My Child Belongs to Me': Black Motherhood and Mothering in the Era of Emancipation," has received Honorable Mention in the competition. The Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award recognizes original work that makes an unusually significant contribution to the discipline. Jessica's award will be presented at the Graduate School Fellowship and Award Celebration on Tuesday, May 9, at 3:00 pm in the Stamp Student Union. Jessica also won a 2022-2023 post-doc at Penn State. She has been appointed assistant professor of African-American history at Arizona State University.
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.
Alex Cummins's (PhD 1988, Advisor: Clifford Foust) 7th book was just published by Academic International Press. The book, 10th in a series about Soviet History, is entitled Documents of Soviet History, Volume 10: Victory, 1944-1945. The series of books consist of extensive narrative and related documents, many of which are translated from the Russian and available for the first time in English translation. At UMD Cummins also studied under George Yaney, George Majeska, Robert Friedel, John Lampe, and Gordon Prange. He presently teaches history at Flagler College, St. Augustine, FL. Reynolds Scott-Childress (PhD 2003, Advisor: James Gilbert) recently gave a paper called "A Nation of Different Races: Reconsidering Categories of Experience and Analysis in the Gilded Age US" at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism in Loughborough, England. John C. Hardin's (PhD 2011, Advisor: David Sicilia) new book is Church Advertising, Public Relations and Marketing in Twentieth-Century America: Retailing Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). The volume appears in the publisher's series Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000. At the annual meeting of the American Society for Environmental History in Boston from March 22-25, three presenters from the Department of History shared their research. Justin Shapiro (PhD 2020, Advisor: Thomas Zeller) gave a paper on "The Carbon Dioxide Effects Research and Assessment Program (CDERA): Federal Climate Research Efforts in the United States, 1975-1981." Joseph Slaughter (PhD 2017, Advisors: Whit Ridgway and David Sicilia) presented a paper, “God and Guns: Making Colt Christian” at the Business History Conference in Detroit (March 2023). Slaughter was recently interviewed on this research into Christianity and gun culture by Current.
Alumni / Graduate
J. Samuel Walker’s (PhD 1974) book, The Day That Shook America: A Concise History of 9/11 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021), has been named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2022. The book will be published in a paperback edition in June 2023. GRADUATE Brice Bowrey (PhD Student, Advisor: David Sicilia) was selected for and attended the Business History Conference's (BHC) Doctoral Colloquium Workshop. He also presented at the Organization of American Historians (OAH) Conference and received a Samuel and Marion Merrill Graduate Student Travel Grant to attend. At the annual meeting of the American Society for Environmental History in Boston from March 22-25, three presenters from the Department of History shared their research. Sophie Hess (PhD Sudent, Advisor Rick Bell) presented on "Red Soil and White Water: Iron Extraction and the Landscape of Settler Colonial Violence in Eighteenth-Century Maryland." Caroline Angle Maguire (PhD Student, Advisors: Paul Landau and Peter Wien) has received the 2023-24 American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). The one-year fellowship is designed to offset living expenses while writing the dissertation. Caroline was also recently selected as the President of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS) Graduate Student Association for the 2023-24 academic year. Lauren Michalak (PhD Student, Advisor: Holly Brewer) had her paper given at the 2021 Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (CRE) conference published online in the Selected Papers of the CRE, 2021-2022. The paper, given as part of a roundtable on American Loyalists, can be accessed HERE Nicholas Misukianis (PhD Student, Advisor: Jeffrey Herf) will have an academic article titled "A Servant of Two Masters: Bishop Aloisius Muench and the Debate over Catholic Schools in Postwar Bavaria" published in the spring edition of The Catholic Historical Review. He also has an article being published by the Bundeskanzler Helmut Schmidt Stiftung about Germany's recent nuclear energy phase out and the history of the nuclear energy debate in Germany titled: "Der lange Weg zum Ausstieg aus der Kernenergie" (The Long Road to phasing out Nuclear Energy). Jordan S. Sly (PhD Student, Advisor: Stefano Villani) will be working with his advisor on two projects funded by a UMD Graduate School Faculty-Student Research Award. The projects are: 1) the research, analysis, and creation of a digital Humanities project with the aim of coding a digital edition of Samuel Morland’s 1658 history of the Waldensian massacre in the Italian Piedmont, History of the Evangelical Church of the Valleys of Piemont. This digital edition will function as both an accessible digital text and a densely annotated concordance and scholarly work; and 2) Jordan's dissertation research. Alan Wierdak (HiLS Student, Advisor: Julie Greene) won the UMD iSchool's Laurence B. Heilprin Award for a co-authored publication, "Promoting Archival Engagement through Computational Interventions," which he presented at the City of Asheville Reparations Commission meeting on March 20, 2023.
Graduate
Graduate Student Appreciation Week is held each spring and is designed to recognize the contributions of graduate students to the Department of History. This year Graduate Student Appreciation Week was April 3-7. Here faculty members and graduate students have a chance to socialize. Photo by Jodi L. Hall,
Paulina Leder, a triple Major in History, French, and German, has been selected for recognition as one of the University of Maryland's Undergraduate Researchers of the Year for 2023. Pauulina's research was for her Senior Honors Thesis directed by Piotr Kosicki: "Between Compromise and Utopia: Konrad Wolf ,An Artistic Life Unfulfilled, 1949-1990." Paulina also did research during an internship at the U.S. Army Center of Military History that resulted in a paper supervised by Peter Wien titled "Orientalism: An Examination of American Military Perspectives in Iraq," This paper was published subsequently in JANUS, the undergraduate journal. Paulina was nominated for the Researcher of the Year Award by Piotr Kosicki and Peter Wien. According to the awards committee: "Accounts of Paulina's accomplishments were most impressive, and we thank you for nominating this outstanding student and researcher."
Students in HIST319E European Engtanglement in the Era of the Thirty Years War, taught by Sabrina Baron, work together on a discussion exercise. Luke Barone, James Schmidtlein, Zachary Miller, Samuel Perkins-Cohen, and Emily Sanders are pictured here.
undergraduate
The History Undergraduate Association (HUA) held a dinner on April 19 where students could meet with Dr. Liudmila Novikova, the UMD Maya Brin Resident. She is a specialist on the Russian civil war and World War II. The dinner took place at The Hotel and was filled with lively conversation and good food. A big thanks to Sarah Cameron for helping our Majors discuss History and current events outside the classroom with an expert!
Forward looks
Conference Program
politics
memory
history
The Department of History is pleased to host HISTORY, MEMORY, POLITICS: New Perspectives on The Age of Ideologies and its Aftermath, a one-day conference to celebrate the retirement of Jeffrey Herf, Professor of History and Distinguished University Professor. The conference will be held May 3, 2023 from 10:00am-7:00pm in Taliaferro Hall, Berlin Room, Room 2110.The conference is co-sponsored by the University of Maryland Department of History and the Joseph & Rebecca Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies; Üniversitat Bielefeld; and Professur für Zeitgeschichte rem ipsum dolor sit amet, elitr, sed
Honors Showcase Department of History May 5, 2023 1:00pm-3:30pm Berlin Room TLF 2110 Kaylie Bergeson Ella Casale Sarah Cobau Julia Grafstein Paulina Leder Allen Madarang Madeline Martinucci Zev Roberts
forward looks
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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, 2023. 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