Past, Present & Future
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Past, Present & Future THE 2017 REPORT FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY 1 LETTER FROM THE CHAIR HISTORY ALUMNI: What are you doing? Fill us in! We’re always interested in getting updates from our graduates. Email us your news at communications@ history.umass.edu. Be sure to include your graduation year and degree, and we’ll be happy to include you in our next newsletter. If you have any pertinent and reasonably high-resolution photos, include them as attachments. As I enter my second year as department chair, I wish Virginia, who delivered the annual UMass/Five College to thank my colleagues for entrusting me to succeed Graduate Program in History’s Distinguished Lecture. Joye Bowman, off on a well-deserved sabbatical after In the spring, the department hosted Allyson Hobbs six years as chair. Despite her leave, Joye was gener- (Stanford University) as its writer/historian-in-residence. ous with her advice, for which I’m truly grateful. As has Christian Appy delivered one of the university’s four often been the case, the past year offered challenges to Distinguished Faculty Lectures and received the Chan- Past, Present & Future is higher education, particularly the humanities, but the cellor’s Medal. And in December, in response to student published annually by the Department of History continues to grow and develop interest, the department hosted a question-and-answer Department of History as it confronts those challenges. We also welcome Alon session, “Historical Perspectives on the 2016 Election.” Herter Hall Confino, the inaugural Pen Tishkach Chair in Holocaust Those are only some highlights from the department’s 161 Presidents Drive University of Massachusetts Studies and new director of the Institute for Holocaust, many activities during this year. The rest fill up most of Amherst, MA 01003-9312. Genocide, and Memory Studies, who comes to us from this newsletter, from new book publications to the many the University of Virginia. undergraduate and graduate awards we granted. Send news to the editor or by e-mail to Two of our current faculty were promoted this year. I would like to thank Associate Chair Marla Miller, communications@history. Barbara Krauthamer became a full professor, and Brian Graduate Program Director Anna Taylor, and Under- umass.edu. Bunk was promoted to senior lecturer II. Congratula- graduate Program Director Alice Nash for serving with For a PDF version of this tions to both! Barbara was also tapped to succeed John me. I would also like to thank our staff: Office Manager report, see umass.edu/ McCarthy as Graduate School dean. We will miss her Amy Fleig, Undergraduate Program Assistant Suzanne history. in Herter Hall. Bell, Graduate Program Assistant Mary Lashway, Hu- EDITOR Congratulations are also due to Mary Lashway, the man Resources and Finance Assistant Adam Howes, Adeline Broussan Plano del nuevo método de trabajar las minas (“Plan showing the new method of working mines”), department’s graduate program assistant, who received and Outreach Director Jessica Johnson for keeping the With: 1790, Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain. the university’s 2017 Distinguished Graduate Staff Award. department running like a well-oiled machine. Justin Burch We are delighted that her vital role in the department Finally, I would like to thank our alumni, faculty, and Jessica Johnson This detail from a plan drawn in 1790 by Gaspar Sabugo, a miner and military man, shows a cross-section of a silver was recognized by this award. friends for their support, both moral and financial, of the And assistance from: mine in central Peru. Feeling that it illustrated an innovative mining method, Sabugo petitioned unsuccessfully for Marla Miller the plan to be reproduced and circulated among miners throughout the Andes. His is just one of dozens of plans The department had a busy year with its regular department’s activities. —Brian Ogilvie, chair Brian Ogilvie and maps depicting mines and mining sites in late-Colonial Latin America, especially in the Andes and Mexico. These programs and special events. The Feinberg Family Dis- little-studied images and the texts that accompany them are the focus of Heidi Scott’s new book project, which seeks tinguished Lecture Series, on the U.S. in the age of mass COPY EDITORS to answer several questions: What were the specific contexts in which the images were made, and for what purpose? John Sippel incarceration, featured a sterling array of speakers and What do they reveal about the use of cartographic images as tools of communication and persuasion? And what can Laura Gomes panelists, including Talitha LeFlouria of the University of they tell us about the ways in which mining was viewed in different locations and times during the Colonial period? DESIGNER Michelle Sauvé ’84 2 1 CONFRONTING THE CARCERAL STATE Feinberg Series Explores U.S. Mass Incarceration From left: Rhonda Y. Williams, Andrea Ritchie, Kissa Owens, and ShaeSahe Quest discuss police violence at Springfield Technical Community College. “Confronting the Carceral State,” the 2016 –17 Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture The following week, the series presented its feature the 20th Century and the award-winning The Politics of Series, explored how state violence, mass incarceration, and mass criminalization lecture, Reginald Dwayne Betts’s “The Circumference of Public Housing; a lecture by Amherst College historian have transformed the U.S. economy, culture, and society. It included more than two a Prison: Youth, Race, and the Failures of the American Jen Manion, author of Liberty’s Prisoners: Carceral dozen events, drew thousands of attendees, and addressed a wide range of topics— Justice System.” Betts—author of A Question of Freedom, Culture in Early America, on how the penitentiary everything from police brutality, immigration detention, and carceral feminism to the a PEN New England Award winner, a Soros Justice system in early America exploited racist ideologies, consequences of incarceration for women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals. Fellow, the national spokesperson for the Campaign gender norms, sexual desire, and antipathy toward the The series culminated in the opening of the national traveling exhibition States of for Youth Justice, and a recent graduate of Yale Law poor to justify its existence and expansion; and a lecture Incarceration: A National Dialogue of Local Stories, created in collaboration with School—was arrested at 16 and served eight years in an by historian Franklin Odo, founding director of the several local museums and libraries. adult prison. In a powerful lecture before an audience Asian Pacific American Program at the Smithsonian The goal of the series was to consider the carceral state in historical perspective, to of more than 350, including several dozen young Institution, who spoke on Executive Order 9066, which support and amplify the ongoing work of local grassroots organizations, and to enrich people from surrounding communities, he drew on his authorized the removal and incarceration of 120,000 K–12, undergraduate, and graduate education. The series was directed by faculty cochairs personal experiences to discuss the current state of the Japanese Americans, and the experience and collective Marla Miller and Jennifer Nye; coordinated by the history department’s outreach and criminal justice system. Hearing Betts’s story inspired memory of internment. community engagement director, Jessica Johnson; and supported by the department’s history major Jaffar Shiek ’17 to pursue a career in This robust series also included panel discussions undergraduate and graduate student employees. A community and scholarly advisory public-interest law, which he began this fall as a first-year and other events that drew leading scholars, lawyers, committee worked with us to select speakers and plan the events. In total, more than two student at Suffolk University Law School. activists, and artists, including people with direct The official artwork of the series was dozen university and community groups partnered with us on series events (see page 27). After beginning the series by grounding our experience with incarceration. In October, a panel in “Freedom” by Ronnie Goodman, a 55-year- The series kicked off in September with a keynote event, “Women, Incarceration, understanding in personal narratives and lived nearby Springfield, Massachusetts—which has the old, self-taught homeless artist, distance and Carceral Feminism.” Some 300 people packed the ballroom of the UMass Amherst experience, we hosted eight lectures by leading historians commonwealth’s highest incarceration rate—considered runner, and formerly incarcerated person living in San Francisco. Student Center to hear an impressive roster of leading activists and scholars: Andrea and legal scholars. Highlights included a lecture by local and national experiences of police violence. In James, founder of Families for Justice as Healing and the National Council for historian Talitha L. LeFlouria, author of Chained in November, an event on the history of immigrant Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls; Mariame Kaba of Project Silence: A History of Black Women and Convict Labor, detention similarly put leading thinkers from various NIA and Love & Protect; Victoria Law, journalist and author of Resistance Behind Bars: on the plight of post–Civil War black women prisoners fields into conversation with one another. We ended The Struggles of Incarcerated Women; Herschelle Reaves, poet/activist from Springfield, and their day-to-day struggles to overcome work-related the fall semester with a powerful event on campus Massachusetts; and Elias Vitulli, professor of gender studies at Mount Holyoke College. abuses and violence (see page 7); an event with Rhonda featuring onstage conversations among formerly They reflected on the fact that women constitute the fastest-growing segment of the Y. Williams, founder and director of the Social Justice incarcerated people. U.S. prison population, with women of color and trans women being incarcerated at Institute at Case Western Reserve University and author The series also featured a performance in Holyoke, disproportionately high rates.