Congratulations to 2007-2008 Student Award Winners

At the Honors Convocation on April 8, 2008 five of our history majors received honors and awards. Emily Espenan won the "Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement" award for the history department; Chris Paysinger won the "Outstanding Graduate Achievement" award for the history department; Dillon Lee won the "National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Alabama History" award; and Jennifer Staton won the "Colonel Walter Aston Chapter of the Colonial Dames of the XVII Century History" award. In addition, history major Veronica Ferreira won the "Outstandung Undergraduate Achievement" award for the Women's Studies program.

Pictured here see Jennifer Staton with Mrs. Bonnie Turner (of the Colonial Dames); Dillon Lee and Emily Espenan; and Veronica Ferreira with Dr. Nancy Finley, the Director of Women's Studies.

Dr. Dunar at Cazenovia College -- with his first PowerPoint

Over spring break, Dr. Andrew J. Dunar, chair of the UAHuntsville Department of History, delivered the 8th annual Paul J. Schupf lecture at Cazenovia College in Cazenovia, NY. His lecture title was "Fifty-Fifty: The 1950s Fifty Years Later," and for this lecture, he produced and presented his first PowerPoint show! The first image showed Harry Truman. During his visit, Dr. Dunar also gave a guest lecture in an upper-level U.S. history course for which students read his book America in the Fifties (Syracuse University, 2006).

Dr. Dunar is currently mulling over whether to drop using overhead projector slides (not "vu-graphs"!) in the classroom for what he calls "new-fangled" teaching technology. Meanwhile, he keeps muttering in the coffeeroom, "Williams, Gerberding--eat my dust."

Welcome John Kvach!

We are pleased to announce the hiring of John F. Kvach!

John's specialty is the Nineteenth-Century South and he is currently finishing his doctorate at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His dissertation, entitled Up, Up Ye Men of Capital: J. D. B. De Bow and the Antebellum Origins of the New South, shows how influential figures in the Old South promoted economic development and modernization. The work not only offers an intellectual biography of De Bow, the prominent Southern editor and journalist, but also provides a collective biography of the subscribers to his journal from across the region. John's work transcends some historiographical patterns which traditionally argue that the South opposed modernization. In contrast, he shows how De Bow's readers, while mostly slave-owners, called for internal improvements, economic diversification, urbanization, and cultural sophistication.

John taught several years at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland, and at UAH will teach courses on the US in the Nineteenth-Century, including the Old South and Civil War and Reconstruction. He also wants to teach the history of Alabama.

In addition, John has a passion for world history and public history. He has a master's degree in public history from West Virginia University and has worked as a public historian for the National Park Service, the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health, and West Virginia's Humanities Council and State Park System. John dreams of teaching a public history course on heritage tourism. Once again, welcome John!

Welcome Sandra Mendiola!

The History Department welcomes our new colleague, Sandra C. Mendiola! Sandra is currently finishing her doctoral dissertation in the History Department at Rutgers University and will join us this fall.

Her dissertation, entitled Street Vendors, Marketers, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Puebla, examines the lives of market women in Puebla, Mexico. She analyzes their backgrounds and values, and shows how they organized to defend their dignity and enhance their income. Blending labor, gender, and business history, Sandra not only uses traditional evidence, but also oral history interviews and records of police spies.

Sandra loves teaching! At Rutgers, she has taught Latin American Revolutions and Social History of Latin America. Among her ideas for courses in Latin American history at UAH, she suggested introductory surveys, labor and gender history, revolutions and counter-revolutions, the region during the Cold War, as well as media and history. Sandra is expert at teaching with technology (she confesses that she loves gadgets).

Sandra was born and raised in Puebla, Mexico. In 1998, she completed a BA in International Relations at the Universidad de las Américas-Puebla. From 1998-1999 she worked as a Spanish language assistant at Union College, NY. In 2000 she finished an MA in History at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Welcome Sandra!

History Majors Present at Phi Alpha Theta Conference; Jennifer Staton Wins Best Paper Award!

UAH history majors Thomas Bockhorn, Veronica Ferreira, and Jennifer Staton presented papers at the 2008 Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference at Samford University in Birmingham, AL, on Saturday, February 9, 2008. They were accompanied by Phi Alpha Theta Faculty Advisor Dr. Molly Johnson.

Thomas presented a paper on "Enterprising Citizens: Bell Factory's Profit by Slave Labor," written for Dr. Johanna Shields' graduate class on Southern History (HY 614). Veronica presented a paper on "How the Vote was Won: Alice Paul and the US Woman Suffrage Movement," written for Dr. Molly Johnson's Historical Methods course (HY 290). Jennifer Staton presented on "European Ideals of Slavery in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko," written for Dr. Christine Sears' Atlantic World class (HY 424).

All three students presented their papers and fielded questions well and were impressive representatives of the UAH history department.

The department is particularly pleased to announce that Jennifer Staton's paper was chosen for a Best Paper award. Congratulations, Jennifer!

Pictured here are Jennifer Staton with her professor Christine Sears and a sketch based on a stage performance of Oronooko, the subject of Jennifer's paper.

UAHuntsville Co-Hosting 2008 Conference of the "Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850"

From February 28 to March 1, UAHuntsville will be co-hosting the 2008 Conference of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850, together with Jacksonville State University. Dr. John Severn, Professor of History and Associate Provost at UAHuntsville, is on the Consortium's Board of Directors and was instrumental in bringing the 2008 Conference to Huntsville.

Including among the 100+ Conference participants are several current and former UAH historians. Dr. Severn and Dr. Christine Sears are both presenting papers, as is Carrie Barske, part-time instructor at UAH and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts. UAH alum Thomas Reidy, now pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, is also presenting. Dr. Ernest Limbo, visiting assistant professor of history, is chairing a panel, and UAH alum Michele Kinney, now pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Texas-Arlington is chairing a panel for which Dr. Philip Boucher is providing commentary. Click here to see the conference program.

We are pleased to welcome historians from all over the United States and from Europe to Huntsville!

Congrats to Dr. Christine Sears on $7000 UAH Research Mini-Grant

Congratulations are in order for one of the department's newest members, Dr. Christine Sears! For her proposal on “Captive and Corsairs: The International Context of North African Corsairs, 1776-1830,” Christine has been awarded a $7019 UAH Research Mini-Grant. This grant will support a month of research in mid-Atlantic archives during the Summer of 2008. This research will help Christine turn her dissertation into a book manuscript.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, North African corsairs seized captives at sea and forcibly employed them in urban centers such as Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis, until they died or were redeemed. Contemporary Westerners—and later historians—saw this as a barbarian, backward practice that impeded modern free trade. However, North African privateers operated within a set of long-standing customs and systems long recognized, and practiced, by Western countries. As Western countries moved from constrained trade and monopolies to free trade over the long nineteenth century, they continued to license their own privateers and to buy the prize ships and cargoes taken by North African corsairs while simultaneously denouncing the barbaric depredations of the corsairs.

With this research grant, Christine will continue looking at corsairs’ practices and Western reactions to them. Further, she will begin looking more directly at privateering and piracy in the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds in order to put North African corsairs and reactions to them in a broader historical context.