Department of History
Arts & Science Bldg 216       
302 Buchtel Common             
Akron, OH 44325-1902
330 972-7006 
330 972-7007 
FAX: 330 972-5840

Chair: Michael M. Sheng

 

Associate Dir. of Gen. Ed. Programs: Rosemarie Eichler
Director of Graduate Studies: Michael Graham
Humanities Director: Michael Levin
World Civilizations Director:  Martin Wainwright
Asst to Chair on Undergraduate Advisement: Rosemarie Eichler
To schedule an appointment to speak with an advisor call
330 972-7006 or stop by History Department, CAS 216
Admin. Asst History Gen. Ed.: Kym Rohrbach, 330 972-7007
Admin. Asst.: Wade Wilcox 330 972-8535.

HISTORY DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER

Inside This Edition:

DEPARTMENT NEWS:

Professor Tracey Jean (TJ) Boisseau received the Mentor of the year award.  T.J. received her award as the Mentor of the Year for her commitment to mentoring students with their research projects. Congratulations, T.J.!

The following history students presented their papers during this year’s CUGSR:
(9 graduates and 2 undergraduates who presented

VIEW FROM THE CHAIR:

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

It’s almost the end of my first academic year at the University of Akron. Time really flies while I am having fun! I came here from Missouri State University, where I taught for 16 years, and was the chair for the last 5 years. Honestly, I am still thrilled to be here in Akron after the first year. It is granted that we have an uphill road ahead of us in terms of dealing with difficult issues such as maintaining academic standards in an open-admission institution, upholding the values of humanities and social science in a STEM-emphasized environment, and supporting faculty research in a financially difficult period. What is most comforting to me is the fact that the faculty in the Department of History is a group of dedicated educators and hard-working productive scholars, and I am reminded everyday that I am in good company. That is what made my first year here, and that is the principal reason for the Department’s accomplishments during a difficult time.

Recognizing our students’ future need to survive and thrive in an increasingly globalizing world, we have been rethinking our general education offerings. As a result, Humanities in the Western Traditions II will become Humanities in the World, to reflect the historical trend of increased encounter and integration among different regions, nations, and cultures of the world after the 15th century. This is the first step in the right direction, while the dialogue in the department continues.

For some unfortunate reasons in the past, most history doctoral programs in the state of Ohio were adversely affected. To revive and reenergize our Ph.D. program, we worked together with our counterpart at Kent State to create a joint doctoral program in history with an emphasis on world history and pedagogy. After a long and careful deliberation, both faculties have reached an agreement on a Program Development Plan (PDP), which outlines the rationale and curriculum of this joint doctoral program. The PDP has been accepted and supported by the administrations in both campus, and is ready to go to the next stage of program development. With the combined resources and a fresh orientation, we anticipate a more productive and viable doctoral program in the near future.

To the same end, we confronted the issue of our ABDs’ fourth year funding proactively to help our doctoral students complete their academic requirements in a timely way. Due to the unfortunate “60-hour limit,” our doctoral students’ funding ends after three years in the program, and they were forced to teach many classes to meet their financial obligations. Their academic pursuit was thus adversely affected, they could not complete their dissertations in a timely fashion. We could not, and did not wait for the state to restore the subsidy a doctoral program is entitled to. Instead, we restructured our departmental endowment fund creatively by establishing a number of dissertation fellowships. Next year, we offer three and a half of such fellowships to enable these recipients to focus on their dissertations. We’ll have two doctoral students graduating this year, and will have at least two for each year in the years to follow.

Of course, the undergraduate program is the bread and butter for the department. While class enrollment remains steady overall, the number of history majors increased in the last few years. To better connect with our majors, the faculty voted to adopt a shared student advisement model in which everyone in the department will be an advisor. Ms. Rosemarie Eichler, the Assistant to the Chair on Student Advisement, is taking charge of creating a manual and training faculty members to work with advisees one at a time. We worked with the Social Studies Education program in the College of Education closely to recruit students into history as second major. To that end, we have made a number of curriculum changes to meet these students’ programmatic needs. To better attract bright students into our programs, we have launched the process to create a 5-year BA/MA accelerated program, in which a student can complete his/her undergraduate and masters program in 5 years.

All of these would have been impossible without each and every faculty member’s dedication and hard work. In this issue of the newsletter, you will learn about the faculty’s individual accomplishments in research, teaching, and service. And these accomplishments have been recognized by the larger community and history profession. In the beginning of this year, Dr. Baranowski was promoted to distinguished professor rank. Before the end of this year, we have learned that both the university’s committee and the provost have officially approved the nomination of Dr. Hixson to be promoted to the same rank. Plus Dr. Bouchard, we are the only department on campus that has three distinguished professors! Dr. Boisseau is the recipient of this year’s Best Student Mentor, and at this year’s Graduate and Undergraduate Research Forum, our department had the most presence. Dr. Gordon is now a member of the Distinguished Lectureship of the Organization of American Historians. Dr. Mancke received an NEH collaborative research grant in conjunction with grants from Canada and UK, with which two conferences have been held at Johns Hopkins and in Sussex, UK. Dr. Bouchard is the recipient of an NEH summer research grant. Dr. Hixson is currently enjoying his stay in China as the Fulbright Chair. Of course, this year also marks the beginning of the second one-million dollar Teaching American History grant, of which Dr. Wilson is instrumental.  The list goes on.     

I am deeply moved by the enthusiasm of our alumni and emeritus faculty towards the department. I had two enjoyable lunch meetings with our retired professors, who meet once every week for lunch, and they come to the annual Knepper and Miller lectures as they can. Many alumni have demonstrated their loyal fondness to their alma mater over the years. For instance, Dr. Irvin Winsboro is now a well established scholar at Florida Gulf Coast University, he has been in touch with us throughout the years since 1983, and we may have one of his current MA students in our doctoral program next year. His student is interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in the US history of psychiatry, and we may be the best institution for his interest, due to the only archives of psychiatry being on our campus. I truly hope that such a connection between the department and our alumni and friends will be strengthened by enhanced communication. This electronic newsletter will serve this purpose.

Michael Sheng, Ph.D.
Chair and Professor
The Department of History
The University of Akron  
4/23/2009

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT (change from NEWS ANALYSIS): (should Hixson’s piece go here?  Could you name this section Faculty Spotlight or something to that effect, and fold the news analysis into the section on faculty or student guest column.  For example the guest columnist could talk about contemporary issues from a historical perspective.)

Since the dawn of the New Year Walter L. Hixson has been amusing himself by teaching, traveling, and eating all over East- and Southeast Asia.  After traveling with his wife Kandy to Singapore, Bali, Java, Malaysia, and Thailand, Hixson trekked alone in the Borneo rain forest, stopped off in Manila and Corregidor, dropped in on Hong Kong, and finally went to work as the Fulbright distinguished lecturer at the China Foreign Affairs Institute in Beijing.  He has done a bit of blogging along the way.

In addition to teaching some excellent students as they prepare to enter into China’s diplomatic service, Hixson has appeared several times on the television program “Dialogue” on Chinese Central Television’s international English channel.  He has also published two commentaries on foreign policy in the China Daily.  Thus far Hixson has lectured in or visited Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi’an, Qingdao, Zhengzhou, and Kaifeng, the location of Henan University, a “sister” institution of UA.  He will visit Nanjing and Macao while contemplating visits to Harbin and Tibet, the latter of which would only be allowed in the company of an “official guide.”  Hixson has become keen on Sino-American relations and engagement as well as being keen on Chinese food and both the Tiger and Qingdao varieties of Asian beer.  His proficiency in Mandarin has reached the level of a learning impaired three year-old.

Happy to be relived from a second stint as department chair—and more than happy with the quality of his replacement in that role—Hixson is basking in the aura of the hostile reviews of his recent book, The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 2008).  Oh, there have been many favorable reviews as well but the indulgence in theory (too many big words, they say) as well as the book’s focus on the matrix of enemy-othering, violence, militarization, and the U.S. foreign policy has also proven upsetting.  The Chinese audiences appear to like it, however, leading Hixson to take up serious contemplation of the prospects of expatriate life.  For now, however, he must come home, teach summer school to try to cover for the over-indulgence in foreign travel, and to take up the reins as President of Akron-AAUP after his colleagues took advantage of his absence to elect him to the post just in time to participate in brutal contract negotiations with the UA administration.

CALENDAR OF EVENTS: (pull from department website)

NEWS ANALYSIS (Guest Column: (by faculty/ student)

FACULTY RESEARCH:

Professor Constance Bouchard

Constance Bouchard just received a summer research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to work on the project, "Thirteenth-Century Cartularies from Auxerre," and that I recently had an article published, "Episcopal Gesta and the Creation of a Useful Past in Ninth-Century Auxerre," Speculum 84 (2009), 1-35.

Professor Lesley J. Gordon

Lesley J. Gordon continues work on her manuscript “So Much Suffering”: The 16th Connecticut in War and Memory, under advance contract with Louisiana State University Press.  This study examines a single Civil War unit’s experience as a way to explore questions of cowardice and heroism, patriotism and purpose, and ultimately public debates over the “true” history of these soldiers’ raw and unsettling military ordeal.  An interview with Professor Gordon appeared in the April 2009 (Vol. 48, No. 2) issue of Civil War Times Illustrated discussing her research.
During the spring of 2009, Professor Gordon again took her students to the Gettysburg National Battlefield Park in conjunction with UA ROTC’s annual staff ride.  During a three day tour of the battlefield, students made presentations, debated questions of leadership and command, and  popular memory of the war.  This continues to be an extremely positive experience for all involved

 

Professor Steven Harp

Steve Harp’s book on Michelin has appeared in France with the title Michelin:  Publicité et identité dans la France du XXe siècle (Paris: Belin, 2008).  He has also recently published “Marketing in the Metropole:  Colonial Rubber Plantations and French Consumerism in the Early Twentieth-Century,” in Views from the Margin: Creating Identities in Modern France, pp. 84-107, edited by Kevin J. Callahan and Sarah A. Curtis (Lincoln: University of  Nebraska Press, 2008; and “Time and Tourism :  Taylorism in Guides to the French Regions,” Entreprise et histoire 47 (2007) : 61-72.

He is currently at work on a book tentatively titled Demanding Vacation ‘Au Naturel’: European  Naturisme, Nudism and Tourism in Twentieth-Century France.

Professor Michael Graham

Michael Graham recently published The Blasphemies of Thomas Aikenhead: Boundaries of Belief on the Eve of the Enlightenment_ (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).  The book is a study of the last case in which "blasphemy" was punished with death in Britain.  Aikenhead was a sometime Edinburgh University student who was hanged in January 1697 for challenging the idea of the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, and traditional views about the authorship of scripture.

Professor Janet Klein

Janet Klein has the following two forthcoming articles:
“Çevreyi İdare Etmek: Osmanlı Devleti ve Hamidiye Alayları,” in Tarihsel Perspektiften Türkiye’de Güvenlik Siyaseti, Ordu ve Devlet, edited by Evren Balta-Paker (forthcoming, Istanbul: 2009). [English translation of Turkish title: “Managing the Periphery: The Ottoman State and the Hamidiye Light Cavalry,” in Military, State, and the Politics of Security in Turkey in Historical Perspective]. Invited contributor.
“Turkish Responses to Kurdish Identity Politics: Recent Developments in Historical Perspective,” in The Kurdish Policy Imperative, edited by Gareth Stansfield and Robert Lowe, (London: Chatham House/Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2009 forthcoming).  Invited contributor. 
She is also working on her manuscript in addition to a few other articles.

The talks given this past academic year include:
“Nationalism, Statelessness, and Kurdish Studies Today,” paper presented at the international conference, “The Kurds and Kurdistan: History, Politics, Culture,” at the University of Exeter, Exeter, U.K. (April 1-3, 2009).

“Iraqi Kurdistan Between Statelessness and State-building,” Sharp lecture at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX (March 30, 2009).  Invited speaker.

“The Kurds and the Armenian Genocide: Reflections on Historiography,” to be presented at the Society for Armenian Studies Conference, “Armenian Studies at a Threshold: Celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the Society for Armenian Studies,” Los Angeles, CA (March 26-28, 2009).  Invited presenter.

“Strange Bedfellows: The Village Guards and the Kurdish War in Turkey in Historical Context,” presented at the panel titled “Parallel Authorities?  State and Kurdish Tribes in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey” at the Middle East Studies Association annual conference, Washington, D.C. (Nov. 22-25, 2008).

“Kurds as Minorities and Minorities in Kurdistan,” presented at the “Middle East Minorities” workshop sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Center for Middle East and North African Studies,” Ann Arbor, MI (Nov. 7-8, 2008).  Invited presenter.

“Women, Gender, and the (Re)Construction of Kurdistan as ‘The Other Iraq,’” presented at the University of Dohuk, Dohuk, Kurdistan Region Iraq (Oct. 14, 2008).  Invited speaker.

Professor Michael J Levin

Michael Levin is currently working on two projects.  The first is an essay on "Italy and the Limits of Spanish Empire," to appear in a festschrift volume in honor of my thesis adviser, Prof. Geoffrey Parker.  The other project is an essay on a 16th-century Spanish ambassador and spy, which will appear in "The Dangerous Trade: Secret Agents in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800" to be published by Dundee University Press under the editorship of Professor Daniel Szechi.

KUDOS AND ALUMNI CORNER: (pull from website)