GLOBAL. INNOVATIVE. MENTORSHIP.
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN 2014-2015 ANNUAL REPORT HISTORY.UNL.EDU
WELCOME
It is a pleasure once again to recognize the achievements of our faculty, staff, alumni, and students and to present the Annual Report of the Department of History. The 2014-2015 academic year was marked by the retirement of two distinguished and long-serving faculty members. Professor Lloyd Ambrosius served the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with distinction for 48 years as a leading scholar of American foreign relations in the twentieth century, as a teacher for thousands of undergraduate students, as chair of the Department of History, and as chair and host of the Thompson Forum on World Issues lecture series. He was awarded one of the University of Nebraska’s highest honors this year, the Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award. Professor Ann Kleimola served the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with distinction for 43 years as a scholar of Russian society and culture, with a special focus on medieval iconography, architecture, art, and the history of animals, a teacher with wideranging interests and expertise, and an early leader in the development of women’s history and women’s and gender studies at the University of Nebraska. We will miss both Professor Ambrosius and Professor Kleimola, and we thank them for their many contributions to the Department of History and the university.
As we look forward to the 2015-2016 academic year, we are focusing on the qualities that define our undergraduate and graduate program: innovative research, excellent teaching and mentoring, and global engagement. All three of these defining qualities can be seen in the new courses we are designing for freshman students. Our first batch of “gateway” seminars include: The History of the Present United States, The History of Hip Hop, The History of Modern Crime, and Making and Breaking Law in U.S. History. Each blends faculty research with excellent teaching and mentoring in ways that address global themes. You can read here about the many successes of our alumni and current students, including senior history major, Ann Himes, who was selected in 2015 for a Truman Scholarship, one of the most prestigious national awards recognizing public service. We hope you will come back to campus this fall and visit the University of Nebraska Department of History. We will host the Carroll R. Pauley Lecture on October 8, 2015. Professor Darlene Clark Hine will speak on the theme of reckoning with history. She is a leading historian of the African American experience who helped found the field of black women’s history and has been one of its most prolific scholars. A past-president of the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association and the winner of numerous honors and awards, she is the Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and History at Northwestern University. I especially want to thank all of the donors and supporters of the department this past year for their generosity. These gifts have supported students, enabled innovative research, and provided funding to start new projects. I hope that you will consider supporting the Department of History with a gift this year. You can find details about giving to all of The University of Nebraska Foundation’s Department of History funds on the inside back cover of this Annual Report. Again, thank you to our donors and supporters. Best,
William G. Thomas III Chair
TABLE OF CONTENTS GLOBAL PAULEY PUBLISHES PIONEERING HISTORY 2 JACOBS TO TEACH AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY
3
STRAUSS SHINES IN GERMANY
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CZECH SCHOLAR VISITS NEBRASKA 4 UNL HOSTS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CONFERENCE
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MALLORY GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE
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ARI WINS ACLS FELLOWSHIP 7
INNOVATIVE BEYOND RUNZA: THE STORIES OF GERMANS FROM RUSSIA
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NEW DIGITAL PROJECT BRINGS HIDDEN HISTORY TO LIGHT
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WINGO WINS ANDREW W. MELLON POST DOC
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PROFESSOR EMILY ROSENBERG GIVES 2014 PAULEY LECTURE
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MILLER IS AWARDED OAH PRIZE
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MENTORSHIP THREE PROFESSORS TAKE TOP HONORS
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JONES WINS THE LAKE AWARD FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM
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ALUMNI INTERVIEW: PABLO RANGEL
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ANN HIMES NAMED TRUMAN SCHOLAR
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CATCHING UP WITH ALUMNI: REX BURKHEAD
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NOTES UNDERGRADUATE CHAIR REPORT 17 GRADUATE CHAIR REPORT 17 FACULTY NOTES 18-19 NOTES FROM HGSA PRESIDENT 19-20 GRADUATE NOTES 20-22 ALUMNI COUNCIL 22 BOOK NOTES 23 UPCOMING EVENTS 24 IN MEMORIUM 24 DONORS 2014-2015 24 HISTORY FUND 25
CREDITS EDITOR: William G. Thomas III DESIGN & CONCEPT: Mikal Eckstrom CONTRIBUTERS: Samantha Bryant, Bedross Der Martosssian, Mikal Eckstrom, Deann Gayman, Vanessa Gorman, Margaret Jacobs, Leslie Reed, and Gerald Steinacher PHOTOGRAPHY: Craig Chandler, Bedross Der Martossian, Mikal Eckstrom, Troy Fedderson, and Greg Nathan COVER: Images from the October 18, 2014 History Harvest, Lincoln, NE. Used with permission from individual donors.
PAULEY PUBLISHES PIONEERING HISTORY In 2014 Bruce F. Pauley, a distinguished alumnus of the Department of History (M.A. 1961), published Pioneering History on Two Continents: An Autobiography with Potomac Press. A scholar of Austria and Central Europe in the twentieth century, Pauley has published major works in the field, including Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century (1997), From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (1992), and Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism (1981). Pauley’s connections to the University of Nebraska and the Department of History are deep. Pauley’s father, Carroll R. Pauley, graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1930, served in World War II, and headed the Pauley Lumber Company in Lincoln, NE. History was his lifelong passion. The Pauley family supports the Carroll R. Pauley Memorial Endowment in the Department of History to promote the public dissemination of history and historical research through an annual lecture series and a triennial symposium.
GLOBAL
present. Q: Why did you become interested in Austria? You went there as part of what then was called the Institute of European Studies (IES) and is now known as the Institute for International Education of Students. Did that time abroad have a direct impact on your course of study? If so, why?
BRUCE PAULEY
Q&A:
Q & A CONDUCTED VIA TELEPHONE & EDITED BY MIKAL ECKSTROM
Q: Throughout Pioneering History you show your love of dates. What do they mean to you personally? A: Well, I don’t know if I really love dates as much as I realize how they have shaped my life and history in general. I was lucky to have been born at the right time. My career benefited from my low birth year (1937) which facilitated my being accepted into an elite liberal arts college and later into graduate school. Still later it helped me get my first fulltime job at a time when colleges were frantic to hire professors to handle the flood of post-World War II baby boomers. My Volga German ancestors benefited from emigrating to Nebraska in 1878 at a time when the cost of farmland had decreased by 50 percent since the Panic of 1873. My great-grandfather sold his farm near Harvard, Nebraska, in 1908 when the cost of land had skyrocketed. My birth date turned out to be the gift that kept on giving right down to the
A: My parents were avid travelers even before they were married and met on a ship headed for Europe in 1930. They continued to travel during my father’s years in the Navy in World War II and reached a high point in 1954 when our whole family took a three-month trip to Europe when I was sixteen. My early interest in Europe encouraged me to study German during my first two years of college. It then made sense to study in a German-speaking country like Austria. I was already aware of Austria’s historic past as a multi-national empire preceding the First World War, and the importance of the country being annexed to Germany in 1938 which helped lead to the outbreak of World War II. I was also attracted by it being nearly surrounded by Communist countries: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Studying in Austria and traveling throughout Europe enabled me to see America through the eyes of others. The whole experience demonstrated the importance of international travel and a liberal arts education. Q: When reflecting on your college education and then professorial career you provide many teachable moments for graduate students. What wisdom would you like to impart to future historians? continued on page 7
JACOBS TO TEACH AT CAMBRIDGE UNL’s Margaret Jacobs has been selected as the University of Cambridge’s Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions for 2015-16. As a Pitt Professor, Jacobs, Chancellor’s Professor of History, will spend a full year at Cambridge University, teaching classes, giving lectures, mentoring graduate students and furthering her own research. “There are so many archives that I wouldn’t have had access to before,” she said.
said, adding that when she received an email regarding her selection, “it was a little bit surreal.” This visiting professorship dates back to 1944, and has been held by some of the most distinguished historians and social scientists in the United States since its inception, Gerstle said. “A nominee must have achieved the highest standards of scholarship and have acquired an international reputation,” Gerstle said. “Professor Jacobs meets those standards. We are excited that she will be joining us next year.”
Jacobs’ research focuses on the history of women, children, and families in the American West in comparison with other settler societies, including Australia and Canada. She particularly examines cross-cultural dynamics between white and Indigenous women. Her most recent book, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World, was published last fall by University of Nebraska Press. Her work on indigenous people is unique among past historians selected for the professorship, as are her Nebraska ties.
continued on page 5
“Professor Jacobs is the first to be appointed from the University of Nebraska,” said Gary Gerstle, Paul Mellon professor of history at Cambridge University. “We believe that she is also the first whose work focuses on indigenous peoples.”
Strauss, a native of Bellflower, Mo., who earned a master’s degree in education from Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., said he plans to study 16th-century Christian sermons and texts, identifying the ways in which Muslims and Jews are portrayed. Strauss said he believes that examining earlier Christian texts is important in understanding the identity formations of Christian denominations. Strauss said religious studies in Germany are especially important and crucial to understanding the complexities of early European history.
The honor, which is given by a committee of Cambridge faculty, came as a surprise to Jacobs, since the professorship is not something faculty can apply for. “I didn’t even know it existed,” Jacobs
MARGARET JACOBS
STRAUSS SHINES IN GERMANY Last year, Paul Strauss, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant to conduct dissertation research in Germany during the 2014-15 academic year. This year, he continues his dissertation research with the Leibniz-Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany.
He anticipates completing his dissertation in 2016. Writer: University Communications
PAUL STRAUSS [3 ]
CZECH SCHOLAR VISITS NEBRASKA
Q&A:
Q & A CONDUCTED VIA E-MAIL & EDITED BY MIKAL ECKSTROM
VLADIMIR POLACH In the Spring 2015 semester the Department of History hosted Dr. Vladimir Polach as the Frank A. Belousek Distinguished Scholar. Known for his work on Czech language and literature, Dr. Polach’s academic interests and publications reflect Nebraska’s long-standing relationship to issues surrounding Czech immigration and culture. Dr. Polach came to UNL from the Department of Czech language and literature at Palacky University, Olomouc where he has been on the faculty since 2004. He holds a joint Ph.D. in History and Czech language from Palacky University awarded in 2003. During the spring 2014 semester, he lectured at University of Nebraska- Omaha, University of NebraskaKearney, University of Nebraska- Lincoln, and at Wilber- Clatonia High School on a wide range of topics relating to modern Czech culture, both in the Czech Republic and in Nebraska. He also taught “Czech History and Culture” at UNL, a 300-level course for undergraduates. Q: Can you talk about the importance of Czech heritage as it is experienced in the US and its connection to memory? A: Interesting and intriguing question. There are probably between two to three million people with some trace of Czech or Slovak ancestry (not much perhaps on the larger scale, but we are talking about their mother countries with the size of 10 and 5 million inhabitants respectively). The bond between Czechs at home and abroad was probably the strongest around the time
when Czechoslovakia had been created (1918) and when it became a Communist satellite (1948), but the connection still exists. Locations such as Wilber, NE, called the Czech capital of USA, or the Czech Museum in Cedar Rapids, IO, are just two examples. And if you walk around the monuments in Lincoln’s Veterans Memorial Garden, you realize just how many of the soldiers’ names have a distinct Czech origin. Many American-Czech cultural events that can be seen in the USA today are actually re-creations of the “beautiful past.” They reflect the memories and ideas which the immigrants brought with them from their homeland across the Atlantic long ago, whether 1878, 1948, or 1968. This does not imply their lack of realism in the modern sense; on the contrary, it makes them extremely interesting from not only historical, but also ethnographical or anthropological point of view. And the connection is alive. Not only that one can still study Czech, a rather obscure language, at several universities, including Lincoln, but just the bare fact that during my time in the US everyone, who could claim any Czech heritage, was eloquent and proud about it, and stressed its importance. Q: You spoke about the consolidation of Czech media during your lecture at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, what do you think that does to intellectualism?
A: Perhaps it’s a game of words, but these changes, when media ownership is consolidated in hands of a very few entrepreneurs (and one politician) is not only devastating for the intellectuals but also for the whole society. The intellectual, especially on the Left side of political and ideological scale, a critic of neoliberalism, does not yet have proper ammunition for his eloquent pen. And he probably never read the mainstream newspaper anyway. It is a tragedy for the general public, for the average media consumer, who is not aware of the fact that newspaper and TV news are converted into PR and power instruments. One thing that could be done in the future to help the people understand the change is to remove the holy grail of objectivity and non-biased journalism. Maybe it’s time to revert to a modern version of 19th century partisanship. Here is the role of the intellectual: to discuss, debate, and define the role of media in 21th century. Q: What, if I may ask, is your next project? A: Right now I have finished editing a book of interviews with some 15 Czech journalists. After that I will take a week off and then go back to the pile of material I’ve brought with me from USA, above all from all the archives at Lincoln. I have several hundreds of pages to go through and mine for data, but I am very much looking forward to it.
UNL HOSTS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE COMMEMORATING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
On the occasion of the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) on March 19-20, 2015, hosted a two-day international conference entitled, “Crossing the Centennial: The Historiography of the Armenian Genocide Re-Evaluated,” at the Wick Alumni Center, Great Hall, in Lincoln. Organized by Prof. Bedross Der Matossian from UNL’s Department of History, the conference was sponsored by the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), the Society for Armenian Studies (SAS), the Department of History, the Faculty Senate Convocation Committee, the Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Program, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, and the Institute of Ethnic Studies at UNL. The conference focused on four underresearched themes that have recently gained scholarly attention and analytical depth: humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention in the Armenian Genocide; women and children in the Armenian Genocide; comparative dimensions of the Armenian Genocide; and the impact of the Armenian Genocide on society, politics, literature, and culture. Seventeen scholars from Armenia, Cambodia, Canada, Holland, Hungary, Israel, and the United States participated in the conference. On March 19, the chair of the History Department, Prof. William G. Thomas III, offered welcoming remarks in which he emphasized the commitment of the department to teaching and research of the field of Holocaust and genocide studies. Der Matossian then
CONFERENCE ATTENDEES made opening remarks in which he gave a brief background about the Armenian Genocide and highlighted the importance of commemorating the Centennial in the academic sphere. Der Matossian also criticized the latest trend of denialism surging in the academic sphere. Towards the end of the conference Prof. Lloyd Ambrosius from the UNL Department of History gave the concluding remarks, in which he thanked all of the participants for the illuminating and productive conference, and hailed it as a great success that attracted a diverse set of audience and participants. Writer: Bedross Der Matossian
(continued from page 3 Jacobs)
Jacobs won the Bancroft Prize, a top award in American history, in 2010 for her book White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 18801940. “The historians who have been invited are so accomplished,” Jacobs said. “I just can’t believe I’m joining that list.” Gerstle said Jacobs will play an integral role in both the undergraduate and graduate programs, and will be involved in the Cambridge American History Seminar, a weekly seminar at which scholars from across the U.S., U.K., and Europe present current works. “Through these seminars, she will have an opportunity to meet scholars from all over the world whose interests intersect with hers,” he said. Writer: Deann Gayman
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MALLORY GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE Alexander Mallory, a senior history and political science major, and Rebekka Schlichting, a graduate student in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, met with members of the Obama administration and heard a keynote address from First Lady Michelle Obama during the visit in early July. More than 1,000 youths from about 240 tribes attended. Participants engaged with government officials and elected leaders, including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, White House Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Munoz and U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota), a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs. To be chosen for the conference, both Mallory and Schlichting entered the Generation Indigenous Challenge with a plan to improve their community. Generation Indigenous, or Gen-I, is a new initiative by President Obama with the goal of investing in Native youths and, in turn, helping them invest in their communities. Mallory and Schlichting, each of whom intern at the Nebraska Commission for Indian Affairs, will be helping with programming at this year’s Native Youth Leadership Camp in Crete. The camp’s focus is on leadership development. At the Washington event, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn and other administration officials hosted roundtable discussions regarding tribal sovereignty, or tribes’ rights to govern themselves, manage tribal property and regulate tribal business and domestic relations as well as establish governmen-
tal relationships with the federal government. “The vast majority of non-Natives and even some Natives are unaware of this very important concept,” Mallory, a member of the Winnebago tribe, said. “It was encouraging to have a discussion on what sovereignty meant to us and hear competing viewpoints.” Mallory and Schlichting said they were impressed and motivated by the gathering. “Michelle Obama spoke about the resilience in Indian Country that I have witnessed throughout my lifetime,” Schlichting of the Ioway tribe said. “It’s good to know that we are recognized for positive actions and not just the negatives. She also gave me hope when she
said that the White House has our backs. She made me feel empowered and hopeful for our futures.” The students also met with members of the Ponca Tribe and visited the National Museum of the American Indian. Mallory said being a part of the meeting was empowering, too. “Witnessing over 1,000 Native youth coalescing to address the issues of our community was truly something to behold,” Mallory said. “It was a tremendous privilege to attend the gathering and represent our tribes, university, and state.”
Writer: Deann Gayman
REBEKKA SCHLITCHTING, ASST. SEC FOR INDIAN AFFAIRS KEVIN WASHBURN, & ALEXANDER MALLORY
ARI AWARDED ACLS FELLOWSHIP continued from page 2 (Pauley)
In 2015, Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies, Waskar Ari was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. Ari received one of seventy awards to faculty of all ranks and independent scholars to support research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. ACLS received over 1,000 applications in this cycle, making the program once again the most competitive in ACLS’s portfolio. “Fellows were chosen for their potential to create new knowledge resulting from investigations and reflections on diverse cultures, texts, and artifacts from across the globe and human history,” said Matthew Goldfeder, director of fellowship programs at ACLS. “ACLS employs a rigorous multi-stage peer-review process to ensure that humanities scholars themselves select those fellows who exemplify the very best in their fields. The 70 fellows this year represent more than 50 colleges and universities and an array of humanities disciplines, including linguistics, religious studies, architectural history, and geography,” Goldfeder said in a statement released by the ACLS. The ACLS Fellowship will allow Ari to
spend time researching and writing his new project, Indigenous Women’s Strategies of Autonomy: Segregation, Sexuality, and Agrarian Reforms in Bolivia, 1870-1964. According to Ari, the project “concerns the development and circulation of discourses of social and economic autonomy among Aymara women.” The research project also “shows that while internal colonialism was restructured in the making of the Bolivian nation-state, Aymara women created their own mechanisms of decolonization.” By comparing “the trajectories of four generations of women in the indigenous area of Carabuco, it demonstrates “that the two Bolivian Agrarian Reforms of 1874 and 1953 were both ultimately concerned only with an ideology that reinforced the dominant heterosexualism and patriariarcalism in a segregated country. By addressing marginalized groups, including single mothers, sexual minorities, and orphaned female children, the work offers an account of this period that reshapes Latin American rural history.” Writer: Mikal Eckstrom
WASKAR ARI
A: First, let me say that I enormously enjoyed my career as a historian. But studying history opens up many career opportunities, not just teaching. Only yesterday I played golf with a former criminal defense attorney who had been a history major in college. As far as lessons I learned, one is how long it takes to research, write, and publish an article or book. This knowledge is all the more important when it comes to getting tenure. I also suggest that an untenured professor should resist the temptation to teach too many different courses as preparation for each one is enormously time consuming. By the same token, try to hold your committee assignments to a minimum because they too will delay your efforts to publish. Before accepting a position, try to determine whether you and your chairman are compatible. Differing personalities and values can have disastrous consequences for an untenured professor. Let me also suggest that when asking for references from your former professors or from your peers that you thank them even if your applications turn out to be unsuccessful. Q: One of the things I enjoyed when reading your book is that I found out that your earlier work challenged the notion that Austria was a mere victim of Nazi Germany. As I understand it, your interpretation ran counter to the orthodox views of the time. In talking with other Ph.D. students who work on Austria, they have told me that the myth of victimization is still very popular in Austria. Now, 30 years later, where do you see Austria and its relationship to its Nazi past. continued on page 12
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BEYOND RUNZA: HARVESTING THE HISTORY OF GERMANS FROM RUSSIA, WITH GERALD STEINACHER
INNOVATIVE
In Nebraska, traditionally a farming state, harvesting occupies a central place in life. As historians we do not harvest corn or soy, but rather history. This is the beginning of my standard explanation to the many people asking me what the history harvest class is all about. In the History Harvest class each year students work with local communities willing to share their histories or family documents. Students collect diaries, photographs, letters, maps, official documents, war memorabilia, and other family and cultural heirlooms. “Harvested” family artifacts are digitized and returned to their owners. Students then publish a selection of these family treasures on the History Harvest website http://historyharvest.unl.edu to make them available online for interested people here in the state but also worldwide. The History Harvest project was started in 2010 by the Department of History and is co-directed by Professors William Thomas and Patrick Jones. It provides students with a hands-on experience through which they learn how to collect, organize and critically interpret sources. The History Harvest model inspired already other universities and is part of our Department’s strong focus on digital history. During the 2014 Fall semester I took my first history harvest “journey” with seven undergraduate students. Jake Friefeld, who was a teaching assistant for the previous harvest, helped with much needed technical advice. Choosing a community to partner with was easy, as I already had established strong ties with the Germans
POSTER FOR FALL 2014 HISTORY HARVEST from Russia community. Ethnic Germans settled in the Russian Empire over two hundred years ago, but economic and political turmoil around 1900 forced many of them out of their traditional home regions. Attracted by promises of cheap land and opportunity they crossed the ocean and settled in the Midwest, which resembled the lands they had to leave behind. Here they started anew,
keeping their traditional lifestyle and language alive until the 1940s. The Museum of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia in Lincoln with its rich library and archives (www.ahsgr.org) has taken on the responsibility of keeping the history of this community alive. continued on page 14
NEW DIGITAL PROJECT BRINGS HIDDEN HISTORY TO LIGHT Slavery has often been painted in broad strokes in history books and narratives, giving little attention to slaves’ daily lives and social networks. For more than a century, these broad strokes have made it nearly impossible for their descendants to trace their heritage.
the center and represent their life histories in ways that we’ve not yet been able to do and the digital environment allows us to attempt to do that, to represent individual experience in the larger context of a dehumanizing social system,” Thomas said.
An ongoing collaboration between University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Maryland researchers, however, is filling in some of the missing pieces.
Halfway through a two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Thomas and researchers from UNL’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities and colleagues from the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities have revealed previously invisible family networks and have given dimension to the everyday lives of slave families through their social ties.
The O Say Can You See: Early Washington, D.C., Law and Family Project is digitally archiving petitions for freedom lawsuits that were filed in the U.S. Circuit Court in the nation’s capital from 1800 to 1862, up until the Emancipation Proclamation that was issued Jan. 1, 1863. The court records add texture to stories about slaves, the slaveholders, and the families and power brokers of early Washington. The project has quickly grown to host more than 1,200 documents from about 250 petitions for freedom. In the next year, those numbers will grow to about 4,000 documents from nearly 400 petitions. By March, the project aims to put online every petition for freedom case in Washington, D.C., between 1800 and 1862 for scholars, teachers and the public. Digitizing the petitions puts the individual experiences of slaves at the forefront, said William G. Thomas, UNL professor of history and the project’s principal investigator. “We need to put enslaved individuals at
WILLIAM G. THOMAS III
“The family networks that we’re beginning to uncover are deep, extensive, are multi-generational and they move across race,” Thomas said. “Individual slave petitioners are connected into white and black families in D.C. in ways that we may not have realized. Now we can start to see those patterns.”
“When you look at the whole collection of these petitions for freedom, you can start to see the social world of enslaved families in the Washington D.C. area in a way that we otherwise couldn’t,” Thomas said. “You wouldn’t be able to put the whole family network together, if you were just looking at one case.”
Until the project took flight, the only real record of these petitions was a barebones index of records in the National Archives and Records Administration, where the original documents are kept.
Thomas said the family networks being uncovered would be useful to African American genealogists.
Thomas said that many more petitions of freedom have been found than were previously thought to exist. This is a boon to the project, he said -- each petition “is capable of adding a new dimension to what we know about how these suits were brought, in the first place, who knew whom, and the social fabric of early Washington.
“This resource is going to be available to tap into and start to piece together some family history that they may not have been able to penetrate because of the inscrutability of these documents and because disentangling these names and relationships is extraordinarily difficult work,” he said. Writer: Deann Gayman
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REBECCA WINGO (PH.D. ‘ 15) AWARDED MELLON POST DOC AT MACALESTER COLLEGE
Q&A:
Q & A CONDUCTED VIA E-MAIL & EDITED BY MIKAL ECKSTROM
agenda clearly. Q: What are your roles during your tenure at Macalester? What are the expectations/teaching requirements for your job?
MARGARET JACOBS & REBECCA WINGO Position title: Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Liberal Arts, Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching, Macalester College Q: Congratulations on your Post-Doc at Macalester! Describe the process of applying for a post-doc teaching position. A: Applying for a postdoc requires you to meet an entirely different set of criteria than applying for a tenure-track position. Many require you to have a well-articulated research agenda on top of your teaching skills. In my experience, this should stem from your dissertation but should be more than merely editing your dissertation into a manuscript. For instance, I often applied for postdocs with the stated intention of developing a digital component to my dissertation, publishing spin-off articles from the dissertation, as well as editing the manuscript. Postdocs are designed for you to get ahead on your research, so reviewers want to be able to see your
A: My position at Macalester is twopronged. In the Fall semester, any faculty interested in developing digital projects or incorporating digital pedagogy will apply to work with me and sign a contract stating how much time per week they will devote to their projects. In return, they will get my expertise. I will also participate in an interdisciplinary faculty discussion group in which we develop a whitepaper about how to incorporate digital scholarship into tenure and promotion. During this semester, I also plan to implement monthly Digital Liberal Arts workshops, showcases, or discussions. In the Spring semester, I will continue my consultations and teach a single course of my choosing. The expectation is that this course will include a large digital component. Q: Are you introducing any new courses to the college? A: Macalester currently does not offer any digital humanities courses. I will teach one digital history course in the Spring. Q: How has the graduate program at UNL prepared you for your job? A: I firmly believe that having the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities made me more competitive on the job market. From what I have been able to
gather, few applicants had such qualifications. The University of NebraskaLincoln has an outstanding national reputation for digital humanities, and Macalester was specifically looking for someone who had the kind of training that UNL provides. Q: What don’t people tell you about the job search? A: Well, people will tell you that being on the job market is a full-time job. Believe them. You must keep your materials (C.V., research statements, teaching statements, syllabi, teaching portfolio, etc.) updated. Have these reviewed early and often by your advisor and other mentors. It will save you time when you’re actually applying for the jobs. The real truth of the matter is that the job market is a huge time commitment for your letter writers as well. Be organized about how you present your job opportunities. Tell them if they have already written you a letter for a similar job; highlight the main items in the application requirements; tell them specifically how you think you’re particularly qualified for that position; offer deadlines and send reminders when they are near; and most of all, send them your application materials in advance. All of these things will help them write the best possible letter for you.
PROFESSOR EMILY ROSENBERG GIVES 2014 PAULEY LECTURE “I seek to illuminate a nearly forgotten history about the relationship between the Great War and America’s imperial holdings, which during this period included colonies, protectorates, and countries controlled through U.S. military occupation,” Rosenberg said. “My talk will also assess why this important chapter in the history of America’s international policy tended to be relatively invisible at the time and has remained even less visible in historical discussions ever since.
recognizes excellence in historical projects for, by, and with the National Park Service and is intended to honor projects that make the NPS exemplary in promoting civic dialogue about and appreciation of American history, is named for Robert G. Stanton, who served for almost four decades in the National Park Service, and James Oliver Horton, who is the Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University and Historian Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
EMILY ROSENBERG People across the globe are remembering the World War I as 2014 marks the centennial of its start. As the war raged, the United States avoided the conflict for three years and was involved in its own imperial holdings, a history that has been largely overlooked. How did the United States present itself on the world stage during World War I and what can be learned from the forgotten history of American colonies, protectorates and military occupations in those years? Emily Rosenberg, professor and chair of the department of history at University of California, Irvine, explored these questions during the annual Carroll R. Pauley Memorial Lecture, “The Great War and the American Empire.” The lecture was held on Oct. 23 in the Unity Room of the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center, 15th and S streets, adjacent to the Nebraska Union.
“My talk offers historical consideration of how U.S. involvement in the war affected what might at first seem an unrelated topic: policies toward America’s own imperial holdings in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific.” The lecture was a homecoming for Rosenberg. She and her husband, Norman Rosenberg, received their bachelor of arts degrees from the University of Nebraska. Writer: Deann Gayman
PH.D. CANDIDATE WINS OAH PRIZE During its annual meeting in St. Louis, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) presented the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom with the prestigious 2015 StantonHorton Award for Excellence in National Park Service History. The award, which
UNL Ph.d. candidate, Diane Miller, the primary project director, won the inaugural award for her work on, “National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.” The OAH award announcement stated: “The inaugural Stanton-Horton Award is given to the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program administered by the National Park Service. The Network to Freedom program originated from a 1998 congressional mandate and has grown to 550 members in 36 states plus the District of Columbia. Members include historic sites and markers, educational and interpretive programs, and facilities, such as archives and museums. There are 33 National Park Service sites included as members. The winning program has distinguished itself in three ways. First, the Network to Freedom (NTF) has identified through a lengthy and collaborative process criteria for NTF significance based upon verifiable primary sources. This criterion continued on page 12
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continued from page 7 (Pauley)
legitimates the Underground Railroad beyond its so-called mythic status as a secret network and establishes its existence with documented proof. The results of such rigorous demonstrable evidence are that American historical scholarship is substantially and significantly enlarged in a crucial area of study. Second, the Network to Freedom engages people in a vast network of collaboration and scholarship. Individuals working alone or with an array of nonprofit organizations join together to pool resources and cooperate in education, preservation, and commemorative activities. Third, this vast modern-day network crosses boundaries of race, geography, and interest levels in history. Grassroots activists to professional historians across local and national venues join in the common cause of documenting Underground Railroad activities and sites. The Network to Freedom epitomizes the best in American historical scholarship and promotes active and sustained civic dialogue.”
P.H.D. CANDIDATE DIANE MILLER (RIGHT The award was presented on April 18 by OAH’s 2014–15 President Patty Limerick and 2015–16 President Jon Butler. A total of 50 recipients received 2015 OAH awards.
A: Well, I have to confess that I have made only three brief trips to Austria since last doing research there in 1996, so I can’t claim to be an expert on contemporary attitudes. However, it is safe to say that the scholarly community in Austria and much more of the general public is aware of the country’s antiSemitic past than was true when I first began to research Austrian Nazism and anti-Semitism in the 1960s and 1970s. I hope that my books on these topics have contributed to these changing attitudes to some degree. At the same time, regarding the “myth” to which you refer, one should keep in mind that the Austrian government of the 1930s did try to resist the Nazis and had the fervent support of virtually all Jews. So one should remember that half-truths can in fact be half true. Q: Your book has two very nice themes that end your autobiography—family and Russia. Can you share with us how those two things helped shape your view of history? A: The book, in fact, has several themes, two of which are indeed family and Russia. My family lived near the Lower Volga River for 111 years after making a fifteen-month epic journey from western Germany at the invitation of Catherine the Great. Writing Pioneering History did give me a sense of my place in history. I came to realize the importance of my ancestors in shaping the life that I enjoy today. My ancestors left Russia with little more than the shirts on their backs and a burning desire to work hard and improve their lives. Their decision paid off and enabled their descendants to avoid the horrible fate—Stalin’s collectivization of farms, mass starvation, and ultimately deportation to Siberia in 1941—that would have befallen them if the family had remained in Russia. My father, in
particular, loved history, and took our family to numerous historic sites starting with following the Oregon Trail when I was only nine. His enthusiasm for history was contagious, and what I have learned about my earlier ancestors has been inspiring. I strongly recommend that other people, especially young people, attempt to explore their family histories by interviewing their parents and grandparents. It is a fascinating and rewarding enterprise.
WILLIAM THOMAS & BRUCE PAULEY AT THE 2014 PAULEY LECTURE
JONES RECEIVES THE LAKE AWARD FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM Patrick Jones, associate professor of history and ethnic studies, received the James A. Lake Academic Freedom Award from the UNL Faculty Senate. The honor was established in 1980 to recognize an individual who made exceptional contributions defending, supporting and explaining the applications and practice of the principles of academic freedom.
TIM BORSTELMANN, KATRINA JAGODINKSY, & LYOLD AMBROSIUS
THREE HISTORY PROFESSORS TAKE HOME TOP HONORS On Sunday, April 12, 2015, three Department of History faculty took home three awards from the Honors Convocation held at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. Professor Tim Borstelmann received the Annis Chaikin Sorensen Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Humanities. This award recognizes creative activities related to teaching in the humanities.
sius helped shape and guide the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues; has influenced policy makers, particularly in the context of U.S. foreign policy; has served in many capacities, including vice-chair and chair of the history department; and mentored dozens of graduate and undergraduate students. Ambrosius is also a leading scholar on President Woodrow Wilson.
Professor Lloyd Ambrosius was awarded the Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award, which recognizes those whose career at UNL has made an exceptional contribution to the university community. Established in 1990, the award recognizes individuals with a distinguished career of service to the university through teaching, research, public service, administration or a combination of factors. In his 48 years at UNL, Ambro-
Professor Katrina Jagodinsky won the Harold and Esther Edgerton Junior Faculty Award. The award is presented each year to an outstanding junior faculty member who has demonstrated creative research, extraordinary teaching abilities and academic promise. Writer: Univeristy Communications, Mikal Eckstrom
Jones led the effort to raise national and international awareness about the case of Waskar Ari, a Bolivian scholar who was hired by UNL but denied re-entry to the United States for unspecified reasons. Jones is also a campus contact for Scholars at Risk, an international network of academic institutions designed to support and defend the principles of academic freedom and to defend the human rights of scholars around the world. He has also merged his research and civic engagement to promote racial justice. Writer: University Communications
PATRICK JONES
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Q&A:
Q & A CONDUCTED VIA E-MAIL & EDITED BY
Q: How has studying history shape the ways in which you understand your own life?
ALUMNI INTERVIEW PABLO RANGEL Q: Where are you now? A: I am beginning my third year in the Department of History PhD program at the University of Chicago. My dissertation research explores U.S. statecraft through an analysis of federal immigration and agricultural policy legislation and enforcement. This summer I participated as a Latino Museum Studies Program Fellow at the Smithsonian Latino Center in Washington, D.C. I contributed to the Latino Virtual Museum. Q: What area of history did you study at UNL? With who? Why? A: I primarily engaged U.S. History and Latino & Latin American Studies. My M.A. thesis committee included James A. Garza (chair), Jeannette Eileen Jones, and Lloyd Ambrosius. Additionally, I worked closely with Patrick Jones, James Dean Le Sueur, and Gerald Steinacher. I valued this group’s wide range of expertise. Their various perspectives helped me to understand the interconnectivity central to seemingly disparate historical narratives. These professors
PABLO RANGEL (BA’11/MA ‘13) demanded excellence from me at every step of the program. The positive results are evident in the work I produced at UNL, but also in the scholarship I currently contribute. Q: How did the history department at UNL prepare you for your current position? A: The Department provided me the opportunity to deeply engage Digital Humanities, and offered me the chance to work directly with undergraduate students as a teaching assistant. These two components afforded me considerable experience that I draw on in my current position. Additionally, the department faculty and staff trained me and encouraged me to expand my professional network and to consistently seek opportunities that could advance my academic and professional career.
A: I did not like my high school history classes. I did not identify with the people, events, and places upon which those courses focused. Although I am an American I felt like an outsider when I read American History textbooks or listened to the lectures. Because I study history at a critical level I can scrutinize those outdated narratives and offer interpretations and analyses that are more inclusive and hopefully provide a more accurate historical representation. In this way, studying history has allowed me to put my family heritage and personal existence within an international and chronological context that helps me to feel connected to alternative historical experiences. Q: Any favorite memories that you care to share? A: I fondly recall HGSA meetings and working on the Rawley Coneference. Those times allowed me to get to know my fellow students outside of class. I relished the chance to be around the more advanced grad students. I felt like I was a part of something special.
continued from page 7 (History Harvest)
After a number of small collection events we held our main history harvest on October 18, 2014 at the Germans from Russia Museum in Lincoln, where myself, seven undergraduate students and two of my graduate students staffed the various work-stations. We were fortunate to use the Museum as our home base, and felt very welcomed by director Sherry Pawelko, the staff and many volunteers. The turnout was very good and kept us busy all day. Among the treasures we gathered were pamphlets in both German and English, rare photos and wooden eggs that were painted as part of an Easter tradition in the Ukraine. We had great interactions with interesting people, heard fascinating family stories, and most importantly had a good time at the Museum. In the last two months of the semester we worked on cataloguing our findings in a database: photos, documents and interviews. For the online exhibition we featured a selection of items that showcased the traditional culture of the German-speaking immigrants, but also their increasing Americanization following World War I. In the course of completing the project students learned a number of important lessons: the importance of time management and organization skills, the value of following project guidelines and rules, and the usefulness of technology in the humanities. Students also learned that Nebraska had always been a culturally diverse state in which immigration had always played an important role. Finally, students came to recognize that foreign language skills are invaluable in in the study primary sources. Writer: Gerald Steinacher
$30,000 scholarship, which rewards students who demonstrate leadership potential and who have an outstanding record of public service.
JUAN FRANCO & ANN HIMES
HIMES WINS LEADERSHIP AWARD & TRUMAN SCHOLARSHIP History major Ann Himes was one of two students who were awarded the Outstanding Student Leadership Award, recognizing their notable contributions toward the development of leadership qualities in their fellow students at UNL. The award recognizes outstanding leadership in academic, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities and involvements. Recipients of this award receive a scholarship with an approximate value of the cost of in-state tuition for one semester during the student’s senior year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Himes has served as a senator on the ASUN, the student government body at UNL. Himes was also selected as a Truman Scholar by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. As a 2015 Truman Scholar, she’ll have plenty of opportunities to explore her path in public service and leadership. Himes was selected as one of only about 60 students nationally to receive the highly competitive,
Himes, a 2012 graduate of Papillion-La Vista High School, has been a legislative intern and page, an Association of the Students of the University of Nebraska senator, a member of the University Honors Program, a member of the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Women, a Chi Omega sorority member and a volunteer with the progressive advocacy group Nebraska Appleseed. UNL honored Himes at a reception April 9 in the Canfield Administration Building, where family, Honors Program staff, mentors, professors and Chancellor Harvey Perlman celebrated her achievement. “Annie represents the university well and this shows the caliber of the student body that we have,” he said. Growing up, she said she knew she wanted to work in public service. Her mother and her grandmother instilled in her a strong sense of community and need for social justice. “They’re very progressive thinkers,” Himes said. “They’ve always engrained in me a knowledge and an awareness of social causes, and they’re very connected to women’s causes.” The scholarship, which is awarded to college juniors, can be used for graduate or professional school. Himes said she plans to attend law school with an eye on a career working for policies and change in the treatment of women. Himes is working to complete her continued on next page
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degree in three majors -- Russian, history and global studies -- and hopes to study abroad again after completing a semester in St. Petersburg, Russia. She said she would like to earn a Fulbright to study and teach overseas before studying law.
Q&A:
It was Himes’ involvement in student government at UNL, she said, where she learned to navigate the bureaucratic and activist sides of public policy.
A: “Ancient Greece History is my favorite time period because it’s very interesting to me to see how much technology, government, economic, and social ideas during then laid a foundation for current advances in today’s world.”
“Working in the legislature, I was able to see how effective the senators are that have legal backgrounds, so I’d really like to pursue a law degree,” Himes said. Himes said it was Conrad, now the director of the American Civil Liberties Union for Nebraska, who solidified her drive to pursue an activism. “I have learned from her that law can be a very powerful tool in creating social change,” she said. “Ideally, I would find a job where I could use law to pursue social causes. That could be practicing law or working for a nonprofit as their attorney.” Writer: Deann Gayman
E-MAIL & EDITED BY WILLIAM THOMAS
Q: What’s your favorite period or person in history and why?
“There is a really important balance between people elected to serve and the citizens they serve,” Himes said. “I really found through student government that I wanted to be more in the activist role at UNL.” As a legislative intern in the offices of State Sen. Danielle Conrad and State Sen. Heath Mello, Himes honed her future path.
Q & A CONDUCTED VIA
Q: What are you reading, watching, or listening to these days?
REX BURKHEAD
CATCHING UP WITH OUR ALUMNI: REX BURKHEAD Rex Burkead graduated with a B.A. in History in 2013. He currently plays professional football for the Cincinnati Bengals. At the University of Nebraska, Burkhead was selected in 2011 and 2012 as an Academic All-American and named to the All-Big Ten first team. He served as a co-captain of the Cornhuskers football team for the 2012-2013 season.
A: “These days I’m currently watching anything on TV that interest me. I don’t really watch reality TV or series that much. Treehouse hunters is one show that I really like and honestly some HGTV cause I’m looking to buy a house soon so I’m trying to get some ideas.” Q: What did you like most about being a history major at Nebraska? A: “What I liked most about being a history major at Nebraska was the way professors presented material and made lectures interactive with the students. They made class enjoyable and something to look forward to coming to everyday.”
NOTES UNDERGRADUATE AWARDS Glenn Gray Award: Grace Brown History Department Service Award: Ashley McAndrew Ed Hirsch Scholarship: Chelsey Pounds and Campbell Kennedy
to attract more majors earlier in their college career. In addition, Professors Ann Tschetter, Amy Burnett, and Vanessa Gorman have been participating in the American Historical Association’s Tuning Project, with the goal of establishing a new and better major assessment. Writer: Vanessa Gorman
Allen P. Gerlach Scholarship: Melani Hagge and Brian Barmettler Larry R. Gerlach Scholarship: Jacob Garbison Alan Woolworth Scholarship: Griffen Farrar
UNDERGRADUATE CHAIR REPORT The Undergraduate Program has been invigorated by an active group of students in Phi Alpha Theta and the History Club. Led by co-presidents, Ashley McAndrew and Melani Hagge, the clubs sponsored many events, including a very successful movie night attended by some 75 students, featuring Invictus followed by a discussion led by Dawne Curry. They held a successful Meet the Professor with Laura Munoz, as well as a fall open house, a spring senior sendoff, and an invaluable career night. Phi Alpha Theta inducted twenty new members in all, and we graduated more than 30 history majors this May alone. Behind the scenes, we are developing new, freshman gateway courses
VANESSA GORMAN
GRADUATE AWARDS
GRADUATE CHAIR REPORT After a retreat focused in August 2014, the History faculty engaged in an intensive process of re-examining and revising our MA and PhD programs in 2014-15. We created new streamlined programs that are aimed at training our graduate students more effectively for a variety of historical careers in the twentyfirst century. For the PhD program, we created six focus fields and developed a new intensive research seminar. For the MA program, we are developing new tracks, including a joint program with the College of Law. Our new programs put emphasis on the development of skills, especially in digital history, in addition to knowledge and expertise in content areas. Writer: Margaret Jacobs
Albin T. and Pauline Anderson Memorial Award: Catherine MediciThiemann Helen & Perry Moran Scholarship: (American heritage): Brian Sarnacki Dov Ospovat Award: Courtney Pixler Marguerite C. and Clare McPhee Memorial Fellowship: Mikal Eckstrom
MARGARET JACOBS
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MIKAL ECKSTROM, REBECCA WINGO, & JOHN BUCHKOSKI DURING WRITING WORKSHOP
FACULTY AWARDS Albin T. and Pauline Anderson Faculty Award: Alexander Vazansky Albin T. and Pauline Anderson Faculty Award: Bedross Der Matossian Clay Thomas Faculty Research Grant: Dawne Curry Charles Henry Oldfather Faculty Research Grant: Dawne Curry Raymond Schmidt History Excellence Fund Faculty Research Grant: Patrick Jones James A. Rawley Faculty Research Grant: Patrick Jones
FACULTY NOTES Tim Borstelmann is serving as the President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) for 2015. He presided at the SHAFR annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in June, where he delivered his presidential address entitled “Inside Every Foreigner: How Americans Understand
Others.” The address will be published in the January 2016 issue of the journal Diplomatic History. Amy Burnett gave papers at the International Calvin Congress in Zurich, Switzerland and the Frühneuzeit Interdisziplinär (Early Modern Interdisciplinary) Conference in Nashville, TN as well as talks on teaching Luther and the Reformation at the University of Chicago and at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. She also co-edited (with Kathleen Comerford and Karin Maag) a book, Politics, Gender, and Belief: The Long Term Impact of the Reformation: Essays in Memory of Robert M. Kingdon, that was published in January 2015. David Cahan has completed and submitted to a press his biography of the German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz. He is now turning more of his academic focus and energies to the general topic of Science, Technology, and Economic Growth from 1770 to the Present. Bedross Der Matossian has been active in the past year organizing conferences and giving talks in different universities across the country. On November 21-22, 2014 he organized a conference marking the 40th Anniversary of the
founding of the Society for Armenian Studies (1974-2014). The conference entitled “Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th-20th Centuries” took place at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC. On March 1920, 2015 he organized a two-day major international conference at University of Nebraska-Lincoln for the centennial of the Armenian Genocide. In addition, he gave multiple talks on his book and the Armenian Genocide in Boston, University of California-Los Angeles, Emory University, City of University of New York, and University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He is currently working on his second major project on the Adana Massacres of 1909. Vanessa Gorman was promoted to Full Professor this year, and her book, Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature, co-authored with Robert Gorman, came out from the University of Michigan Press in November 2014. She is now deeply engaged in the Digital Athenaeus Project, trying to determine ways to teach the computer to identify authorship of Greek historical fragments through the analysis of dependency syntax. Margaret Jacobs published A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adop-
tion of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World with University of Nebraska Press in 2014. She will be the visiting Pitt Professor of American History at Cambridge University in the UK in 2015-16. Katrina Jagodinsky’s book will be released in Yale University Press’ Lamar Series in Western History in March 2016 and she won the Harold & Esther Edgerton junior faculty award at UNL. Carole Levin recently returned to the United States after six months in England as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of York where she conducted research on her book project, Boudica’s Daughters: Queens and Nationalism in the Tudor/Stuart Age and gave lectures all over the British Isles. Her edited collection, Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens (Palgrave - Macmillan) came out in August 2015. Gerald Steinacher is in the final stages of completing his book manuscript, Humanitarians in Crisis: The Red Cross in the aftermath of the Holocaust (working title), which is under contract with Oxford University Press. The book examines the institutional crisis of the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross following the Committee’s failure to speak out against the Shoah. In June 2015 Gerald presented at an international conference about the legacies of National Socialism held at the University of Hannover (Germany) and at a conference commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII held at the former concentration camp of Mauthausen (the biggest and most notorious Nazi camp on Austrian territory). Most of the summer he conducted research
NOTES FROM HGSA PRESIDENT for his new book project on the Catholic Church in the post-WWII years. This work in the National Archives and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. was supported by University grants. In addition, he has been awarded a prestigious Research Fellowship at the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, so he is looking forward to his stay in Israel in the fall of 2015. Sean Trundle is currently working on putting together a series of workshops for all faculty teaching the US History survey workshops to enhance our use of digital technologies in the classroom. Additionally, he is putting together a book proposal to look at the intersection of science policy and popular culture in the post-War era, and fine tuning an article about the “Horatio Alger” styled narratives surrounding software entrepreneurs in the late 20th century. William G. Thomas III received an National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research grant in 2014 to conduct research on the history of early Washington, D.C., using the case files of the D.C. Circuit Court held in the National Archives. He is working on a legal and social history of slavery in the early republic based on these cases. He served on the Program Committee of the 2015 American Historical Association Conference to be held in New York City in January 2015. In addition, he has been appointed to the Executive Committee of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
SAMANTHA BRYANT During the 2014-2015 academic year, the History Graduate Students’ Association remained successful, expanding workshop opportunities and facilitating a professional camaraderie among the members of the departmental graduate student community. As HGSA President, I continued the tradition of hosting and coordinating workshops such as “Reckoning with History: Race and Racism” in the fall 2014 semester and the spring 2015 “Teaching Gender and Sexuality Workshop” with the aid of Drs. Margaret Jacobs, Jeannette Jones, Rose Holz, and Laura Muñoz. Other workshops sponsored by the HGSA included the Digital Humanities Bootcamp for Beginners in conjunction with the Nebraska Forum on Digital Humanities and a workshop in the fall 2014 semester aimed at de-mystifying the job application process for federal government employment. I would like to again thank all graduate students, faculty, and staff in the History Department continued on next page
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GRADUATE NOTES on the valuable contribution of their time, patience, and mentorship this academic year. Co-chaired by Ryan M. Kephart and Kylie McCormick, the 10th Annual James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities continued to serve as an opportunity for budding scholars in humanities-related disciplines to present and receive constructive feedback on their original research. This year’s theme “Humanity in Conflict” attracted a wide variety of papers, topically focused on the impact of colonialism and military engagements on social and political relations. The HGSA is thankful for the support of Humanities Nebraska, the Office of Graduate Studies, the Center for Great Plains Studies, the Department of History, the Department of Geography, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As the 2015-2016 academic year approaches, the HGSA aims to strengthen the professional relationship between the graduate organization and faculty committees. Under the leadership of incoming HGSA President Alyson Lomelin, the HGSA will continue coordinating engaging workshops thematically centered on historicizing contemporary events, sharpening graduate students’ skillsets as they enter the job market, and facilitating a dynamic intellectual community both inside and outside of the classroom. Writer: Samantha Bryant
Samantha Bryant is currently a thirdyear doctoral student in the history program at the University of NebraskaLincoln. During the 2014-2015 academic year, Bryant was appointed the webmaster for the Virginia Social Sciences Association. In March 2015, she was a recipient of a Mary Lily Research Grant to conduct research at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University. She also published a book review in The Journal of African American History forthcoming in the fall of 2015.
graduate project he plans to publish as an article: “An Imagined Life: (mis)Appropriations of Carl Hans Lody, Transnational Hero”. He also presented at the thirty-eighth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association. He was part of a session entitled “Transnational Identities: Germans across Borders” and presented his paper, “From Failed Immigrant to the Kaiser’s Great War Hero: The Story of German-American Carl Hans Lody”. He received feedback and met contacts which broadened his research and academic interests.
Luke Chennell joined the faculty of McPherson College as an Assistant Professor of Automotive Restoration for 2015-16. In addition, he taught at the annual TIIC2 Intercultural Symposium University of Lille-Telecom 1 in Lille, France.
During the 2014-2015 academic year, Jacob Friefeld presented at the Western Historical Association Conference, the American West Center Symposium, The National Council on Public History, The National Association for Interpretation annual meeting, and the Northern Great Plains History Conference. Along with his busy conference schedule,he served as a Graduate Fellow at the Center For Great Plains Studies. He currently has a co-authored manuscript under review at University of Nebraska Press that reassesses the Homestead Act, particularly the scholarly emphasis on rampant fraud in the settling of the West. Prior to the start of the 2014-2015 academic year, Jacob attended the 2014 Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria. At DHSI, he completed an extended training session on database development.
Mikal Eckstrom was a fellow at the American Jewish Archives, a graduate fellow at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities Graduate, Center for Great Plains Studies and the Marguerite C. and Clare McPhee Memorial Research fellow for spring 2016. His co-authored chapter with Margaret Jacobs on settler colonialism appeared in Why You Can’t Teach U.S. History Without American Indians. He teaches a section of the U.S. History survey course this fall and is progressing on his dissertation. During the summer of 2014, Tony Foreman attended seven weeks of intensive German language instruction at the Deutsch in Deutschland Institute in Berlin, Germany. He also used the opportunity to conduct research for a
During the academic year, Clayton Hanson began the first year of his graduate fellowship at the Center for Great Plains Studies. As a Great Plains Fellow, he contributed to the development of
Looking Back, Looking Forward: Native American Art from the Permanent Collection, an exhibition of contemporary Native American art in conversation with historic depictions of indigenous people at the Great Plains Art Museum. Throughout the year, he also served as a member of the Western History Association Graduate Student Caucus Executive Committee. Clayton also completed a digital humanities practicum with the Midwest Archeological Center which focused on the digitization and contextualization of transfer print ceramics found at National Park Service units throughout the Midwest region. Finally, he begins a new appointment with the National Park Service as an interpretation ranger at Mesa Verde National Park beginning in May 2015. Jason Heppler entered his second year as the Digital Humanities Specialist for the Department of History at Stanford University and completed a major research collaboration with Cameron Blevins, the Geography of the Post. “Crowdsourcing Digital Public History,” co-authored with Gabriel Wolfenstein, appeared in The American Historian and he also started releasing his borndigital dissertation material, Machines in the Valley. He also presented at several conferences and talks, including the Missouri Valley History Conference in Omaha, the d3.digitalhumanities() meetup in San Francisco, the National Council on Public History in Nashville, the American Historical Association in New York, the Western History Association in Newport Beach, and HASTAC in Lansing. He plans to finish and defend
his dissertation by the end of 2015. This year Ali Kardatzke held a teaching assistantship and had the opportunity to lecture two times in History 111 courses. She was also awarded the Chancellor’s Fellowship. Additionally, she served on the Rawley Finance Committee and helped write a successful grant proposal to Humanities Nebraska. Ali was elected treasurer of the HGSA for the 2015/2016 year. Rory Larson attended the Siouan and Caddoan Language Conference in Marksville, Louisiana, held from June 12-14, 2015. He presented a paper How Many’y Phonemes Were There in Proto-Siouan? He also announced and demoed the online appearance this summer of the Comparative Siouan Dictionary, a project begun by a team of Siouan linguists 31 years ago, since the people principally involved in that project were unable to attend. Finally, Rory spoke a biographical memorial for the late Dr. Mark Awakuni-Swetland of the UNL Anthropology and Ethnic Studies departments. Catherine Medici-Thiemann will have two essays published in 2015. “Mary Dudley Sidney and Her Dudley Siblings,” co-written with Carole Levin, appeared in the Ashgate Research Companion on The Sidneys (1500-1700), Volume 1 Lives and “More Than a Wife and Mother: Jane Dudley, the Woman Who Bequeathed a Parrot and Served Five Queens” will be published in Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens. She received the John F. Stover Fellowship from the History department to support
travel to archives in England to complete her dissertation research and the Albin T. and Pauline Anderson Award for excellence in European history also from the Department of History. Catherine presented her paper “So Noble a Friend: Lady Mary Sidney’s Favor and Patronage at Elizabeth’s Court” as part of the Queen Elizabeth I Society at the South Central Renaissance Conference, which won the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Robert Knoll Graduate Paper Award. She also prepared a poster for the North American Conference on British Studies Annual Meeting for which she received a Stern Trust Travel Grant. Andrea Nichols had a few publications, presented at several conferences, and finished her dissertation research in the last year. In the summer of 2014, Andrea was a contributing editor for Selected Proceedings of the Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies 2014 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference (Vol 8). Her co-authored book reviews with Dr. Carole Levin on Judith Richards’ Elizabeth I (Routledge, 2012) and The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed’s Chronicles (Oxford University Press, 2013) appeared in The Sixteenth Century Journal Summer 2014 (Vol. XLV, No. 2) and Spring 2015 (Vol. XLVI, No. 1), respectively. Andrea will also have an chapter “‘I was not I?’: Tracing Representations of Cleopatra in English Drama, 1592-1611” in the collection Scholars and Poets Talk About Queens edited by Carole Levin with Christine StewartNunez, forthcoming from Ashgate’s Queenship and Power series in August 2015. Currently, Andrea is finishing her dis-
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sertation research: in January she was in New York City at Columbia University; in May and June she was in England, thanks to the financial support of the Department of History and the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program; and in July and August she was in New York City at the Morgan Library and at Princeton University, thanks to the financial support of the 2015 Medieval and Renaissance Studies Dissertation award and a Princeton University Library fellowship. Brian Sarnacki had an article, “In the Biting Stage”: The 1955 Nebraska Penitentiary Riots and Violent Prison Activism) published in Nebraska History. He also presented at HASTAC’s annual conference on a panel with Jason Heppler, Andy Wilson, and Rebecca Wingo. This summer he will be attending Humanities Without Walls’ pre-doctoral workshop in Chicago. Paul Strauss made progress this year on his dissertation “Preaching on an ‘Unholy Trinity:’ Muslims, Jews, and Christian Identity in Early Modern Germany” with the generous support of various fellowships. In the summer of 2015 he will end a Fulbright fellowship period at the Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, and will begin an eight month doctoral dissertation fellowship at the Leibniz-Institute for European History in Mainz, Germany. He presented sections of different dissertation chapters at the Renaissance Society of America conference in Berlin, the Workshop on Early Modern German History of the German Historical Institute, London, and the Fellows Colloquium.
DON GERLACH AND NATHAN SANDERSON AT ANNUAL ALUMNI COUNCIL MEETING
ALUMNI ADVISORY COUNCIL WELCOMES NEW MEMBERS In 2012, William Thomas and Lloyd Ambrosius created the UNL History Department Alumni Advisory Council (“Council”) to help the Department enhance the graduate and undergraduate student experience at UNL, encourage promising students to major in history, and support fundraising efforts. The Council held its annual meeting on October 24, 2014. The Council created the Peter Maslowski Graduate Student Support Fund (“Fund”), in honor of one of the Department’s outstanding former faculty members. The Fund is to support student fellowships, assistantships travel and related expenses. In doing so, the Fund provides the Department a powerful
recruiting tool to attract outstanding students. Also, the Council has held meetings with Department undergraduate and graduate students, offering guidance on career opportunities available to those who major in history, and has met with promising high school students to encourage them to major in history at UNL. In the coming years, the Council looks forward to further efforts in these and other areas to support the longterm enhancement and growth of the Department to make it one of the best programs in the Big 10 conference. The Council welcomes new members: John Belohlavkek, Bradley Hansen, Nancy Stohs, and Don Winslow.
2015 ALUMNI ADVISORY COUNCIL John Belohlavek ‘67 M.A., ‘70 Ph.D., Tampa,FL, Professor of History, University of South Florida (retired) Andrea Bjorkland ‘86, Davis, CA, Professor of Law, University of California, Davis
Jack Campbell ‘72, Santa Fe, NM, General Electric (retired) Don Gerlach ‘54, ‘56, ‘61, Harvard, NE, Professor of History, Univ. of Akron (retired)
BOOK NOTES CHINA’S WAR REPORTERS: THE LEGACY OF RESISTANCE AGAINST JAPAN PARKS M. COBLE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Garth Glissman ‘05, Omaha, NE, Attorney at law, Kutak Rock LLP Bradley Hansen, ‘07, Sioux City, SD Attorney at law Mary Ann Hanusa ‘87 (M.A.), Council Bluffs, IO, State Representative, Iowa Legislature James Hewitt ‘54, Lincoln, NE, Attorney at law Benjamin Knoll ‘83, Edina, MN, Chief Operating Officer, Greater Twin Cities United Way Bruce Pauley ‘61, Windsor, CO, Professor of History, University of Central Florida (retired) Nathan Sanderson ‘11 (Ph.D.), Pierre, SD, Policy Advisor to the Governor of South Dakota
CORRUPTING LUXURY IN ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE VANESSA B. GORMAN AND ROBERT GORMAN UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
SCHOLARS AND POETS TALK ABOUT QUEENS CAROL LEVIN AND CHRISTINE STEWART-NUÑEZ PALGRAVE
CIVIL WAR WASHINGTON: HISTORY, PLACE, AND DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP SUSAN LAWRENCE, ED. UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Karen Starr ‘96, Laguna Beach, CA, Consultant Nancy Stohs, ‘76, Wauwatosa, WI Editor and journalist Natalie Wagner ‘02, Cambridge, MA, Attorney at law, Bank of America Don Winslow ‘75 (M.A.) Julian, CA Author
It is the policy of University of NebraskaLincoln not to discriminate based on age, race, ethnicity, color, national origin, gender, sex, pregnancy, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, verteran’s status, maritial status, religion or political affiliation.
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2014-2015 DONORS UPCOMING EVENTS
We thank these donors for their generosity and leadership.
CARROLL R. PAULEY LECTURE
JULY 1, 2014- JUNE 30,2015
Donations to all Department of History funds.
Darlene Clark Hine, Northwestern University OCTOBER 8, 2015 ALUMNI ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN OCTOBER 9, 2015
IN MEMORIUM: MARK GILDERHUS (PH.D. ‘68) SHAFR Past President (1996) Mark T. Gilderhus died at his home in Fort Collins on Thursday, January 22, of cancer. Gilderhus, a professor of U.S. diplomatic history, taught at Colorado State University for 29 years, serving as the Chair of the History Department from 1980 to 1993. In 1997, he accepted the Lyndon Baines Johnson Chair in History at Texas Christian University where he served in this capacity until his retirement in 2010. He was the author of numerous articles and books, and described himself as a “scholar of war, politics, and diplomacy.”
$10,000+
UP TO $100
John M. Campbell Karen Campbell Raymond P. & Roberta Schmidt
John W. Clark Mark & Mikal Eckstrom Martin A. Fehringer George G. Gibson Dennis N. Henry Stephen S. Hilliard Nancy Kassop Frederick C. Luebke Peter Maslowski C. McCheyne Swortzel Anne Morey Joakim Nyoni Paul A. Olson Nathan J. Probasco Gerald M. Reagan Julia E. Schleck Pamela F. Starr Patricia Sullivan Amy Tan Jon E. Ulbright Connie J. VanDoorn Cyndi Whitten
$1,000-$4,999 Patrice M. Berger Sharon W. Brown Arthur H. Hughes Andrew B. Koszewski Thomas P. Lynch & Margaret Jacobs Karen A. Starr William G. Thomas
$500-$999 James W. Hewitt Katrina Jagodinsky Carole Levin Ellen M. Macek Ann K. Rawley
$100-$499 Robert W. Cherny Laura M. Franz James W. Goeke Susannah C. Hall Nancy Hayes Kathleen A. Johnson Elaine M. Kruse Victor A. Martinez Pamela J. Nickless Aubrey H. Polser Allison Sheldon David R. Snyder Matthew J. Swanson Susan K. & John Wunder
For corrections or questions regarding the list of annual donors, please contact the University of Nebraska Foundation 800-432-3216
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Enclosed is my check for $
(Please make check payable to University of Nebraska Foundation)
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to my:
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Please mail your contribution: University of Nebraska Foundation 1010 Lincoln Mall, Suite 300 Lincoln, NE 68508
Signature I prefer to make this donation anonymously We invite friends of the department to contribute to an existing fund, or contact the chair about establishing a new fund for a specific purpose.
I would like my gift to support the following areas in the amounts specified $ $ $ $ $
History Department Discretionary Fund (2586) James A. Rawley Research Fund (5002), supports research in American history Clay Thomas Memorial Endowment Fund (3968), supports research in American history Edward L. Homze Fund (10852), supports graduate student research in European History Peter Maslowski Graduate Support Fund (26400), supports graduate student research
helping
HISTORY history.unl.edu
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY 612 OLDFATHER HALL LINCOLN, NE 68588-0327