What's New?
Ongoing Department Updates
Faculty News
History Major Wins Prestigious Alumni Award
At the UMW Alumni Reunion held in June, Dr. Katherine Aaslestad, (History Major, MW '85) , was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Dr. Aaslestad, who teaches modern German History at West Virginia University, has won multiple teaching awards there. In her acceptance speech, she attributed her excellence in teaching in part to her attempts to model how she had learned at Mary Washington. Congratulations, Katherine! For more, see>>
2007 Department Awards and Scholarships Presented at Our Annual Banquet in April
See the details here>>
The "Great Lives" Chappell Lecture Series
Building upon the success of the annual offerings since 2004, the UMW Department of History and American Studies once again presents its annual public lecture series, “Great Lives: Biographical Approaches to History,” during the Spring 2008 semester. Endowed by the family of the late Carmen Chappell (UMW, Class of 1959), the program of lectures is open to the public free of charge. For more information on the Spring 2008 series, and recordings of lectures from previous years>>
2007-2008 Student Representatives Elected
Representatives for American Studies:
Lauren Hicks, Andrea Meyer
Representatives for History:
Sarah Herzog, Cassandra Hill, Megan McCrum, Justin Simeone
| Spring 2007 HIST 485 Syllabus available here. |
Congratulations!
Information about the 2007-2008 Writing Contest Winners coming soon....
Faculty News
Two of our faculty members have won prestigious year-long fellowships:
The United States Institute of Peace awarded Professor Nabil Al-Tikriti of the Department of History and American Studies a ten- month Senior Fellowship in the Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace beginning October 1, 2007. His project, "Addressing Ethnic Conflict and Population Displacement in Iraq," will study the impact of the current war on the people of Iraq.
Professor Allyson Poska won the American Council of Learned Societies' ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship. The incredibly competitive grant was one of only 65 of ACLS fellowships granted (there were 1017 eligible applicants to the ACLS) and one of only ten of the joint international studies fellowships that were awarded. The title of her project is "Iberian Regionalism and the Formation of Gender Norms in Colonial Spanish America." It is an examination of the social and sexual behaviors of Spanish immigrants to Argentina during the eighteenth century and the impact of gender expectations from Iberia on colonial society.
Professor Allyson Poska also won the Roland H. Bainton Prize, given by the Sixteenth Century Studies Association (the early modern history professional society) to the best book in early modern history or theology for her work
Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia (2006) . Congratulations to Dr. Poska for this significant scholarly achievement!
Professor William B. Crawley, and his wife, Dr. Theresa Young Crawley, were awarded Washington Medallions by the University of Mary Washington for their many contributions to the school. Read the UMW Resolution to find out more.
Other News
Student Web Projects
To see some of the exciting work with history and the web that Mary Washington students are doing in the department, click here.
Our Students!! -- We've created a page dedicated to the remarkable students who major in History and American Studies>>
UMW HISTORY STUDENTS PRESENT RESULTS OF
SUMMER RESEARCH AT MEDIEVAL STUDIES CONFERENCE
Three University of Mary Washington seniors presented the results of research they conducted during the summer in England to the 20th Medieval-Renaissance Conference at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.
Irene Frankofsky, Josephine Fu, and Elizabeth Kuhl read scholarly papers that summarized what they have culled so far from research they pursued in England during their summer vacations. Fu and Kuhl worked in manuscript sources in the British Library in London while Frankofsky worked on a Norman-era archaeological site in Lincolnshire in the north of England. All three used sources written in Old English, an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland from the mid-fifth to the mid-twelfth century. All three student arrived in England with research skills they acquired during the spring semester. The orthography, or the ways letters are written, of Old English differ dramatically from modern English, Fu, Frankofsky and Kuhl learned to translate Old English to modern English working with Professor Bruce O’Brien, the UMW faculty member who directed their summer research. Meeting weekly with O’Brien, all three had by the time they departed for England gained the skills they needed to decipher ancient texts.
At the Wise Conference, Irene Frankofsky summarized the results of her analysis of ceramics recovered at the site on which she worked in a paper entitled "Material Effects of the Norman Conquest: Pottery and Status in a Lincolnshire Site." Josephine Fu explored the mingling of Saxon healing practices with other cultural traditions in her paper “Pagan Ritual in Christian Medicine,” and Elizabeth Kuhl presented “The Organization of British Library MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiv,” a summary of the early results of her research efforts.
O’Brien said, "The conference at Wise welcomes scholarly papers on all areas of medieval and renaissance studies, including literature, history, philosophy, art, and music, encouraging interdisciplinary approaches."
Past Department Events and Items of Interest
The Department held a ceremony November 4, 2005 to dedicate a bench in memory of longtime instructor, Ham Caldwell, who passed away in May. For more, click here>>
TEN MAJORS ELECTED TO PHI BETA KAPPA
Congratulations to our ten majors who were selected in 2006 for membership in Phi Beta Kappa, generally recognized as the most prestigious of all academic honorary societies. This year’s graduating class of majors boasts the greatest number of Phi Beta Kappa members of any class in the Department’s history. In addition to the five majors pictured below, other honorees include Sarah Hof, Benjamin Franklin, Kathryn McGillicuddy, Nicholas Ross, and Nancy Williams. The Department takes great pride in their outstanding achievement.
2006 Phi Beta Kappa members, L-to-R, Miriam Rush, Lauren McCreedy, Emily Mushen, and Thomas Cogliano -- all History Majors -- and Amy Miller, American Studies. All were members of the 2002 First-year Seminar in American history.
WRITING CONTEST WINNERS
Once again, History majors won laurels in the campus-wide writing contest sponsored by the Writing Center. The 2006-07 winners in the category of Natural and Social Sciences were:- Lauren McCreedy for her HIST 485 paper written under the direction of Professor Blakemore: “World War II Comes Home: German and Italian Prisoners of War at Fort Meade, Maryland.”
- Justin Simeone for his HIST 299 paper written under the direction of Professor Ferrell: “Defining the Debate over Science and Religion: Clarence Darrow, Agnosticism, and the Scopes Monkey Trial.”
The first class of the History Department's Freshman Seminars graduated in May 2005. Read about their experiences and successes>>
Our department's own Distinguished Professor of History, William B. Crawley, received the Mary W. Pinschmidt Award from the 2005 graduating class as the faculty member who had made the most impact on their lives. To learn more, click here>>
Gregory H. Stanton -- 2007-2008 James Farmer Professor in Human Rights
Click here for more information>>
2005-2006 Department Merit Scholarships