THETHE NEWSLETTERNEWSLETTER DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Number 62 Autumn 2013 GREETINGS FROM THE CHAIR The evolution of history departments—like the wider development of human history itself—is an ongoing process of change across time; and, as always, the UNC History Department has steadily evolved over this past year. We worked in a context of political upheavals, which included new educational priorities in the statewide UNC system as well as legislative proposals for more reductions in the UNC budget; and we were affected by internal University upheavals, which included a long-unfolding athletic/academic scandal and the appointments of both a new chancellor and provost. Drawing on a famous generalization about historical realities, it might well be said that we make our own history in Chapel Hill, but not under conditions that we have chosen for ourselves. Despite the always-changing context in which we work, there are enduring continuities in our Department’s commitment to historical education and our distinguished departmental achievements. Our faculty continue to publish outstanding books and articles, our classes draw large, diverse enrollments, our graduate programs attract hundreds of talented applicants, our current graduate students constantly win competitive awards for their research and teaching, and our History major regularly attracts many of the best undergraduates in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. These continuities provide a strong foundation for new initiatives and new responses to our changing contexts. In this past year, for example, we explored how historians can expand their engagement with public audiences and communities by pursuing imaginative historical work in non-academic institutions and by extending their research or teaching into the rapidly developing “digital humanities.” The UNC-CH History Department, in short, continues to change and to uphold its traditional high standards as new generations of faculty and students gradually transform our departmental community. This Newsletter provides much information about the accomplishments of our faculty, students, and alumni over this past academic year. The descriptions of our many departmental activities show why historical studies remain a dynamic component of the liberal arts curriculum at public universities—even when some people dismiss the humanities and social sciences as a cultural luxury that does not help students find jobs in our technologically advanced global economy. As this Newsletter clearly demonstrates, however, historians bring essential skills and perspectives to contemporary education, social issues, and economic changes; and I encourage you to follow our Department’s evolving engagement with public issues by visiting our departmental web site (http://history.unc.edu/) for regular updates on historians and historical projects at Carolina. Among the numerous recognitions and awards that our faculty received this year, I want especially to note several competitive fellowships that are supporting the innovative work of UNC historians. Brett Whalen has received a Kingdon Fellowship for a semester at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and he will continue his research in medieval European history with the assistance of a Chapman Family Teaching Award at UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH). Kathleen DuVal and Benjamin Waterhouse also received fellowships at the IAH, where they will advance their new projects on American history; and Sarah Shields is expanding her work on modern Middle Eastern history with the generous support of a Bowman Gray fellowship that honors excellence in undergraduate teaching. Jacquelyn Hall received the 2013 Mary Turner Lane Award, an annual UNC recognition of colleagues who have made “outstanding contributions to the lives of women students, faculty, staff, and administrators at Carolina” (a fitting award for Jacquelyn’s distinguished teaching and advising over a long UNC career); and Malinda Maynor Lowery’s influential research and writing on American Indian history was honored with UNC’s “Philip and Ruth Hettleman Award for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement.” Malinda has also become Continued on page 2 Carolina Alumni Receptions Please join us for a reception at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in St. Louis, MO. We are co-sponsor- ing the event with the Duke University History Department on Friday, November 1st, 2013 from 5:30p.m. to 7:30p.m. in Mills Studio 3 of the Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch. We look forward to seeing you there. We will also co-sponsor a UNC-CH and Duke reception at the American Historical Association meeting in Washington, D.C. in January 2014. More information on the AHA event will be available later in the fall. GREETINGS FROM THE CHAIR, CONT. the director of the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP), so she is now leading and expanding the in- novative projects that Jacquelyn developed during her long directorship of the SOHP. The History Department’s undergraduate journal, Traces: the UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History was recognized by Phi Alpha Theta as the “second-best” undergraduate history journal in the United States; and Fielder Valone (History, class of 2011), who published some of his research on the Holocaust in the first issue of Traces, received the American Historical Association’s Raymond J. Cunningham Award for the “best article published in an undergraduate History journal.” Another recent History major, Hillary Hollowood ’13, was the recipient of a prestigious Gilder Lehrman History Scholars award for her research on Civil-War era North Carolina; and Sarah Ransohoff ’12 received the Elie Wiesel Foundation’s Ethics Essay Award for her comparative historical analysis of slavery and modern energy dependence on oil. The strong commitment to undergraduate teaching among faculty such as Christopher Browning (Valone’s adviser) and Joe Glatthaar (adviser for both Hollowood and Ransohoff) can be seen in the national recognitions that our History majors have received. Meanwhile, the undergraduate editors of Traces are preparing new issues of the journal and benefitting from the insights of a graduate editor, Mark W. Hornburg, and faculty adviser, Miles Fletcher. The Department again provided support for notable events during African American History Month in February. Professor Tera Hunter of Princeton University (and our former faculty colleague at UNC) presented a well-attended public lecture entitled “’Bound as Fast in Wedlock as a Slave Can Be’: African American Marriage, Slavery, and Freedom,” which helped to generate later discussions of the so- cial legacy of slavery in American society. Professor Hunter’s visit took place immediately after the national conference of the Triangle African American History Colloquium, an event that is organized each year by a team of graduate students (led this year by Brandon Byrd and Liz Lundeen). The conference focused in 2013 on the theme of “Interpreting Black Politics” and featured a keynote address by Professor Angela Dillard of the University of Michigan. We also co-sponsored a number of other conferences and public lectures, including graduate and faculty workshops with colleagues in our partner History Department at King’s College London (facilitated by our faculty liaison, Chad Bryant), a series of lectures on “The US in World Affairs: The Cold War and Beyond,” (organized by Klaus Larres), several workshops on “Gender, War, and Culture” (organized by Karen Hagemann), and visiting speakers who gave presentations for the Program in Sexuality Studies (organized by John Sweet), lectured on American Indian history, or led special seminars in fields ranging from Eastern European/ Russian history to modern Latin America. These events all enriched departmental conversations that also took place in our monthly faculty lunch seminars and graduate research colloquia. The Department launched a new initiative in 2012-13 to expand our discussion of “Historians and their Publics.” We hosted helpful vis- its by AHA executive director James Grossman and NYU historian Thomas Bender, both of whom talked about the imaginative methods that academic historians are now using to communicate with non-academic audiences through new media, web-based technologies, and various public institutions. We also organized a panel discussion/workshop that introduced faculty and graduate students to the profes- sional trajectories of several visiting historians: Dr. Emily Greenwald (researcher at a historical consulting company), Dr. Mike Snyder (historian at the US Foreign Service), and Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley (former chief historian for the National Park Service). Each panelist offered personal perspectives on how professional historians can bring their skills and knowledge into careers outside academia, thereby contributing historical insights to an often ahistorical public culture. A comprehensive survey of 300 historians who have received a Ph.D. in our Department since 1990 showed that almost 40% of these alumni currently hold non-tenure line professional positions in secondary schools, colleges, academic administration, the military, mu- seums, archives, libraries, and other institutions. Responding to the information in this report (which was carefully compiled by one of our recent Ph.D. recipients, Maren Wood), the Department began looking for new ways to help our Ph.D. candidates prepare for profes- sional