Letter from the Chair

As I expected, the first year of my tenure asdepartment chair has been an eventful and busy one.The central task that confronted me was preparing forand conducting our decennial self-study project.Thanks to the help of several colleagues, we wereable to amass and articulate information about everyaspect of how the department functions. When thethree outside evaluators chosen by the administrationcame for their on-site visit in April, they werepresented with this information and given theopportunity to interview faculty and students. As theNewsletter goes to press I have not yet received thereport of the evaluators, but my preliminary feeling isthat they went away with a positive sense of what thedepartment is about.

In addition to the activity generated by the self-study,life in the department continued with its usualvibrancy. The faculty distinguished themselves onceagain in both scholarship and teaching. ProfessorsGábor Ágoston, Catherine Evtuhov, AndrzejKaminski, Erick Langer, Aviel Roshwald , NancyTucker, and John Voll published new books duringthis academic year, while the newest member of ourdepartment, Professor Adam Rothman, just signed acontract with Harvard University Press for his firstbook. Members of the faculty have also broughtrecognition to the department through their receipt ofvarious prizes. Professor Tommaso Astarita was

honored for his work in the classroom by beingawarded the College of Arts and Sciences Award forExcellence in Teaching; Professor Richard Stites wasone of three recipients of the Graduate School’snewly created Lifetime Distinguished ResearchAward; and Professor John McNeill received theWorld History Association Book Prize and took therunner-up position in the BP Natural World BookPrize competition for his recently published work,Something New Under the Sun. Faculty members arealso undertaking new initiatives in teaching.Professor Carol Benedict is developing a new generaleducation course on the Pacific World in ModernHistory and Professor McNeill will host a summerworkshop at Georgetown on teaching world history.

The department has also been fortunate this year tohave had a series of distinguished visiting faculty. Aspart of our ongoing program in Australian and NewZealand studies we hosted Professors Eric Eklundand Patricia O’Brien from Australia, and MichaelKing as Fulbright Visiting Professor of New ZealandStudies. Additionally, it was our good fortune tohave Clive Foss of the University of Massachusettsbe our guest as the Royden B. Davis Professor forthe spring semester. Professor Foss delivered theannual Davis Lecture, speaking on his specialty ofByzantine history to a large and very appreciativeaudience. Finally, the department also hosted three

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visiting foreign researchers: from Russia, ProfessorsTatiana Alentieva and Olga Kocheleva; and fromAustria, Ms Regine Bogensberger. In the comingacademic year we look forward to having twoadditional visitors from abroad in the persons ofFriedrich Lenger as the Adenauer Professor in Historyand José M. Portillo who will be the Prince ofAsturias Distinguished Visiting Professor in SpanishStudies.

Our graduate program has also continued to maintaina strong national profile. In terms of placements,Elizabeth Drummond has accepted a position at theUniversity of Southern Mississippi and Steve Tamariat Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, whileTheresa Velcamp and Elizabeth Koch-Janik have bothreceived post-doctoral fellowships at UC San Diegoand George Mason University, respectively. Three ofour former students, Argyrios Pisiotis, JeffreyVeidlinger, and Nancy Yanoshek all received facultyteaching awards from their institutions. Among ourcurrent graduate students Catherine Blair receivedfirst prize and Nadya Sbaiti second prize for bestpapers by graduate students at the regional conferenceof Phi Alpha Theta. At the same conference one ofour undergraduate majors, Victoria Golebiowski, wonsecond prize in her category. It also should be notedthat our chapter of Phi Alpha Theta learned thisspring that it received the national award for the bestchapter of 2000, a testament to the efforts of itsmembers and to the work of their faculty advisor,Professor Sandra Horvath-Peterson.As one can see from all of our accomplishments thedepartment remains active and vital, but like anysuch entity it is also subject to changes. Thus, whileI am pleased to welcome the distinguished historianof modern France, Richard Kuisel, to our ranks as along-term adjunct professor, I am sorry to have toannounce that we are losing one of our LatinAmericanists, Professor Thomas Klubock, to SUNYStoneybrook, and to inform many friends and formerstudents that our distinguished, long-time colleaguein the Middle East field, Professor John Ruedy, hasannounced his intention to become an emeritusmember of the faculty at the end of the next academicyear. We wish Professor Klubock well at his newinstitution and look forward to honoring ProfessorRuedy for his years of devoted service to the

department and to Georgetown.

I encourage you to peruse the Newsletter foradditional and more detailed information about whathas been happening in the department over the lastyear and to let us know any news concerning eventsin your own lives that you would like to share.

James Collins Chair

HISTORY AT GEORGETOWNNEWSLETTER 2001

Editors: Gábor Ágoston, James Millward and JordanSand

Proofreading and Mailing: Elizabeth English

Cover Drawing: David A. Hagen (M.A., 1987)

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2000 Quigley Lecture-SeminarExplores Nations and Nationalism

On November 3rd and 4 th, the Department of Historyproudly hosted the 2000 Quigley Lecture andSeminar, an event which honors the memory of thelate Carroll Quigley, one of the most popularlecturers in the department’s history. The featuredspeaker for the 2000 lecture was Benedict Anderson,the renowned Cornell University historian. Andersonis the author of dozens of articles and several books,perhaps the most famous of which is ImaginedCommunities, a ground breaking study of the originsand nature of nationalism. Anderson’s stimulatinglecture was entitled “How Can a Nation Be Good?” Incorporating a variety of contemporary references, itexplored the processes by which nationhood and itsmoral imperatives are being refashioned continuouslyin our own times. Following his lecture, anaudience of 200 listeners (including many fromneighboring colleges and universities) consideredcritical evaluations of the corpus of ProfessorAnderson’s work delivered by three outstandingscholars: Lauren Berlant, Department of English,University of Chicago; Florencia Mallon, Departmentof History, University of Wisconsin; and our ownAviel Roshwald.

On Saturday morning, November 4 th, Anderson,Berlant, Mallon, and Roshwald reconvened for aroundtable discussion of the history and future ofnationalism. This seminar attracted more than 30graduate students, History faculty, and members ofother departments. All agreed that the event was ahigh point of the Fall, 2000 semester. Plans willsoon be underway for the 2002 Quigley lecture andseminar.

The “Book-a-MonthClub”—Georgetown History’sPublishing Streak

1999-2000 was an exceptionally productive year forscholarship in the Georgetown History Department. As the Blue & Grey noted in a feature article inApril, 2000, in thirteen months, the full-time andadjunct faculty published thirteen books.

Teaching at the AmericanUniversity in Cairo

Judith Tucker

Judith Tucker was a Distinguished VisitingProfessor at the American University in Cairo,spring semester, 2000

I spent the spring semester, 2000, as a visitingprofessor in the Department of History at theAmerican University in Cairo (where one of mycolleagues was Michael Reimer, a graduate of ourPh.D. program). AUC is a liberal arts university thatenrolls primarily Egyptian students in itsundergraduate program, and a mix of Egyptians andinternational students in its graduate programs. Ithas an American-style curriculum and the language ofinstruction is English.

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During my stay, I taught two courses, both at thegraduate level. One of them, an interdisciplinarycourse entitled Gender Discourses in the Middle East:History and Anthropology, was team-taught withCynthia Nelson, an anthropologist well-known inMiddle East circles who has been teaching at AUCfor some 30 years. The course drew AUC graduatestudents from Sociology, History, and Middle Eaststudies as well as a number of auditors from AUCand other Egyptian universities. We covered a rangeof discourses on gender in the Middle East as weexplored nationalist, religious, legal, and medicalapproaches to women and gender issues. Cynthiaand I worked together on many of the sessions, andwe also were fortunate enough to have a number ofguest speakers. Local researchers and activists infields that ranged from Qur’anic interpretation to ruraldevelopment and health care made the course as muchof a learning experience for me as for the students. This course was actually a great opportunity toexplore a variety of issues of interest on thecontemporary scene and connect with very dynamicand activist women in Egypt.

My other course was a bit more conventional. Itaught a seminar in twentieth century Middle Easthistory for the Middle East Studies program - anM.A. program analogous to the Master of Arts inArab Studies at Georgetown. The main differencewas the diversity of my ten students; I had studentsfrom Egypt, Sudan, the United States, South Africa,and Norway in the class. The mix of academiccultures was a challenge, but made for a lively classroom as Arab nationalist, transitional South African,Norwegian socialist, and positivist Americanapproaches repeatedly came into conflict. Theabsence of a dominant or mainstream view was a realadvantage when it came to teaching about the varietyof historical narratives!

In addition to my teaching, I attended several lecturesand conferences sponsored by university andindependent organizations in Cairo. I spoke on myown research to the Women and Memory group, anindependent research group dedicated to the retrievalof women’s history in Egypt. I also participated inthe establishment of a new Institute for the Study of

Gender at AUC and will continue to serve on theadvisory board.

On a more personal note, life in Cairo for myself andmy family was a nice change from sedateWashington. Cairo itself is huge (roughly fifteenmillion people), and an old city with manybenefits—cultural life, a steady stream of conferencesand events, fantastic architecture representing almostevery Islamic era; these resources more thancompensate for the noise, traffic, and pollutionfeatured in this ever-expanding city.

Comparative Colonialism–A VeryPersonal Perspective

John Ruedy

John Ruedy has been teaching North African historyat Georgetown since 1965

Early in 1946, the United States Army put me on atroopship headed for the American territory of PuertoRico. There, an eighteen year old enlisted man, Iwas assigned to work in the office of theCommanding General of the Antilles Department,located on the grounds of San Felipe del Morrofortress. This architectural marvel was placed underconstruction in 1537 and today–as a nationalmonument–still impressively guards the entrance tothe Bay of San Juan and to the capital city of theCommonwealth of Puerto Rico.

When my wife Nancy and I decided to spend lastChristmas there, we knew that it would be a warmand relaxing experience, and I suspected that for methere would be a bit of nostalgia as well. Bothexpectations born out. It was a truly wonderfulholiday. But I had no idea how a vacation wouldconnect with the worker in me. Having spent most

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of my academic career wrestling with issues ofcolonialism, independence, and post-colonialism inNorth Africa and the Middle East, it had not onceoccurred to me to factor in my very first experiencewith colonialism or to wonder how Puerto Ricansociety had dealt with that colonialism since I partedcompany with it at the end of 1946.

In 1946 the country was ruled by a governorappointed by the President of the United States. There was no elected legislature. The economy,which had been in dreadful shape all through thethirties, was devastated with the closing down ofshipping lanes during World War II. The naked anddirty children with bloated bellies and sores all overtheir bodies whom I saw daily in the slums of ElFanguito and la Perla created a picture I have neverforgotten, even as a child myself of the greatdepression. Principal sources of income in the1940s were transfers by the Puerto Ricancommunities on the continent and service in or tothe U.S. armed forces. The only language ofinstruction in the public school system was English,of which few teachers on this overwhelmingly ruralisland had command. The result was that more thaneighty-five percent of Puerto Ricans remainedilliterate. I remember students going on strike at theUniversity of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras demandingthat the language of instruction be changed toSpanish. I was on their side and I became convincedthat Puerto Rico would soon begin a struggle forindependence. How wrong can you get?

When Nancy & I flew into San Juan, we landed atLuis Muñoz Marín International Airport. The airportis named after the island’s first elected governor,chosen by his compatriots only two years after mydeparture. Muñoz Marín presided over the drafting ofa commonwealth constitution—approved by the U.S.Congress in 1952—which has turned Puerto Ricointo a remarkably functional autonomous territory ofthe United States where participation in the politicalprocess is lively and widespread. As we rode alongin the shuttle taking us to our resort on thenortheastern corner of the island, we found ourselveson a traffic-choked freeway lined with pharmaceuticalfirms, electronics manufacturers, shopping malls, and

overflowing parking lots. “What a mess we’ve madeof our environment,” one local said to me a few dayslater. The population of the island, excluding PuertoRicans whose permanent residence is on thecontinent, is now about 4,000,000. GDP per capitain the year 2,000 was about $9,800, making PuertoRico the richest country in the Caribbean, exceptionmade for a few sparsely populated tourist islands.

Although English and Spanish are both officiallanguages in Puerto Rico, the language of instructionin public schools was changed to Spanish in the early1950s and English was taught as a second language. Today 90% of Puerto Ricans over fifteen are literateand a majority are functionally bilingual. Thisbilingualism is reinforced by the fact that PuertoRican communities on the continent continue toprosper and that Puerto Ricans by the thousandstravel annually between the States and theirhomeland. One day at a gift shop, I decided in myresidual Spanish to regale a clerk with my memoriesfrom a half century before. She listened patiently andthanked me for sharing these things with her, then,switching to English, she explained that “I was bornand raised in Massachusetts, and only came back herethree years ago. I don’t know much about whathappened here before that.”

Shoulder patch from the Antilles Department of theCaribbean Defense Command, bearing a silhouetteof the watchtower of El Morro.

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Puerto Rican Spanish, while structurally closer toCastillian than most western hemisphere dialects, isnow overwhelmed with Americanisms. The mostpopular sport is baseball, little leagues and all. Santais everywhere and newspapers are overwhelmed withadvertisements of gifts for la Navidad . The minuteSanta heads north, the stores start pushing gifts forthe Fiesta de los Reyes. Speed limits are posted inmiles per hour while distances on road signs aremeasured in kilometers. They don’t like Castro verymuch but they still find ways to visit their relativesin Cuba when they want to. In the 1993 plebisciteon the question of Puerto Rico’s political status,4.4% of voters favored independence.

Now let me return to North Africa where I reallybelong. In the same period when Puerto Rico wasmaking the transition to commonwealth status,nationalist movements in Algeria, Tunisia andMorocco geared up to end generations of authoritarian rule by France. They doggedly resistedall offers by France to accord them internal autonomyunder an umbrella of French sovereignty. They werebent on freedom, which could only come through

independence. Within a few years all three countriesgained independence. Nearly a half century later,political freedom for their peoples is still a distantvision, while cultural, intellectual, gender, economic,and other freedoms are parceled out in varying, butextremely limited ways by the ruling establishments. With regard to economic development in Moroccoand Tunisia, tourism and transfers from nationalsliving abroad–mostly in the former métropole–are thelargest sources of income, while off-shoring of laborintensive industries like textiles is growing inimportance. Per capita GDP in Tunisia is about$5,200 and in Morocco $3,600. In Algeria, a rentierstate whose economy is overwhelmingly dependentupon hydrocarbon exports, the per capita GDP is$4,700. Distribution of this wealth is so unbalanced,however, that, according to an article in Le Monde onMarch 13, 40% of the nation’s population live belowthe poverty line. These per capita GDPs range from37% to 53% of those in Puerto Rico where theAmerican flag still flies alongside that of theCommonwealth.

One of the greatest ironies I see is in the radicallydifferent results triggered by the return to the nativelanguage in North Africa and Puerto Rico. In allNorth African countries, Arabic became the soleofficial language at the moment of independence. Itwas progressively phased in as the language ofinstruction in public schools as the years went by. As of the year 2000, adult literacy stood in Moroccoat 43.7%, in Algeria at 61.6%, and in Tunisia at66.9%. In each of these countries, however, Frenchremains a sine qua non of upward mobility for mostindividuals. This is because of its importance in thebusiness world, the sciences, technology, tourism,and many liberal professions. The majority ofnewspapers continue to appear in French, as does asignificant percentage of the scholarly and scientificwork required for growth and development. Yet,ironically, it is primarily middle and upper middleclass families who have access, through expensiveprivate education, to that language. The populistnationalism which drove French out of the officialpublic sphere, has ended up broadening the gapbetween rulers and ruled, rich and poor, and

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unfortunately, the secular and religiously oriented.

I have for several years been taken with the post-colonialist focus on the concept of cultural hybridity. In post-colonial models, all peoples and culturesneed to be seen as hybrids who are constantlychanging due to interaction with others. The processintensifies, however, within colonial relationships,and does not end when the political connections arerelaxed or severed. If I could possibly come up withan appropriate methodology, I would like to do astudy comparing hybridization processes andoutcomes in Puerto Rico and North Africa. It wouldneed to deal with a diversity of issues, includingheritage, class, gender, language, information, andmobility. But as I think it through, what started outas an article is quickly becoming several!

The Century of Human HegemonyAn Interview with John McNeill

Professor John R. McNeill has spoken about hisprize-winning book, Something New Under the Sun,in several radio interviews. The comments belowwere excerpted from his conversation with GeorgeListon Seay, on Dialogue, a public affairs programpresented by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation andaired on Public Radio International. The programaired during the week of 29 January-4 February,2001.

GLS: To me the central argument of your book isthat humans have usurped the role that microbesplayed for about the past three and a half millionyears in affecting the course of environomentalchange. This is certainly an unprecedenteddevelopment.

JRM: Yes… of course human beings have beenaffecting the environment in at least modest ways foras long as there have been human beings. But for themajority of earth history it’s been microbes who havebeen, as I put it, “lords of the biosphere.” In modern

times, that role has been transferred to human beings,where it will stay for the forseeable future.

GLS: What strikes me from your book is the pointthat this state of affairs is complicated by the fact thatwe’ve gotten used to it, used to the benefits we thinkwe derive from it, and used to rapid growth in thepopulation and economy.

JRM: Yes, and that’s interesting in at least tworespects. First, it’s a reflection on our limitedlifespans. Those of us who are born in the 20thcentury have only known a very peculiar moment inthe world’s history, a moment of enormousexpansion in economies, in energy use, in all sorts ofthings--a time of enormous swirl and flux in theworld’s ecology. And because we only live threescore and ten years, it’s easy for us to assume thatthis is the ordinary state of affairs. It isn’t. If welived 700 years or 7,000, we would understand thisin a way that we cannot, unless we look at the pastvery carefully.

GLS: That leads me to think that some of theassumptions we might be glibly making, such as thefact that we have a stable climate and cheap water, arereally the wrong assumptions.

JRM: They will be wrong assumptions sooner orlater—it’s unclear how soon. With respect toclimate, it may well be that we have already enteredinto a period of comparatively rapid climate changeof our own making. That’s not absolutely certain,

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although most of the evidence points in thatdirection. And this is the second reason why this isan interesting observation: we have gotten used tothis flux and swirl. We have gotten used to steadytides of economic growth and population growth, andsooner or later some of these tides are going to ceaseor perhaps reverse themselves. And then, all thethinking and the institutions and the politics thathave grown up around this age of exuberantexpansion are all going to have make someadjustments. That may be a difficult passage.

GLS: We just can’t continue going the way we aregoing and expect a good outcome.

JRM: There can be no logical doubt about that. Weare on an unsustainable path, or rather have been onan unsustainable path for some time. That’s not tosay, however, that we are necessarily in for somecollapse or catastrophe. Paths can be changed. Indeed, the trends of the 20th century are not goingto be reproduced in the 21st. It’s quite unthinkable,for instance, that human population could quadruplein the 21st century. That would take us up to 24billion people. It’s just not going to happen. Thetrends are going to change. Whether they change ingentle and benign ways that don’t cause muchdislocation and hardship, or abrupt and wrenchingways, remains to be seen. But they are going tochange.

GLS: Your book has many stark reminders, but alsogives us some heartening news. You describe howsome cities have been able to correct their problemswith air pollution.

JRM: Some environmental problems aresurprisingly easy to reverse—some of them, not all. Urban air pollution is one of those most suceptible toreversal. In this country, St. Louis was thetrendsetter. In 1940, St. Louis politicians,industrialists, journalists, angry housewives, andothers, got together and organized a fairly effective airpollution reduction program, which Pittsburghcopied after the second world war to address its own,more serious problem.

GLS: Turning to water, I was very interested to learnthat something like 98% of our liquid fresh water

resources lie deep underground, in the aquifers, fromwhich we draw them up for our own use, and thatwe’re over-exploiting those aquifers on almost aworldwide basis.

JRM: I would say this is becoming the most criticalenvironmental issue, because it translates intopolitical frictions and bad health very easily. Peoplehave been pumping water up for a long time, butespecially with fossil fuels it’s cheap to pump it upfrom greater depths, so aquifers have been run downon every continent. Some of the most disturbingexamples of that are in the United States. The highplains sit on a big aquifer, the Ogallala aquifer, abouthalf of which is now gone, because it has been usedto irrigate fields and pastures on the high plains. Without that, the cattle economy and the wheateconomy of the high plains of the United Stateswould be hard to maintain.

GLS: Politics is an underlying theme this book. Iwas impressed to read how many times dams andwater management projects are done for politicalreasons, and can lead to environmental disasters suchas the Aral Sea. The Aswan Dam, for example, hadenormous unintended consequences in Egypt.

JRM: A lot of environmental changes happen asunintended consequences of actions taken forcompletely other reasons—a lot of which arepolitical. This may be no more true with respect towater than with respect to air, or soils, or livingthings, but it sure is obvious in the case of dambuilding. In many countries—India, China, Egypt,the old Soviet Union, and not least the western partof the United States—dam-building took on apolitical aspect. Prestige projects gave convincingevidence of the government commitment tomodernization and improving the lot of farmers. And so it was often good politics to build dams,even if, ultimately, it meant that a lot of people hadto be moved—sometimes millions of people in thecase of Indian and Chinese dams—or that thedownstream river was completely changedecologically, and species might go extinct. And thedams used for irrigation purposes might lead to thesalinization of farmers’ fields—as in the Aral Searegion. All kinds of things can happen when you

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dam up a river and reorganize the plumbing of alandscape, and very little of it is forseen.

GLS: I was struck by how common unintendedconsequences were in practically every realm ofhuman endeavor throughout the century, and howoften the law of irony seemed to be working. Humaninventiveness itself led to these unintendedconsequences, didn’t it? With air conditioning, forexample?

JRM: Yes, through the efforts of Thomas Midgley,whose career gives a good example of the principlethat in ecology you can’t do only one thing. Midgley was a chemist born in western Pennsylvaniain the 1880’s. Early in his career, when he wasworking for a division of General Motors, he had thebright idea of putting lead into gasoline, which madethe gas burn more efficiently, allowed higher octaneand higher compression engines—it was a great idea!But of course it meant, inadvertently, that over thecourse of the next sixty or seventy years billions of

tons of lead would be emitted into the atmosphere,and in crowded cities with traffic problems—say,Bangkok—this produced neurological damage,particularly in children. Midgley in my estimation isthe single organism in the history of the earth mostconsequential for the environment, and not justbecause of his invention of leaded gasoline.

GLS: Why else?

JRM: In the late twenties, he was asked to develop anew refrigerant, because in the old days refrigerationwas done with ammonia, which was flammable, andlots of accidents took place. So Midgley inventedthe first chlorofluorocarbons—freon was the name hegave the first one. This solved the refrigerationproblem very nicely. But, what no one knew, orcould know in 1929-30, was that eventually, afterdoing their work as refrigerants, CFCs would worktheir way into the atmosphere, percolate up to thestratosphere, damage the ozone layer, and subject lifeon earth to higher levels of ultraviolet radiation:unintended consequences.GLS: Where does all this leave us? What’s theimportance of it? What can we do about it?

JRM: As a historian, I’m very cautious about tryingto predict the future, and I don’t go very far downthat line. It does seem to me that the paths of recenthistory are unsustainable, and that humankind and itsenvironmental position at the beginning of the 21stcentury are either in a crisis or on the brink of acrisis. Whether it’s one or the other perhaps isn’t allthat important. What this implies is that business asusual is going to change, and that the responsibiltyall of us face is to try to see that that happens inways that are not disruptive, dislocating, wrenchingand painful. It seems to me that’s quite achievable,but it will require a good deal of clear thinking, agood deal of diplomacy, a good deal of education,and probably some luck as well.

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Graduate Student LifeA Candid Interview with MeredithOyen, President of the GSO

Meredith Oyen is a second-year Ph.D. candidate inAmerican diplomatic history. Since May 2000, shehas served as president of the Graduate StudentOrganization. Her colleague Simone Ameskampasked her to reflect on life at Georgetown, herresponsibilities as GSO, and some of the salientissues of the day.

SA: Why did you decide to come to Georgetown?MO: I really wanted to move to D.C., and I’ve had astrong interest in Georgetown in particular for years,even before I investigated schools, programs, ordegrees. After I’d received my acceptances and knewmy options, I looked much more closely at who I’dbe working with and what the program would be liketo make my decision. It was the right one.

SA: What do you dislike about living inWashington, DC?MO: I’m generally very pro-D.C., and I love theconvenience of the Smithsonian Museums (especiallyNatural History). I’ve had a lot of adventures herethat I might not have had elsewhere. But, of course,there is that whole issue of having no votingrepresentative in Congress...

SA: You teach ESL. What is the biggest challengeyou face?MO: The diversity of the students. In my currentclass, I have 15 students from 13 countries, whospeak at 15 different levels of proficiency. Findingactivities that everyone can benefit from is alwaystricky. Of course, that’s also what makes teachingEnglish so much fun. But it doesn’t help thatclasses are Friday nights, so I’m usually prettypunchy and my thought-processes are, as a result,sometimes hard to follow (for me and my students).

SA: You also support National History Day. Why?MO: The National History Day competition for 6th

through 12th grade students comes close to being theperfect academic competition. Of course, likeeveryone else in the department I have an interest inseeing history not only well-preserved, but also well-taught to young scholars. But even moreimportantly, I think, History Day trains students inthe kinds of skills they’ll need for life: they conductresearch (and discover where and how to find newinformation), synthesize and write about theinformation they’ve collected, creatively present theirresearch and arguments, and do all of this under adeadline. The added incentive of progressive school,regional, state/citywide, and national competitionsadds to the fun and the quality of the projects. Ofcourse, I also have a personal interest in the program-- I competed for four years in junior high and highschool, and that experience was what motivated meto change my college major to history frompaleontology.

SA: How did you become interested in your minor,Chinese history?MO: My father has an old friend who is an engineerand who collects Chinese textiles. When my sisterand I were little, he and his wife would visit and hewould teach us binary math and hexadecimal, andthen they would both tell us stories about Chinesehistory. My sister is finishing up her Ph.D. inmaterial science engineering; after a brief and ill-fatedforay into the geological sciences, I chose the otherroute.

SA: What was the most hilarious moment in yourgrad school career?

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MO: There have been so many... I accidentallyserenaded a member of the faculty with my ownpersonal rendition of “Blue Moon” once.

SA: On how many committees are you serving?MO: Not counting subcommittees or anythinginternal to the GSO, six.

SA: What is it like to be president?MO: Well, the power and influence islimitless...Actually, most of my work involvesacting as a conduit between various parts of theadministration and the graduate student body. Iattend meetings and report the information back tothe GSO, then bring the grad student perspective tothe various administrators I meet with. A huge partof the job is making sure that the GSO will bestrong—both in spirit and in budget—after I leave. The latter is looking good, and I hope the former willtoo.

SA: How would you describe your constituency?MO: In theory, at least, the GSO serves all (roughly)3,000 graduate students on the Main Campus. Unfortunately, not all of the departments sendrepresentatives to our meetings (in spite of all thethreats, bribes, and charm we’ve used to try to lurethem in), so it is a bit more limited. I hope,however, that any graduate student with a problem,concern, or idea would go, if not first, at leasteventually, to the GSO.

SA: Would you like to sub for George W. Bush orMartin Sheen?MO: The GSO presidency is presently the limit ofmy political ambitions.

2001 FACULTY PROFILE

In order to provide readers with a closer view of thedepartment faculty and their work, the Newsletterannually profiles individual faculty members andintroduces short selections from their writing. Thisyear, we profile European diplomatic historian AvielRoshwald, who has just been appointed fullprofessor.

Aviel Roshwald Reflects on theSources of National Identity

Nationalism is easy to talk about, as long as it’ssomeone else’s. Reflecting on the central theoreticalissue in his research and teaching, Aviel Roshwaldremarks that he finds too many discussions ofnationalism to be antiseptic and detached. Then,with a characteristic mix of insight and playfulness,he adds, “maybe that’s because a lot of it’s written byalienated Jews like me.” In a scholarly career thatstarted at a precocious age, Roshwald has restlesslypursued an intellectual course from abstract issues toquestions intimately tied to his own personal andintellectual formation, moving from political scienceto political history, then to the history of nationalismand the fundamental question of the nature ofnational identity itself.

The child of Polish-born Israeli parents living inMinnesota, Roshwald grew up in a strangely dividedenvironment. Outside of the house he lived in theworld of a typical midwestern American youth (the

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sort of life captured in the Coën brothers’ movie“Fargo”). At home, Middle Eastern politics filledthe air, and conversation often turned on what itmeant to be Jewish. Every two or three years, hespent summers in Israel, which nurtured in him thefeeling that he was permanently connected to Israel,yet at the same time confirmed that he was not quiteIsraeli himself. Culturally isolated from theirsurroundings, Roshwald’s parents were, in his words,“their own movement in Judaism—everyone else waseither too orthodox or too liberal.” The strongJewishness inculcated in him despite his family’suprooted life—or perhaps because of it—becamecentral to his sense of self, yet left him dailyconfronting the paradoxes of national identity.

Quickly bored by a high school where the historyteacher quizzed students on such trivia as the name ofAndrew Jackson’s mule, Roshwald entered theUniversity of Minnesota at the age of fourteen,planning to major in political science. He soonfound himself alienated from that field’s deductiveapproach as well, and turned to history. He went onto Harvard for graduate school, and there began thework for his dissertation and first book, EstrangedBedfellows: Britain and France in the Middle EastDuring the Second World War. This study ofMideast diplomacy examined the behavior of regionalimperial officials involved in what Roshwalddescribes as an “anachronistic game of colonialrivalry” while World War raged in Europe. By theauthor’s own account it was an eccentric topic,perhaps befitting his eccentric intellectual career. “The beauty of history is its magnificent irrelevance!”Roshwald laughs. Yet the work also demonstratedsomething of broad significance: the lag betweengeopolitical transformation and politicalconsciousness. It thus provided an insight intopolitics only available from the archival study ofhistory: that contingencies such as the persistence ofelites acting on outmoded assumptions or personalvendettas may explain a political situation thatrational analysis cannot.

Roshwald taught at the University of Massachusettsat Boston, Tufts, and Pomona College before comingto Georgetown in 1991. In addition to teachingEuropean history and the history of international

relations, he has taught a freshman pro-seminar andan upper-level colloquium on nationalism. Severalyears ago, he introduced the course “World War I asHistorical Watershed.” One day toward the end ofthe semester, Russian historian Richard Stites sawthe syllabus and casually suggested they put togethera book on the subject. Equally casually, Roshwaldsaid “sure.” Within a few minutes, Stites returnedwith a written proposal. The eventual result wasEuropean Culture in the Great War: the Arts,Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914-1918, acollection of 14 essays edited by Stites andRoshwald. In contrast to the wealth of research onthe effects of the war, this innovative volume focusedspecifically on social cultural developments duringthe war years. With this tighter chronological focus,it encompassed greater geographical extent,examining wartime culture in Eastern Europeancountries as well as in the better-known West. HereRoshwald worked on the subject of Jewish culturalidentity as a scholar for the first time, contributing anextended essay that examined the wartime experienceof Jews in Eastern and Central Europe.

A second book-length study followed the editedvolume with remarkable rapidity. This time, withthe encouragement of his colleagues, Roshwalddecided to tackle the question of nationalism and theemergence of national identities through a broadsynthesis of movements in Europe, Russia, and theMiddle East during and following World War I. Inspired by the writing of Isaiah Berlin, Roshwaldchose this key period in the formation andpropagation of modern democratic principles toilluminate the historical relationship betweenliberalism and nationalism. Here he demonstratedthe ultimately self-contradictory nature of liberalnationalism. The most ethnically inclusive attemptsto form civic consciousness, like theCzechoslovakism of Masaryk, he pointed out, stillalienated ethnic minorities, while the most successfulefforts, like the Turkish nationalism of KemalAtaturk, were ruthless in their cultural assimilationprograms. Yet tracing the history of ethnicnationalism’s excesses did not lead him to concludethat politics must reject all notions of the ethnicnation, for the human need for “a communal

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framework of identity” persists, and liberaldemocratic states depend upon it. The tensionbetween liberalism and nationalism, Roshwaldwrites, calls for “imaginative compromises andidiosyncratic improvisations.” The new regimes ofthe post-World War I era failed to recognize thenecessity for a certain degree of ideological andinstitutional “messiness” in nation-state formation,but the experiment, he concludes, is not yet over.

In academic year 1999-2000, as he continued to teachand write on nationalism, Roshwald directed theJewish Studies Initiative, leading Georgetown in itsfirst step toward developing a program in JewishStudies. His efforts bore fruit in the hiring ofhistorian Cecile Kuznitz, who now directs theInitiative and teaches courses in Jewish history.

The last two years have been particularly happy onesfor Aviel Roshwald. In addition to tenure and twomajor publications, his personal life has been blessedby his marriage in October, 1999 to Alene Moyer,Assistant Professor of German at the University ofMaryland. As stepfather to her two sons, Martin andJoseph, he finds now that whatever professorialaffectations he may assume in the course of the dayare quickly deflated in camel rides and wrestlingmatches back at home. His wife’s growing interestin ethnolinguistics provides a further stimulus to hisresearch on ethnicity and nation.JS

Faculty Sampler: Aviel Roshwald on theForging of Nations in World War I

The most striking example of how wartime exile inthe Allied countries could propel a hitherto respectedbut relatively powerless figure into the seat of poweris that of Tomá_ Masaryk. By 1914, Masaryk had

come to the conclusion that the Austro-Hungarianstate was too retrograde and authoritarian to besusceptible to reform. Its alignment with WilhelmineGermany in the war only reinforced his sense thatfull independence rather than autonomy within aGerman-dominated Central Europe represented theonly meaningful form of self-determination for theCzech nation. By the same token, the war seemed toopen up the first realistic possibility of breaking upthe Habsburg empire. To this end, in December1914, Masaryk left Austria-Hungary for Switzerland,where he began to plan a campaign from abroad onbehalf of Czech independence...

While there were strong elements of continuitybetween Masaryk’s pre- and post-1914 positions, theprocess of inventing a state in the diplomaticcyberspace of wartime exile certainly helped shapehis program, and had a far-reaching impact on theinstitutions and political dynamics of interwarCzechoslovakia. Masaryk’s decision to openly attackthe legitimacy of the Habsburg state was itself afunction of the war. More interesting is the mannerin which his wartime circumstances shaped thefuture of relations between Czechs and Slovaks. Unencumbered by direct involvement in the politicallife of his homeland, Masaryk was free to take hisideas on the Czech-Slovak connection to their logicalconclusion by advocating the creation of aCzechoslovak nation-state.

Masaryk’s effective wartime constituencies wereWestern elites and Czech and Slovak immigrantcommunities. Both groups proved receptive to hisideas on Czech-Slovak affinity. His Anglo-French-American audience was sympathetic to his rhetoricabout the need to forge a common national identityamong the two Slavic peoples on the basis of theCzechs’ liberal-democratic values, with the newCzechoslovakia to become a bastion of the West inGerman-dominated Central Europe. For their part,the Czech and Slovak communities of the UnitedStates were much more aware of their similarities inthe context of their common encounter with Americanurban life than were their brethren in the oldcountry. It was in Pittsburgh, of all places, thatMasaryk met with American Czech and Slovakleaders to issue a joint declaration calling for the

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creation of an independent Czechoslovakia. ThePittsburgh Declaration of 1917 was an effort to lendMasaryk’s efforts the legitimacy of popular approvalby the largest community of Czechs and Slovaksliving outside the Austro-Hungarian empire. Yetwhile Masaryk regarded it as an affirmation of hisvision of Czechoslovak unity, the document alsocontained assurances of Slovak autonomy within theframework of the future state—assurances that wereto remain unfulfilled. As such, it was to be thesubject of increasingly venomous disputes during theinterwar years.

The problem with Masaryk’s program was that itcould easily be taken as little more than a façade forCzech cultural imperialism. Masaryk clearlyregarded Czech culture as the ideal medium for thedissemination of progressive values to the Slovaks. He seemed uncertain over how to deal with the factthat Slovak was linguistically distinct from Czech. In his wartime propaganda, he referred to Slovak asnothing more than a dialect of Czech, whilepromising that this dialect would be used in Slovakschools and administration. He made no mention ofemploying Slovak at the level of higher education,and insisted that the linguistic issue would notconstitute a stumbling block, indeed, that “there canbe no language question, because every Slovak, evenwithout an education, understands Czech and everyCzech understands Slovak.” The latter observationwas quite true, yet it also reflected the rather naïveobliviousness on Masaryk’s part to the “narcissismof minor difference” that can play so powerful arole in the formation of national identities and thegeneration of ethnic conflicts.

Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall ofEmpires: Central Europe, Russia and the MiddleEast, 1914-1923 (London and New York: Routledge,2001).

History at Georgetown:Undergraduate and GraduatePrograms

The Undergraduate Program

The Undergraduate Program currently has about 55History graduating Seniors (Class of 2001) and 75Junior majors in the College, and about 45International History Junior and Senior majors in theSchool of Foreign Service. As of this writing, thirtySophomores have declared the History major, thoughthe deadline is not for another month and a half. TheDepartment offers a variety of courses in the historyof all regions of the world, and courses that presentdiverse approaches, formats, and topics. Inparticular, we have recently offered an increasingnumber and variety of colloquia and seminars. ManyHistory majors (about 40% of them) spend all or partof their Junior year abroad, and the Department isvery flexible about facilitating the transfer of creditfor History courses taken abroad.

History majors in the College are required to takethree courses in each of two regions, one from GroupA (Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East), andone from Group B (Europe, Russia/East CentralEurope, U.S.). Many History courses offerflexibility in terms of regional distribution, which isindicative of the importance of comparative andtopical approaches in many of our classes. There arealso requirements in terms of course levels: majorshave to take at least four courses numbered 200 orabove (i.e. thematic lecture courses orcolloquia/seminars), of which at least two have to benumbered 300 or above (i.e. colloquia/seminars); oneof the latter has to be a fourth course in one of thetwo regions of concentration. The major finallyincludes two electives. Last year we also instituted athematic area, defined by students in consultationwith their advisors, which can replace one of the tworegional concentrations.

The SFS International History consists of twelve

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courses, which include one colloquium and four othercourses on international history, a colloquium incomparative history, and six courses in a self-designed concentration, approved by each student’sadvisor, to include at least one colloquium orseminar. The twelve courses must include at leasttwo and no more than four courses from otherDepartments.

The Department has expanded its offerings of generaleducation courses. Since 1998 we offer courses inWorld History and in the History of the AtlanticWorld, and in the Spring of 2002 we will offer acourse on the Modern History of the Pacific World. The general education requirements in History for theSchool of Foreign Service, which recently werelowered from four courses to three, are still in theprocess of being revised. Twelve students this yearare enrolled in the Senior Honors Seminar, directedby Professor Howard Spendelow.

Tommaso AstaritaDirector of Undergraduate Studies

The Graduate Program

The graduate program has achieved its goal ofattaining national excellence. Measured by our recordin placing our graduates, we rank among the toptwenty programs in the country. Although U.S.News & World Report continues to undervalue ourprogram by failing to credit our placement success,we moved up several places in their rankings, whichare based on a reputation survey.

Nineteen students entered the Ph.D. program thisyear (2000-01), almost twice as many as entered theprevious year. The program also continues to behighly selective. This year, we offered admission toless than thirty percent of our applicants. Two yearsago, the Graduate School began its UniversityFellowships, a university-wide program that offers

higher stipends than “regular” assistantships. Thefirst year, both of the History Department’s nomineeswere awarded fellowships, and last year two of ourthree nominees won fellowships. This year, one ofour three nominees was awarded a UniversityFellowship and another was named an alternate.

Funding remains a key issue. Under current fundingwe are able to provide full assistance (stipend plustuition) for four years to around seven students ayear. We have also begun providing a de facto fifthyear of assistance to selected students either throughfunding their research for a year or through a DavisFellowship. In addition, we generally providetuition scholarships to many other students. Nevertheless, we continue to lag behind our peerprograms in the level and duration of financialassistance. In addition, we need to improve thequality of our financial assistance to include healthinsurance, language training, and a service-free firstyear.

On the other end of the program, several studentshave completed their degrees this year, and wecontinue to have success in placing our graduates. Inaddition to their academic preparation, many of ourgraduates have benefited from Davis Fellowships,which allow them to teach an advanced undergraduatecolloquium of their own design. Although theGraduate School no longer designates funds for theDavis Fellowships, the History Department hascontinued to fund four to six Davis Fellows a yearout of our overall allocation from the GraduateSchool. In most cases, we are able to fund DavisFellows for two semesters, thus providing a writingsemester in addition to the teaching semester. Inaddition, many of our students are able to gainteaching experience as adjuncts in sections ofEuropean Civilization, and next year some will beable to teach sections of World History.

Finally, I am pleased to announce that Dr. CatherineEvtuhov will take over as Director of GraduateStudies in July.

David S. Painter Director of Graduate Studies

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Recent Doctorates (Ph.D.’s completed,2000-2001)

CARAFANO, James J. (B.S., United States MilitaryAcademy at West Point, M.A., Georgetown)

“‘Waltzing into the Cold War’: US ArmyMilitary Operations in Occupied Austria andthe Limits of Military Power, 1945-1955”

 HILL, Richard (B.A., Georgia State, M.A.,Georgetown)

“Pearl Harbor Month: Why the UnitedStates Went to War with Germany”

 WALL, Michael C. (B.A., Augustana College,Illinois, M.A., Georgetown)

“Chinese Reaction to the Portrayal of Chinaand Chinese in American Motion Picturesprior to 1949”

Phi Alpha Theta Activities

Georgetown’s Beta Pi Chapter of Phi Alpha Thetacontinues to be quite active. The 1999-2000 yearconcluded with two major events. On March 25th,the chapter held a Spring Banquet and CandlelightInduction Ceremony with 41 people—students,parents and faculty—in attendance. Guest speaker forthe evening was Dr. Edna Greene Medford of HowardUniversity, who gave a slide-illustrated lecture on“Slavery from the Perspective of New York’s 18th

century African Burial Ground.” In early April 2000,ten of our students gave a total of eleven papers at theMid-Atlantic Regional Conference of Phi AlphaTheta at the University of Maryland, BaltimoreCounty. Only three paper prizes were awarded at thatconference, but our students captured all them: a first-place prize for the best graduate paper (KateSampsell), and two undergraduate paper prizes: first-place for Lauren Boccardi, and second-place for W.Brent Haas for his two papers. At the end of theyear, the final count for new initiates to Beta PiChapter was 86. As a testament to the quality ofstudent involvement in Phi Alpha Theta, national

headquarters awarded the Beta Pi Chapter a “BestChapter Award” for 1999-2000. The chapter willreceive a framable certificate for this, and a monetarydonation will be made to Lauinger Library, in BetaPi’s name, for the purchase of some historymonographs. Georgetown students also made anexceptional showing at the Phi Alpha Theta regionalconference in April, 2001, taking three out of fiveprizes awarded. First place in the graduate papercompetition went to Catherine Blair for her paper,“State and Society in Sixteenth-Century Lithuania: AComparison of Lithuanian Statutes of 1529 and1588.” Second prize went to Nadya Sbaiti for herpaper “Reconstructing Arab History: The HistoryLayla Al-Sabbagh.” In the undergraduatecompetition, Victoria Golebiowski won second prizefor a paper entitled “The Construction of aRenaissance Identity: The Self-Portraiture ofSofonisba Aguissola.”

So far this academic year, Beta Pi Chapter hassponsored four major activities. In September, whenthe Red Cross announced that the local blood supplywas “dangerously low,” several chapter members andfaculty advisor Professor Horvath-Peterson donated asa group to this important cause. In early October, thechapter held another booksale to exhaust the supplyof books left over from last year’s booksale. Onceagain, and thanks in part to donations from severalfaculty members, the chapter netted over $300. Atthe end of October, the chapter hosted a HalloweenParty, once again inviting Professor Goldfrank tospeak on the man behind the Dracula legend, thecruel Vlad Tepès. Finally, on November 9th, thechapter sponsored a walking tour of historicGeorgetown with Professor Ronald Johnson as guide. About a dozen students braved the drizzle and rainthat afternoon for the walking history lesson, butthey were well rewarded with a “new” discovery, theexistence of the old “White Horse Tavern” at 152433rd Street. According to the bronze plaque on thebuilding, this former tavern “…was a popularmeeting place of Thomas Jefferson and othernotables. It was here that Major John Cox [at thetime, mayor of Georgetown] entertained GeneralLafayette [probably during his 1824 tour of majoreast coast cities] with a dinner of reed-birds, followed

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by dancing to music from the balcony.” The rain-soaked Phi Alpha Thetans returned to campus in thehighest of spirits and with a promise from ProfessorJohnson that he would take them on another one ofhis walking tours in the near future.

Faculty Publications, Papers andResearch

In the spring of 2000 Assistant Professor GáborÁgoston received a Junior Faculty ResearchFellowship from Georgetown, which allowed him tocomplete several chapters of his book on Ottomanmilitary technology, and a longer article about theOttoman conquest in the Balkans. He published twobooks in Hungarian: A tizenhetedik század története[History of Hungary in the Seventeenth Century], co-authored with Teréz Oborni, and Magyarországtörténete 100+1 tételben [History of Hungary in onehundred and one chapters], co-authored with RobertHermann. The first book is the seventh volume of anew ten-volume Hungarian History, which is alsoused as an undergraduate textbook at manyuniversities and colleges of the country. The secondone was originally written in 1996 for the HungarianRadio, and its audio version is available from thewebsite of the Kossuth Radio. His essays andarticles published in 2000 include “The Costs of theOttoman Fortress-System in Hungary in theSixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” in Ottomans,Hungarians and Habsburgs in Central Europe. TheMilitary Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest,edited by Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, “The Ottoman-

Habsburg Frontier in Hungary (1541-1699): aComparison,” in The Great Ottoman, TurkishCivilization vol. 1. Politics, edited by Güler Eren, etal (also published in Turkish translation); “Osmanlı_mparatorlu_u’nda Harp Endüstrisi ve BarutTeknolojisi (1450-1700)” [Arms Industry andGunpowder Technology in the Ottoman Empire,1450-1700] in Güler Eren, Kemal Çiçek, Cem O_uzeds., Osmanlı Cilt :6 Te_kilat; (in Turkish); “Lastrada che conduceva a Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade):L’Ungheria, l’espansione ottomana nei Balcani e lavittoria di Nándorfehérvár” in La campana dimezzogiorno. Saggi per il Quinto Centenario dellabolla papale edited by in Zsolt Visy. He was the co-organizer and panelist at a seminar entitled“Hungary’s First Millennium” organized jointly bythe History Department, the BMW Center forGerman and European Studies and CERES ofGeorgetown University and the Hungarian Embassyand held at Georgetown on April 17, 2000.

After a year’s break, Professor Tommaso Astarita isagain the Department’s Director of UndergraduateStudies. He was promoted to the rank of Professorin the Spring of 2000. In November, he received theCollege’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, inrecognition of his creative use of classroom materialssuch as slides, videos and musical recordings inholding the interest of about 70 students at one timein “European Civilization.” He is beginning researchon a project on the workers’ guilds in early modernNaples. This year he is teaching a new colloquiumon autobiography and identity in early modernEurope.

Y2K was quite a productive year for DavidGoldfrank . He finished and delivered to CistercianPublications—in virtual desktop publishingform—the revised and expanded edition of TheMonastic Rule of Iosif Volotsky, which was in printby the end of the year. He wrote several papers:“Muscovy and the Mongols: What’s What and What’sMaybe,” (published in Kritika, NS 1.2 Spring 2000,259-68); “Aristotle, Bodin, and Montesquieu to theRescue: Making Sense of the Despotism Issue” (for aFestschrift for Hans Jakob Torke, to be published byForschungen zur osteuopäischen Geschichte); “TheHoly Sepulchre and The Origin of the Crimean War,”

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(invited paper for a volume on Russian military historyto be published by Cambridge University Press). Healso participated in several conferences, including theInternational Congress on Slavic and East EuropeanStudies in Tampere, Finland. Then in Helsinki, hereestablished ties going back thirty-two years with theSlavonic Library and helped lay the groundwork for acollective volume on the Russo-Japanese War. Andearly in 2001, Goldfrank and the Russian Historytextbook gang (Professors Evtuhov and Stites here andLindsey Hughes in London) finally sent off a completedraft to Houghton Mifflin. Goldfrank has nowlaunched a new major project, which ought to completeresearches he commenced as he was doing hisPh.D.—Low Rhetoric and High Power: Russia’sIosifite Century, 1470-1570. His undergraduateteaching in Y2K was exclusively world history: thesecond half of the survey, the introductoryglobalization course for SFS international historymajors, and a first year SFS pro-seminar on slavery inworld history.

Professor Ronald Johnson is currently on sabbaticalworking on his co-authored (with Abby A. Johnsonof the Liberal Studies Program) study of”Death,Burial, and Memorial at Congressional Cemetery,Washington, D.C., 1807-1980.” His (and her)chapter on “Funereal Pageantry and National Unity:The Death and Burial of John Quincy Adams”appeared in Ceremonies and Spectacles: PerformingAmerican Culture (2000), published by AmsterdanUniversity Press. Last year, he joined with Abby inpresenting a paper on “The Cemetery as Garden:Congressional Cemetery inWashington D.C., 1807-1900” before the European Association of AmericanStudies in Graz, Austria. This fall, ProfessorJohnson stepped down from serving as director ofAmerican Studies, after serving 17 of the last 21yearsin that capacity.

Richard Kuisel joined the faculty this fall on alongterm contract to teach in both the HistoryDepartment and CEGES. Last year he published fourarticles: “Learning to Love McDonald’s, Coca-Colaand Disneyland Paris,” in The Tocqueville Review,“Americanization for Historians,” in DiplomaticHistory, “The Fernandel Factor: the Rivalry between

the French and American Cinema in the 1950s,” inYale French Studies, and “The French Cinema andHollywood: A Case Study of Americanization,” inTransactions, Transgressions, Transformations:American Culture in Western Europe and Japan,edited by Heide Fehrenbach and Uta Poiger. He alsogave the paper, “Has France been Americanized?” toan international conference on “Globalized America”at Schloss Elmau (Bavaria).

Cecile E. Kuznitz joined the department in the fallof 2000 as Visiting Assistant Professor of JewishHistory/Jewish Studies and Director of the Sam EigJewish Studies Initiative. The previous summer shecompleted her dissertation, “The Origins of YiddishScholarship and the YIVO Institute for JewishResearch,” at Stanford University. In her first year atGeorgetown, Cecile taught “Introduction to JewishStudies” as well as two courses on modern Jewishhistory. She also organized several public events,including a symposium on Polish-Jewish history inthe twentieth century held in memory of Jan Karski.Off campus, she presented papers entitled “TheDilemmas of Engaged Scholarship: The Work of theYIVO Institute in Interwar Vilna” at the annualconference of the Association for Jewish Studies;“Ansky’s Legacy: The Historic-Ethnographic Societyand the Study of Folklore in Vilna” at the conference“Between Two Worlds: S. Ansky at the Turn of theCentury” at Stanford University; “Nokhem Shtif –The Odysseys of a Yiddish Scholar” at the YIVOInstitute for Jewish Research; and “Politics,Popularization, and the Making of Yiddish Culture”at the University of Maryland.

Michael Kazin’s America Divided: The Civil War ofthe 1960’s (co-authored with Maurice Isserman)appeared in paperback in July, 2000. It was namedone of the best books of 2000 by The WashingtonPost. Michael continues working on his study ofWilliam Jennings Bryan and his followers (undercontract with Knopf), for which he was awarded asenior faculty fellowship for the next academic year.He gave a paper on the subject at the AHA inBoston.

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Associate Professor Erick D. Langer spent lastsummer as a Fulbright scholar in Salta, Argentina.There he taught the inaugural course at the NationalUniversity of Salta for their new Master’s program inFrontier Studies and did research on the behavior ofindigenous groups on the Chaco frontier during theindependence wars. Professor Langer co-authored anew world history text, Experiencing World History(New York: New York University Press, 2000), andexpects that once this has been discovered, he will beasked to teach a World History course at Georgetown.He prepared a revised edition of Formulación deproyectos de investigación; the previous editionturned out to be a best seller (in Bolivian academicterms!) and sold out. Professor Langer alsopublished an article on the twentieth-century historyof Chuquisaca (Bolivia) on CD-ROM and wrote anarticle on the economic history of the Gran Chaco forthe Encyclopedia of Economic History (CambridgeUniversity Press, forthcoming). He presented papersat the Latin American Studies Association, theAmerican Historical Association, Instituto Histórico“Dr. Emilio Ravignani” (Buenos Aires, Argentina),National University of Tucumán (Argentina),National University of the Center (Argentina),University of Texas (Austin), Foreign ServiceInstitute, and York University (Toronto, Canada). Lastly, he organized an all-day conference sponsoredby the Center for Latin American Studies on “ThePolitics and Economics of Oil: Venezuela and LatinAmerica in Comparative Perspective,” held onFebruary 9, 2001.

Assistant Professor Amy E. Leonard spent lastsummer in Strasbourg, France, doing research andrecovering from her first year of teaching EuropeanCivilization. Upon her return she gave a conferencepaper, “Nuns as Whores: A Common Trope,” at theSixteenth Century Studies Conference in October,and then helped organize and participate in a round-table seminar on “Female Religious Communities” atthe Early Modern Women conference at College Park,MD. In the Spring she will be presenting anotherpaper at a special conference on Church History onthe topic of women, the Reformation, and ChurchHistory today, as well as giving a lecture for

the Smithsonian Associates Program on the religiousgeography of Europe. She is currently working on anarticle on female religious orders, due in May, for aBlackwell volume on the Reformation, edited byRonnie Po-chia Hsia. After that she will be excitedlylooking forward to her junior sabbatical leave nextSpring.

U.S. historian Joseph McCartin joined thedepartment in 1999 from SUNY-Geneseo. He isnow at work on two book projects. One examinesthe ill-fated 1981 strike of PATCO, the union offederal air traffic controllers broken by PresidentRonald Reagan. The other is a documentarycollection tracing the history of American labor.

In the past year, James Millward has continuedwork on his history of the Xinjiang (easternTurkestan) region in northwest China, and hasfocused more attention on the separatist crisis in thearea. He has also been preparing for publication of avolume he has edited on Chengde, the Qingdynasty’s Inner Asian capital. Millward deliveredpresentations on Chinese modern history, Mongolia,Xinjiang and Tibet, and Chinese minority issues to aYale seminar for high school teachers of Asianstudies, and spoke on Qing dynasty eclecticism andcosmopolitanism before the International ChineseSnuff Bottle Association (text and illustrations fromthis presentation will appear in an upcoming issue of

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Association’s journal). In 2001, Millward launched anew course that employs The Dream of RedMansions (Hong lou meng, also known as Story ofthe Stone), China’s greatest novel, as the core text toexamine the social and cultural history of 18thcentury China, a time and place not unlike our own,both for its great prosperity and for the ominousclouds on the horizon. He continues to teach hissurvey of Central Eurasia and to participate inoffering the core “intersocietal history/globalization”course for students in the Masters program of theSchool of Foreign Service.

John McNeill’s Something New Under the Sun: AnEnvironmental History of the 20th-century Worldcame out in 2000 with W.W. Norton in the U.S. andwith Penguin in the U.K. British historian EricHobsbawm noted it as the most original book he readin 2000. It won the World History Association bookprize, was selected as “book of the month” by theWorld Bank Development Group, and will betranslated into 7 languages. In the spring of 2000,McNeill enjoyed a sabbatical, spent in Christchurch,New Zealand, where he was a Canterbury Fellow atthe University of Canterbury. He gave papers orlectured at the World Bank, Yale University, GeorgeWashington University, the U.S. Naval Academy,the Woodrow Wilson Center, the National ParksService, the Carnegie Council on Ethic andInternational Affairs, the Foreign Policy School ofthe University of Otago (New Zealand), theInternational Congress of Historical Sciences (Oslo),the New Zealand Association of University Women,the Library of Congress, and the annual meetings ofthe American Society for Environmental History andthe American Historical Association. He alsopublished two articles and four book reviews, wasappointed to the Board of Editors of the Britishjournal Environment and History, and was namedseries editor for Cambridge University Press’ seriesin environmental history. He is working on a newbook about the political and military importance ofyellow fever in the Americas, 1650-1900.

In 1999-2000, Kathryn Olesko continued to workon her two book projects, Precision in GermanSociety: Westphalia to Divided Berlin and Science in

Germany: Reason for Profit. While in Germany sheexamined the growth of regional “centers of scientificexcellence” since 1989. She delivered “Deceptions ofVision: Optical Illusions in German Society” at theNineteenth Century Studies Association Conferenceand at a conference on Romanticism and VisualCulture at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University. At the BMW Center for German & European Studiesand the Program in Science, Technology andInternational Affairs Faculty Seminar, she spoke on“Student Protest, Gutenberg, and ‘Green Cards’:Historical Roots of Germany’s Present Crisis inScience.” For the Georgetown University Forum shegave a broadcast interview on “Gender & Science”. InMay she attended Georgetown’s “Teaching, Learning,& Technology Summer Institute”. She is Editor ofthe History of Science Society’s annual journal,Osiris, was elected to a three-year term on theSociety’s Executive Council.

Aviel Roshwald’s new book, Ethnic Nationalismand the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russiaand the Middle East, 1914-1923, has just beenpublished (January 2001) in both hardcover andpaperback editions by Routledge. Over the past year,Roshwald gave papers by invitation at a Universityof London conference on Jewishnational identity andat the Georgetown History Department’s Quigleyforum, which featured Benedict Anderson,the CornellUniversity scholar of nationalism, as the mainspeaker. He also published a review article entitled“A Price above Rubies? The Value and Meaning ofSurvival in Modern Jewish History” in EuropeanHistory Quarterly. He intends to continue tormentinghis students, colleagues, and himself with thedilemmas and contradictions of ethnic politics andnationalism in modern history.

Over the past year Associate Professor James Shedelhas continued to serve on the official jury for theAustrian State Prizes in History and as a member ofthe Board of Editors of the Austrian HistoryYearbook. During the fall semester of 2000 heattended the conference, Paradigma Zentraleuropa:Pluralitäten, Religionen und kulturellen Codes, heldat the Université Catholique de l’Ouest in Angers,

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France where he delivered the paper, “The Problem ofBeing Austrian: Religion, Law, and Nation fromEmpire to Anschluß”. Two publications by Prof.Shedel also appeared this year. They are: “Tradition,Law, and Space in the Austrian Rechtsstaat” in TheBorders and National Space in East Central Europeand “Sonderweg, Myth, or Heritage? The Rechtsstaatand Modernity in Habsburg Austria” in Ambivalenzdes kulturellen Erbes. He also continues to work onthe research for his book on the role of the AustrianRechtsstaat in the modernization of Austria.

Richard Stites received a Senior Faculty ResearchGrant from the Graduate School and will spend nextyear in Helskinki, St. Petersburg, and Moscow,finishing his book on Russian culture in the earlynineteenth century. He, Catherine Evtuhov, DavidGoldfrank, and their colleague in London, LindseyHughes have sent in their finished manuscript, some1600 pp. to Houghton-Mifflin: the Rise and Fall ofthe Russian Empire: People, Cultures, Events,Forces. In 2000, Richard published “The CreativeProvinces in Early Nineteenth Century Russia,” inModernization in the Russian Provinces, edited byNatalia Baschmakoff and Paul Fryer, “Soviet RussianWartime Culture: Freedom and Control, Spontaneityand Consciousness,” in A People’s War: PopularResponses to World War II in the Soviet Unionedited by Robert Thurston, and “Provincial Days inthe 1930s: Festivals of Collusion?” in Kritika, 2(Summer, 2000). He also gave the Carls Lecture inHistory at Union University, Jackson, Tennessee,entitled “The Intertwining of Russian and AmericanPopular Culture.”

During the 1999 to 2000 academic year, NancyBernkopf Tucker published two long articles:“Dangerous Liaisons: China, Taiwan, Hong Kongand the United States in the New Millennium,” inChina Briefing edited by Tyrene White, and“Security Challenges for the United States, Chinaand Taiwan at the Dawn of the New Millennium,” inProject Asia, published by the Center for NavalAnalysis; two policy-related shorter essays, “TheTaiwan Factor in the Vote on Permanent NormalTrade Relations for China and Its World TradeOrganization Accession,”

National Bureau of Asian Research, which appearedon the NBR website and in the bulletin NBRAnalysis, and “Options for U.S. Policy RegardingU.S.-Taiwan Relations,” American Foreign PolicyInterests 22 (August 2000); as well as a variety ofbrief comments on American foreign policy in Asiain the 21 st century, such as “Looking Ahead: MajorEvents That May Effect Cross-Strait Relations,” inTaiwan Strait Dilemmas edited by Gerrit W. Gong,and “Future Choices and Suggestions,” in UnitedStates-Taiwan Relations: Twenty Years After theTaiwan Relations Act edited by William Boyer andJaw-ling Joanne Chang. She also appeared ontelevision and radio frequently and participated inbriefings on China and Taiwan for the Department ofState, Department of Defense and the NationalIntelligence Council. In the autumn of 1999, shecompleted her service on the Department of StateHistorical Advisory Committee on DiplomaticDeclassification. As this newsletter goes to press herannotated and edited book China Confidential,which looks at Sino-American relations since 1945through oral histories recorded by Americandiplomats, has just been released.

Professor John Voll’s book, Makers ofContemporary Islam, co-authored with JohnEsposito, is about to be published by OxfordUniversity Press as this newsletter goes to press.

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During the academic year 2000-2001 AssociateProfessor John W. Witek, S. J. continued to teachin the Department while also serving as acting chairof the Department of East Asian Languages andCultures. He has edited Religion and Culture: AnInternational Symposium Commemorating theFourth Centenary of the University College ofSt.Paul , published by the Instituto Cultural deMacau and the Ricci Institute for Chinese-WesternCultural History, University of San Francisco. Thefifteen essays explore various aspects of the firstWestern-style university college in Asian, originallyestablished in 1594 for the training of Jesuits andJapanese lay-persons for the mission in Japan. Whenthat mission closed in the early seventeenth century,the college became a training center for the Chinamission. His keynote address “Christianity andChina: Universal Teaching from the West,” deliveredat an international conference in 1999, appeared inChina and Christianity: Burdened Past, HopefulFuture, edited by Stephen Uhalley and Xiaoxin Wu. Additionally he contributed several essays to the TheHandbook of Christianity in China, Volume One:635-1800, which is part of the series Handbook ofOriental Studies (Handbuch der Orientalistik)Section 4: China. He was recently elected for a three-year term as second vice-president of the AmericanCatholic Historical Association. He is a member ofthe University Faculty Senate and Chair of itsgovernance committee.

ALUMNI NEWS

David Abshire (Ph.D., 1959) is president of theCenter for the Study of the Presidency here inWashington. He has kindly provided the departmentwith a copy of Triumphs and Tragedies of theModern Presidency: Seventy-Six Case Studies inPresidential Leadership, a report examining thesuccesses and failures of past American presidents. Prepared in 2000 for the president-elect, the report isthe first of its kind.

Peter Baker has made a generous donation towardthe department’s Quigley Lecture fund. He fondlyremembers Professor Quigley and others of his era,who made great contributions to history.

Susan Buck-Morss (Ph.D.,1975) is Professor ofPolitical Philosophy and Social Theory in theDepartment of Government at Cornell. Shepublished a new book in May 2000 titledDreamworld And Catastrophe: The Passing of MassUtopia in East and West. It analyzes strongsimilarities of mass culture in the U.S. and U.S.S.R.and implies a reinterpretation of the meaning of thecold war. She also published the article “Hegel andHaiti,” in Critical Inquiry (summer 2000), presentingnew archival evidence to show that Hegel got his ideafor the famous master-slave dialectic by reading aboutthe Haitian Revolution in 1804 (in his favoritemonthly political journal, Minerva). Hisham Sharabiwill find this interesting, she writes.

John D. Buenker (M.A., 1962, Ph.D, 1964) hasbeen awarded a Fellowship for College Teachers fromthe National Endowment for the Humanities. Hewill be working on a biography of CharlesMcCarthy, director of the Wisconsin LegislativeReference Bureau and author of The Wisconsin Idea. He has also signed a contract with Copley Publishingto produce a volume on the Gilded Age andProgressive Era in the Sources of the AmericanTradition series. In the past academic year, hepublished a review essay in the Journal of Urban

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History, as well as several articles in the revisededition of the Handbook of American Women’sHistory, and in The Encyclopedia of AmericanViolence. He gave papers at the AHA and severalother conferences, and spoke to audiences aroundWisconsin as a member of the state HumanitiesCouncil’s Speaker’s Bureau. He was awarded forExemplary Service at the University of WisconsinParkside’s fall convocation.

David H. Burton (M.A., 1951, Ph.D, 1953) retiredin May 2000 from the History faculty at St. Joseph’sUniversity. He served there from 1953, and wasChair of the Department from 1976. He is presentlyediting the Collected Works of William Howard Taft,to be published in eight volumes by Ohio UniversityPress. Volumes 1 and 2 will appear in 2001. Among his most successful books are TheodoreRoosevelt: Confident Imperialist (1968), AmericanHistory—British Historians (1976), which wasnominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and The LearnedPresidency (1988), which was noticed by Choice asone of the outstanding academic books of the year.

Edward R. Case (M.A., 1977) returned inNovember 2000 from an overseas assignment inStuttgart to become Vice President of ArmstrongHoldings, Inc., a Fortune 500 manufacturer ofbuilding products located near Philadelphia.Professor Patrick Kelly (Ph.D., 1969) , who wasdoing research in Freiberg, joined Ned in a regionalchess tournament in Nuremberg. They earned a plusscore on average (individual results were notdisclosed!).

After teaching for two years as a visiting assistantprofessor of history at Boise State University, PeterCole (Ph.D., 1999) has moved to a tenure-trackposition at Western Illinois University in Macomb,Illinois. Other highlights of the past year includerock-climbing in Idaho, Utah, Nevada, NewHampshire, and New York, and participating in afive-week summer seminar sponsored by the NEH atHarvard’s W.E.B. DuBois Insitute on the history ofcivil rights. Peter_Cole@ccmail.wiu.edu

Margaret E. Crahan, (Ph.D., 1963) is DorothyEpstein Professor at Hunter College and the GraduateCenter, City University of New York. She iscurrently a Fellow at the Woodrow WilsonInternational Center for Scholars in Washington,D.C., working on a book on the culture of resistanceand strategies for survival of female politicalprisoners during the Argentine military regime, 1976-1983. Her recent publications include “Cuba,” inReligious Freedom and Evangelization in LatinAmerica: The Challenge of Religious Pluralism, and“Cuba: Politics and Society,” in U.S. Policy TowardCuba. She also participated in five sessions at theLatin American Studies Association Conference,March, 2000, and presented papers on “Religion andAccess to Justice,” and “The Role of Human RightsAdvocacy in Combatting Racism,” at U.N.-sponsored meetings. CrahanME@wwic.si.edu

George H. Curtis (Ph.D., 1972) retired from thenation’s presidential library system in 1996, butremains involved with presidential libraries. Hefrequently gives classes on the subject and in the pastyear has conducted several Elderhostel tours of theTruman and Eisenhower libraries. In the coming yearthe program will be expanded to include the HooverLibrary in West Branch, Iowa, and the Gerald FordBirthplace Site in Omaha. CGhcmlc@cs.com

Lawrence Davidson (M.A., 1969) reminds us thathe is a proud founding member of the GeorgetownUniversity Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).He is now a full professor at West Chester Universityin West Chester, PA. West Chester is one of

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Pennsylvania’s state universities. His third book,entitled America’s Palestine: Popular and OfficialPerceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood, willbe published by University Press of Florida in 2001.ldavidson@wcupa.edu

Rebekah C. Beatty Davis (Ph.D., 1999) representedthe Foreign Agricultural Service on the U.S.delegation to the U.N. Commission on SustainableDevelopment in May 2000. In June, she left her jobas Assistant to the National Food SecurityCoordinator at the Foreign Agricultural Service toaccept a position as an International ProgramSpecialist at the National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration (NASA). In this new position,Rebekah does international relations work in supportof the Space Shuttle Program and NASA’s ChiefHealth and Medical Officer, and works with Europeancountries on issues related to the human explorationand development of space. Together with AmyStaples and Nick Cullather, Rebekah has organized apanel titled: “Supermarket to the World,” for the2001 OAH Conference. Rebekah will be presenting apaper on food and power in international relationsfrom P.L. 480 to the World Food Conference.rdavis@hq.nasa.gov

Douglas R. Egerton (Ph.D., 1985) continues at LeMoyne College. In 2000, he published chapters inAntislavery Violence in Antebellum America andSlavery in the Francophone World. His 1999 essayon black abolitionist Denmark Vesey won a prizefrom the South Carolina Historical Magazine. Hegave talks in Charleston, Charlottesville, Richmondand Buffalo, and published several book reviews. Hecontinues on the editorial board of The Historian.

Hafez Farmayan (Ph.D., 1953) retired inSeptember, 2000 from his position as Professor ofHistory and Middle Eastern Studies at the Universityof Texas at Austin. He remains there as ProfessorEmeritus, continuing his research and writing.

John D. Finney, Jr. (Ph.D, 1967) is a SeniorForeign Service Officer with 35 years of service inthe Department of State. From 1996 to 1999, he

served as Political Advisor to the Chief of NavalOperations. In July, 1999, he deployed with theU.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division to Bosnia andHerzegovina, where he served as Political Advisor. Since September, 2000, he has been back at theDepartment of State, in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. He thoroughly enjoyed his tour ofduty in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He tells us thegraduate program in History at Georgetown has beenof “immeasurable benefit” throughout his ForeignService career.

Patrick J. Flood (M.A., 1964) taught courses inInternational Relations and Professional Writing andconducted faculty workshops in PublicAdministration in Uzhgorod, Ukraine during the Fall2000 semester. He also published a chapter on “TheU.S., the U.N. and Human Rights: Policy Choices”in The United States And Human Rights: LookingInward And Outward (U. of Nebraska Press, 2000),and has a chapter on “Impunity v. Accountability forWrongs under International Human Rights andHumanitarian Law” in International HumanitarianLaw: Origins, Challenges and Prospects (EdwinMellen Press, forthcoming). In June 2000, hepresented a paper on “Life after Communism:Democracy and Abortion in Eastern Europe andRussia” at the annual meeting of University Facultyfor Life, held at Georgetown. Patrick earned hisPh.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in

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1995 after completing a career as a US ForeignService Officer with the Department of State.

James L. Fowler (M.A., 1980) is presently Directorof Corporate Security at Unilever United States, Inc.in New York. October 2000 saw the 25th MarineCorps Marathon, which has been held in Washingtonannually since Jim inaugurated the event. He was acolonel in the Marine Corps at the time, havingcompleted a law degree at Georgetown and been twicewounded in Vietnam. He came up with the idea forthe race as a way to improve public relations after thewar. The Corps immediately approved it, andappointed him race director. The number ofparticipants has grown enormously over the years. The Washington Post ran a feature on Jim, “TheMarine Officer Who Brought Corps Values to theMarathon.”

Bruce Goodpasture (M.A., 1964) is retired from theSmall Business Administration, but continues toteach “Publishing Management,” a course in theGraduate School of the U.S. Department ofAgriculture. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Hubertus Jahn (Ph.D., 1991) began his new job aslecturer in Modern Russian History at the Universityof Cambridge. He also became Fellow of ClareCollege. “Otherwise not much to report,” he writes

with undue modesty. hfj21@cam.ac.uk

Richard L. Jasse (M.A., 1973) lives in retirementin Rocky Mount Virginia.Rjasse@aol.com

Dina Rizk Khoury (Ph.D., 1987) is now AssociateProfessor of History at George WashingtonUniversity. She is also director of the Middle EastStudies Program. She spent her sabbatical year inTurkey on an NEH/ARIT grant doing research for herbook on popular politics in early modern OttomanBaghdad and Basra. Her book, State and ProvincialSociety in the Ottoman Empire, Mosul 1540-1834,won the Fuat Koprulu Prize and the British MiddleEast Studies Society Prize for the year 1998. Herson elder Zayd is a freshman at William and Maryand her younger son Waleed is a freshmen at EdmundBurke School. dikhy@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

Michael Krause (Ph.D., 1968) is Chief LogisticsOfficer and Founder of FreightDesk.com of Bethesda,MD and Amesbury, MA. Prior to his currentposition, he produced the strategic logistics plan forAmazon.com, and worked as the chief logisticalplanner for the U.S. military during the Persian GulfWar. His experiences in that conflict led him toformulate the concept of the Logistics Anchor Desk,many principles of which are being embedded inFreightDesk.com technologies and within otherindustries. Dr. Krause also serves on the ArmyScience Board. He has written three books andnumerous articles, and has taught at West Point andthe National Defense University. He is married toDeborah Smith-Krause of Buffalo, New York andthey have two daughters and five grand-children.mkrause@freightdesk.com

Ronald D. Landa (Ph.D., 1971) helped organize aconference held in June 2000 jointly sponsored bythe Library of Congress and the Department ofDefense on Project Open House, a program tomicrofilm Cold War records in military archives inPoland, Hungary, and Romania. In October heretired after 27 years as a federal government

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employee, 14 with the Department of State’sHistorical Office and 13 as a historian with the Officeof the Secretary of Defense (OSD). He continues towork as a consultant with the OSD Historical Office.Ron.Landa@osd.mil

Roland V. Layton (M.A., 1961) has retired fromteaching, but reports that he keeps up the skillslearned from his fine Georgetown professors—Helde,Wilkinson, Sharabi, and Penn—by editing the annualJournal of the Greenbrier Historical Society inLewisburg, West Virginia.omb00764@mail.wvnet.edu

The peripatetic Paul Lorentzen (M.A., 1957) spent ayear doing even more traveling than usual. He madefour trips across the Atlantic, visiting Denmark,Germany and England, sightseeing in SouthernWales, and taking nostalgic walks in London, wherehe was on active duty with the U.S. Navy in 1947-50. Back in Columbia, Maryland, he moved house,and enjoyed the “liberation” of giving up threequarters of his possessions in the process.

Wayne Limberg (Ph.D., 1974) continues to headthe Russian foreign policy and western republicsdivision in the State Department’s Bureau ofIntelligence and Research. He has a chapter on theOgaden war in a forthcoming volume published byPenn State Press on U.S.-Soviet crisis managementduring the Cold War.ACwlimbe@us-state.osis.gov

Michele Marincovich (M.A., 1972, Ph.D., 1977) isAssistant Vice Provost at Stanford University as wellas Director of its Center for Teaching and Learning.In May of both 1999 and 2000 she spent two and ahalf weeks in China lecturing to a touring group of

Stanford graduates and other friends of the universityon a Stanford Alumni Association “suitcaseseminar.” In 1999, together with a colleague atStanford, she launched the I-RITE (IntegratingResearch Into the Teaching Environment) initiative, anew program for graduate students. They havepresented the program at conferences on highereducation both domestically and overseas, and arecurrently discussing pilot projects with severaluniversities. Recent publications include “UsingStudent Evaluation Data to Improve Teaching” inChanging Practices in Evaluating Teaching;“Making Teaching Evaluations Contribute toTeaching Improvement,” in the Spring 2000 issue ofThe Department Chair ; and her keynote address atthe 2nd Asia-Pacific Conference on Problem-BasedLearning in Singapore, which appeared in Problem-Based Learning: Educational Innovation AcrossDisciplines. marin@stanford.edu

Laura J. Mitchell (M.S.F.S./M.A., 1993) had avery eventful 2000. In June, she returned to the U.S.after living in Cape Town, South Africa for threeyears. In July, she married Graham Proctor in aceremony near her parents’ home in NorthernCalifornia. In August, she started teaching AfricanHistory and World Civilizations at the University ofTexas, San Antonio. She received a Ph.D in AfricanHistory from UCLA in 2001. ljmitchell@utsa.edu

In August, 2000, Charles P. Neimeyer (Ph.D.,1993) became Dean of Academics at the US NavalWar College in Newport, RI. neimeyec@nwc.navy.mil

Katerina Nizharadze (PhD., 1998) started her newjob as tenure-track Assistant Professor of RussianHistory at Kennesaw State University in fall of 2000.Kvladimi@kennesaw.edu

David M. Petrou (M.A., 1973) is president of oneof the Washington area’s largest independent publicrelations agencies, with staff in both Washington andBaltimore. The firm represents a broad range ofregional, national and international clients. This year,the agency won first place at the International

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Business Communicators awards dinner. Hisavocation remains choral singing, and he is presentlya first tenor in the principal chorus of the NationalSymphony Orchestra, The Choral Arts Society ofWashington. He also serves on their Board ofDirectors and am chair of the Touring Committee. Last summer, he led the chorus to Jackson Hole,Wyoming, where they closed the Music Festival ofthe Grand Tetons, with a performance of Verdi’s“Requiem,” which was broadcast on National PublicRadio this past October.David.Petrou@eisnerpetrou.com

Michael P. Onorato (Ph.D, 1960) is EmeritusProfessor of History at California State University,Fullerton. In 2000, the reprinted edition of EdoMcCullough’s Good Old Coney Island waspublished by Fordham University Press with anextended epilogue by Michael. He also edited andtranscribed Life without Steeplechase Park: TheDiary and Papers of James J. Onorato, 1967-1971,published by Pacific Rim Books, and published arevised edition of Another Time, Another World:Coney Island Memories, with a new foreword andepilogue (Oral History Program, California StateUniversity, Fullerton, 2000). In addition to thesepublications, he wrote numerous book reviewsrelating to the Philippines, his principal area of expertise. pacrimbks@aol.com

Argyrios Pisiotis graduated from the Department ofHistory with a Ph.D. in August 2000. In May 2000he was hired to the position of Assistant Professor ofthe History of Modern Russia/U.S.S.R. in theDepartment of History at Kent State University. In

summer he delivered the paper “Dissident RussianOrthodox Clergy and Parishioners in Revolution,1905-1917” at the VI World Congress of Central &East European Studies in Tampere, Finland. InNovember 2000 he delivered a paper on “LiterateBrokers of the Late Imperial Russian Countryside” atthe annual convention of the American Associationfor the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Since startingat Kent State in August 2000, Argyrios has taughtHistory of World Civilization, as well as colloquiaon the history of Russian Orthodoxy and ModernRussian Culture. apisioti@kent.edu

In September 2000, Ian Reifowitz (Ph.D., 2000)began a four-year appointment as Visiting AssistantProfessor of History at Monmouth University. Hisarticle “Nationalism, Modernity, and MultinationalAustria in the Works of Joseph Roth,” appeared inAustria in Literature, edited by Donald Daviau. InApril, he gave a paper on “Inventing a Nation: JosephSamuel Bloch and the Cultivation of a SupraethnicAustrian Identity,” at the Association for the Studyof Nationalities Conference at Columbia. Heparticipated in the German Studies Associationconference in October, 2000 together with severalGeorgetown colleagues, including co-panelistElizabeth Drummond. There he delivered the paper,“Threads Intertwined: German National Egoism andLiberalism in the Austrian Consciousness of AdolfFischhof.” reifowii@georgetown.edu, ireifowi@monmouth.edu

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Robert Rinehart (Ph.D., 1975) continues asChairman of Northern European Area StudiesPrograms in the School of Professional and AreaStudies, Foreign Service Institute. In 2000, helectured to the European Seminar at the LondonSchool of Economics on “Created Memories and thePolitics of Identity in Finland,” and participated inthe annual convention of the Association ofInternational Educators (NAFSA) in San Diego. Healso addressed the Education Committee of theFinnish Parliament on issues in American education.During fall, 2000, he welcomed several members ofGeorgetown’s history department—ProfessorsCollins, Kuisel, and Horvath-Peterson—as speakersin his courses at FSI. Robtrine@aol.

Marcia R Ristaino (Ph.D., 1977) continues asSenior Chinese Acquisitions Specialist in the Libraryof Congress. She served the last of a three-year termon the Executive Committee of the Council on EastAsian Libraries, attending their annual meeting inSan Diego in March. She also presented the paper“Russian Women as Icons in Republican EraShanghai” at the international conference “EastAsia—Saint Petersburg—Europe: Inter-CivilizationContacts and Prospects for Economic Cooperation,”held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in October, 2000. She published the following two articles: “NewInformation on Shanghai Jewish Refugees: TheEvidence of the Shanghai Municipal Police Files inthe National Archives, Washington, D.C.” in Jews ofChina, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Goldstein, and“The Russian Diaspora Community in Shanghai,” inNew Frontiers: Imperialism’s New Communities inEast Asia, 1842-1953, edited by Robert Bickers andChristian Henriot. mris@loc.gov

Dr. Madeline Sapienza (M.A., 1975) lives inWashington, D.C. Her major research and writingfocus during 2000 was working six biographicalentries to appear in the Scribner Encyclopedia ofAmerican Lives.

Martin Sweig lives in retirement in West PalmBeach, Florida. He remembers his Georgetown days

with much pleasure.

Anthony B. Toth (1982) received a D.Phil. inModern Middle Eastern Studies from OxfordUniversity in Spring 2001. His thesis examinedeconomic change among the bedouin of northernArabia between 1850 and 1950. He lives inArlington, Virginia, with his wife and three children.

Joseph L. Wieczynski (Ph.D.) retired from VirginiaTech in 1999, after 31 years of service to thatinstitution, and now lives in Sarasota, Florida. j.wieczynski@home.com