Historyn Ewsletter

NEWSLETTER FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, FAYETTEVILLE HISTORY NEWSLETTER ISSUE NO. XXXVII, 2008-2009 She has also co-edited a volume, That Gentle Strength: Historical Perspectives on Women and Christianity, and published essays all over the place, including in the Cambridge History of Christianity and the journal, Church History. The Divine Miss C has been simi- larly venerated as a teacher in the pro- phetic mode. Legions of devoted students would kill for her. A few, in fact, have. In 1998, she was designated Ful- bright College’s Master Teacher. Two years later, she garnered the University of Arkansas’s top faculty prize, the Charles and Nadine Baum Teaching Award. This latter triumph was celebrated at Razorback Stadium with gladiatorial games and mock naval bat- tles. As Dr. Coon notes elsewhere in this newsletter (see “Epistle of the Ab- bess”) her way was expertly paved by Jeannie M. Whayne, whose service as chair was truly Rooseveltian in propor- tion. Holding that post for ten years-- until she thought better of it last June-- Whayne presided over a generational lead by saintly example. Given the junior shift. Indeed, by the time she stepped OLD FACES IN NEW faculty’s fierce resistance even to wearing down, Whayne was the only chair that PLACES; OR THE coats and ties, she has thus far failed to get us fully half her colleagues had ever to don hair shirts. But neither are we brawl- known. Never has our faculty been so SORROWS OF ST. ing or getting arrested much anymore. productive or widely praised for its LYNDA Lynda Coon has a Virginia pedigree that teaching prowess as during the Whayne even James S. Chase might envy. Raised in regime. Throughout her decade of hard Springfield, not far from the nuclear power work for the department, Whayne Lynda Coon had her choice of mar- plant, Coon attended James Madison Univer- remained mindbendingly productive tyrdoms. She could be shot full of ar- sity in the Shenandoah Valley before repair- herself, both as a scholar and in reaping rows. She could have her eyes dished ing to Mr. Jefferson’s academical village. teaching awards (she has most recently out on a plate. She could choose that Coon earned her doctorate from the Univer- been inducted into the university’s business with the spiky wheel. Instead, sity of Virginia in 1990 and came to the U of Teaching Academy). Still, Whayne’s she chose to become chair of the De- A that same year. She was promoted to asso- move out of the corner office seems to partment of History, as of July 1, 2008. ciate professor in 1996. What we tell the have been something of a tonic for her. Who but a self-abnegating saint public is that Dr. Coon “researches the inter- Her epic study of the Lee Wilson plan- would consent to be elevated to leader- section of gender, sexuality, and religious tation in Mississippi County, Arkansas, ship amid financial panic and pandemic practice in the early medieval era, c. 600- provisionally titled Forging a Delta Em- self-indulgence? Our Department, for 900.” That usually involves stuff her col- pire, is now complete and will be pub- one, has been left with key faculty posi- leagues only pretend to understand. She published by Louisiana State University tions unfilled, maybe for a good long lished Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiog- Press. We are sure alums and friends of while. But Coon’s m.o. has been calm, raphy in Late Antiquity in 1997 and has a sec- the Department will join Dr. Whayne’s consensus, and consideration. Without ond book, Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monas- colleagues in offering her a million ma- the stomach to get medieval on the fac- tic Practice in the Early Medieval West, due out halos for her good works—and that ulty, and without the budget to buy our from the University of Pennsylvania Press. strawberry cake. good behavior, Lynda has attempted to Page 1 Newsletter/ Spring 2009 Our Bill-less ished in body and mind, we asked Bill to Liang reports that she loves all kinds Faculty compile a list of the sort of recommenda- of plants but only dares have the easy-to- tions we perpetually pester him for. care-for kind. She also likes to play ten- nis, badminton, and pingpong but has not Those educated by the Department Bill Tucker’s Best American Bookstores yet learned to swim. She loves all kinds recognize the Thirteenth Amendment as of romantic stories/movies and martial one of the triumphs of American history. Seminary Co-op Bookstore, Chicago arts ones, too, but, like the rest of us But those strictures against involuntary Labyrinth Books, Princeton, NJ absent-minded professors, never remem- servitude can be durned inconvenient at Powell’s Books, Portland, OR bers the names of the protagonists. She times. It turns out we can’t make Bill Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver was intoxicated by the beauty of snow Tucker stay. If he wants to retire, appar- Fields Book Store, San Francisco when she first saw it in Beijing, but fi- ently we must let him. So cancel that call City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco nally wearied of it after living seven years to Lawyer Marks. University Press Books, Berkeley in upstate New York. She and her hus- Associate Professor William F. Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA band both love Fayetteville, because the Tucker has been our consummate scholar Caveat Emptor, Bloomington, IN weather resembles that of their home- for decades now–ever armed with a cita- Penn Book Center, Philadelphia towns and the landscape that of Ithaca. tion, ever ready with an instructive his- Joseph Fox Bookshop, Philadelphia torical parallel, ever abreast of the new- Elliott Bay Bookstore, Seattle Robinson Kicked est published and unpublished research in his field, ever ready with a tip for good As for restaurants, Tucker offers no more Upstairs reading and good eating. Students have than the instruction that you to get to the flocked to his courses on Middle Eastern Berghoff in Chicago while you still have the Associate Professor Charles F. Robin- and Islamic history, Mongols and Mam- chance. son has been tapped to lead efforts to luks, Ottomans and Iran–though Tucker make the U of A an even more interest- has made few concessions to vaudeville Department ing and just place. Chancellor G. David or current fads in therapeutic pedagogy. Gearhart has appointed Robinson vice Bill’s a Tarheel, which might explain Welcomes Liang Cai provost for diversity effective July 1, his Panama hat but not that wintertime 2009. Robinson will sit on the chancel- cowboy number. After receiving his BA lor’s executive committee and oversee at the University of North Carolina, he In contrast to other high-profile vacancies that have left gaping holes in our faculty, the campus-wide efforts to recruit students, moved on to Indiana University, where faculty, staff, and–we might earnestly he earned his master’s degree and doc- quick replacement of Shih-shan Henry Tsai has allowed the Department to continue to hope–newsletter editors who belong to torate. He came to the U of A as an assis- underrepresented ethnic groups. He will tant professor in 1971 amidst that whole hold its head up high and to serve its students well when it comes to East Asia. As noted in also work to increase retention among passel of new arrivals whose recent de- those already here. That Robinson is the partures have left the Department a last year’s newsletter, we are privileged to have Liang Cai covering that vital part of the man for the job seems clearly to be dem- duller place. 1979 saw him elevated to onstrated by his leadership of the African associate professor. Over his career, world and the world’s history. Liang Cai was born in Hechuan, a small American Studies program. Where it Tucker directed eight master’s theses and enrolled three students in 2004-05, it two doctoral dissertations. A reader of town surrounded by three rivers in the Si- chuan province of China. Spoiled by her now enrolls more than 80. Interim Pro- Arabic, French, German, Italian, Latin, vost and professor of history Bob etc., he has published articles and re- family, she says, she “had a colorful childhood with many dreams.” In 1995, she entered McMath predicts Robinson “will be a views in a wide variety of places on a very effective leader of the university’s wide variety of subjects–ranging from Renmin University of China in Beijing. She excelled in physics, chemistry, and mathe- renewed efforts to recruit outstanding natural disasters in the Middle East to minority students, staff, and faculty Shi’ite clerics to Muslim explorers and matics but finally chose history as her major. Liang received her bachelor’s degree in an members and to make this a community travelers of the Middle Ages. Tucker that embraces diversity in all its forms.” capped this research with the publication interdisciplinary program in Chinese litera- by Cambridge University Press of Mahdis ture, history and philosophy. In the fall of and Millenarians: Shi’ite Extremists in Early 2000, she entered graduate school at Cornell Starks Sanitizes Muslim Iraq in 2008. University to pursue a MA/PhD degree in the Past the Asian Studies Department. She com- Tucker will apparently become a house husband. His wife, Janet, an pleted her master’s degree in May 2003 and her doctorate in August 2007. After an extended hospital stay, The equally celebrated professor of Russian Body Soviet: Propaganda, Hygiene, and the language and literature here at the U of In graduate school Liang met and married Qiang Zhang, a chemical engineer who– Revolutionary State, by Tricia Starks, has A, will, she says, continue teaching for a emerged well-scrubbed and vigorous time.

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