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NEWSLETTER FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, FAYETTEVILLE HISTORY NEWSLETTER Issue No. XXXVIII, 2009 –2010 History: The Musical Let‘s face it. However distinguished we might be, our monster-trucks-and-malt-liquor Department sometimes lacks a certain tone. Watch us howl over ―The Three Stooges‖; listen to us launch into off-color sea shanties or plow through sev- enteen choruses of ―All the Young Dudes,‖ and you‘d no doubt agree. We were fortunate, indeed, then, to shanghai a pair of world-class scholars away from the Music Department—and just in the nick of time. Both faced conscription into the Razorback Marching Band. Professors Rembrandt Wolpert and Elizabeth Markham are the Nick and Nora Charles of East Asian historical musicol- ogy—well-traveled, of wide reputation in their field, and fun at parties, too. They greatly enhance our offerings in Asian history and further the globalization of our medieval studies curriculum. Both hold PhDs from Cambridge University, with Wolpert also carrying an M.A. from Universität München and an M.Sc. in computer science from the University of Otago (in Markham‘s native New Zealand). Before arriving at the U of A, Wolpert held appointments in Sinology at Cambridge and the University of Würzburg and in social anthropology at Queen‘s University of Belfast. Markham has held research positions at the same institutions. Markham describes her research interests as music, musical thinking, and culture in East Asia, particularly in the courts and temple arts of medieval Japan. She studies the relationship between words and music and between the oral and written in Japanese poetry, chant, and song. Her teaching has concentrated on Buddhism in East Asia, historical ethnomusicology, aesthetic concepts in Japanese performing arts, and comparative music theory. Her fieldwork has included a gig as a nov- ice in a gagaku orchestra in Japan. Wolpert studies historical sources for musicology and music in context, with a special concentration on seventh to thirteenth-century China, and musical and ―a-musical‖ grammars. Professors Markham and Wolpert are co-directors of the U of A‘s Center for the Study of Early Asian and Middle Eastern Music and coordinate the international Tang Music Project. Cambridge University Press has published a number of volumes co-edited by the pair in its Music from the Tang Court series. Their most recent collaborations include studies of empirical musicology in nineteenth-century Japan and the development of computer programs to transcribe Sino-Japanese vocal notation. All in all, Wolpert and Markham have published essays and books too numerous to list and too recondite to be adequately described, at least by a newsletter editor whose background in Asian music doesn‘t go much farther than an unfortunate encounter with karaoke in Pine Bluff. Elizabeth Markham and Rembrandt Wolpert add further luster to a department that‘s already blindingly accomplished. Bang a gong in celebration. Newsletter/ Spring 2010 1 All the Young Dudes tists, literary men, and politicians in the as he writes and thinks. Chair Lynda Coon nineteenth and twentieth century to craft a has called West ―a brilliant example of Departments of history and universities Nordic past for the German people. Hare how research and teaching work together. in general can‘t do much hiring these days. once worked as a policeman in Chatta- He‘s one of the most well-known histori- There‘s just no money. But we were hav- nooga, which makes him an all the more ans of the American West, but he also ing a hard time coping with the retirements attractive hire, considering what‘s been loves to teach freshman survey classes. of David Sloan, Evan Bukey, and Bill happening at Department parties as of late. That‘s very strange.‖ West himself says, Tucker—not only because they are our pals Our Middle East search has gotten rather ―Teaching helps your research and also but because we couldn‘t claim to have an Byzantine. It is ongoing. your writing. When you have the job of honest-to-goodness program without teach- explaining something to people who are ing early America, modern Europe, or the less acquainted with it than you are, you have to put it in simple language without medieval Middle East. So the Department A Cherry… and a Peach auctioned off some graduate students, compromising how complex it is.‖ As if to prove this, West‘s encored the pawned Professor Brogi‘s Ferrari, held Maybe you think you don‘t have time to Cherry announcement with The Last Indian bake sales and car washes, and might even read every last ―Elliott West Writes a War: The Nez Perce Story, published by have stuck up a liquor store or two (―I ain‘t Book!‖ or ―Elliott West Honored for Oxford University Press as part of its Piv- confessin‘ to nuthin’,‖ purrs chair fatale Teaching Excellence!!‖ story that appears otal Moments in American History series. Lynda Coon)—just to get up the tease to in History Newsletter. There will be an- Many Americans know something of the do some hiring. It worked. We‘ll remain a other next year, you think, so why not Nez Perce and their flight toward Canada distinguished crew—but all the more un- move on to the almost as frequent ―Coon in 1877. But West not only tells that story recognizable to anyone who graduated Plea Bargain Set.‖ Well, read this one. It‘s beautifully, he places it in the far larger more than a few years ago. big. context of American nation-building. Beth Schweiger outgeneraled the com- Having carried off every prize this uni- ―America was reborn in the mid-19th cen- petition in plotting out our early American versity and state has to offer, Professor tury,‖ he says, ―and the last Indian War search. Stunningly choreographed parades West has lately been honored as one of the was the culminating moment of the Greater of distinguished candidates passed by our finest college teachers in the English- Reconstruction. It raises uncomfortable reviewing stand pretty much every day in speaking WORLD. West was named last questions about the making of our nation.‖ February that there wasn‘t snow or ice. We s p r i n g The federal government‘s ―efforts out West would prefer to have hired them all and as one simply had no developed option that would perhaps could have, had some of the lesser of three leave room for people like the Nez Per- lights of our tenured faculty actually been finalists ces—historically friendly and utterly un- sincere in offering to step aside to make for the threatening but living by ways well outside room for the youngsters. The candidate R o b e r t the national mainstream—to live as they who got the nod and gave us one in return F o s t e r wanted while still being part of that new is Dr. James Gigantino. Gigantino earned C h e r r y union.‖ his PhD at the University of Georgia, Award. West‘s fellow luminaries in western and where he worked with the distinguished T h i s nineteenth-century history have been early American historian Allan Kulikoff interna- unanimous in their praise of the book, and accrued considerable teaching experi- t i o n a l Howard Lamar calling it ―powerful and ence. An authority on the remarkably vig- compe- elegant, informative and highly readable.‖ orous institution of slavery in New Jersey t i t i o n , Daniel Walker Howe says simply ―No one in the eighteenth and early nineteenth cen- adminis- writes Western history better than Elliott tury, Gigantino seems poised both to revive tered by West.‖ Patricia Nelson Limerick praises the study of early America at the U of A B a y l o r his ―extraordinary gifts,‖ while David and make real contributions to our bur- Univer- Blight says The Last Indian War ―will geoning African American Studies pro- sity, ―is designed to honor great teachers, make readers weep and then enrich and gram. to stimulate discussion in the academy haunt their imaginations forever.‖ Appro- In conducting our Modern Europe about the value of teaching, and to encour- priately enough, The Last Indian War has search, Comrade Tricia Starks had no use age departments and institutions to value won the 2010 Western Heritage Award for for the Schweiger sort of delicate maneu- their own great teachers.‖ Simply for being Nonfiction, bestowed by the National ver. Ruthlessness was her guiding princi- selected, West received $15,000, and our Cowboy and Western Heritage museum. ple. Before it was all over, dozens of un- Department, again surfing in his wake, got This prize netted West a mechanical bull, suitable candidates and even some recalci- $10,000. As part of the process, West pre- which he will install in his office just as trant colleagues had simply vanished, hav- sented a lecture at Baylor and another here soon as they fix that leak in the roof. Stop ing last been seen holding railroad tickets at the U of A last November. ―The West by and take a ride. stamped ―Anywhere east of the Urals.‖ before Lewis and Clark: Three Lives‖ was Lest you think a tuckered West might One unfortunate left behind nothing but a your standard West-ern ware: combining finally rest on his laurels and declare ―I fez as evidence he had ever existed. The dazzling story-telling, expansive thinking, will write no more forever,‖ know that he Hero of Starks‘ Revolution turned out to be crystalline analysis. And it met with the has been spending the year at the Hunting- Dr.