Fall 2012 - Spring 2013 Highlights
The Campus Guide: University of Massachusetts Amherst (April 2013)
Marla Miller and Max Page have written the University of Massachusetts installment in Princeton Architectural Press's “The Campus Guide” series. Marla and Max will also deliver part of their research in a special lecture titled “Beauty, Cravings, Virtue: A Celebration of the Architectural Legacy of the University of Massachusetts Amherst” (4PM on April 23, Goodell Hall’s Bernie Dallas Room). The University of Massachusetts Campus Guide is available at the University Store, area booksellers, and major online booksellers. For more on the book and other resources, visit 150 Years of UMass Amherst Building & Architecture.
Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Newsletter Out (April 2013)
Interested in this semester's WGSS activities and news? Find out more about their Spring events, progress towards building a Ph.D. program, graduate and faculty news, and more in their newsletter here. An interview with Joyce Berkman on her 2013 retirement can be read on page 9.
Audrey L. Altstadt in The Massachusetts Review (April 2013)
In response to the recent news reports and public discussion following the Boston Marathon bombing, Audrey Altstadt offers readers a balanced introduction to Chechnya in the current issue of The Massachusetts Review. The article is titled "Chechnya to Boston: What Do We Really Know?"
Congratulations to Tom Army (April 2013)
Tom Army has won a Residential First Year Experience (RFYE) Student Choice Award. The student choice award recognizes faculty who have made a significant impact on the lives of students during their first year of college. The criteria for the award includes "inspiring students to learn, going above and beyond to support first year students, and challenging students to reach their full potential."
Robin Kelley at UMass (March 2013)
We'd like to thank Robin Kelley for a fantastic Writer-in-Residency this year. Robin is an American historian whose research and teaching interests range widely, covering the history of labor and radical movements in the U.S., the African Diaspora, and Africa; intellectual and cultural history (particularly music and visual culture); urban studies, and transnational movements. You can view his week's full schedule here, or enjoy his public lecture "The Long Rise and Short Decline of American Democracy" on the department's YouTube channel.
GHA Conference Preparations (February 2013)
This semester's Graduate History Association Book Sale brought in over $400 for the upcoming Annual Conference. Thank you to everyone who baked, staffed the table, or purchased books or baked goods. You can see the program (including panels and keynote speaker information) for next month's conference here.
Steve Platt on Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (January 2013)
Following Steve Platt's Cundill Prize in History, he delivered a lecture in Cape Cod Lounge titled "Into the Storm: Some Windows into a Chinese Civil War." Watch the whole talk here!
Fall '12 Faculty Honors
Congratulations to the many faculty members who received university and national awards this semester. Recently, Stephen Platt was awarded McGill University's prestigious 2012 Cundill Prize for his book Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. Laura Lovett's edited book When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back At a Children's Classic and the Difference It Made has also received widespread attention: click here for an interview with Laura by UNC Press.
New faculty hire Julio Capó was featured this Fall in the Miami Herald, contributing an article on the progression of the national debate on gay rights. He also received the Urban History Association's 2011 Dissertation Award for his work titled "'It's Not Queer to Be Gay': Miami and the Emergence of the Gay Rights Movement, 1945 - 1995" (Florida International University, 2011). Fans of historical films will be interested in reading Barbara Krauthamer's review of Lincoln, which appeared in The Chronicle this December.
Fall '12 Public History Visitors
The Public History program is very fortunate this semester to welcome a series of public historians who will meet with program students and the general public. This semester's line-up includes Michael and Carrie Kline, who will on their careers as folklorists researching and producing oral histories of Appalachia "Coal Curtain," Elizabeth Rairigh, of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, and Ellen Garvey, who will give a talk on scrapbooking as a method of making 19th century African American and Women's Rights history.
Feinberg Lecture Series Schedule (August 2012)
The schedule is set for the Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series this Fall '12, titled "Truth and Reconciliation, History and Justice." This year we have invited UMass History faculty and nearly twenty special guests to discuss historical trauma and the reconciliation process in a powerful series of lectures, panels, and film screenings. James Anaya, U.N. Rapporteur on Indigenous People, will deliver the keynote address on Thursday, October 4th. The complete schedule is available here.
Fall 2011 - Spring 2012 Highlights
Professor Bruce Laurie appointed OAH Distinguished Lecturer (May 2012)
Bruce Laurie is one of twenty-five speakers joining the Organization of American Historians' Distinguished Lectureship Program this year. OAH Lecturers serve 3-year, renewable terms during which they speak to diverse audiences across the country and are hosted by college campuses, conferences, historical societies, libraries, museums, and teacher workshops.
Mexican American Colonization during the Nineteenth Century: A History of the U.S. - Mexico Borderlands, a new book by José Angel Hernández, is published this month by Cambridge University Press (May 2012):
"This study is a reinterpretation of nineteenth-century Mexican American history, examining Mexico's struggle to secure its northern border with repatriates from the United States, following a war that resulted in the loss of half Mexico's territory. Responding to past interpretations, José Angel Hernández suggests that these resettlement schemes centred on developments within the frontier region, the modernisation of the country with loyal Mexican American settlers, and blocking the tide of migrations to the United States to prevent the depopulation of its fractured northern border."
Undergraduate Thesis Presentations (April 2012)
Congratulations to all 2012 seniors who completed History theses this semester: Jacob Adams, Daniel McDonald, Annika Mitchell, Joshua Pitt, Samantha Ryan, and Thamyris Tavares de Almeida.
Tony Horwitz visits as the UMass Amherst Department of History 2012 Writer-in-Residence (March 2012)
Tony visited UMass courses in the History, Afro-American Studies, and Journalism departments, as well as meeting with the undergraduate History Club and graduate Public History students. He gave a public lecture on the subject of his new book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War. (Below: Tony Horwitz with the UMass History Club)
8th Annual GHA Conference (March 2012)
Students from across the nation joined UMass History graduate M.A. and Ph.D. students in this year's Graduate History Association conference. This year's theme was "Networks, Connections, and Exchange," and featured a keynote address by Charles C. Mann titled "Drilling Through the Silo."
Stephen Platt's book Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, is published this year by Alfred A. Knopf. (February 2012) Henry Kissinger writes: "Stephen Platt brings to vivid life a pivotal chapter in China's history that has been all but forgotten: the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century, which cost one of the greatest losses of life of any war in history. It had far-reaching consequences that still reverberate in contemporary China."
Kenneth Feinberg (B.A., 1967) Donates Historic Materials to UMass Amherst (Nov. 2011)
"Sesquicentennial Symposium: Civil War Causes and Consequences" (Oct. 2011)
The UMass History Department was pleased this month to participate in the Five College Learning in Retirement's Civil War Sesquicentennial Symposium. Among others, speakers at this two-day event included Eric Foner, UMass History professors John Higginson and Bruce Laurie, Leonard Richards, emeritus, and Manisha Sinha of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies.
Public History "The Next 25 Years" Anniversary Conference (Sept. 2011)
Celebrating 25 years of Public History at UMass Amherst, the Department of History was thrilled to welcome some of the nation's most innovative practitioners to help us ponder the field's next quarter-century. Special guests included Nina Simon, Rolf Diamant of the National Park Service, preservationist Chris Wilson, UMass's own James Young, Steve Lubar of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center's Graciela Sanchez, Liz Cevcenko from the Guantanamo Public Memory Project, NPS curator Patricia West, and Alice Greenwald, director of the museum being established beneath the World Trade Center Memorial in New York City. A special thanks also to our alumni who presented a series of "Snapshots from the Field."