Viewed Historically The Newsletter of the Department of History 101 Read Hall • Columbia, MO 65211 Phone: 573•882•2481 Become a fan of history@Mizzou www.history.missouri.edu on Facebook Vol. 7, #1, Summer 2012 A Note from the Chair s the 2011–12 academic year draws to a close, A some notable gains and achievements and look to native of Saratov, a lovely Russian city on the Volga River, the department can reflect with satisfaction on 450 miles southeast of Moscow. Among our graduate students who have either received their advanced de- the future with some optimism. High on the list of gains grees or are continuing in the program, some have been must surely be the hiring of two new colleagues, one in successful in securing teaching positions. Others, among African history, the other in African-American history. those continuing, have presented papers at academic With the campuswide hiring freeze officially extended conferences, published scholarly articles, or been the into the current academic year, the department was recipients of prestigious national fellowships (see our In April the department sponsored the second biennial indeed fortunate to be able to fill these two positions Graduate News section for details). that are absolutely essential to the viability of both our undergraduate and graduate programs in the areas of Atherton Memorial Lecture. Our invited speaker was African and African-American history. Daniel Domingues Professor Thomas A. Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania. and Keona Ervin will join the department this fall as our In addition to the lecture, Sugrue held a well-attended A major headline this past year was the decision by the new African and African-American historians, respec- symposium for our graduate students. tively. Additionally, the department was able to make a strong case with our dean in light of the continuing surge in enrollment (over 34,000 students projected to University of Missouri to leave the Big 12 Conference for enroll in fall 2012) to allow us to search for a new U.S. the SEC (Southeast Conference). While of little historian, with an emphasis on diplomatic history. This significance from an academic standpoint, the new new position, officially described as “U.S. and the World,” athletic orientation has stirred much excitement among will bring a new colleague to begin in fall 2013. students campuswide. Local business leaders are also touting the new athletic configuration as potentially Our graduate program continues to thrive, with 17 new beneficial, economically, for Columbia as well as the MA/PhD candidates slated to matriculate this fall. Five of university. the students are recipients of highly competitive univer- sity fellowships. Aside from their solid undergraduate As our newsletter was being prepared, an issue of training at various institutions, the incoming graduate considerable importance to the campus has surfaced. students bring with them some interesting and eclectic For financial reasons, the president of the University of life experiences. Among them are: a former antique jew- Missouri System has announced the imminent closing of elry appraiser; a piano teacher; a professional archivist; the University of Missouri Press. Our faculty and gradu- a member of the Benedictine monastic order; and a ate students, as well as concerned scholars and authors Inside outside Missouri have been quite disturbed by this decision and have mounted a vigorous campaign to urge New Faculty Welcome ............................ 2–3 the administration to reconsider. If allowed to stand, this Undergraduate Program ......................... 3–7 decision could have serious implications for the aca- Graduate Program Highlights ............. 7–11 demic reputation of our institution. As of this writing, a Nauert Prize News ......................................12 plan to reconstitute the Press and give it a home on the Huneycutt Wins Wheeler Award .............14 Columbia campus has been announced. Read Hall Reflections .................................14 Russ Zguta, Chair Giving to the Department .........................15 Department of History 2 University of Missouri Department of History New Faculty Welcome The department is fortunate, indeed, to be able to welcome two new assistant professors to Read Hall this year. Daniel Domingues with knowledge of African languages can listen to these names and help identify to which language they belong. Daniel B. Domingues da Silva is our new as- This informationth will allow scholars to reconstruct the sistant professor of African history. He will the 19 linguistic origins of Africans pulled into the Atlantic in begin his duties in the fall 2012 semester, century, providing thereby for the first time a and we are thrilled to have him join the department. view from within Africa of the final years of the largest Domingues is an historian of the transatlantic slave coerced migration in history. trade between Angola and Brazil. He graduated in Domingues has taught courses on comparative slavery 2004 with a BA in history from the Federal University and the history of Africa and the African Diaspora at of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and received his PhD in 2011 Emory University. He has also taught as an Andrew W. from Emory University in Atlanta, with a disserta- Mellon Fellow, at Dillard University, a historically black tion titled “Crossroads: Slaving Frontiers of Angola, c. institution in New Orleans, Louisiana. 1780–1867.” He looks forward to moving to Columbia and is excited Domingues is working on a manuscript examining the ment and sale into the transatlantic trade by tracing about joining the history department at the University issue of who Africans regarded as eligible for enslave- of Missouri as assistant professor of African history. Angola in the 19th the inland origins of thousands of captives leaving century. His manuscript is based on Keona Ervin two sets of documents in addition to customs records of Luanda, the principal port of slave embarkation We are also pleased to welcome Keona from Angola. The documents include lists of Africans K. Ervin, our new assistant professor of rescued from slave ships in Brazil and Cuba from 1832 African-American history who will begin to 1849, and slave registers compiled by Portuguese her duties here at MU in the fall. colonial officials in Angola between 1855 and 1856. Combined, these materials provide details, including their country or nation of origin, on thousands of Afri- Ervin earned her BA from Duke Uni- cans coerced into the Atlantic economy. Domingues will versity and her MA and PhD in African-American present a preview of his manuscript in a paper titled history from Washington University in St. Louis. She “Patterns of Enslavement and Consumption in Angola is the recipient of several grants and awards for her During the Nineteenth Century,” at the 2013 meeting of research including the Huggins-Quarles Dissertation the American Historical Association in New Orleans. Award from the Organization of American Historians, Domingues’ research has been integrated into a collab- the Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellows Travel and orative project funded by the National Endowment for Research Grant from the Woodrow Wilson National tothe an Humanities. online database He is nowat www.african-origins.org working as consultant contain for Fellowship Foundation, and the Lewis Atherton Disser- the African Origins Portal, which provides free access tation Award for the best dissertation produced on a - Missouri topic from the Missouri Historical Society. ing nearly 92,000 records of Africans rescued from Her current research focuses on African-American slave ships between 1808 and 1862. As there were no women’s labor activism, urban politicalth culture, and written African languages at the time, the records list the struggle for racial and economic equality in the the phonetic rendition of the African names in their na- urban Midwest during the early 20 century. “The tive tongue as transcribed by Spanish and British clerks Labor of Dignity: African American Women’s Economic at Cuba, St. Helena, and Sierra Leone. It is this phonetic Activism and the Early Civil Rights Movement in St. rendition that is now available in audio recordings cre- Louis, 1930–1945,” investigates the interplay between ated by the project team with the help of Spanish and the black woman’s quest for dignity on the job and the English speakers from Cuba and England. Individuals 3 University of Missouri Department of History emergence of the civil rights movement in St. Louis from the Great Depression to the postwar period. Largely barred from membership in organized labor and denied basic New Deal protections, black women The department’s Undergraduate Internship Pro- used a variety of community organizations such as the gram is flourishing, with more and more students and National Urban League, the YWCA, the League of Wom- new sites being added all the time. Qualifying history en Voters, the March on Washington Movement, and majors can choose to spend a semester or summer at the Communist Party to establish a collective relation- one of our sites in Columbia or Jefferson City learning ship with employers. Black female workers’ political about and practicing skills and gaining experiences activities and labor narratives, uncovering an intricate that have already led many of our graduates to careers tapestry interlacing notions of gender, citizenship, in public history, public relations, museum studies, and racial progress, became a foundation