Chair’s Bulletin
February 2007

Faculty News

First, I am delighted to report some very good news of scholarly recognition.  Jeffrey Herf’s latest book, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2006), has been awarded the National Jewish Book Award for 2006 in the category of works on the Holocaust.  Congratulations to Jeffrey for another scholarly trophy to be hung on his belt, as it were.

And then there is Art Eckstein.  Art’s book, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (University of California Press, 2006), no sooner appeared in print then sold out.  And this is not because California’s policy is only to print one at a time.  Anyway, I got my copy, so the rest of you are just going to have to wait until the second printing comes around.  Congratulations to Arthur!  We expect more best-sellers to come rolling out of his scholarly assembly line soon.

Michael David-Fox has not been taking it easy in Berlin where he is currently on sabbatical.  A volume, Orientalism and Empire in Russia (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers), which he coedited has just appeared in the lastest volume of Kritika Historical Studies. Misha wrote the "Editors’ Introduction: Russia’s Orient, Russia’s West." He also recently published an article, "Multiple Modernities vs. Neo-Traditionalism: A Contribution to Recent Debates in Russian and Soviet History,"Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 55: no. 4, 2006, and a book chapter, "Leftists versus Nationalists in Soviet-Weimar Cultural Diplomacy: Showcases, Fronts, and Boomerangs," in Susan Gross Solomon, ed., Germany and Russia between the Wars (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). 

I have two items of note to report concerning Mary Kay Vaughan.  First, a new book of essays she coedited has just been issued by Duke.  It is titled Sex in Revolution: Gender, Power and Politics in Modern Mexico and her fellow editors were Jocelyn Olcott and Gabriela Cano.  And, second, in recognition of her eminence and status in her field she has just been elected vice president of the Conference on Latin American History.  This means she is also the president -elect.  The CLAH organizes the annual meeting of Latin American historians to coincide with the AHA, presides over and awards all prizes in the field, provides stipends for graduate students and post-doctoral work, maintains regional studies (Brazil, Southern Cone, Mexico, Borderlands) and teaching committees, and publishes a regular bulletin.  

And similarly honored was Marsha Rozenblit who has been elected Vice President for Program of the Association of Jewish Studies.  She will hold this position for the next three years.  She currently also serves on the Executive Committee of the Society for Austrian and Habsburg History.  At the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies she commented on a session on "Negotiating Languages: The Struggle with Linguistic and Cultural boundaries in Modern Central Europe." She also delivered a paper, "Assimilation and Affirmation: The Jews of Freud's Vienna," Conference on "Freud's Jewish World," sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the Sigmund Freud Archives, New York, December 2006.

More recognition of professional eminence recently went to Ken Holum,  who received the P.E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award for 2006 from the  American Schools of Oriental Research.  The award, which was made at the November 2006 annual meeting in Washington, read in part, "In recognition of outstanding career contributions to the discipline of Near Eastern archaeology." 

At the end of January, Rick Bell presented a paper titled 'Unimagined Community: Reading Suicide in Early American Newspapers' to the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies.

John Lampe continues to travel to the Balkans.   Drawing on recent research trips to all three countries, he presented a paper currently under revision for publication, “Smiles from the Southern Balkans, Long-term EU Prospects for Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro” at a Wilson Center Noon Discussion on December 13.  He also commented on papers addressing the current situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina during a November 16 session at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, held in Washington.  Most recently, he traveled to Belgrade for further research on his current book project, “Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans: From Post-Conflict Struggles to European Integration”, and also to observe the Serbian elections on January 21.

Marlene Mayo organized a panel and presented a paper at the annual Mid-Atlantic Region Association Conference for Asian Studies on October 28, 2006.  The Panel was “Lingering Memories of War.”  Her paper was, “Justice for POWs at Camp Hoten, Manchuria?  Class B/C War Crimes Trials at Shanghai and Yokohama, 1946-1948.

David Sicilia recently presented a paper titled "Entrepreneurship and Social Change in the United States:  Dynamic Stages, Historical Lessons" in Hong Kong as part of a conference on comparative entrepreneurship in the United States, Japan, and China sponsored by the Shibusawa Ei'ichi Memorial Foundation of Japan and the Center for International Studies, University of St. Louis.

On December 13, 2006.Katherine David-Fox presented a paper, "After Omladina: The Czech 1890s Generation and the Genesis of Modern Czech Politics,” to the Colloquium for East and Southeast European History, University of Leipzig, Germany,

Tom Zeller continues to set an enviable scholarly pace.  He presented a paper, “Were there Nazi Technological Landscapes?” to the Society for the History of Technology, Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 12-15, 2006. Two weeks before that, from September 28th to October 1st he was at the Centre d’Histoire Sociale du XXe siècle, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in beautiful downtown Paris where he delivered a paper titled  “Consuming Landscapes: Parkways in Germany and the United States, 1920-1970,” at the Fourth International Conference on the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility.

Kudos to Hilary Jones who was awarded a GRB for summer 2007 to work on her book project called:  "Ambiguous Citizens: Metis Identity and Urban Politics in Colonial Senegal."  She will work through the literature on critical race theory and plans to write the introduction for her projected book.  In addition, a course that she will teach next fall called “African Women's History in Life Stories” has been approved as a part of the Driskell Center curriculum development initiative for 2007-2008 based on the theme "Sites of Memory/Acts of Resistance." Participation includes a modest grant for course development.

Grace Palladino, from the Gompers Project, recently gave a paper at the AHA in Atlanta entitled, "Finding Labor’s Voice: Using Primary Documents to Recover the Past."

Also performing at the AHA was Richard Price who was part of a panel on Colonial Governance and gave a paper entitled “Creating Colonial Knowledge.”

Alumnus and Ken Holum student Andrew M. Smith II (Ph.D. 2004), assistant professor at Dowling College, Long Island, NY, has a nice article in the most recent Near Eastern Archaeology:  "Pathways, Roadways, and Highways:  Networks of Communication and Exchange in Wadi Araba," Near Eastern Archaeology 68 (2005): 180-89. 

Upcoming

Thursday, February 8 the History of Technology Seminar Series will present Guillaume de Syon,of Albright College who will present a paper,  “The Airplane is in the Mail: Postcards and the Spread of Aeronautical Knowledge in France and Germany, 1890-1914.”  Commentator will be Joanne Gernstein  of the National Air and Space Museum. The seminar will be held in Key 2120 (Merrill Room).  Soft drinks and cookies from 4-4.30 p.m.; paper and discussion from 4.30-6 p.m. Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper. If you plan to attend the talk and would like a copy of Dr. de Syon's paper, kindly send your request to tzeller@umd.edu.

Monday, February 12 the Miller Center will host Lamin Sanneh from Yale University who will talk on "Post-Colonial or Post-Western Christianity? Resurgence and Revisionism."   This is the latest in the Center’s program on Religion in History.   The Commentator will be Hilary Jones from the Department.  It will be held in the usual place, Taliaferro Hall, 2110, 4:00-6:00 p.m.

And then two weeks later, Monday, February 26 CHS offers "From Jesus to Shylock: Christian Supersessionism and The Merchant of Venice" Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College. Commentator: Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland. Taliaferro Hall, Room 2110, 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Monday, February 26 is also the date of the winter 2007 installment of our Occasional Lectures in Luso-Brazilian History.  Our guest will be Dr. Hendrik Kraay, Associate Professor of History, University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada). Dr. Kraay (PhD, University of Texas-Austin, 1995), is a noted scholar of nineteenth-century Brazilian society, is author of Race, State, and Armed Forces in Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790s–1840s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) as well as several edited works in Brazilian military and social history.  He will be speaking about "Days of National Festivity in the Brazilian Empire, 1850-1864."  2:00-4:00pm, H. Samuel Merrill Room

Thursday, February 15 is the deadline for submissions to the Third Annual Janus Undergraduate Conference.  All History undergraduate students are encouraged to submit their work.  Each student will have a chance to present her/his paper at the conference on March 29, and the best three (peer-reviewed) papers will receive awards and be published in the online journal.  Professors and graduate students who have guided promising papers over the last few semesters should remind their students of this important opportunity to share their work with our Department community.  Questions should be directed to janus@umd.edu.

History Graduate Student Conference  The HGSA has organized a graduate student conference which will be held on 9 February and will run all day.  Seccions will be held in TLF 2110, 2103 and FSK 2112.  The HGSA is to be congratulated for arranging what looks to be a terrific series of panels.  They were very successful in drawing speakers from far and wide; indeed, they had more applications from paper givers than they could accommodate.  A good range of topics will be addressed from Spanish history through Central Europe, to Milwaukee and Miami.  Roy Rosenzweig of George Mason will be the keynote speaker.
As you know, unfortunately this conference clashes with the visit of one of our Medieval search candidates.  I hope everyone will do what they can to reconcile this conflict between two important events.

Other Events

The next meeting of the Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies will take place on Friday, February 2, 3:30 to 5:00 pm, in the Woodrow Wilson Room (LJ-113), in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Catherine Field will deliver a talk entitled “’A water for the mind and to comfort the stomach’: Bodies Politic and Private in the Recipes of the Early Modern Housewife.”
The paper will consider the representation of the British housewife—as writer and practitioner of recipes—in seventeenth-century printed cookbooks, and will also examine the housewife’s writings in the manuscript receipt book, a recording of culinary and medicinal practices in her “own words.”  Recipes (and writing about recipes), the paper argues, gave early modern women a mode through which they could reflect on the “how to” workings of the private body in order to improve the health of the individual, and, occasionally, the body politic of the state.
Catherine Field received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland in 2006.
Please join us for Dr. Field’s talk and for dinner afterwards.

For further information, consult the Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies website at http://www.wcupa.edu/_academics/sch_cas.eng/wagpcs.htm, or contact Sabrina Baron, Eric Lindquist, and Eleanor Shevlin at booksumcp@umd.edu.

The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) of George Mason University is pleased to introduce Probing the Past Virginia and Maryland Probate Inventories, 1740 – 1810.  It may be found at http://chnm.gmu.edu/probateinventory  and it consists of 325 probate inventories that were recorded between 1740 and 1810 in selected Virginia and Maryland counties. Resources include digitized copies and transcriptions of the inventories, keyword and advanced searches, browsing by decade and county, two in-depth interviews with scholars on how to analyze probate inventories, and three lesson plans. This would be a great teaching tool for American historians who use technology in their classrooms.

Please check here for the link to some great alumni news.