History Major Veronica Ferreira (and Dr. Waring) Wins Research Grant!

Congratulations to History Major Veronica Ferreira, who has received a $3000 fellowship from the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at UAH to fund ten weeks of full-time research during the Summer of 2008. Veronica’s project -- which will be closely supervised by Dr. Stephen Waring -- will be an investigation of how the federal government attempted to regiment the sexuality of service women and men during the Second World War.

The primary source database for her research will be mainly online archival materials, training manuals and films, recruitment and educational posters, personal papers, and oral history interviews. The finished product will combine a paper written during the History Department's senior seminar (History 490) during Spring Semester 2008 with a REU paper of an additional 20-25 pages based on the summer research. She hopes to submit her paper for publication in a scholarly journal.

Congratulations, Veronica!

Photos from Dr. Waring's Archaeological Excursion in Peru

Dr. Stephen Waring travelled to Peru in December to visit historical and archaeological sites, as well as have some tourist and culinary adventures.
Highlights included the Moche Temple of the Moon, the adobe city of Chan Chan, the museum for the Lord of Sipan, the art and architecture of Cuzco, the Inca Sacred Valley and mountaintop city of Machu Picchu, and the Nazca lines and Chauchilla Cemetery.

Here Waring experiences an Incan "flying staircase" at Ollantaytambo and photographs a two thousand year old textile at Chauchilla. He wants to return to Peru someday with his daughters and some students to hike the Inca Trail.

Congratulations to Dr. Boucher on Yet Another Book!

Congratulations to Dr. Philip Boucher, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History, on the publication of his new book -- his fourth! -- France and the American Tropics to 1700: Tropics of Discontent? (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

Here are some excerpts from the book description:

"Traditionally, the story of the Greater Caribbean has been dominated by the narrative of Iberian hegemony, British colonization, the plantation regime, and the Haitian Revolution of the eighteenth century. Relatively little is known about the society and culture of this region -- and particularly France's role in them -- in the two centuries prior to the rise of the plantation complex of the eighteenth century. Here, historian Philip P. Boucher offers the first comprehensive account of colonization and French society in the Caribbean.

Boucher's analysis contrasts the structure and character of the French colonies with that of other colonial empires. Describing the geography, topography, climate, and flora and fauna of the region, Boucher recreates the tropical environment in which colonists and indigenous peoples interacted. He then examines the lives and activities of the region's inhabitants -- the indigenous Island Caribs, landowning settlers, indentured servants, African slaves, and people of mixed blood, the gens de couleur. He argues that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not merely a prelude to the classic plantation regime model. Rather, they were an era presenting a variety of possible outcomes. This original narrative demonstrates that the transition to sugar and the plantation complex was more gradual in the French properties than generally depicted -- and that it was not inevitable."

Dr. Boucher, who officially retired in August, is teaching his final two courses at UAH -- one section of Western Civ and a graduate course on Early Modern Europe -- on a post-retirement contract this semester. He will then continue his research and writing at home here in Huntsville and at his new vacation cabin in the mountains near Mentone, on the Alabama-Georgia border.

Dr. Johnson gets a DAAD

Dr. Molly Johnson has won a Faculty Research Visit Grant from the German Academic Exchange Service/DAAD. Germany’s “Fulbright Commission,” so to speak, will sponsor her travel to Germany for two months in Summer 2008 to continue research on her new project on “Collective Living, Social Experimentation, and Cultural Critique in Postwar West Berlin.” Funding from the UAH Humanities Center allowed Dr. Johnson to begin her research on this project last summer.

Dr. Johnson studies how counter-culture West Berliners in the late 1960s shared a critique of bourgeois society, mass consumption, and the nuclear family. They organized communes, squatters’ communities, automobile colonies, and collective apartment communities (Wohngemeinschaften). Examining the ideals of the communards, she situates their experiments within the history of utopian socialist movements of the early nineteenth century and communal practices that emerged internationally in the late Sixties.


Dr. Johnson stays busy. Over the next two months, she will complete final revisions to her book manuscript, Training Socialist Citizens: Sports and the State in East Germany, under contract with the Studies in Central European Histories Series with Brill Academic Publishers. Congratulations Dr. Johnson!

Student Leaders Reflect on First Semester of PASS

Veronica Ferreira and Sarah Fisher have completed the first semester as student leaders in UAH's new Peer-Assisted Study Sessions, or PASS, sponsored by the Academic Resource Center. They led study sessions to help students do better in class assignments, tests, and research in Dr. Waring's sections of Western Civilization. Although the results from the final exams have yet to be tabulated, Dr. Waring found that students who attended the sessions on average scored about a grade level higher than those who did not. Sarah enjoyed the sessions, remarking that the PASS program was "a great way for students to learn new material." Veronica said of PASS that "For me, it has been a great experience. It feels wonderful to have a student come to you who is so excited about grades. I've even learned a few new study strategies in my efforts to help others."

Based on this early success, the History Department, working with the Academic Resource Center, will expand its participation in the program in Spring 2008. In World History classes, Veronica will work with Dr. Molly Johnson, and Sarah will team with Dr. Christine Sears. Craig Noneman, a new session leader, will work with Dr. Waring in Western Civilization.

After 40 Years, Johanna Shields Teaches her Final Class

Professor Johanna Shields, who came to UAH in 1967, taught her last class this fall. She retired some years ago but helped the department by continuing to teach a couple classes on the Old South. She said she enjoyed teaching but missed seeing student development from their first year to their senior seminar and participating in the evolution of the department. Johanna reflected on the major changes she witnessed on campus over her career. She recalled that in 1967 a single room in Morton Hall housed the library. Now, Johanna expressed excitement at the incredible access to on-line resources and information. With all the data, students have so many more research opportunities, but have to learn "the illusory character of knowledge on-line" and investigate beyond the false completeness yielded by search engines. Looking back on her career, Johanna expressed satisfaction about several accomplishments. She was proud of her efforts to help found the Humanities Center, which provides funding for humanities research and programs. But most of all, Johanna expressed pride for "teaching good people" through all her years. The department will miss Dr. Shields as a colleague in learning and wishes her the best in a well-deserved retirement.

Research Experience for Undergraduates, Summer 2008

Calling Undergraduate History Majors!

Are you interested in the opportunity to do independent research under the direction of a history professor during Summer 2008?

In exchange for developing a research plan that would require 32 to 40 hours a week of active research, reading, and writing for 10 to 12 weeks, you could receive a $3000 stipend from the "Research Experience for Undergraduates" program funded by the UAH President’s Office, the Provost’s office, and other sources as they become available. 15-20 proposals will be accepted, pending availability of funds.

If you are interested, please contact a member of the UAH History Department by Friday November 9. Prelimininary proposals will be due to the department by November 16. The final deadline to submit proposals to the Faculty Senate Finance and Resources Committeee is December 1.

We encourage you to consider this exciting opportunity. Be sure to act quickly! You will be competing with students from across the campus and will need time to develop a strong proposal in cooperation with your faculty mentor.