history | the university of texas at austin

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T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F T E X A S A T A U S T I N D E P A R T M E N T O F H I S T O R Y

Department of

The University of Texas at Austin2014 • Volume 8College of Liberal Arts

Alumni Newsletter

W W W. U T e x A s . e d U / C o L A / d e p T s / h i s T o r y • 1 2 8 i N N e r C A m p U s d r . B 7 0 0 0 • A U s T i N , T x 7 8 7 1 2 - 1 7 3 9 • 5 1 2 . 4 7 1 . 3 2 6 1

cartoon in a recent issue of the New Yorker (July 21) depicts a mature authority figure saying to one of his toadies, “I’m concerned about my legacy—kill the historians.” This

caught my attention, not only because in our political age obsessed with spin, control of the past has been an increasingly prominent sidekick of the right to gov-ern, but also because I have completed my tenure as chair of this fine department. By the time you read this newsletter, Professor Jacqueline Jones will be installed as our new Chair of History. She has been a wonderful colleague, a dynamic graduate chair, and will, I know, provide the strong leadership History both deserves and needs in the coming years. You will meet Professor Jones in the next pages, and I ask you to give her all the assistance you have so thoughtfully and generously sent my way over the past decade. I also want to extend my thanks to you for that support.

Rather than run through some of the highlights of our past year, which you will find inside our news-letter and on our websites, or catalogue some of the same from my years as chair, I want to reflect a little on the attempts to control what History “is” that have centered on American History and been particularly prominent in Texas. Such claims are at odds with both the centuries-long, broad thrust of historical enquiry, and with particular developments in the writing of American history in the relatively recent past.

Through the nineteenth century and a good deal of the twentieth, most American historians wrote U.S. history and in doing so generally told versions of the national story—qualified often by strands of provin-cial or regional particularism—and/or penned hagio-graphic homages to public figures.

During the last four decades of the twentieth cen-tury, history’s terrain has become much more compli-cated. The idea of “histoire totale” took hold as never before in groups of people and individuals, who had been previously ignored or shouldered aside, to voice their take on the national, regional, diasporic, person-al, and international worlds relevant to their interests in the past. Authors drew inspiration from their aware-ness of the inclusions and exclusions in the story of “who built America,” and from a widening of the sense of membership within the bounds of western civiliza-tion. The logic of this drive has taken us, for example, to such historically self-conscious undertakings as the well-known StoryCorps project. The irony of this same drive is that the orthodoxies of classical liberalism and the democratic ideal of the fulfillment of the individ-ual that were so often presented as binding national orthodoxies have promoted the very fragmentation its repetitious articulation was meant to avoid.

History departments in leading public or private universities bear the charge of reflecting this plural-ization of historical consciousness. Most historians, by training and inclination, come to question every generalization, every opinion whether cavalier or considered, including the pronouncement of both past and current historians. But in doing so we also constantly look for ways to venture coherent and credible takes on the gnarly evidence that we work with as we contend with the continually expanding spectrum of historical thought.

The strength of a large history department such as ours at UT Austin depends upon its embrace of a variety of ways of looking at history. We continue to write and teach national history, state history, and diplomatic history in conjunction with, and contex-tualized by, many of the other perspectives that en-rich historical thinking. These come from our long-standing commitment to Latin American, African, Asian, European, Middle Eastern history, our re-discovery of the multiple international lineages that Americans embody, our evolving American plural-ism, and our continuing expansion of the interest groups that pull up a chair to the historical table. At the same time we have made a concerted effort not only to bring some of this freshness and dynamism to our campus classrooms but also to share that with members of the larger, public, historically-conscious community through our website Not Even Past, https://notevenpast.org/. Our professionalism, our determination to build strength through diversity and scholarly discussion across differences of interest and view, and our openness to responsible dialogue with the communities we serve has distinguished our department during the recent past. My colleagues and I look forward to continuing that mission. And we hope that you will accompany us on that journey.

— Alan Tully

Dear Friends of History:

Hi stor y

AInside

Alan Tully

Commencement, 2014 2

Jacqueline Jones to Lead department

32014 history honors Theses

4Alan Tully Leads department for

Twelve years, 2002–2014 5

h.W. Brands Tweets history6

students make a revolution6

Normandy scholar program7

Graduate students receive Awards and Fellowships

8Conference about the Central

American revolution of 1970s–90s 9

Annual Africa Conference hosts 3009

Taking history Beyond Forty Acres10

institute for historical studies12

Julie hardwick Wins regents’ outstanding Teaching Award

14Gail minault retires

14Juliet e.K. Walker Wins Lifetime

Achievement Award15

erika Bsumek Commended with Teaching Fellowship

15Tatjana Lichtenstein recognized for

excellent Teaching 16

Not Even Past 16

martha Gonzalez and Arturo Flores Winning staff

17Booknotes

18Faculty publications

19Faculty News

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Phot

o by

Mar

sha

Mill

er

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NEWSLETTERSTAFF

Newsletter Staff:

Megan Seaholm, Editor

Courtney Meador, Assistant Editor

Writers and Consultants: Marilyn Lehman, Jackie Llado

Design: Jane Thurmond

We thank Liberal Arts Instructional Technological Services for providing so

many photos of Department of History faculty.

history B.A. Graduate Justina moloney with dr. Alan Tully

U T A u s t i n ’ s m o t t o : “ W h a t s t a r t s h e r e C h a n g e s t h e W o r l d .”

Keynote speaker, The honorable pete Geren

Photos by Marsha Miller

history B.A. Graduate Jasmin Lott with dr. Alison Frazier

Alan Tully

Dressed in caps and gowns while listening to the cheers and applause from their family and friends, members of the Class of 2014 enjoyed a profound sense of accomplishment during the department’s commencement ceremony last May. On May 16, graduating seniors walked across the stage at Bass Concert Hall to be recognized for completing the Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in history. The Honorable Pete Geren, current president of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation and previously Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Acting Secre-tary of the Air Force, Under Secretary of the Army, and Secretary of the Army from 2001 to 2009, was the commencement speaker. Mr. Geren is also an alumnus of UT Austin, earning his B.A. degree with a major in History and his J.D. from the University of Texas Law School. The achievements of the following students and the mentoring provided by faculty and staff in the History Department make us very proud. Victoria Schwartz (Class of ’14) was awarded the Rapoport King Thesis Scholarship for 2013–2014 and the Claudio Segre Honors Thesis Prize for Excellence in the Study of History. Her award-winning thesis, advised by Dr. Julie Hardwick, “Working in Verbs: Gender and Labor in Pre-Industrial England,” dis-cusses the gendered division of labor and proto-industrialization in late 17th-century Bedfordshire through a verb-oriented methodology. Katherine Sinclair received the John Ferguson Honors Thesis Prize for Excellence in the Study of History for “’La Chasse aux papillons’: Myth, History, and Memory in the Penal Colony of French Guiana.” Dr. Philippa Levine supervised Ms. Sinclair’s work. Lidia Plaza (Class of ’13) was awarded the prestigious Under-graduate Award for her paper “The First Crime of Fashion: Cloth and Clothing Theft in Eighteenth-Century London” advised by Professor Neil Kamil. Lidia received an all expenses-paid trip to Dublin, Ireland to attend the UA’s Global Summit. Seven history students were also named Dean’s Distinguished Graduates in 2014: Sarah Lusher, Patrick Naeve, Rebekah Rodriguez, Aurora Mayte Salazar-Ordonez, Andrew Wilson, Andrew Clark, and Philip Wisemen. The History Department congratulates the stu-dents who have been recognized for their achieve-ments, as well as the entire graduating class of 2014!

Students Graduate to Cheers and Applause

By Justina moloney

see page 4 for more on our 2014

history honors Theses graduates.

Visit our department of

history website for informa-

tion about events, courses,

alumni, faculty, special

programs, and online giving:

www.utexas.edu/cola/

depts/history/

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Distinguished Historian Will Lead DepartmentProfessor Jacqueline Jones, Mastin Gen-try White Professor of Southern History and Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas, will serve as the new Chair of the Department of History beginning with the 2014–15 academic year. With an overwhelm-ing vote of confidence from the department faculty, College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl enthusiastically approved the depart-ment’s nomination of Professor Jones. Alan Tully passed the torch of leadership to Pro-fessor Jones with these words: “Our students, faculty, alumni, department staff, all who visit Not Even Past regularly, and the entire university will be inspired and led creatively by an outstanding individual, and a nation-ally known and distinguished historian.” Jones has published eight acclaimed books as well as numerous essays in edited volumes and scholarly journals. She has also co-authored a widely used American His-tory textbook. Her second book, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (Basic Books, 1985; revised for 25th Anni-versary Edition, 2010), was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in American History in 1986 and the recipient of other awards including the Ban-croft Prize in American History, the Philip Taft Award in Labor History, the Julia Spruill Prize awarded by the Southern Association for Women Historians, the Brown Memo-rial Publication Prize awarded by the Asso-ciation of Black Women Historians, and the Gustavus Myers Center Prize for Best Book on Racial Intolerance. Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. aptly predicted that Labor of Love would become a classic when he called it “a seminal work of scholarship which has no rival in its subtle explication of the complex interface of work, sex, race, and class.” Jones has since received several pres-tigious grants for her scholarship includ-ing the MacArthur Fellowship from 1999 to 2004. In 2008, Jones published Saving Savan-nah: The City and the Civil War, 1854–1872 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) which received the Malcolm Bell, Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell Award for Best Book in Georgia History. In 2013, she became a Pulitzer Prize Final-ist for the second time with A Dreadful De-ceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era

to Obama’s America (Basic Books, 2013). In Dreadful Deceit, she uses six biographies to reveal the insidious but persistent way that racial ideology has fortified injustice. A Wall Street Journal reviewer of her book noted, “Ms. Jones argues persuasively, the signifiers ‘white’ and ‘black’ simply ‘emerged from a fundamental imbalance in power among so-cial groups.’”* Not Even Past features an ar-ticle by Jones (“Jacqueline Jones on the Myth of Race in America”) and a video interview conducted by NEP editor, Joan Neuberger (notevenpast.org/jacqueline-jones-on-the-myth-of-race-in-america). Before joining the Department of History faculty at UT Austin in 2008, Jones taught at Wellesley College, Brown University (as Clare Booth Luce Visiting Professor), and Brandeis University (as the Harry S. Truman Professor of American History). While at Wellesley College and Brandeis University,

she served terms as the department chair. She has served on several editorial boards including the Journal of American History and the Journal of Southern History. And, she was Vice President for the Professional Divi-sion of the American Historical Association from 2010 to 2013. At UT Austin, she teaches a variety of un-dergraduate and graduate classes: The U.S. South, the Social History of the Confederate States of America, Classics in American Au-tobiography, U.S. History from Reconstruc-tion to the Present, and a Graduate Research Seminar at the Briscoe Center for American History. Also, Professor Jones has been a member of the College of Liberal Arts Aca-demic Planning and Advisory Committee, several Graduate School fellowship-selec-tion committees, and the University Truman Scholarship Nominating Committee. She was the Graduate Advisor for the depart-ment from 2011 to summer 2014. Esteemed and well-prepared, Professor Jones will face several challenges as the Chair of the Department of History. As she has said, “I want to make certain that our fac-ulty have the resources necessary to do their jobs of teaching and research well and that our graduate financial recruitment packages become more competitive. I would like to start replenishing our ranks to compensate for the faculty who have retired or otherwise left the university. I hope to represent the department’s interests effectively at the col-lege and university-wide levels. And finally, I want us to be proactive as we consider the best way to provide online instruction of his-tory courses; we should strive for a creative and thoughtful approach to increasingly in-sistent calls for online courses.”

Please join us in the UT Austin Depart-ment of History as we welcome Professor Jacqueline Jones to the helm.

* Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wall Street Journal, 1/20/2014, Book Review. online. wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303465004579324704236516682

Read more about Professor Jacqueline Jones and follow links for reviews and interviews: “Professor Jones Selected New Chair of History Department,” utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/news/7799Emily Nielsen, “What it is like to learn from a Pulitzer Finalist,” The Daily Texan. utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/news/8036Jacqueline Jones Ph

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2014 history honors Theses Aisha Ali

Let London Talk: The Role of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, in the Westminster Election of 1784(Advisor: Professor James Vaughn)

Arjun AwasthiA Futile Stand: the Punjab Boundary Force and Peacekeeping of the 20th Century(Advisor: Professor Wm. Roger Louis)

John DicksonTheorizing Environmental Confrontation: German Settlement in Mid-Nineteenth Century Texas(Advisor: Professor Erika Bsumek)Earned B.A. in History and B.A.A. in Art History

Catherine HarrisDaniel Defoe and the Churches of England and Scotland: National Prejudice in the Union of 1707 (Advisor: Professor Julie Hardwick)

Scott JamesonA Yellow Metal’s Quest: The Charitable Journey of the Gold Found During the Victoria Gold Rush of 1851 (Advisor: Professor Roger Louis)

George KimsonGeorge Habash, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the First Intifada(Advisor: Professor Yoav Di-Capua)

Jasmin LottRace, Place & Contested Space: The Battle Over Freedman’s Town & Racial Homogeneity in Dallas Neighborhoods(Advisor: Professor Anne Martinez)

Justina MoloneyWar’s Hoarse Croaking: The Varied Perceptions of the First World War Represented through British and American Literature(Advisor: Professor H. W. Brands)

Catherine MorenoA Story of Syncretism and Approval: The Virgin of Guadalupe from Inception to Independence(Advisor: Professor Ann Twinam)

Victoria SchwartzWorking in the Verbs: Gender and Labor in Pre-Industrial England (Advisor: Professor Julie Hardwick)

Front row: Aisha Ali, Justina moloney, emily you, Victoria schwartzsecond row: Katherine sinclair, Catherine harris, Catherine morenoThird row: Arjun Awasthi, Jasmin Lott, Nathan VestTop row: John dickson, scott Jameson, Alison Frazier, George Kimson

ph.d. Graduates left to right: Jason morgan, robert icenhauer-ramirez, Chiristine Baker, John Vurpillat, George Christian, Ken Ward, Cameron strang, Kyle shelton, robert Whitaker

Katherine Sinclair “La Chasse aux papillons”: Myth, History, and Memory in the Penal Colony of French Guiana(Advisor: Professor Philippa Levine)

Jacob TroublefieldA Struggle for Solidarity and Control: E. D. Morel and the Congo Reform Movement(Advisor: Professor Wm. Roger Louis)

Emily YouInheriting the Sino-centric Tradition of Foreign Relations: China’s Post-1949 Approach to the International System (Advisor: Professor Huaiyin Li)

Nathan VestA Liberty Loving People: Developing an American Identity During the Barbary Wars, 1785–1895(Advisor: Professor Denise Spellberg)

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T h e U N i V e r s i T y o F T e x A s A T A U s T i N d e p A r T m e N T o F h i s T o r y

Professor Alan Tully Leads Department of History for Twelve Years, 2002–2014

With this newly established Excellence Fund, the department was able to realize several major initiatives:• The Institute forHistorical Studies (IHS),

founded in 2007 under the directorship of Professor Julie Hardwick and currently di-rected by Professor Seth Garfield, has pro-vided an opportunity for faculty, students, visiting scholars, and members of the uni-versity community to come together to share and discuss cutting-edge historical research and writing.

• Beginningin2008,thedepartmentaddedfaculty “excellence” hires including Pro-fessors Jacqueline Jones (Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas and Mas-tin Gentry White Professor of Southern History), Miriam Bodian, Philippa Levine (Mary Helen Thompson Centennial Pro-fessor in the Humanities and Co-Director, Program in British Studies), Jeremi Suri (Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs), and Sumit Guha (Frances Higginbotham Nalle Cen-tennial Professorship in History).

• TheExcellenceFundincreasedthedepart-ment’s graduate program competitiveness by adding approximately $600,000 annu-ally for student fellowship packages.

• The public website, Not Even Past, launched in January 2011 and edited by Professor Joan Neuberger, has allowed the department to reach out to the global community of history-lovers everywhere and share some of the books and sources— visual, audio, and textual—that faculty and graduate students have found memorable and compelling. By creating a community of scholars and engaging the public, both the IHS and Not Even Past have raised the profile of the department and introduced the groundbreaking historical scholarship of UT Austin faculty to a wider audience.

• ProfessorTully has been remarkably suc-cessful in advocating for the department by reaching out to donors and alumni, creating a departmental newsletter, initiat-ing lectures by History faculty to groups in Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston, and by assembling the History Department Visit-ing Committee made up of alumni dedi-cated to the success and reputation of the department. The Visiting Committee has made valuable suggestions to benefit the department, such as the establishment of Not Even Past. Endowments set up during Tully’s tenure will provide for the gradu-ate program, faculty research, and other department initiatives for years to come.

* See a list of Professor’s Tully’s publications on his curriculum vitae: utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/faculty/tullywa1

By sarah steinbock-pratt in collaboration with Laura Flack, Courtney meador, and Jackie Llado.

Photo by Marsha Miller

With such accomplishments, it is not sur-prising that Tully has had many admirers. Pulitzer Prize winning author and former member of the department, David Oshinsky, commented that Professor Tully was “fair, compassionate, and devilishly hard-working,” and a “master at separating important issues from peripheral ones. He knows what’s truly important in terms of teaching, scholarship, and personnel. And he’s kept us relentlessly focused on these things—to our enormous collective advantage.” Associate Chair and Professor Virginia Garrard-Burnett states that Professor Tully is not only “compassion-ate and fair-minded,” but also “an admin-istrative chess player,” able to “keep his eye on the prize: the best interests and good of the department as a whole.” Another faculty colleague said, “Most of all I treasure Alan’s civility, which extends far beyond mere sur-face politeness to a deep respect for everyone with whom he interacts, be they student, staff, or faculty.” Of course, these developments and the related rise of the department’s stature, both within the Forty Acres and in the wider aca-demic community, also required the initiative and participation of the university adminis-tration, as well as the department’s impressive faculty, staff, and the members of its Visiting Committee. Still, as former chair Carolyn Boyd noted, the choice of Professor Tully for department chair was “an inspired one.” In the opinion of Dean Randy Diehl, College of Liberal Arts, Professor Tully repre-sents “the consummate department leader. He has a clear vision of how to build excellence. His per-formance as chair, Diehl summed up, “has been, in a word, masterful.”

After twelve years of service to the depart-ment and the university, Alan Tully, Eugene C. Barker Centennial Professor in American History, will stand down as department chair. Tully presided over and facilitated a remark-able decade of innovation and excellence in the department. Professor Tully came to The University of Texas at Austin in January 2002 already es-teemed as a scholar and a university adminis-trator.* He taught courses in colonial American history at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver from 1972–2002. While at UBC, he served as chair of the History Depart-ment from 1996–1999 and, then, as Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He said that he was motivated to come to UT Austin, in part, “because of the university’s sizeable and tangible commit-ment to the humanities, social sciences and the visual and performing arts.” Beginning during the chairmanship of Pro-fessor Brian P. Levack and continuing under Professor Tully, the department successfully recruited numerous accomplished scholars, including Professors David Oshinsky, H.W. Brands, Juliet E.K. Walker, Ann Twinam, and Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, with additional strategic hires to follow. The department can also boast a dramatic change in the gender makeup of the department: in 2002, the de-partment had only three female full professors; by 2014, that number had risen to thirteen. While Alan Tully was chair, the depart-ment became the first UT Austin department to receive the Presidential Excellence Fund for the purpose of recruiting new faculty, provid-ing competitive graduate stipends, and creat-ing a department excellence fund for speakers, symposia, and visiting scholars. In his inaugu-ral address on September 29, 2006, UT Austin President William Powers, Jr. highlighted the History Department, citing the strength of the department’s faculty, national ranking, overall “vision of excellence” and “harmonious pro-fessional environment.” Powers announced this award, in recognition of the depart-ment’s “strong academic vision.” “I am very proud of Alan Tully and the leadership he has provided the Department of History,” Powers said. “One of the primary reasons I picked the History Department to receive this special focus was because of the confi-dence I have in Alan. Through his leadership, the department has achieved a working en-vironment that is committed to excellence in both teaching and research. I’m proud to be Alan’s colleague, and I’m sure that the praise I have for his past achievements will be sur-passed only by my praise for those to come.”

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Professor Olwell’s Students Make a RevolutionDr. Robert Olwell, Associate Professor, whose research and teaching interests in-clude the early American South and the eighteenth century British-Atlantic world, let his fall 2013 students spend half of the semester playing the “Reacting to the Past” game. Inspired by the book Patriots, Loyal-ists, and Revolution, in New York City, 1775–1776 by William Offutt (2013, W.W.Norton), Professor Olwell designed his upper division seminar, “Debating the American Revolu-tion,” so that students act, write, debate, and plan as if they lived in New York City dur-ing the year the American Revolution began. (Offutt’s book is part of the Reacting to the Past series, a set of “historical role-playing games,”* begun by Professor Mark Carnes of Barnard College in the 1990s.) Olwell expanded upon Offutt’s model by having the class spend the first half of the semester reading the political theorists that most colonial New Yorkers would have read: Locke, Hobbes, Bolingbroke, as well as loyal-ist and patriot pamphleteers. Then, students studied life in colonial New York. Using con-temporary maps, students learned about the city’s diverse inhabitants, the crowding, the sights and smells. Finally, each student read one of New York’s weekly newspapers for a month between June 1773 and March 1775. Professor Olwell asked students to note not only the news and the editorial content but also the advertisements: an express stage-coach, slave auctions, patent medicines, and more. In chronological order, students reported to the class on their month’s news and saw how tensions between the colonies and Britain grew.** With this background, each student drew the name (and role) of the character that he or she would portray for the second half of the semester. Five students were patriots; four were loyalists; four moderates (who had not made up their mind). These char-acters all served in New York’s Provincial Congress. There were also seven characters who, by virtue of their status, were politically disenfranchised. Some were slaves, others women, poor, or not Protestants. Each stu-dent/character received information about their character that was unknown to the oth-er students. There was no actual script, but each character had his or her role to play;

and the game began. The patriots and the loyalists both wanted to win the moderates over to their side, so there were speeches and votes. The disenfranchised made their voices heard by forming a mob and demanding concessions from “the better sort.” Individ-ual characters also had their own cares and concerns. There were two slaves who wanted to be free; one woman wanted to divorce her husband; and all of the poor wanted a voice on the independence issue. Thus, the disen-franchised sought political rights from the colonial assembly; and the different factions in the assembly plotted to gain support for their position. At the beginning of each weekly class, students met with others of their group (pa-triots, loyalists, moderates, the “mob”) to make plans—what each group, and the indi-viduals of each group, would do to get what they wanted. The student/characters acted in concert and alone. Each student submitted two anonymous letters to the in-class news-paper to provoke debate or to create intrigue. And so the game continued through the as-sembly’s decision to join the Non-Impor-tation Agreement, through July 1775 when the Continental Congress raised troops for the Continental Army, through Britain’s re-jection of the Continental Congress’ plea for peace, through the spring of 1776 when Thomas Paine’s influential essay “Common Sense” was published in the newspapers, and on to July 1776. Olwell explains that the stu-dents “debate, argue, riot and experience the outbreak of the American Revolution while playing their character.”*** Professor Olwell has used this histori-cal role-playing in previous “Debating the American Revolution” classes, but, he ex-plains that “[though] all my classes thus far have declared independence and joined the revolution….no two classes have arrived at that destination by the same route.”** Stu-dents become intensely engaged in learn-ing about the American Revolution. “[T]he format of this class teaches students about how history is woven from the interaction between structure and contingency, between the larger forces of economics, politics, and culture and the immediate consequence of events and of individual choice.”** In Dr. Robert Olwell’s class, history comes alive.

* http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294979822 **For a full description of this class, see Dr. Robert A. Olwell, “You Say You Want a Revolution?

Making History in the Classroom,” June 4, 2014, Department of History, online: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/news/7970

***Dr. Robert Olwell, 9/29/14, email.

it was a dare, or at least a challenge. Alex Vickery reported in the June/July 2014 edition of Alcalde that Professor H.W. Brands once told his class that the long research paper was not the only way to write history. One could write history using many different formats, even haiku. A stu-dent then asked Dr. Brands if he had ever written history in haiku. He had not, but that was then.

Since 2009, Professor Brands, author of scholarly biographies and histories—thousands of pages of complete sentences and well-orga-nized paragraphs—has “tweeted” dozens of haikus as part of “History in Haiku: The Ameri-can Saga 17 Syllables at a Time.” He has two thousand Twitter followers. You, too, can follow Professor Brands’ history haikus: #hwbrands.

Walking from AsiaA hunter, a tribe, a clan

Into a new world.(First arrivals, c. 15,000 BC)

The white ships appear The bearded ones come ashore

Who the hell are they?(Columbus, 1492)

Taunts and ice balls fly Nervous soldiers flinch and fire

Blood moon, scarlet snow(Boston Massacre, 1770)

A Western empire Suddenly offered for sale

Louisiana!(Louisiana Purchase, 1803)

Texas now beckons Take me! She says, lest helpless

I seek another.(The Texas republic applies for admission to the Union, early 1840s)

The days! Oh, the days! When the calendar is changed

Eleven go missing!(The British empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, 1752)

A cunning device Which severs cotton from seeds

Gives bondage new life.(Cotton gin and slavery, 1790s)

Glint in the gravel Glimmer in the morning sun

And dreams of Midas(The discovery of gold in California, 1848)

A boy on a raft With a slave on the river And truth on the page

(Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, 1885)

See: http://alcade.texasexes.org/2014/06/ retweeting-history/

h.W. Brands Can Tweet you a history Lesson

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25This spring twenty UT Austin under-

graduates went on the trip of a lifetime.

The Frank Denius Nor-mandy Scholar Program, led by Associate Professor of History Charters Wynn, travels every spring across Europe learning about the Second World War. The program offers a small number of highly motivated students an arduous, semester-long immersion in the study of World War II. This year’s class visited London, Normandy, Berlin, Krakow, Lodz, and Warsaw. The other participating Department of History faculty were Michael Stoff, David Crew, Tatjana Lichtenstein, and Francoise De Backer. For the last quarter of a century, the Nor-mandy Scholar Program has been a staple of the History Department. An academically focused program, it allows students to inter-act with other multi-talented and enthusias-tic students to gain a better understanding of world events, and especially, World War II. The three-week excursion that follows a semester of challenging coursework differs from traditional study abroad programs. Be-cause the students have essentially become young experts on the Second World War, visits to Omaha and Utah Beach, the Reich-stag, and Auschwitz hold profound meaning. Furthermore, the intellectual respect that faculty and students show each other, and the bonds of friendship that form among all participants, add to the distinctive experi-ence that is NSP. This year was a milestone for the pro-gram: its twenty-fifth anniversary. Since the

Normandy Scholar Program Celebrates Twenty-five Years

program’s inception in 1989, over 500 stu-dents have participated in the Normandy Scholar program. The program hosted an an-niversary celebration this spring with alumni from almost every class represented, as well as the numerous faculty and staff members who have contributed their time and knowl-edge to the program over the years. The event

included talks by Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author of the The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944–1945 (2014), and Leila Levin-son, author of Gated Grief: The Daughter of a GI Concentration Camp Liberator Discovers a Legacy of Trauma (2011). The 25th anniver-sary also marked the retirement of Associate Director Dr. Francoise De Backer, who has been instrumental to the Normandy Scholar Program since its beginning. Scholars from throughout the years recounted their fondest memories of De Backer and how she shaped the program and their lives. The 2014 Normandy Scholars also ex-pressed their gratitude for the program. Zachary Stone (Plan II, History, Econom-ics, Government, English) wrote, “My time at UT would have been incomplete if I had not done the Normandy Scholar Program. In the NSP, you are challenged academically in a way unlike in any other liberal arts pro-gram at UT. You study with other motivated students and learn from, and get to know, each phenomenal faculty member. You read interesting history and dazzling stories. You have to consider complicated ethical dilem-mas. Your analysis and writing improves. By the time you get to Europe after a rigorous semester, all the students are already close friends, unlike in a traditional study abroad program.” Jake Barnett (Plan II, History, and Arabic) stated, “I know when I look back at my college days this will be the experience that I remember most fondly.” The Department of History is proud to sponsor this superb life-transforming and life-affirming program.

By Justina moloney

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• Cameron Strang, department Lathrop Prize for Best Dissertation

• Chloe Ireton, department Perry Prize for Best Master’s Thesis/Report

• Cacee Hoyer, Best Graduate Paper from Southeast Regional Seminar in African Studies

• Julie Ogden, Adrian Bantjes Best Graduate Student Paper Award from Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies

• Albert Palacios, Southern Methodist University award for best graduate essay on Book History

• Ava Purkiss, First Place in Graduate Divi-sion of the C.M. and Cora Caldwell Memo-rial Award for Excellence in Historical Research, Texas State Historical AssociationGraduate students in the Department of

History collectively earned an unprecedent-ed number of prestigious fellowships for the 2014–15 academic year. Three students, Benjamin Breen, Isabel Huacuja Alonso, and Brian Stauffer, were awarded Mellon/ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies) Dissertation Completion Fellowships. Sup-ported by The Andrew W. Mellon Founda-tion, the ACLS fellowships support a year of research and writing to help advanced grad-uate students in the humanities and social sciences in the last year of Ph.D. dissertation writing. Sixty-five awards are made annually. More information about the students and their projects can be found on the ACLS web-site: http://www.acls.org/research/dcf.aspx? id=800; https://www.acls.org/programs/dcf/

Two students, Canadian citizens, received multi-year Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Doc-toral Fellowships. First-year student, Sandy Change, accepted a four-year fellowship to support her project on the history of prosti-tution and sex trafficking in the British Em-pire, and second-year student, Simon Miles, a three-year fellowship for his work on US-Soviet relations during the 1982–1985 period.

The distinguished Charlotte W. New-combe Dissertation Fellowship, which sup-ports outstanding work in religion and eth-ics, was awarded to advanced student, Susan Zakaib. Zakaib’s dissertation examines the relationships between native languages and the Catholic Church in late colonial Mexico. The Woodrow Wilson Foundation, which ad-ministers the Newcombe Fellowship com-petition, gave out twenty-two fellowships

Graduate Students Receive Awards and Fellowships

By marilyn Lehman, Graduate Coordinator

at the request of and in consultation with the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, a private foundation created under the will of Philadelphia philanthropist Mrs. Newcombe, who died in 1979.

Third-year student, Chloe Ireton, collected by far the greatest number of fellow-ships, among them the prestigious Leverhulme Trust Study Abroad Stu-dentship (A United King-dom trust which supports talented individuals in the

arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences to realize their personal vision in research and professional training) and a Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) Dissertation Fellow-ship. The SSRC is an independent, nonprofit, international organization founded in 1923 that nurtures new generations of social scien-tists, fosters innovative research, and mobilizes necessary knowledge on important public is-sues. Ireton’s dissertation explores the connec-tions between black communities in three key port cities in the Iberian Atlantic in connection with the emergence of black Atlantic Catholic cultures. These grants, along with a collection of short-term fellowships, will enable her to spend the next two years visiting archives in Spain, Mexico, and Colombia.

Another third-year student, Edward Shore, received the Ruth Landes memorial Fellow-ship from the Reed Foundation in recognition of his work on the emergence of race based public policy and affirmative action in Brazil. The Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund was established in 1991 in honor of Ruth Schlossberg Landes, Ph.D. (1908–1991). It supports interdisciplinary research.

Finally, three advanced students garnered es-teemed predoctoral, resi-dential fellowships, two from the University of Virginia, one from Yale University. Ava Purkiss re-ceived a Carter G. Wood-son Institute Two-year

Predoctoral Fellowship for her project, which examines the barriers to exercise for African American women and how they circumvented those obstacles and sought health, fitness, beauty, and recreation through physical culture. Joe Parrott received a one-year Miller Center National Fellowship for his dissertation, which charts the growth of

European and North American solidarity with anti-colonial parties in Portuguese Africa and the impact this transnational network had on Western foreign policy and popular percep-tions of the Cold War. Helen Pho received the Smith Richardson Predoctoral Fellow-ship in International Security Studies at Yale University. For advanced doctoral candidates in international, diplomatic, or military his-tory from universities other than Yale, the Smith Richardson Fellowship is given to two students annually. Ms. Pho, whose disserta-tion examines the unintended economic con-sequences of American aid to South Vietnam and the effects of the outcome of the Viet-nam War on the economy, was also awarded a two-year predoctoral fellowship from the Clements Center for History, Strategy, and Statecraft. The Clements Center provides research funding for scholars and UT Austin graduate students.

The Harrrington Graduate Fellowship is a prestigious award of support for “gifted and ambitious graduate students at the Univer-sity of Texas at Austin.” Established by Don and Sybil Harrington in 1951, three History students will be Harrington Fellows for 2014–15: Christopher Heaney, Carl Forsberg, and Zack Schlacter. http://www.utexas.edu/harrington/graduate/ index.html

recent department of history ph.d. recipients Launch New CareersMikki Brock: Assistant Professor, Washington & Lee UniversityLauren Hammond: Postdoctoral fellowship, Denison UniversityBonar Hernandez: Assistant Professor, Iowa State UniversityJonathan Hunt: Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the RAND CorporationMichelle Reeves: Postdoctoral fellowship, Dartmouth UniversityClaudia Rueda: Assistant Professor, Texas A & M University at Corpus ChristiKyle Shelton: Postdoctoral fellowship, Rice UniversitySarah Steinbock-Pratt: Assistant Professor, University of AlabamaCameron Strang: Assistant Professor, University of Nevado-RenoCharlie Thomas: Air Force Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force BaseLaurie Wood: Assistant Professor, Florida State University

prize-winning graduate students in 2014

Chloe ireton

Ava purkiss

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Department Co-sponsors Conference about the Central American Revolution of 1970s–90sThe Lozano Long Institute of Latin Amer-ican Studies (LLILAS) and the affiliated Benson Latin American Collection hosted a remarkable two-day conference, “Archiv-ing the Central American Revolutions,” the 1970s through 1990s, in February 2014. Co-sponsors included the Departments of History and Religious Studies, the Insti-tute for Historical Studies, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, and the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Virginia Garrard-Burnett of History and

Annual Africa Conference Hosts 300By danielle porter sanchez

Kent Norsworthy of LLILAS organized this forum for new scholarship.

About 200 scholars and activists from the United States and Central America present-ed new work about various aspects of these turbulent times. Two Department of History graduate students—Cheasty Miller Ander-son and Claudia Rueda—were among the participants, and Professor Jonathan Brown moderated a discussion with UT Austin graduate students. Activists, journalists and others who witnessed the events under discussion spoke on panels in roundtable

discussions. The conference also issued a call for scholars and activists to contribute their papers and other relevant documents to the Benson Latin American Collection so that these materials can be preserved and made available to future scholars.

LLILAS has posted a series of short video interviews with Professor Virginia Garrard-Burnett about this conference.

See http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/llilas/events/conferences/2014-Lozano-Long.phpns

For the past 14 years, the Africa Conference has encouraged an interdisciplinary dialogue about the African continent for scholars from around the world. The 2014 Africa Conference centered on the theme of “African Diasporas: Old and New.” Scholars responded to the wide-ranging and vibrant theme by answering the Call for Papers in unprecedented numbers. With more than 300 people registered, the 2014 Africa Conference was the largest to date with participants from every continent (except Antarctica).

Panel topics ranged from entrepreneurship in the African diaspora to representations of black immigrant experiences through literature. Furthermore, the 2014 conference featured a completely francophone panel entitled “Francophone African Identities in Motion,” chaired by Professor Benjamin Brower. Dozens of conference participants and francophone scholars as well as UT Austin students crammed into Garrison 0.120 and eagerly witnessed a groundbreaking moment: the first panel dis-cussion in the history of the UT Austin Africa Conference con-ducted entirely in a language other than English. Nicole Gregoire (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Louise Barre (Columbia Univer-sity, London School of Economics), Hervé Tchumkam (Southern Methodist University), Josiane Banini (West Virginia Universi-ty), Ramon A. Founkoué (Michigan Technological University), and Africanist scholar Daouda Gary-Tounkara (CNRS, LAM/Sciences Po Bordeaux) presented original research in French. The audience enjoyed participating in a dialogue that took the past, present, and future of Africa and the African diaspora be-yond the English language. We hope to continue this tradition in the future with specialty panels in French, Yoruba, Portuguese, and Kiswahili.

The three-day conference featured dozens of panels in Gar-rison Hall and the Student Activity Center, an eloquent keynote by Professor Edmund Gordon who is chair of the UT Austin De-partment of African and African Diaspora Studies, a lively ban-quet, and a relaxed farewell dinner featuring Ethiopian cuisine at St. Edward’s University. Beyond enjoying the delicious cuisine and spirited dancing, participants expressed their gratitude for continuing the important tradition of bringing scholars from a variety of backgrounds together to discuss the multidimensional histories and cultures of Africa.

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In June, Dr. Jeremi Suri, the Mack Brown Distinguished Professor for Global Leader-ship, History, and Public Policy, led a cohort of high school history teachers through a weeklong seminar on the history of United States foreign policy. The seminar was one of forty organized across the country by the Gilder Lehrman Institute. The goal of these annual seminars is to connect the nation’s best high school history teachers with uni-versity historians in order to bring cutting edge historical research into high school classes and improve historical education at both levels. For Professor Suri, the seminars display “the enthusiasm and commitment of the teachers,” creating an energetic atmo-sphere that “constantly renews my faith in the importance of education and the ability of those delivering it.”

Dr. Lesley Herrmann, the director of the Gilder Lehrman who visited Austin during the seminar, sees these meetings as spaces where teachers can “recharge, refresh, and delve deeply into a topic” with the educator colleagues. To Herrmann, the mix of schol-arly content and pedagogical discussions offered by the seminars creates an opportu-nity to strengthen high school history classes across the United States.

Master teacher Carl Ackerman, from Constitution High School in Philadelphia, facilitated the pedagogy sections of the semi-nar and agreed with Herrmann on the value of the week. “At the heart of every teacher is a good learner,” Ackerman said. The inten-sive mix of pedagogy and content engages that thirst for knowledge. “Teachers feel re-spected and valued as educators. [The semi-nars] foster a supportive atmosphere where

By Kyle shelton

UT Austin and Gilder Lehrman institute host secondary school Teachers for Third year

teachers of every age and experience level feel confident in speaking up and expressing ideas. [Professor Suri] in particular does a great job of making teachers and their ideas welcomed,” Ackerman said. Michal Hersh-kovitz, a teacher from Poly Prep Country Day School in New York, echoed those sen-timents. To Hershkovitz the careful organi-zation of the event “communicated the high regard in which teachers are held, by Gilder Lerhman, Jeremi [Suri], the compelling guest lecturers, and the University itself.”

The efforts of many groups across the UT Austin campus ensured a successful seminar. Co-sponsored by the Gilder Leh-rman Institute, the Department of History, the Institute for Historical Studies, and the Lyndon B. Johnson School for Public Affairs, the program employs staff from each en-tity who worked seamlessly to facilitate the week. The majority of the events took place in the classrooms of the LBJ School. Teach-ers spent their mornings with Professor Suri and guests, such as history professor Dr. Erika Bsumek, for lectures aimed at provid-ing the teachers with new interpretations on a variety of historic topics. Professor Bsumek, for example, lectured on how teachers could share more Native American history with their students by highlighting its numerous interconnections with foreign policy.

In the afternoons, the staffs of the several world-class archives at UT Austin opened their doors to participating teachers. The seminar visited the Harry Ransom Center, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Humani-ties Texas, and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. In each archive the teachers were given a chance to look at col-lections and get a behind-the-scenes view of the archives. Brenda Gunn, Associate Direc-tor for Research and Collections at the Bris-coe Center, and a UT Austin graduate stu-dent, explained that the center saw working with the seminar as an opportunity to “get

primary documents into the hands of the students and teachers. Having a piece of his-tory in your hands allows for an even deeper engagement with history.” Lila Teeters, a teacher from the Pingree School in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, noted that the “in-teractions with the archives and their staffs were great. It wasn’t a surprise to see them enthusiastic about their jobs, but it was excit-ing to also see how committed they were to helping teachers and sharing their resources. Before the seminar I had never thought of archives as partners for the classroom.”

The teachers did much more than absorb the lectures. Indeed, their own wealth of ed-ucational experiences offered a great deal to UT’s faculty and staff members. Tim Evans, a teacher from W.T. Wooden High School in Fairfax, Virginia, said he believed that the “diverse classroom experiences of the teach-ers at the seminar offered examples of how college teachers might engage students with a wide variety of learning styles and from a number of backgrounds.” Professor Suri agreed, “the teachers here help me become a better teacher. Their experiences help me see where the freshmen in my class are coming from. The seminars give UT Austin history graduate students [who help facilitate the week] a view of great teachers in action.”

Professor of History Joan Neuberger also gained some helpful feedback in her presentation to the seminar participants. As editor of Not Even Past, a public history website created by the Department of History, Professor Neuberger talked to the

Taking HistoryTaking History


Photos by Brenda Gunn

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In 2013, the Study Abroad program and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE) collaborated to pro-vide a special Maymester program in Beijing, China.* Department of History Professor and Associate Vice President of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement Leonard N. Moore, Dr. Ge Chen (also of the DDCE) and Giancarlo Taylor of the Interna-tional Office escorted a diverse group of thir-ty-eight students to the People’s Republic of China and through a memorable and trans-forming experience.

Students spent four mornings each week in the Social Entrepreneurship class taught by Dr. Moore on the campus of Beijing For-eign Studies University. Students also at-tended language and culture classes taught by Dr. Chen. Guest lecturers “spoke to stu-dents about Chinese History and social en-trepreneurship, and a panel of Beijing resi-dents spoke to students about the one-child law.”** On Fridays, students volunteered at the Dandelion School for children of mi-grant workers helping the children to learn English. The students also visited Beijing’s Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, Tianan-men Square and the Great Wall of China.This year (June 2014) Dr. Moore and Dr. Darren Kelly of the McNair Scholars Program traveled with forty-three students to Cape Town, South Africa to study urban

You have read in these pages about Emilio Zamora’s recent book publications: Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas, Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II (2009) and The WWI Diary of Jose de la Luz Saenz (2014).* Professor Zamora also worked with the Tejano Monument Project to place a bronze sculpture by Armando Hinojosa on the south lawn of the Texas Capitol. As Juan Castillo wrote in the Austin American States-man in 2012, this monument “fills a gaping hole in the popular narrative of Texas, by not-ing the achievements of the settlers who were here long before Anglos began arriving in the 1800s.” Zamora has continued his work to increase awareness of Tejano history.

teachers about what the site offered high school classrooms. In return, Professor Neu-berger received helpful suggestions from the teachers about how to make the site work for their classrooms. “This year, the GLI teach-ers had great ideas about promoting our most recent project, ‘Our/stories.’ I learned about the kinds of assignments that teachers are using in high school history classes, as well as about programs like the National Public Writing Project, all of which pro-mote study and writing of history,” Professor Neuberger said.

By the end of the week the back and forth between the teachers and members of the UT community fostered a fruitful atmosphere for both discussing ways to frame complex episodes in American history and for brain-storming how to effectively bring new con-tent into the classroom. The seminar showed how similar high school and university his-tory instruction can be. As master teacher Ackerman pointed out, “there is an assump-tion that universities are where content is made and academic research is done and that pedagogy is neglected. And high school teaching is seen in the reverse. Effective learning requires both.” These seminars link history instruction across all levels of educa-tion. As Professor Suri noted, on the first day of the seminar, “the enthusiasm for history created by these workshops ripples outward through us to students in high school and in college. That’s the goal.”

Along with UT Austin College of Education colleagues, particularly his wife Dr. Angela Valenzuela, Professor in the De-partment of Educational Administration, Zamora developed and piloted the Tejano History Curriculum Project. With grant funding from the Walmart Foundation and Tejano Monument Inc., Zamora was the “content” person in designing curricula to introduce Tejano history to primary school students in the Austin Independent School District. AISD teachers, along with UT Aus-tin College of Education undergraduate and graduate students and the Mexican Ameri-can Cultural Center, used the program in six 4th grade classes in 2012–13.

* Emilio Zamora’s New Book Hailed as “Best Book on Texas,” Department of History Alumni Newsletter, volume 4, 2010, p. 8.** Juan Castillo, “Tejano Monument Dedicated at Capitol,” online: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/tejano-monument-dedicated-at-capitol-1/nRmZN/

*Maymesters are month-long (late May through Late June) faculty-led study abroad programs. See http://world.utexas.edu/abroad/programs/mm.

**http://ddce.utexas.edu/news/2013/06/25/beijing-maymester-experiece-of-a-lifetime/***http://world.utexas.edu/abroad/programs/south-africa-ddce

economic development—to consider the “potential for corporations and governments to embrace the United States model of market-led approaches to spur greater economic development in apartheid-created, majority Black townships near Cape Town.”*** Stu-dents participated in service learning proj-ects, attended classes, and listened to special lectures such as talk by Enver Daniels, Chief-State Law Advisor of South Africa, and one of those who helped write the post-apartheid constitution for South Africa.

The 2013 Maymester to China and this year’s program in South Africa are recognized as national models for bringing diversity to study abroad programs as well as to campus classrooms.

emilio Zamoraemilio Zamora: Working to enrich Texas history for K–12 students

Longhorns Go to Beijing and Capetown

For more on Not Even Past see page 16.

Phot

o by

San

dy C

arso

n

Today, the Tejano History Curriculum Project can boast a web site with instructional materials. Furthermore, the project and the Texas State Historical Association provide workshops for teachers about implementing the curriculum. Eventually, the curriculum and its three themes—civil rights, migra-tion, and local history—will be expanded to several grades.

Zamora and Professor Andres Tijerina of Austin Community College, are co-directing the “Handbook of Tejano History Project,” sponsored by the Texas State Historical As-sociation, to expand the entries about Teja-nos and Mexican Americans history in the Handbook of Texas (online).

Leonard N. moore

Beyond the Forty AcresBeyond the Forty Acres

UT Austin and Gilder Lehrman institute, continued

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Institute for Historical Studies Adds Two New Popular Series

In celebrating its sixth year, the Institute for Historical Studies launched an ambitious schedule of programming, including the ad-dition of two new series: one investigating national traumas in history through a multi-disciplinary lens, and another, a forum for History faculty to discuss their new book publications. Both series were initiated by Dr. Seth Garfield, Professor of Latin Ameri-can History, in this first year as IHS Director, and both enjoyed record attendance, draw-ing audiences from across campus and the Austin community. Nearly all of the eighteen workshops, four “Commemorative round-tables,” nine History faculty new book dis-cussions, along with the annual conference and other talks and events, centered on the institute’s 2013–14 theme of “Trauma and Social Transformation.”

The Institute’s annual conference on “Trauma and History,” organized and co-convened by Dr. Garfield and Dr. Yoav Di-Capua, Associate Professor of History and IHS Program Coordinator in 2013–14, was held last March. The two-day conference examined how the field of trauma studies might enrich our understanding of the past. Going beyond the existing historical litera-ture on trauma and the Holocaust, the con-ference explored a number of themes: the cumulative toll and intergenerational nature of trauma; trauma as a catalyst for geograph-ic displacement, social reform, and politi-cal mobilization; the commercialization of trauma; and the methodological challenges of integrating trauma into historical analysis.

Stretching from the medieval to the modern, and drawing from the fields of human rights, psychoanalysis, memory studies, sociology, anthropology, religious studies, environ-mental science, and comparative literature, the conference enhanced and extended the historical study of trauma and human ca-tastrophes. Dr. Di-Capua is compiling the pathbreaking essays for publication in a special issue of the highly regarded journal Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques.

Also in correlation with the “Trauma and Social Transformation” theme, IHS launched a major new series of roundtable discussions examining the impacts and repercussions of national traumas through a multi-disciplin-ary lens. “Through the new “Commemora-tion” series, IHS seeks to promote broader reflection on the legacy of key historical events and figures for our contemporary world, and to open new avenues for inter-rogating the past. The series, which includes roundtables, lectures, and symposia, will be composed of historians, social scientists, and even eyewitnesses, and aims to provide diverse perspectives on transformative mo-ments in history,” notes Professor Garfield. “Although much has been said about the ‘presentist’ mindset typifying the age of in-formation technology, the public has a very deep need and yearning to understand the past and its implications for the lives we live and the world we inhabit.” The series looked at the fiftieth anniversary of Kennedy’s as-sassination, the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Brazilian coup d’état, the centennial of World War I, and a retrospective on history and psychoanalysis on the seventy-fifth an-niversary of Sigmund Freud’s death.

The institute’s new series showcasing re-cent book publications by History faculty also met with great success. The monthly

book presentations provided attendees a short pre-circulated chapter to further smaller, more intimate discussions. Featured authors included:• Dr.BrianP.Levack,The Devil Within: Pos-

session and Exorcism in the Christian West (Yale University Press, 2013).

• Dr. Denise A. Spellberg, Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders (Knopf, 2013).

• Dr.MarkMezler,Capital as Will and Imagina-tion: Schumpeter’s Guide to the Postwar Japa-nese Miracle (Cornell University Press, 2013).

• Drs. Jorge Canizares-Esguerra and JamesSidbury, The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade (University of Pennsylva-nia Press, 2013).

• Dr. Jacqueline Jones, A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America (Basic Books, 2013).

• Dr. Indrani Chatterjee (Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages, and Memories of North-east India (Oxford University Press, 2013).

• Dr.HuaiyinLi,Reinventing Modern China: Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing (University of Hawaii Press, 2012).

• Dr.H.W.Brands,The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace (Doubleday, 2012).

• Drs. Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M.Harris, Slavery and Freedom in Savannah (University of Georgia Press, 2014).

By Courtney meador

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IHS was pleased to continue graduate program support via several venues. The “New Work in Progress” workshop se-ries highlighted new research by advanced graduate students in the History program. Coordinated this year by Ph.D. Candidate Juandrea Bates, the four workshops pro-vided an opportunity for graduate students to share their insights and help presenters hone their research projects. IHS was also pleased to host, for the first time, a one-se-mester Graduate Student Fellowship, which was held by Libby Nutting. Ms. Nutting at-tended and provided feedback at IHS events throughout the year, and presented her own research in a workshop format before Fac-ulty, Fellows, and other scholars. In June, IHS sponsored a grant writing workshop for graduate students in the History pro-gram. At the workshops (also organized by Ph.D. student Juandrea Bates), the students drafted, circulated, and revised proposals, informed by faculty and advanced graduate student input. “I think the students gained a lot from the workshops—clarity about the writing process, informed perspectives on what committees are looking for, and getting critiques of proposals, and tips for post-docs like how to cater proposals beyond the dis-sertations,” said Bates. “They appreciated the professors’ feedback, having peers evaluate their work, and having a conversation about their proposals guided by rubrics.”

The institute continued to provide out-reach to students and teachers from Austin and across the country. In February, the Institute was pleased to host, for a second year, a Model United Nations day coordi-nated with Austin-based Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy, serving local middle and high school students from AISD. And, for a third consecutive year, IHS worked with New York-based Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History to host twenty-five top History teachers from across the coun-try (chosen from hundreds of applicants) for a summer teachers workshop seminar on “United States Foreign Policy since 1898” directed by Dr. Jeremi Suri, Mack Brown Distinguished Professor for Global Leader-ship, History, and Public Policy.

IHS was pleased to host four residential Research Fellows for 2013–14: Dr. Carel Bertram (Associate Professor, San Francisco

State University), Dr. Leslie M. Harris (As-sociate Professor, Emory University), Ronen Steinberg (Assistant Professor, Michigan State University), and Dominic Meng-Hsu-an Yang, (Postdoctoral Fellow). Collectively, they gave a dozen talks, mostly on-campus, presented eight conference papers, wrote three book chapters, six articles, co-edited one volume of essays, and produced a nearly polished book manuscript being consid-ered by two prestigious university presses. They participated in the “Trauma and His-tory” conference and the workshop series. Throughout the year, they met with gradu-ate students in the History program, of-fering support, reading and critiquing dis-sertations, assisting advanced students in their endeavors on the job market, helping students revise job letters, and participat-ing in mock interviews. During his time at the institute, Dr. Yang won two major fel-lowships totaling over $100,000—one, from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for the North American Taiwan Studies Associa-tion conference and, the other, a Postdoc-toral Fellowship from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In addition, the Department of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia hired Yang for a tenure-track assistant professorship.

“This has been a profoundly important year for me as a young scholar,” said Dr.

mark your calendars now for the just- announced annual conference next year:Global Commodity Flows April 16–18, 2015 For more information about the conference and to learn about the full program of events next year, please visit us online (utexas.edu/cola/insts/historicalstudies) and “like” us on Facebook (facebook.com/historyinstitute) As always, IHS events are free and open to the public. We hope to see you there!

Visiting research Fellows, 2013–2014Left to right: Leslie m. harris, Carel Bertram, dominic meng-hsuan yang, and ronen steinberg

internal Faculty research Fellows, 2013–2014: Benjamin Claude BrowerDavid CrewLaurie B. GreenTracie MatysikEmilio Zamora

Steinberg. “I see scholarship as a journey or a process. I do not always know where the process is taking me, but I do know that wherever that will be, my year as a fellow at the Institute will stand as a decisive turning point in my path. I have found my voice as a historian and an intellectual, and I have made real friendships. I am deeply, deeply grateful to the Institute for Historical Studies and to the University of Texas at Austin for giving me the opportunity to spend this year here and I hope that my future accomplish-ments will justify the trust that you have all put in me.”

“The workshops and conference were en-gaging, informative, and thought-provoking, and offered an appreciated opportunity to meet other faculty and scholars,” said IHS Fellow Dr. Carel Bertam. “Engaging with faculty and graduate students at UT greatly benefitted my own research. I met regularly with several History faculty who kindly read, discussed and critiqued my work, made it much stronger, helped me make connections and offered the benefit of their ideas.”

In 2014–2015, IHS will welcome four promising visiting Research Fellows: Drs. Michitake Aso (SUNY-Albany), Emma Jane Flatt (UNC-Chapel Hill), Mary K. Gayne (James Madison University), and Kristin Wintersteen (University of Houston). Their fields of specialization are geographically and thematically rich and diverse—ranging from rubber production and environmental crises in Vietnam, 1890–1975, to consumption in medieval Persian cities, to wig-making and hairdressing in eighteenth-century France, to the post-World War II fishing industry in the Southeast Pacific—but all engage with the next year’s theme, “Capital and Commodities.”

Model UN photos by Mazie Hyams

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Teaching Students to “write cogently and speak thoughtfully,”

Professor Julie Hardwick Wins 2014 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching AwardProfessor of History Julie Hardwick re-ceived a 2014 Regents’ Outstanding Teach-ing Award, the UT System Board of Regents’ highest teaching honor, which recognizes extraordinary educators from system insti-tutions. The award honors outstanding per-formance in the classroom and dedication to innovation in undergraduate instruction. It recognizes “those who serve our students in an exemplary manner and as an incentive

for others who aspire to such service.”

Professor Hard-wick described her teaching philosophy as one that empha-sizes the relationship between teaching and research: “Un-dergraduate research is at the heart of my teaching. Research animates my disci-pline and my under-

graduates learn why historians think what they do as they develop their own research skills. I teach our students, regardless of their different backgrounds and levels of academ-ic preparation, to understand the problem at hand, to research, synthesize and analyze using a variety of tools and strategies, and to write cogently and speak thoughtfully about the process and outcomes. In this process, they build their historical expertise and learn skills that help them succeed in other classes, in their subsequent careers and as citizens.”

Former students as well as colleagues pro-vided feedback for the Regents’ Award selec-tion process and their comments illustrate the deep and long-lasting impact Professor Hardwick has on her students.• “Dr. Hardwick was the most influential

professor of my University of Texas ca-reer, and remains a key figure in my aca-demic development at Yale.”

• “Dr.Hardwicktaughtmetothinkinwaysmy previous experiences neglected and awakened in me a greater love for learn-ing than I thought possible.”

• “What has really stood out to me about Dr. Hardwick is her genuine interest and investment in all her students, on both an academic and personal level. She radi-ates warmth and kindness in everything she does. I am originally from a rural east Texas town that is a little smaller than the

undergraduate population at UT. Therefore coming to such a large university was very overwhelming. During my freshman year, I felt lost in some big classes. Having her in-volvement in my undergraduate career has been instrumental to my success at UT.”

• “All studentsobtaininghighereducationencounter obstacles and doubt, but as an adult entering my 40s and transferring from a small community college I expe-rienced unique challenges. My success at UT and my continued success at graduate school are directly linked to the tutelage, guidance and support of Dr. Hardwick.”

• “She is never afraid to challenge students, and never settles for anything but my best work. Yet I always leave with the resolve that not only do I want to improve, I can. I know that she will help me every step of the way.”

• “Professor Hardwick challenged me toproduce my best work and encouraged me to pursue my goals…Even now, as a lawyer, I find myself falling back on the research and writing skills Professor Hardwick taught me.”

• “EventhoughIamnolongerherstudent,Professor Hardwick is still enthusiastic and supportive. When I look back on my time at the University of Texas, the op-portunity to work with Julie Hardwick is what I appreciate the most.”

• “Julie is collegial, smart, andwholly de-voted to the training and wellbeing of UT students. She has made them smarter, more competitive, and better prepared to get jobs and do well after college.Professor Hardwick came to UT Austin

in 2001 and served as the founding Direc-tor of the Institute of Historical Studies from 2007–2013 where she built one of the most vibrant and competitive fellowship programs in higher education. “Her energy and cre-ativity are the motor forces that drive the institute,” wrote one former fellow. Among her many awards and distinctions, Professor Hardwick has been the recipient of the Col-lege of Liberal Arts Raymond Dickson Cen-tennial Teaching Fellowship (2011), multiple Rapoport-King Awards for thesis advising, and two year-long National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships. She is the au-thor of The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (Pennsylvania University Press, 1998) and Family Business: Litigation and the Political Economies of Everyday Life

in Early Modern France (Oxford University Press, 2009) as well as many articles. Her cur-rent book projects reflect her core interests in the intersections of law, economy and family: “Sex and the (Seventeenth-century) City; the Social World of Young Workers in Early Mod-ern France,” and “Hanging Bankrupts: Credit, Crime and the Transition to Capitalism.”For more on the Regents Awards, see:http://www.utsystem.edu/teachingawards/ 2014/Academic/tenured.htm#jhardwick

Professor Gail Minault joined the University of Texas at Austin Depart-ment of History as an Assistant Professor in 1972. She became our first tenure-track schol-ar in South Asian Stud-ies. Minault completed graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and, before that, served with the U.S. Information Service as a Cultural Affairs Assistant in the American Embassies in Beirut, Lebanon and Dacca, East Pakistan (now Bangaladesh). By 1982, Minault had published her first scholarly monograph and was promoted to Associate Professor. Professor Minault taught a wide variety of undergraduate courses: European Expansion in Asia, History and Culture of India since 1750, Partition of India in History and Litera-ture, Muslim India before India, and Gandhi and Gandhism, to name a few. She also men-tored many graduate students. All the while she has continued to pursue research in the history of India, of Islam in South Asia, and women in South Asia. For a complete list of her book length publications, go to http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/faculty/minaultg She will be busy in “retirement.” She is com-pleting a book on nineteenth-century Delhi, and she has a “bucket list” of travel plans.

After more than forty years of teach-ing and scholarship, Professor Gail Minault retires

Julie hardwick

Gail minault

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Professor Erika Bsumek Commendedwith Dads’ Association Centennial Teaching FellowshipProfessor Erika M. Bsumek is the recipient of the 2014–15 Dads’ Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship. The award reflects Dr. Bsumek’s teaching excellence and acknowl-edges the many contributions she has made to the undergraduate experience for students at the university.

The Dads’ Association Centennial Teach-ing Fellowships were established by the Uni-versity of Texas System Board of Regents in 1983 with funds raised by the University’s Dads’ Association and matching funds con-tributed by the Centennial Teachers and Scholars Program. Previous Department of History faculty who have received this award include Professors Karl Miller, Penne Restad, Martha Newman, and Denise Spellberg.

Dr. Bsumek’s teaching areas include Na-tive American History, U.S. West/Southwest-ern Studies, Environmental/Urban Environ-mental Studies, Public History, and Material Culture Studies. In recent years she has taught a variety of courses including “Environmental History of North America,” “Introduction to American Indian History,” “History of the American West,” “Imagine West/Real West: History, Art, and the Far West”, and “Building America: Engineering Society and Culture, 1868–1890.” Course descrip-tions are posted on utexas.edu/cola/depta/history/faculty/bsumeke#courses, and you

can read more about Professor Bsumek at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/ faculty/bsumeke.

Several of Professor Bsumek’s students wrote letters in support of her nomination for the Dads’ Association award. One student wrote, “Dr. Bsumek is a wonderful instruc-tor who brought out the best in my analyti-cal writing and critical thinking skills, and who sparked my interest in a subject I never thought I would care about.” Another stu-dent praised Dr. Bsumek with these words: “When I started Professor Bsumek’s course ‘Imagine West and Real West,’ I knew virtu-ally nothing about the subject matter. [She] captured my attention and caused me to care about the subject through her enthusiastic instruction. She made the class interesting and engaging. By involving everyone in the class, she created a true sense of community and camaraderie among the students.”

Erika Bsumek, associate professor as of 2009 having joined the department in 2001, is also a noted scholar who has published work about Native American history, the history of the consumption and produc-tion of both manufactured and handmade goods in the United States, and the history of anthropology. Her book publications include Indian made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1868–1940 (2008) and a co-

edited volume entitled Nation-States and the Global Environment: New Approaches to International Environ-mental History (2013). She is currently ex-ploring the social and environmental history of the Glen Canyon area on the Utah/ Arizona Border from the 1840s through the 1980s. Her working title is “Engineering Glen Canyon: Mormons, Indians, and the Damming of the American West.” She is also completing a book that examines the impact of large construction projects (dams, high-ways, cities, and suburbs) on the American West, to be titled The Concrete West: Engi-neering Society and Culture in the Arid West, 1900–1970. Not Even Past features several articles by Professor Bsumek—including “Her Pro-gram’s Progress” on Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification project, and “History and Myth in John Ford’s ‘The Searchers.’” See https://notevenpast.org/?s=by+Erika+Bsumek

Also see: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/ history/news/8142

Professor Juliet E.K. Walker Wins Lifetime Achievement AwardProfessor Juliet E.K. Walker received the first Madame C.J. Walker Lifetime Achieve-ment Award at the inaugural Madame C.J. Walker/Frederick Douglass Annual Lecture Series. The award is named to honor two remarkable pioneers. Madame C.J. Walker (1867–1919), African American daughter of Louisiana sharecroppers, was an entre-preneur and probably the first American woman to become a self-made millionaire. Frederick Douglass (1818–95) was an es-caped slave who became one of the most influential nineteenth century abolitionists and authors.* Dr. Juliet Walker delivered the keynote address, “African American

Business in the Arc of History: Culture, Innovation, and Black Business Success.”

Professor Walker is also a pioneer. She published the first study of African Ameri-can businesses (The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneur-ship, Macmillan/Prentice Hall Internation-al, 1998) and is a frequent and significant contributor to scholarly journals. Walker is the Founding Executive Director of the UT Austin Center for Black Business History, Entrepreneurship and Technology; and she started the Undergraduate Journal of Black Business History. She held positions at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and

the University of Il-linois. She has been the recipient of presti-gious fellowships and was a Senior Fulbright Professor for the De-partment of History at the University of Witwatersrand in Jo-hannesburg, South Africa in 1995–1996. In addition to teaching Black Business History and Political Economy, she teaches Black Intellectual History. She is currently work-ing on several scholarly projects including Oprah Winfrey: An American Entrepreneur.

* American National Biography Online: Re Madame C.J. Walker, http://www.anb.org/articles/10/10-01700.html?from=../10/10-02284.html&from_nm=Ash%2C%20Mary%20Kay and Re: Frederick Douglass, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/1500186.html?a=1&n=Frederick%20Douglas&d=10&ss=0&q=1

See also http://www.utexas.edu/research/centerblackbusiness/vitae.htm

Juliet e.K. Walker

erika m. Bsumek

16


The College of Liberal Arts Recognizes Tatjana Lichtenstein for Excellent Teaching

Tatjana Lichten-stein joined the de-partment in 2009 as Assistant Pro-fessor of Modern Eastern Europe. She also serves on the faculty of the UT Austin Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Schuster-man Center for Jewish Studies. In

the five years that she has been with us, she has taught nine different undergraduate and graduate classes and one Maymester class, published several articles, won a fellowship to spend a year at the University of Michigan Frankel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, completed a book manuscript (Making Jews at Home: Zionists in Interwar Czechoslova-kia, 1918–1938), and been invited to join the Society for Teaching Excellence.* In April, 2014, Professor Lichtenstein was one of eight faculty in the College of Liberal Arts rec-ognized as an outstanding teacher: she was named a recipient of the Josefina Paredes Endowed Teaching Award.

Professor Lichtenstein’s undergraduate courses include “Introduction to the Holo-

caust,” “Jews of Eastern Europe” “Eastern Eu-rope in the 20th Century,” and “World War II in Eastern Europe.” In May–June of 2012, she taught a Maymester in Prague, Czech Republic: “Jewish Prague, Past and Pres-ent.” One Maymester student wrote, “I never thought I could grow so much from one class….I gained an appreciation for a history I knew little about, but I also expanded my abilities to be open to new and quite differ-ent experiences.” Another student thanked Dr. Lichtenstein “for leading such an amaz-ing Maymester. Not only have you helped to expand my knowledge, but you have taught me to appreciate what I have learned.”

In the spring 2013 semester, Profes-sor Lichtenstein joined the ranks of his-tory faculty teaching in the Frank Denius Normandy Scholar Program on World War II. She teaches a course on Poland and the Second World War. Lichtenstein teaches undergraduate seminars with as few as 21 students, and she teaches mid-size classes of between 30 and over 100 students. In either format, she is committed to making her classes dynamic and interactive. In semi-nars, she often has students work in small groups to analyze a particular document or design particular projects. For example, in one class, she asked students to plan a mu-seum exhibit for the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw that would

explain Polish-Jewish relations at the end of World War II. Writing assignments require multiple drafts and peer-review. She finds that “this strategy turns written assignments into exercises in reflexive thinking.” She sometimes divides the class and challenges her students to use historical evidence tak-ing one or another position in a debate.

In her larger classes, she uses PowerPoint slides and lectures, but she encourages stu-dents to interrupt with questions or com-ments. In one fifty-minute class, she may be-gin with a short lecture, have students confer and reflect in small groups, and close with a classroom discussion. She uses many dif-ferent historical artifacts to “make the past more accessible to students:” documents, poetry, folk songs, posters, art, photographs, film clips, memoirs, and literature.

Lichtenstein recognizes that courses about war, occupation, and genocide are “well suited to strengthen students’ ability to recognize ethical issues.” She is develop-ing a series of assignments designed to help students “identify ethical questions and ana-lyze the historical actors’ competing ethical imperatives.” As she says, “it is crucial that [students] are able to recognize ethically complex situation, to evaluate their own role and responsibilities as well as those of others, and to make sound decisions.”**

* http://www.utexas.edu/ugs/ste**All quotations from Tatjana Lichtenstein, “Statement of Teaching Philosophy”

Not Even Past, the website for the public launched in 2011, continues to grow and dazzle. In addition to new reviews, stories, videos, and photos, Not Even Past began a new series on Digital His-tory called “The New Ar-chive.” Editor Joan Neuberg-er explained, “Henry Wiencek and Charlie Binkow reviewed interesting new online historical archives and new digital history projects each week.” And Maria Jose Afa-nador has written about new digital tools she and other historians are using to do new kinds of research. The website also features new stories on some very creative pedagogy: Professors Penne Restad and Karl Miller encouraged their introductory U.S. history classes to explore “doing history”

by developing particular skills like critically reading historical documents. Professor Robert Olwell had his class re-enact the tu-multuous months in New York before the American Revolution by taking on the role of loyalists, patriots, and the disenfranchised poor. Professor Jacqueline Jones challenged members of her class to create videos about important debates in U.S. history.

The 15 Minute History podcasts con-tinued to be among the most popular

podcasts on iTunesU (the iTunes store for free university lectures). Two of the recent-ly posted podcasts include Professor Brian Levack speaking about “Witch-hunting in early Modern Europe” and Ph.D. candi-date Michelle Daneri speaking about “The Pueblo Revolt of 1680.” 15 minute His-tory has been the #1 History podcast since October 2013, and it has reached the #1 ranking on all iTunesU twenty times in the past year.

Tatjana Lichtenstein

Not Even Past

17


Martha Gonzalez and Arturo Flores Acclaimed for “Impact on the University”A ll who work in the Department of History know that we have a superb and winning staff. We, literally, have a winning staff: few can remember a year when one of our own has not been recognized with an award for professional excellence. This year, Martha Gonzalez was one of seven to receive the College of Liberal Arts Staff Excellence Award. She was selected for this award because of superior job performance and because her work has had a positive impact on the college.* Arturo Flores was one of thirty university employees to receive the President’s Outstanding Staff Award for his “significant impact on the university through outstanding dedication; compe-tence; conscientious performance; excellent customer service; and ingenuity.”**

Martha Gonzalez has been with the university for five years. As an administra-tive associate and professional event planner, she serves the department in myriad ways. Fortunately, she has many talents so she manages her diverse responsibilities with equanimity and charm. Gonzalez admin-isters the Normandy Scholar Program, organizes the recruitment and orientation program for new graduate students, coor-dinates the logistics for faculty recruitment and for faculty travel, and supervises the department’s front office.

She is best known for event planning. She manages logistics: venue, food, enter-tainment, scheduling, accommodations, and travel. These events range from three-day conferences to department parties. For example, each year Ms. Gonzalez makes arrangements for the department’s recep-tion at the American Historical Associa-tion’s meeting. The last three meetings were held in Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and Chicago. She organizes the department’s exhibit for the Texas State Historical Association’s annual meeting; and she is in charge of the Atlantic History Distinguished Lecture Series, the Honors’ Reception for graduate students, and the department’s winter holiday and the spring end-of- semester parties. Perhaps the largest event that Gonzalez plans is the annual Africa Conference held on the UT Austin campus. (See p. 9)

When the Normandy Scholar Program (NSP) celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2014, Gonzalez organized an impressive one-day event that hosted 150 NSP alumni and special guests that included Frank De-nius one of the program’s founders and its

namesake), Peyton and Carolyn Townsend (recently named Pro Bene Meritis by the College of Liberal Arts (COLA), as well as several university officials. The celebration included speakers, a panel of NSP student alumni, lunch, an exhibit of memorabilia collected by NSP faculty Francoise Deback-er, and a reception with live music.

Martha Gonzalez worked as an event planner for an international travel agency in Cancun, Mexico and San Juan, Puerto Rico for over seven years. Growing up in Gua-dalajara, Mexico she attended the Alliance Francais and studied in Paris for one year. She is fluent in Spanish, French, English, and university-speak. When you attend an event planned by Gonzalez, be sure to note the unique and always fabulous flower arrange-ments and table decorations—a signature of her excellence.

Arturo Flores, Account Manager for the Department of History, supervises the de-partment’s accounting staff and is in charge of maintaining the departmental budgets totaling millions of dollars. Yes, plural: bud-gets: maintenance and operations, profes-sorships, grants and awards, events and ac-tivities (conferences and symposia). Flores follows the money. He oversees all income and spending for the department, prepares quarterly spending reports, and guarantees budget reconciliation. Flores explains that budget reconciliation is his favorite part of the job because “he likes a good puzzle.”

Flores came to the University of Texas at Austin in 2003 and completed a bachelor’s degree with a major in Biology and a certifi-cate in Business Foundations. After gradu-ation, he worked for the McCombs School of Business Texas Executive Education Pro-gram until 2010. In this job, he learned the principles and procedures of accounting.

He left the McCombs School to join the Department of History accounting staff

in 2011. Quickly demonstrating superior customer service skills and expertise in the university’s accounting rules and regulation, he was promoted to Accounting Manager in 2012. The department faculty and staff, as well as the college, depend on Flores to track the budgets of this large and very active department.

Flores also takes great pride in organiz-ing the department’s annual staff retreat. He admits that the university’s “budget crunch” has affected morale around the university, and he uses the retreat as an opportunity to discuss the staff ’s issues and concerns while promoting teamwork to find mutually ben-eficial solutions.

Arturo Flores is known for his drive, pos-itive attitude, collegiality, and his remark-able university expertise. He continues to search for ways to improve work processes, customer service, and customer satisfaction. Outstanding, indeed!

* http://www.utexas.edu/cola/human- resources/staff-resources/staff-excellence.php

** http://www.utexas.edu/hr/awards/ excellence/

martha Gonzalez Arturo Flores

department of history, staff

Laura Flack, Executive Assistant

Art Flores, Accounting Manager

Nicole Powell, Accounting and

Administrative Services

Judy Hogan, Administrative Associate

Jerry Larson, Administrative Associate

Jackie Llado, Administrative Assistant

Martha Gonzalez, Administrative Associate

Justina Moloney, Office Assistant

Courtney Meador, Administrative Associate

Nancy Sutherland, Academic Advising Coordinator

Tom Griffith, Sr. Academic Advisor

Michael Schmidt, Associate Academic Advisor

Marilyn Lehman, Graduate Program Administrator

18


BooknotesDaina Ramey Berry, Associate ProfessorThe book that Dr. Berry co-edited with Leslie M. Harris (Institute of Historical Studies fellow, 2013–2014), Slavery and Freedom in Savannah (University of Geor-gia Press, 2014), has won the Georgia His-torical Records Advisory Council’s Award for Excellence in Documenting Georgia’s History. This book and a related museum exhibi-tion and three-day symposium were part of a Telfair Museum project. The Telfair Mu-seum is the oldest public art museum in the South. The American Association for State and Local History also honored the book and the museum’s larger project with the Award of Merit. See http://www.telfair.org/slavery-and-freedom-in-savannah/

Seth W. Garfield, ProfessorThe Conference on Latin American History awarded Seth Garfield Honorable Mention for the Bolton-Johnson Prize for the best book in English on Latin American history published in the previous year: In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region (Duke University Press, 2013). The book is also one of the first four books to be made available to libraries by way of a new open-access model being tested by the nonprofit group Knowledge Unlatched. See http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/ libraries-test-a-model-for-setting-monographs -free/51455?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=eny

Mary Neuburger, ProfessorThe Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, part of the American Council of Learned Societies, awarded The Barbara Jelavich Book Prize to Mary Neu-burger for her 2012 book Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria (Cornell University Press).

L.J. Andrew Villalon, Senior Lecturer De re militari, The Society for Medi-eval Military History, awarded Andrew Villalon and his co-author Donald J. Kagay the 2014 Verbruggen Prize for the best book in medieval military his-tory: The Hundred Years War (3 volume collection).

Emilio Zamora, Professor The Tejano Genealogical Society of Austin presented Emilio Zamora with the Dr. Clotilde P. Garcia Prize for the best book on Tejano history for The World War I Diary of Jose De La Luz Saenz (Tex-as A & M University Press, 2014.) Zamora will be a “featured author” at the October 2014 Texas Book Festival.

Mark and Vicki Atkinson

John and Donna CurtisJosiah and Susan

DanielDarrick EugeneMartin V. B. Fleming IINancy S. FooterJoel M. HammermanJane HaymanRamona Houston,

Ph.D.Robert E. Icenhauer-

Ramirez, Ph.DAdmiral B. R. Inman,

U.S.N. (Ret.)Dee J. Kelly, Jr.Suzon KempJoseph D. Lesley

Visiting Committee for the department of history at the University of Texas at Austin, 2013–2014

David McArthurRichard T. McMillan IIDan and Andrea

NicewanderWilliam A. PaddockRick PoppeHervey and Dianne

PriddyBlake PurnellMaidie RyanDavid A. SheppardPaul TerrillLee Thompson, Ph.D.Peyton and Carolyn

TownsendRichard Vigness, M.D.Barron WallaceTom Ward

Melba and Ted Whatley

Five Books by Department Faculty Win Awards

19


Robert Abzug, ed. Exploring Jewish Arts and Culture, a new University of Texas Press book series. Two books in this series were re-cently published: Three Plays by Jean-Claude Grumberg and Beyond the Forest: Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe, 2004–2012 by Loli Cantor.Sally H. Clarke, “Corporate Reputation, Regulation, and Technological Change,” Business History Review, 87:4 (Winter 2013): 630–32.Sumit Guha. Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present. E.J. Brill, 2013.Madeline Y. Hsu. The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became a Model Minor-ity, 1872–1966. Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2015.

“Chinese and American Collaborations through Education Exchange during the Era of Exclusion, 1872–1955,” Pacific Historical

Review, co-editor of special issue (Conver-sations on Transpacific History) 83:2 (May 2014):314–32.Jacqueline Jones. A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America. Basic Books, 2013. Final-ist for the Pulitzer Prize in American History.Wm. Roger Louis, co-editor with Simon El-iot and Ian Gadd, The History of Oxford Uni-versity Press (3 volumes), Oxford University Press, 2013. Steven Mintz. The Prime of Life: A History of American Adulthood. Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2015.Joan Neuberger. “Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible as History,” Journal of Modern History, 86 (June 2014): 295–334.

“Ivan the Terrible” in Russian Cinema Reader, Rimgaila Salys, ed. Academic Stud-ies Press, 2013.

Faculty publications

Daina Ramey Berry won a National Endow-ment for the Humanities Fellowship for her project “The Value of Human Chattel from Preconception to Postmortem.”

Henry W. Brands, Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History, gave the Mark Hatfield Lecture to the Oregon Historical Society and the Presi-dents Day Lecture at Washington University. Served as Program Advisor for “The Roo-sevelts: An Intimate History”, a seven hour film by Ken Burns.

Lina del Castillo, Assistant Professor and rising star in Latin American History won a prestigious fellowship at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame for the 2014–15 academic year. She will continue work on her book project:

Faculty News

“The Music of Landscape: Eisenstein, Prokofiev, and the Uses of Music in Ivan the Terrible” in Sound, Speech, and Music in Rus-sian Cinema, Lilya Kaganovsky and Masha Salazkina, eds. Indiana University Press, 2013.Abena Dove Osseo-Asare. Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa. Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 2014.Penne Restad. “The Third Sex: Histori-ans, Consumer Society, and the Idea of the American Consumer,” Journal of Social His-tory, 47:3 (Spring 2014).Jeremi Suri, co-edited with Robert Hutch-ings. Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: The Sources of Successful Diplomacy. Oxford Uni-versity Press, forthcoming 2015. Co-edited with H.W. Brands, History and Foreign Policy. Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2015.

“Mapping Out Colombia: Transatlantic Vi-sions and Regional Designs in the Making of the Early Republic, 1807–1865.”

Toyin Falola received an honorary doc-torate degree from Lead City University in Ibadan, Nigeria. The King, Kingmakers, and Council of Chiefs of Ibadan, the intellectual capital of Nigeria, acknowledged Falola’s ac-complishments by bestowing upon him the chieftaincy title of Bohapitan of Ibandan-land. The Bohapitan is the “grand historian” and sage of the empire.

Sumit Guha presented invited lectures at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Kolkata, and Yale University. In May 2014, he presented a paper at the

University of Vienna’s conference on law and diversity.

Denise Spellberg’s 2013 publication of Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders (Vintage Books) has received much acclaim. The book was selected by the Writ-ers’ League of Texas as a Nonfiction Finalist for the League’s 2013/2014 book awards. She was interviewed by National Public Radio’s Arun Rath for the October 12, 2013 “All Things Considered.”

In addition to reviews in scholarly pub-lications, The New Yorker, The Daily Beast, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Salon have reviewed Spellberg’s book.

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/12/230503444/ the-surprisinstory-of-thomas-jeffersons-quran

henry W. Brands Lina del Castillo Toyin Falola sumit Guha denise spellberg

robert Abzug madeline y. hsu Jacqueline Jones Wm. roger Louis steven mintz Joan Neuberger Abena dove penny restad Jeremi suri osseo-Asare

We hope that you will consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Department of History. Your check should be payable to the University of Texas at Austin with Department of History noted in the “memo” section of the check. For more information about giving opportunities, you may contact

Kathleen Aronson Assistant dean for developmentCollege of Liberal Arts116 inner Campus dr., G6000Austin, Texas 78712

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Donations may be mailed to Dr. Aronson at the above address. Please include the form below with your gift. You may want to use the secure online donation form: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/giving/how-to-give.php

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