FINAL Winter 2010 Hist Nwslttr.indd
Transcription
FINAL Winter 2010 Hist Nwslttr.indd
Chair’s Corner D ISCOURSE C OLLABORATION by Charles Israel I NQUIRY A UBURN U NIVERSITY ’ S D EPARTMENT OF HISTORY Winter 2010 Vol. XXX Happy New Year and hello from Thach Hall. It has been a busy and productive year in the Department of History. We have been busy hiring and welcoming new colleagues in several disciplines in the fall of 2008 and 2009. We have been fortunate, even in this troubled economy, to replace vacated positions and to strike out in new directions like Public History and War and Society. Since the last newsletter, friends of history at Auburn have continued to remember the department generously. Thanks to you, the Kicklighter Endowed Professorship has been funded, the Gordon C. Bond Library in Thach Hall has been beautifully refurbished, and students and faculty have been recognized with scholarships, named awards, and endowed support for research. Thank you! The newsletter reveals that our faculty, alumni, and students have been busy. Jenny Brooks was awarded tenure, Cate Giustino received a Fulbright Research Award, and the online Encyclopedia of Alabama went public. A record number of graduate students —15 — completed theses and dissertations during 2008–2009, while a promising class of undergrads have headed to work and into such graduate programs as Ohio State and Vanderbilt universities. Alumna Leah Rawls Atkins has continued her advocacy for Alabama history while Susan Youngblood Ashmore and Ben Wise both won major research and publication awards at the 2009 Southern Historical Association meeting. It’s been too long since we’ve talked. I’ve been chair for a bit over a year now, but this is the first newsletter published under my watch. I became chair in fall 2008 when Anthony Gene Carey left Auburn. I am a historian of religion and society in the American South, though I’ll confess that recently I’ve felt more like a student of bureaucracy than history. Thankfully the department has sustained its reputation for collegiality and hard work, making a chair’s life almost enjoyable. As this is the season for resolutions, I’ll promise we will not take so long to publish another edition. Please enjoy the newsletter, check the department website (www.auburn.edu/history) for more timely and extensive updates, and join me in a resolution to keep in touch. ● Inside This Issue... • EOA’s Success Owes Much to History Department . . . . . . . . . 2 • A Fond Farewell to Tony Carey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 • American History Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 • Department Launches Public History Program . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 • European History Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 • History of Technology Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 • World History Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 • Kicklighter Professorship Fund Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 • Faculty Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 • Department Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 • Class Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2 Auburn University Encyclopedia’s Successful First Year Owes Much to History Department The online Encyclopedia of Alabama celebrated the first anniversary of its official launch and surpassed half a million visitors and 1.3 million page views in September 2009 (www.EncyclopediaofAlabama.org). The EOA is a free online resource on Alabama’s history, culture, geography, and natural environment. It was developed through a partnership between Auburn University and the Alabama Humanities Foundation; the editorial staff is based in the Department of History. The site received national recognition when it was included on Library Journal ’s list of best free reference resources for 2008, described as “an excellent example of a well- designed site on the history, culture, and geography of a U.S. state.” “EOA is matching the expectations of the people who worked so hard to make the site a reality,” said Dr. Jeff Jakeman, EOA editor. “The statistical data we’re collecting show that EOA is being used by schools, libraries, journalists, bloggers, museums, businesses, and even other online research tools. It is becoming a valuable resource on all things Alabama.” When EOA launched, it had 525 articles and approximately 2,000 images; since then, more than 350 new articles and 1,300 images have been added. New articles are added each month. AU History alums have contributed to EOA’s ever-increasing content. In the list of top 100 most viewed articles for the first year, at least 12 were written by people with department ties. The list includes: • Susan Abram (PhD ’09) • Leah Rawls Atkins (MA ’60, PhD ’74) • Allen Cronenberg (retired faculty) • James Sanders Day (PhD ’02) • Glenn T. Eskew (BA ’84) • Linda McMurry Edwards (MA ’72, PhD ’76) • Wayne Flynt (professor emeritus) • W. David Lewis (professor emeritus) • Raymond C. Morton (MA ’04) • Kenneth Phillips (MA ’82, PhD ’99) • Jennifer M. Murray (current PhD student) • Marty Olliff (PhD ’98) Current faculty members who have contributed articles are: Lindy Biggs, Kathryn Braund, James Hansen, Jeff Jakeman, Angela Lakwete, and William Trimble. At least 29 History Department alumni have contributed articles to the EOA. — Laura Hill The Encyclopedia of Alabama is looking for authors who: • have a keen interest in local and state history, culture, and events • are familiar with conducting research in reliable print and Web-based sources • are able to work with a predetermined set of guidelines and article format EOA is adding entries on topics in the following areas: • the largest and second largest cities in each county, not including county seats • local figures who have had a significant impact statewide and nationally; for example, an area resident elected to a federal office • events, festivals, historical sites, etc., that draw statewide and nationwide visitors and attention If you are interested in writing for EOA, please contact Pat Kaetz, managing editor, at [email protected] or 334 - 844 - 4007. Suggestions about other possible entries are encouraged. Please visit EOA before you volunteer for or suggest a topic to make sure that it is not already covered. History Department 3 A Fond Farewell to Tony Carey In July 2008 the department bid a fond if sad farewell to Tony Carey and his wife, Layne McDaniel. Tony joined Auburn’s History Department faculty in 1992, and Layne taught for the Women’s Studies Program in addition to working as a grant writer on campus. Both trained as historians at Emory University, where Tony wrote his dissertation under the direction of Jim Roark and Layne under Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. They left Auburn to take positions at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, where Layne is teaching in the History Department and Tony is Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs. During his sixteen years in the History Department and the College of Liberal Arts Tony became a major presence on campus. A highly rated teacher, he was a one- man Old South program. He directed six dissertations and served on a dozen dissertation committees (and he continues to serve on the committees of some Auburn graduate students). Throughout the period he was associate dean, Tony continued to offer his seminar on the Old South and to advise graduate students. Auburn graduate Sara Frear, currently an instructor in U.S. History at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, shares some of her thoughts about Tony as teacher and mentor: I recalled during moments of discouragement, was also his simplest: “You can do this!” Despite a heavy load of teaching and ultimately administrative duties, Tony remained a significant scholar of the Old South throughout his career at Auburn. In 2005 he was honored with the Hollifield Chair of Southern History. Among several works, he is best known for his monograph Parties, Slavery, and the Union in Antebellum Georgia, published to wide acclaim in 1997. A deeply researched examination of Georgia party development in the three decades before the Civil War, the book directly took on and refuted the prevailing thesis that Georgia’s slaveholding aristocracy conspiratorially foisted secession onto a distrusted and ill-used mass of white voters in order to preserve their power at home. Instead, Tony argued vigorously that republican notions of liberty endangered support for slavery, and racism united white men of all classes to the degree that nearly all of them voluntarily supported secession after Abraham Lincoln’s election, dividing only on timing and tactics. Secession was not elite machination, in other words, but rather a popular mass movement. One reviewer called the book “an elegant and perhaps even definitive book on Georgia politics,” while another deemed it “essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the causes and I thought he was an ideal mentor who struck just the right balance between providing me (continued on next page) with direction and letting me explore matters for myself. I don’t know how he managed to be so available while he was first dean, then department chair, but he always seemed to have time to talk. His love for southern history was (and still is, I am sure) contagious. In class, he combined an easygoing manner with a certain intellectual joie de guerre. He didn’t shy away from controversial topics, and he had a passion for the moral as well as the analytical aspects of historical study. He also had great empathy, both for the denizens of the past and for his students. I was struck by his frequent use of the colloquial term ‘people’ when he talked about antebellum southerners. It made them seem more accessible and human. He provided me with plenty of scholarly Tony Carey with students Colin Shannon, Mike Zarafonetis, feedback as well as emotional support as I David Self, and David McRae. thrashed my way through my dissertation. Perhaps his most helpful comment, one that 4 Auburn University hiring of eight assistant professors, embarked on the redecoration of the main office and library, and played a crucial role in launching the Encyclopedia of Alabama in September 2008. Tony personally expanded the department’s outreach efforts by serving as historical consultant on the Slavery Interpretation Project at Westville, Georgia (which involved the construction of a replica slave house), and on the “Cotton State” rooms, which are part of a permanent exhibition at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. For an extended period he was Book Review Editor for the Alabama Review, and he remains on the journal’s editorial board. Tony and Layne are sorely missed here on the plains. We wish them well in their new lives and positions in the highlands of the Appalachians. — Donna Bohanan and Ken Noe Charles Israel, Tony, Guy Beckwith, and Larry Gerber at Tony’s farewell party. effects of the Civil War.” More recently, Tony has been researching and writing what promises to be a major new book on slavery, focusing on the Chattahoochee Valley. As associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts Tony not only found and dispensed financial support for faculty and graduate student research, he also embarked on a series of initiatives that affected life in the college for many. Among them, he created an integrated Instructional Technology program and support network for the college, an idea that the History Department, preferring more autonomy in these matters, opposed to the bitter end. He also oversaw the renovations of Biggin and Thach halls. Unquestionably one of his greatest accomplishments was the role he played in the construction of the Jule Collins Smith Art Museum, a facility that the Auburn community treasures. Along with Dean Rebekah Pindzola, Tony assumed responsibility for the completion of the museum. He worked with the project manager and the university’s administration to finish its construction and he oversaw its opening. For a period he shared with Joe Ansell (interim dean) the position of acting director of the museum. At the department’s farewell party for Tony and Layne, Carole Ann Fowler, who worked closely with Tony on fundraising for the museum, paid tribute to his herculean efforts to make the Jule Collins Smith Art Museum the extraordinary facility that it is today. After seven years as associate dean, Tony returned to the History Department to assume the position of department chair. In two years he presided over the Abigail Swingen Abby Swingen, who joined the department in 2007 after earning her doctorate from the University of Chicago, has left Auburn to take up a new position as assistant professor at Texas Tech University. In a short two years at Auburn, she jumped wholeheartedly into the Early Modern History program, in which she quickly attracted some strong graduate students; into the intellectual life of the department, by helping resurrect the History Workshop for the discussion of faculty and graduate student papers; and the social life of the department, college, and town. Abby joins her husband, Soviet Union historian Alan Barenberg, on the Texas Tech faculty; along with daughter Ruby they have been in Lubbock since the summer of 2009. • History Department 5 American History Update The Americanist wing of Auburn’s History Department continues to flourish. Several new colleagues have joined us as we bid goodbye to others. Tony Carey left Auburn to assume a new posting as Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Appalachian State University. Although Larry Gerber officially retired in 2008, he continues to play a vital role in the Department, teaching popular courses each spring and serving on several graduate student committees. We welcome to our ranks four new colleagues. Reagan Grimsley joined us in 2008 from Georgia State’s PhD program, and along with heading up Auburn’s storied archival training program brings teaching and research interests in the roles of place and environment in southern towns and cities. Adam Jortner, with a PhD from the University of Virginia and research on the political and religious power of miracles in the Age of Jefferson, started in Fall 2009 and will be teaching and supervising research on the U.S. Early Republic period. Kelly Kennington is spending 2008–2009 on a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies. A recent Duke PhD with research highlighting the complex relationships between slavery and freedom in St. Louis and across the Border States, she will arrive on the Plains in the Fall of 2010 to teach courses on the history of the Old South, slavery, and legal history. Aaron Shapiro, who went on from receiving his PhD at the University of Chicago to work in that city’s Newberry Library and then the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C., is in his second year at Auburn. Along with playing a central role in the creation of the Department’s new Public History program and teaching some of the first courses in that program, he brings Ken Noe gives an on-site to us research and lecture on the Civil War. teaching expertise in twentieth century U.S. history, the history of tourism, and environmental history. Veteran American history faculty members have never been busier. Kathryn Braund remains engaged in a range of scholarly and outreach activities related to William Bartram and the battle of Mabila, and in addition to her teaching on the colonial and Revolutionary eras is at work on a new study of the Creek War. Jennifer Brooks is immersed in an examination of the local and regional impact of Kathryn Braund discussing Creek Cold War history with Dr. John C. Hall, curator of the politics Black Belt Museum. on working-class communities in the South, and along with teaching courses on the history of the New South she has developed new undergraduate and graduate offerings on labor history in the modern South. David Carter has continued to teach and research the civil rights era while settling into his new role as Graduate Program Officer. Ruth Crocker balances her active research and teaching on U.S. women’s history and the history of the Progressive Era with her role as Director of Auburn’s Women’s Studies Program, which continues to grow with exciting developments at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Patience Essah recently assumed the role of Director of Auburn University’s Africana Studies Program, and along with juggling new administrative duties she continues to teach African history, African American history, and Africana Studies courses. Despite his extensive duties as department chair, Charles Israel has managed to keep one foot in the classroom, offering popular courses on the New South and the history of American religion while embarking on new research (continued on next page) 6 Auburn University on the social and reformist engagement of southern white and black Christians. Having handed the editorial reins of the Alabama Review to William Trimble, Jeff Jakeman continues his work editing the awardwinning Encyclopedia of Alabama, another example of how Auburn’s history faculty are engaged in outreach activities in and beyond the state. With a new book on late- enlisting Confederates on the way, Ken Noe has still managed to remain one of our busiest supervisors of graduate research. In the spring of 2009 he won the Phi Alpha Theta Robert Reid Outstanding Graduate Professor Award for the third time in his decade at Auburn, a fitting testament to his passion for teaching and mentoring. Our graduate students continue to cover us in reflected glory, with a surge of recent PhDs and MAs in American history. Building on a long departmental tradition of excellence in American history, with a rich blend of veterans and new colleagues, the future looks exceptionally bright. —David Carter The Alabama Review The Alabama Review, the official journal of the Alabama Historical Association and the state’s only scholarly journal of history, has been produced at Auburn University since 1995. Editor Bill Trimble and the editorial board help to select and refine the submitted articles, and the exacting work of organizing, editing, and production are in the very capable hands of Carey Cauthen, who has managed the editing process since 2006. Not only does the Review serve the friends of history in Alabama, it provides good training in historical editing for Auburn graduate assistants and is an important component of Auburn’s public history initiatives. Department Launches New Public History Program Do you enjoy history museum exhibits and want to learn more about how they are created? Does your car veer off the road to visit historic sites and read roadside markers? Do you surf the web looking for history-related material or watch History Channel? Do you enjoy studying historic buildings and structures on the landscape? Are you interested in how people explore the past in their daily lives? While answering yes to any one of these questions does not make you a public historian, it does suggest you have much in common with students participating in the department’s new public history program. Established by the department in 2008 and headed by assistant professor Aaron Shapiro, the public history program is guided by the belief that an understanding of the past enriches the lives of individuals and communities. Public historians explore ways to make the past useful to the public and to foster historical engagement outside the classroom. By training students as historians and preparing them to practice history in the public sphere, the new program supports the university’s land-grant mission of teaching, research, service, and outreach to the community by providing historical services for area institutions and the State of Alabama. This new program joins the department’s well- established Archival Studies program, now under the direction of Reagan Grimsley. Opportunities in public history organizations increasingly require specialized training. By combining traditional historical skills of research, writing, analysis, critical thinking, and communication with practical experience in delivering historical scholarship to diverse audiences, the program prepares students for a variety of career opportunities. These include working as museum professionals, government and business historians, historical and historic preservation consultants, archivists, cultural resource managers, curators, historical media producers, policy advisors, oral historians, and professors. Graduate students at both the master’s and doctoral levels are eligible to participate in the program. Students seeking an MA degree can specialize in public history, while those enrolled in the direct track PhD may select public history as a minor or breadth field. For more information on the program, contact Aaron Shapiro ([email protected], 334-844-6526) or visit us on the department’s Web site: http://www. auburn.edu/history. • History Department 7 European History Update These are exciting times for European history at Auburn. New colleagues—Christopher Ferguson, Mark Sheftall, and Ralph Kingston—have joined Professors Donna Bohanan, Cathleen Giustino, and Michael Melancon to maintain our strength in both early modern and modern periods. Our medieval European history slot continues to be filled by Professor Joseph Kicklighter, who, as undergraduate advisor, shapes the destiny of all the Department’s majors. Our new colleagues have joined us from far and wide. Christopher Ferguson comes to us from Indiana University, where he did his doctoral work on perceptions of the city and urban life in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mark Sheftall received his doctorate in 2001 from Duke University. He specializes in the history of modern Britain and the British Empire, modern European history, and the relationship between war and social and cultural change in the modern world, and has just published Altered Memories of the Great War: Divergent Narratives in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009). Ralph Kingston, a specialist on the French Revolution and early nineteenth century, has travelled furthest. A graduate of the University of London, he was a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in University College London before packing his bags for the USA. While it is exciting to have new colleagues, unfortunately, in the past year or two, we’ve also seen some valued friends move on to other things. Dan Szechi, at Auburn since 1988, left us to take up a Chair in History at the University of Manc h e s t e r. Mairéad Donna Bohanan, 2008 Outstanding Pratschke Graduate Professor. returned to Canada after a brief stint teaching modern Irish history. And we lost Abby Swingen, who joins her husband Alan Barenberg on the faculty at Texas Tech. For the rest of us, life continues to offer its rewards. Donna Bohanan received the Robert Reid Award for Outstanding Graduate Professor at the Department’s 2008 Spring Banquet. The previous year, Joseph Kicklighter received the University’s Gerald and Emily Leischuck Presidential Award for Excellence Christopher Ferguson and Ralph Kingston, two of the new faces in European History. in Teaching (his former students, for their part, have expressed their appreciation by successfully funding the Joseph A. Kicklighter Endowed Professorship in History; see story, p. 10 ). Michael Melancon, on research leave in Spring and Fall 2008, produced three articles for publication, and he’s making excellent progress on his newest book on the Left Socialist Revolutionaries who Supported the Bolsheviks in 1917. Like Melancon, Cate Giustino has also been able to take some time off teaching by winning several prestigious research awards, including a Benjamin Franklin Grant from the American Philosophical Society to study historic preservation in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Most recently she received a Fulbright Fellowship and will be in the Czech Republic September 2009 through summer 2010. She is also working on developing an educational website on the 1858 Brussels World’s Fair. —Ralph Kingston 8 Auburn University History of Technology Update The department’s internationally recognized history of technology program has undergone major changes in the last year or so. Sadly, we lost David Lewis, distinguished university professor and founder of the department’s Technology and Civilization program, to cancer in September 2007. His death left a void not only in the department family, but also in the history of technology, for David had been one of its leading lights and in 1993 was the recipient of the Society for the History of Technology’s Leonardo da Vinci Medal for lifetime achievement. Last year, Lindy Biggs became director of Bill Trimble and graduate student Maurice Robinson. the university’s new Office of Sustainability, and Jim Hansen was appointed direcbook on hot rod culture with Johns Hopkins Univertor of the university Honors College. Although both sity Press, will be joining us in 2010. Lindy and Jim remain part of our program, their new Meanwhile, Guy Beckwith remains a mainstay in responsibilities have reduced their opportunities for our Honors Technology and Civilization courses, teaching Technology and Civilization and other unMichael Kozuh helps out with Tech and Civ where dergraduate and graduate courses in the history of he adds depth to our understanding of the ancient technology. world, Angela Lakwete brings a regional focus with her work on southern industry, and Bill Trimble continues his emphasis on aspects of aeronautics history. His book The Air Hero: Glenn Curtiss and the Birth of Naval Aviation will be available in Spring 2010 from the U.S. Naval Institute Press. —Bill Trimble The Office of Sustainability James Hansen and astronaut Neil Armstrong, subject of Hansen’s 2005 book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong. Consequently, the department undertook a search in the fall of 2008 to bring in three new faculty members with specializations in the field. We’re pleased that Kristen Haring, from Harvard University with a superb book on amateurs and radio, and Alan Meyer, from the University of Delaware with an interest in aviation history, joined us in Fall 2009. David Lucsko, an MIT graduate who is currently the managing editor of Technology and Culture and recently published a The Sustainability Office provides tools and resources to help people learn to work and live sustainably: to reduce their impact on the environment while enjoying a full lifestyle. The office fosters formal classroom instruction in sustainability, enables the community to educate itself in the wide range of issues related to sustainability, and motivates students, faculty, staff, and campus visitors by example. The office has assumed a lead role in creating a sustainably functioning campus and will create a model of sustainability for the campus, community, and region. Learn more at www.auburn.edu/ sustainability. History Department 9 World History Update Within the last three years the History Department hired three new faculty members to strengthen the department’s program in non-U.S. and non-Western history. In 2007 Tiffany Thomas joined the history faculty. She received her MA and PhD with Distinction in Latin American History from the University of New Mexico, and she graduated Magna Cum Laude from Southwestern University with BAs in Art History and Spanish. Thomas’ research focuses on the experience of women in Latin America, as part of a broader commitment to the study of the operation of power in Latin American society. Her current research on prostitution in Cuba explores the connection between state imperatives to control prostitutes’ lives, labors, and bodies, and the development of broader categories of appropriate behavior within a colonial and postcolonial setting. Thomas teaches courses in Latin American history, comparative history of women and gender, and world history. Matt Malczycki started his teaching career at Auburn in 2008. He earned his BA in History from the University of Arkansas and his MA in Middle East Studies and PhD in History from the University of Utah in 2006. Prior to coming to Auburn, he worked for three years as an assistant professor in the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo. Malczycki’s research area is Arabic papyrology, which is the study of the oldest extant Arabic primary source d o c u ments. Most of his current research Graduate student Andy Wood and centers Matt Malczycki. on religious texts such as fragments of the Quran and parts of hadith works. His teaching responsibility includes world history survey and history and historiography of the Middle East and Islam. Michael Kozuh joined the AU history faculty in 2007. He received his PhD with honors from the University of Chicago in 2006 and his BA with high honors from the University of Michigan. Before coming to Auburn he taught at the UniGraduate student Abby Sayers and versity of Tiffany Thomas. Maine at Farmington and at Western Washington University. At Auburn, Kozuh teaches in the Technology and Civilization sequence, as well as classes on topics in ancient and medieval Near Eastern history, ancient Mediterranean history, and historiography. His research interests are on the ancient economy, Babylonian temples, empires of the first millennium BC, ancient slavery and semi-freedom, Elam and the Elamites, and intercultural connections in the ancient world. His dissertation—“The Sacrificial Economy,” which deals with the management of blood sacrifice at the Eanna temple of Uruk in southern Babylonia—was given the Outstanding Dissertation Award by the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, which promotes scholarly research on ancient Mesopotamia. He travels to Iran frequently; in 2000 he joined the first American archaeological team to excavate in Iran since the 1979 revolution. Continuing faculty in world history have not kept still amidst the excitement of new colleagues. Patience Essah is now director of the Africana Studies program in the College of Liberal Arts, even as she continues her work in the history department on the history of slavery and emancipation. Associate Professor Morris Bian continues to be an exceptionally busy and productive scholar, teaching classes in Asian and world history, presenting papers during the past year in China, Italy, and New York, and continuing his research into China’s regional state enterprise system in the twentieth century. This fall he was recognized by Auburn University’s Vice President for Research with the prestigious Creative Research and Scholarship Award. —Morris Bian 10 Auburn University Kicklighter Professorship Fund Update The Joseph A. Kicklighter Endowed Professorship in History has been successfully funded, thanks to the generous donations from alumni and other friends of the History Department. The professorship has been established through a special program through which endowments could be established for half of the original $300,000 cost. Dr. Kicklighter’s endowment was the first one to be completed under this temporary university program. Former students Tripp Haston (BA ’90) and Tad Lidikay (BA ’90) led the charge to fund the campaign to honor and preserve the legacy of a professor who has inspired thousands of Auburn University students. Donations and pledges to the endowment currently total a little over $160,000—and additional gifts to this fund are still very welcome. To make a donation, please use the donation form below, or give on the Web at http:// media.cla.auburn.edu/history/alumni/ kicklighter_professorship.cfm. Past donors are also honored on that Web site. Your contribution will be a tribute to a man whose enthusiasm for teaching and inspiring students has exemplified the Auburn spirit for over 30 years. Contact Dr. Charles Israel, History Department Chair, or the Development Office of the College of Liberal Arts if you have questions about gift giving. • Samantha Nicolle and Joseph Kicklighter. I would like to make a donation to the History Department Enclosed is my gift of: $25 $50 $75 $100 $ _______ My gift is for: Joseph A. Kicklighter Endowed Professorship Student Support and Awards Milo B. Howard Award (for graduate student research) Faculty Support and Awards Other ___________________________ Please make checks payable to: Auburn University Foundation and indicate that the donation is for the History Dept. Please mail to: Dept. of History, Auburn University, 310 Thach Hall, Auburn, AL 36849 The History newsletter is distributed to alumni, faculty, and friends of the Department. This issue was edited and designed by Carey Cauthen (334 - 844 - 6770 or [email protected]). News, photos, and information are also posted at media.cla.edu/history. History Department 11 History Department Donors The History Department gratefully acknowledges and thanks those who generously gave to the Department in the past year. Contributors include but are not limited to: Dr. Susan Y. Ashmore Ms. Carol Lynn Hammond Morgan Stanley Mr. Alexander R. Atwater Mr. Jacob Willis Hancock Mr. Bruce Franklin Nichols Mr. Keith Thompson Bagwell Mr. Richard O. Harper Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Andrew Baird Mr. & Mrs. Fred Marion Haston Dr. Estelle Owens Mr. Frank C. Baker Jr. Dr. Caroline Smith Helms Mr. & Mrs. Andrew Parker Mr. Peter Willem Baljet Dr. David Phillip Herrick Mr. Paul M. Pruitt Jr. Sally Jones Hill Mrs. Laura Newland Hill Mr. John C. Quiring Mrs. Stephanie Johns Bond Mr. David Errette Hodgson Mr. Clay Prescott Richmond Mr. Timothy Harwood Briles Ms. Karen Coyette Holley Dr. William F. Robinson Dr. Jennifer Elizabeth Brooks Mrs. Ann Shipley Howard Mr. William Luke Robinson Mr. Terrance Michael Brown Mr. Robert Rollins Mrs. Mary Lynn Bryan Ms. Connie Hays Jackson Mr. Jeffrey L. Budimier Mrs. Tyler Smith Jackson Dr. W. Max Smith Dr. Anthony G. Carey Mr. John Albert Smyth III Mr. & Mrs. Alexander Hooker Carothers Dr. Joseph A. Kicklighter Mr. Thomas Glenn Stephens Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Andrew Clark Carroll Mr. Ralph Francis Kingston Mrs. Mary Swenson Stewart Dr. & Mrs. David Charles Carter Mrs. Judy Stone Kyper Mr. Paul Dudley Taylor Complete Office Solutions Dr. Angela Lakwete Dr. Alan Smith Thompson Ms. Terri Hutchins Cournoyer Mr. Eric Brandon Langley Mr. Jay B. Thompson Cournoyer’s Office Supply Co., Inc. Mrs. Ruth Howe Liddell Mr. Michael F. Tinkey Mr. J. Foy Covington III Mr. Charles Tad Lidikay III Mr. Aaron J. Trehub Mr. & Mrs. P. Thomas Dazzio Mr. Calvin Markle Verizon Foundation Dr. Mary Dixie Dysart Mr. Robert Alan Maruster Mr. Austin R. Walsh Mr. Roy Michael Easterwood Dr. & Mrs. Robert Sidney McAnnally Wellpoint Foundation Mr. Terrence W. McCarthy Mr. Scott Allen Farrow Ms. Julie Martel McKinney Mr. James M. Fleming III Ms. Samantha Lynn McNeilly Dr. Sara S. Frear MECO of Montgomery LTC Richard T. Goodwin Jr. Mr. Kenneth E. Gross Jr. Dr. Jennifer Joy Moody Thank You! 12 Auburn University Faculty Notes Guy Beckwith was inducted into the College of Liberal Arts Academy of Teaching and Outstanding Teachers in 2008, and received the Gold Service Award at the AU Honors College Awards Gala this spring. During the fall term he addressed the History Faculty Seminar; the title of his paper was “The Machine in the Temple of the Muses: Interpreting Hellenistic Technology.” He also lectured on Social Darwinism for Auburn’s semester- long Charles Darwin Commemorative Celebration honoring Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. Guy also introduced and provided brief comments on Moonwalk One, the 1970 NASA- sponsored documentary film, for “The Eagle Has Landed at Auburn: A Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing.” He continues to serve as a member of the Honors College Council and on the editorial board of Issues in Integrative Studies, a journal devoted to interdisciplinary theory and pedagogy. Morris Bian deep in discussion with Encyclopedia of Alabama associate editor Laura Hill. Morris Bian made an invited presentation at the International Symposium on New Paradigms of Chinese Business History: Concepts and Case Studies, at Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in August 2007. He also published a peer-reviewed article, “How Crisis Shapes Change: New Perspectives on China’s Political Economy during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945,” in the July 2007 issue of History Compass. In 2007, the International Convention of Asian Scholars named his book, The Making of the State Enterprise System in Modern China: The Dynamics of Institutional Change (Harvard University Press, 2005), one of the top ten social science books in Asian studies, an award chosen from titles published around the world during the previous two years. Kathryn H. Braund is the current president of the Bartram Trail Conference, and continues to work on Bartram-related projects. Her latest book, Fields of Vision: Essays on the Travels of William Bartram, co-edited with Charlotte Porter of the University of Florida, is due out in February 2010. A revised second edition of her Deerskins and Duffels: The Creek Indians, Anglo-America and the Deerskin Trade was released in late 2008. She contributed three chapters to The Search for Mabila, a collaborative effort by a team of historians, archaeologists, linguists, and historical geographers to locate the site of the famous 1540 battle between DeSoto and the Indians. She was the lead organizer for a recent AU symposium on the Creek War and War of 1812. The two-day event, sponsored by the Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, the National Park Service and the Carolyn Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities, brought together 15 scholars and 150 participants. Last year, she served as a script consultant and featured specialist for the PBS video production “Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil, and the Presidency,” as well as for the accompanying web site. She also had the privilege of working with the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art to develop an exhibition of 19th-century Creek portraits by Henry Inman. Over the past two years, she has served as a consultant for master planning for several museum and historic site projects and participated in numerous teaching workshops through the Teaching American History program. She is currently writing a book on the Creek War. David Carter’s book, The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement: Civil Rights and the Johnson Administration, 1965–1968 (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), has been published. In the fall semester of 2008 he succeeded Patience Essah as Graduate Program Officer, chaired a panel at the Southern Historical Association meeting on field trips as a tool in teaching the civil rights movement, and traveled to History Department Norway to deliver a paper examining media coverage of the black freedom struggle in the U.S. from an international comparative perspective. In the summer of 2009 he was one of four scholars who highlighted new directions in civil rights scholarship at a National Archives conference in Atlanta. Along with Kathryn Braund and Ken Noe and colleagues in Auburn’s College of Education he will be participating in a Teaching American History grant in the years ahead. After having served as president of the local chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society for many years, he happily passed the baton to Tiffany Thomas. Ruth Crocker participated in the American Historical Association Meeting in New York City in January 2008. In September she gave a paper at BrANCH, the British American Nineteenth- Century History Conference in Leicester, U.K., and in November 2008 served as commentator on a panel at the Social Science History Association in Miami. She was elected to the executive committee of the SSHA, an interdisciplinary organization of historians and social scientists. Ruth is currently serving as director of Auburn Women’s Studies Program. Cathleen M. Giustino has been awarded a CIES Fulbright Research Scholarship to Prague for the 2009– 2010 academic year. She will be affiliated with the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. During this time, she will continue gathering research for her book-length manuscript on memory and the fate of confiscated cultural property (castles, chateaux, art, and antiques) in Czechoslovakia after World War II. She is also co- editing a volume of essays, “Socialist Escapes: Breaks from the Everyday in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989.” Last year she delivered papers at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Columbia University, and the Central European University in Budapest. She was appointed to the editorial board of HABSBURG, the H-Net list dedicated to the history of the Habsburg Monarchy and its successor states. In addition, she served on the College of Liberal Art’s Community and Civic Engagement Committee. Boris Gorshkov has had an academically profitable year despite a heavy teaching load. His new book, Rus- 13 sia’s Factory Children, Society, and the State: Childhood, Apprenticeship and Labor, 1800 –1917, is now available from the University of Pittsburg Press. His essay “Teaching Modern Russian History in European and Global Context” appeared in the March 2009 NewsNet, the magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. He published two essays about child labor and two book reviews. Gorshkov has also served as commentator at national and regional conferences. Reagan Grimsley received a Historic Columbus Foundation Award for Outstanding Contributions in the field of Historic Preservation for his 2008 monograph “Enriching Lives: A Pictorial History of Columbus State University.” During the past year he delivered papers and lectured in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In the fall of 2009 his co - authored article “Creating Access to Oral Histories in Academic Libraries” will appear in College and Undergraduate Libraries. During the summer of 2009, Grimsley served as one of two instructors for a three-day workshop for secondary school teachers and media specialists sponsored by the Library of Congress. The grant focused on introducing students to online primary sources and developing methods to integrate primary source materials into the secondary school curriculum. Grimsley and Pamela Baker, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Cincinnati, worked together on the grant project and are currently writing an article on methods to integrate primary sources into introductory- level college American history courses. Charles Israel contributed an essay to the sesquicentennial history of Sewanee: the University of the South. In it he explored the history of the professional schools of law and medicine that were part of the university before 1915; he expanded this study to look at southern medical education more broadly in a paper presented to the southern History of Science, Technology, and Medicine conference. As administrative and teaching duties allow, he is returning his attention to a book project on religion and reform in the early twentieth century South. Jeff Jakeman has been honored by the Alabama Historical Association for his service as editor of the state’s scholarly historical journal, the Alabama Review. In a resolution adopted by the AHA board of 14 Auburn University directors, the association commended Jakeman for producing 50 issues of the journal from 1995–2008. Jakeman was named a College of Liberal Arts Engaged Scholar in 2008 for his work on the Review and the Encyclopedia of Alabama (EOA), which was designated a “Best of Free Reference” by Library Journal, the library field’s leading professional publication. While Jeff has passed his Review duties to Bill Trimble, he continues to direct the EOA and serves as its editor. In April 2009 Jeff completed a six-year term as Auburn’s representative on the Alabama Historical Commission. He recently published “Memorializing World War I in Alabama,” a chapter in the anthology The Great War in the Heart of Dixie: Alabama during World War I. W. Matt Malczycki had his article “A Page from an Aspiring Muhaddith’s Notes” accepted for publication in Documents et historie: Islam VIIe-XVIe siècle. That article contains a 9thcentury document that sheds light on the early steps in Islamic higher education. Through the generosity of a College of Liberal Arts summer research grant, he was able to finish two more articles. One deals with a late 8th- century papyrus text that contains one of the earliest examples of written instructions for Islamic ritual; the second re-examines long-held views about price-fixing and the role of the state in papyrus manufacture ca 650-950 CE. In April Dr. Malczycki presented a paper on a 9th- century Arabic historical text at the fourth conference of the International Society for Arabic Papyrology (ISAP) in Vienna. He was the only participant from a U.S. landgrant institution to be invited. He currently serves as the secretary- treasurer for ISAP and as secretary for the Gamma chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. Kenneth Noe served as president of the Alabama Historical Association. He published a book chapter as well as articles in the Ambrose Bierce Project Journal, Civil War History, and the Journal of Military History. He chaired a session at the 2009 American Historical Association annual meeting, and both spoke on the opening panel and commented at the Society for Military History’s 2009 conference. Additionally, he gave a talk on counter-insurgency at Kennesaw State University, and participated in teacher workshops at East Tennessee State University and in Montgomery. Noe also presented public lectures in suburban Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Danville, Kentucky; Denver; Morgantown, West Virginia; Seattle; and Starkville, Kenneth Noe accepts the Outstanding Graduate Professor Award from graduate student Adrianne Lee Hodgin. Mississippi. He led a three- day tour of the Perryville battlefield for the Blue- Gray Education Association, and spent a week as guest historian on the historic riverboat Delta Queen. In April 2008 the university recognized his “exceptional merit” in post- tenure review. He received the Robert Reid Phi Alpha Theta Outstanding Graduate Professor Award from the History Department in May 2009. Aaron Shapiro delivered presentations at the Oral History Association (OHA) annual meeting in Pittsburgh, the Preserving the Historic Roads Conference in Albuquerque, and the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) annual meeting in Tallahassee. The OHA presentation highlighted an oral history project on the Forest Products Laboratory that Shapiro helped develop while with the Forest Service. It can be viewed at http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/ FPLHist. As part of his duties as chair of the ASEH Education Committee, he organized and developed, along with the Smithsonian’s Kate Christen, a halfday program introducing forty Tallahassee area high school students to environmental history. Shapiro also participated in Auburn’s Civic Engagement Summer Academy and has enjoyed working with colleagues and partners to develop the department’s new public history program. William Trimble is the new editor of the Alabama Review, taking over from Jeff Jakeman. He is planning special commemorative issues addressing the Civil War, the civil rights movement, and the War of 1812. His book The Air Hero: Glenn Curtiss and the Birth of Naval Aviation will be available in Spring 2010 from the U.S. Naval Institute Press. • History Department 15 Department Notes Six Auburn History Department graduates or faculty have contributed to The Great War in the Heart of Dixie: Alabama during World War I, which was published in August 2008. Marty Olliff (PhD ’98) edited and introduced the collection of ten essays which include contributions by David Alsobrook (PhD ’83), Jeff Jakeman (PhD ’88 and currently Associate Professor), Dowe Littleton (MA ’91), Wesley P. Newton (Professor Emeritus), and Robert Saunders (PhD ’94). This is the only sustained investigation of the Alabama homefront during the “War to End All Wars,” and the authors hope it will inspire more research in the era. Three students of the History Department doctoral program worked tirelessly on a grant awarded to the Phillip J. Hamm Library at Wallace Community College from the Save Our History Program of the History Channel. Kenneth Phillips (PhD ’99), Linda York (PhD ’99), and Rebecca Woodham (ABD) used the $100,000 grant to produce a documentary and accompanying text about segregated education in Southeast Alabama, Our Forgotten Schools: Segregated Schools in the Wiregrass of Alabama. The documentary shows the substandard conditions of black schools in the area and includes footage from interviews with local residents. The focus of the project is the struggle of the black community to educate their children when the state of Alabama would not. Kenneth and Rebecca are disciples of Wayne Flynt. Linda, a student of Dan Szechi Some of Our Recent Graduates: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Christopher Haveman (PhD ’09) Susan Marie Abram (PhD ’09) Melanie Welch (PhD ’09) William Byrd (PhD ’09) Patricia Hoskins (PhD ’09) John Hardin (PhD ’09) Brian Duke (MA ’09) Jennifer Newman Treviño (PhD ’09) Christopher Duncan (PhD ’08) Bruce Gourley (PhD ’08) Alex Spencer (PhD ’08) Kristen Starr (PhD ’08) Dana Chandler (MA ’08) Deborah Belcher (MA ’08) Gregory Markley (MA ’08) and Donna Bohanan, has been adopted by the Flynt disciples and finds herself becoming more “Southern” every day. All of them wish to say thanks to the History Department for training them to save their history. Susan Abram and Rob Collins gave presentations at Auburn’s “Symposium on the Creek War and War of 1812 in the South.” Abram described Cherokee warriors’ roles in the pivotal Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814. Collins discussed events in the Creek Nation and in Spanish West Florida leading up to the first battle of the Creek War in July 1813. The conference was organized by the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities; leading historians of the period and Creek scholars from Alabama and Oklahoma participated. More information on the conference is available at http://www. auburn.edu/creekwar. Rob Collins also traveled to the Basel State Archive (Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt) in Switzerland in 2008 for dissertation research, where he was reading the diaries and letters of Lukas Vischer. Rich Hall has six articles that will be appearing in the Encyclopedia of Movies and American Culture, which will head to the publishers in January. He is teaching two world history classes at Auburn University Montgomery, two U.S. history classes at Columbus State University, and two political science classes for Vincennes University at Fort Benning. He is currently deep into writing his dissertation on issues of race, gender, and patriotism in Captain America comic books from 1941–2001; he expects to defend in the Spring. Scott MacKenzie will publish his first article, “The Slaveholders’ War: The Secession Crisis in Kanawha County, West Virginia 1860 –1861,” in the Fall 2010 issue of West Virginia History. Greg Markley presented a paper based on his thesis at the 80th Conference of the Southern Political Science Association in New Orleans in January and a paper on Senator Hill and the ramifications for racial integration of Medicare’s passage at the Alabama Association of Historians meeting at the University of West Alabama in February 2009. In August he completed an internship at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. • 16 Auburn University Class Notes 1950s Ralph Draughon Jr. (BA ’58) was appointed by the Governor to a six- year term on the Alabama Historical Commission. In the past year he has served on the state historical association’s executive committee, acted as its program chair, and contributed a review to its scholarly publication, the Alabama Review, and an article on Civil War railroads to its newsletter. He also is involved in a committee planning the bicentennial of the Creek War and the War of 1812 in Alabama. Active in local history, he serves on the board of the Auburn Heritage Association and delivered a slide show on “The Vanishing Loveliest Village” at its annual luncheon. 1960s Jim Bullington (BA ’62) was a career Foreign Service Officer with the State Department for 27 years, serving as Ambassador to Burundi and in other diplomatic posts in Africa and Asia as well as in Washington. After retiring from the Foreign Service, he was director of a global business center at Old Dominion University and then was director of the U.S. Peace Corps program in Niger, 2000–2006. He lives in Williamsburg, Va., and serves as editor of American Diplomacy and as a senior fellow at the U.S. Joint Forces Staff College. He published a book in December 2007, Adventures in Service, with Peace Corps in Niger. Robert P. (Bob) Buchanan (BA ’62, MA ’63) retired from his “second career” after first retiring from the U.S. Navy, having worked in various capacities for the Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC), Defense Intelligence Agency, located on Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. Sally Jones Hill (BA ’63) was co-chair of the “It Begins at Auburn” National Campaign, which raised the largest amount of private funds ever raised in the history of the state, and served on the Presidential Search Committee that selected Dr. Jay Gogue. She currently serves as the President of the Women’s Philanthropy Board. Mike Watson (BA ’69) retired as a BellSouth executive in early 2006. He is still very active with numerous nonprofits and is Vice President of the Auburn Alumni Association. 1970s Ruthmary Williams (BA ’72) retired in 2006 from the School District of Hillsborough County Florida. She is now an Adjunct American History professor for Manatee Community College and has been appointed to the Sarasota County Historical Commission. Don Yates (BA ’73) earned a MA in Geography from the University of Georgia. He found a career in economic development and recommends it as a career option for history majors as “we have the ability to write clearly, do timely research, and have the necessary background to understand current events.” His job requires him to travel often overseas where again his history degree is an asset. Having three children means that he continues to work: his oldest, Maggie, is a law student at George Washington University; his son Joe graduated from the University of Florida and reported for Navy flight school at Pensacola; and his youngest, Caroline, is a student at Roswell High School. Rick Halperin (PhD ’78) is the Director of the Southern Methodist University Human Rights Education Program, and teaches courses in human rights and genocide. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA and serves as the President of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Rick takes groups of students, faculty, and staff to various locations in the world three times a year to confront human rights issues; recent trips have been to Rwanda, Argentina, Cambodia, and to Holocaust sites in Austria and Poland. Donna C. Hole (MA ’79) served as Chief of Historic Preservation for the city of Annapolis, Md., from 1996 to her retirement in June 2007. During that time, she produced several publications and edited design guidelines, and various brochures on Annapolis architecture, African American heritage, and the historic History Department preservation commission process. She was a founding member of the Annapolis, London Town, and South County Heritage Area and continues to serve on that Board; she is also chairman of the Maryland Association of Historic District Commissions. 1980s Edgar Hutch Johnson (PhD ’83) retired with Emeritus status in 2005 from Gordon College, Barnesville, Georgia, after 25 years of teaching. He returned to Gordon in Fall 2007 to teach one class each semester. His wife, Gael M. Johnson, retired from the Lamar County High School in 2006. Dr. Daniel Crews (PhD ’84) published a major study of the life and work of the great Spanish humanist, Juan de Valdes. A University of Toronto Press publication, Twilight of the Renaissance: The Life of Juan de Valdes, has been heralded for providing “significant insight into the debates on Renaissance humanism as an intellectual foundation for public life and on the importance of diplomacy in the midst of a conflict that permanently shattered the religious unity of Latin Christendom.” Crews wrote his dissertation at Auburn under the direction of Glenn Eaves, and is part of the History faculty at the University of Central Missouri. For over a decade, Crews has served as general editor of the Bulletin of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. Tara Lanier (BA ’84, MA ’87) returned to Auburn University in May after 18 years with the Alabama Historical Commission in Montgomery. She now directs communications and marketing for the College of Veterinary Medicine. Jennifer Phelps Davis (BA ’89) and family moved back to Montgomery after an 11-month stint in Spanish Fort. Her husband Jason (’92) is a lobbyist for the Alabama Power Company. Jennifer is a stay-at-home mom to Whit and Rivers. 1990s Gene Allen Smith (BA ’84, MA ’87, PhD ’91), professor of early American history at Texas Christian University, also serves as director of the university’s Center for Texas Studies, a community outreach venture that conducts teacher education and community history workshops, sponsors traveling exhibitions, and offers adult and child educational programming. In April 2008 the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History invited Gene to become the Curator of History; in this 17 position he is responsible for the care of more than 43,000 cultural artifacts and for developing strategic relationships in the community. Gene has also edited book on loyalty and national identity in the Gulf Borderlands, forthcoming with the University Press of Florida, and he is trying to finish a larger project on black combatants during the War of 1812. Dr. Paul McCracken (BA ‘91) was interviewed by Simcha Jacobovici of the History Channel regarding the identification of Kursi, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, as the site of Jesus’ healing of the man possessed by a legion of demons (Jacobovoici is best known for the series The Naked Archaeologist). Dr. McCracken is the Associate Director of the Kursi Excavation Project. For more information on Kursi, known as Gergesa in the first century, please go to http://www.jibe-edu.org. Erik Hancock (BA ’94) received a JD from Empire College School of Law in June 2002. He has been on active duty with the Army since January 2005, which included two 12- month combat deployments in Iraq. He is currently serving as an infantryman with the 1st Infantry Division at Ft. Riley, Kansas, and has applied for Army Officer Candidate School. Glenn Feldman (PhD ’96) has been promoted to full professor in the Center for Labor Education and Research, School of Business, at University of Alabama at Birmingham. John-Bauer Graham (BA ’96) was promoted to Dean of Library Services at Jacksonville State University in March 2008. Michael Pintagro (MA ’96) serves as Noncommissioned Officer in Charge of the U.S. Army Public Affairs Center at Fort Meade, Md. A 18 Auburn University master sergeant, he’s worked in Army Public Affairs since 1997 and served in Afghanistan with the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division 2006–2007. He and his wife Divina have three children. Matt Abbott (BA ’97) opened his own law firm in Pell City in November 2007, where he specializes his practice in the areas of personal injury, wrongful death, and consumer fraud. He married Shannon Lee Jordan of Montgomery in 2006 and their child Reed Matthew Abbott was born on October 24, 2007. Scott Carter (BA ’98) teaches World history, U.S. history, AP European History, and U.S. Government at St. Pius X Catholic High School in Atlanta, where he also serves as head coach for the boys’ lacrosse team and the boys’ and girls’ swimming and diving teams. He has been regional lacrosse coach of the year in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Gordon Harvey (PhD ’98) left University of Louisiana at Monroe after nine years to become Professor and Head of History & Foreign Languages at Jacksonville State University. He had served as Head of ULM’s History Department and had been named the Tom and Mayme Scott Professor of Teaching Excellence (an honor he had to resign when he returned home to Alabama). Gordon’s political biography of Florida Governor Reubin Askew (1971–1979) was accepted by the University of Georgia Press. He is beginning work on a synthetic study of the 1970s American South, while continuing as a contributor and consulting editor for the Encyclopedia of Alabama. While Gordon will most assuredly miss eating boudin and crawfish, the move is a good one for career and family. Marie and the kids (Preston and Hudson) are thriving. Grant Chaney (BA ’98) has been appointed Vice President, Existing Industry, of the Coastal Gateway Economic Development Authority, where he will coordinate local economic development efforts by co- ordinating with industrial development boards and economic developers. Jim Neese (BA ’98) and his wife April Moore Neese (’04) welcomed their son Carter Stephen Neese on June 10, 2008. Marylyn Elizabeth Turnipseed (BA ’98) in April started a new job with Jefferson Title Corporation, located in Birmingham, as an account executive. Susan Youngblood Ashmore’s (PhD ’99) Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964 –1972, has been published by the University of Georgia Press. It has won major awards, including the Willie Lee Rose prize of the Southern Association for Women Historians and the Francis B. Simkins award of the Southern Historical Association. Jeffrey R. Bibbee (BA ’97, MA ’99) successfully defended his doctoral thesis, “The Church of England and Russian Orthodoxy: Politics and the Ecumenical dialogue, 1888– 1917,” at the University of London (King’s College) in January 2008. Jeffrey had been working as a researcher for the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh on a project studying pandemic influenza. He is now a visiting assistant professor at the University of North Alabama. Edwin Vaughan (BA ’99) received a Masters of Arts in Education from the University of North Alabama in December of 2007. 2000s Chuck Smith (PhD ’00) is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky. His book, Awarded for Valour: A History of the Victoria Cross and the Evolution of British Heroism, was released in July 2008 by Palgrave Macmillan. History Department 19 Lyndsey Turner (BA ’00) is working on a Masters of Secondary Education in History at Auburn University Montgomery. She will start working on her PhD in Medieval History in 2010. Kristen Andersen (BA ’04) graduated from Auburn’s Master of Community Planning program in May 2008, and is now working as a Transportation Planner at Metra Commuter Rail in Chicago. Ruth Ann Fite (BA ’01) served as an Academic Advisor in Auburn’s College of Sciences and Mathematics from August 2003 until she left in May 2008. She relocated with her husband and baby to Decatur, Alabama, where her husband works with his family’s construction company. Cole Hendon (BA ’04) married his college sweetheart, Katrin Anne, a year after college. They have a daughter, Madeline Kate, born June 26, 2007, and expected their second child in February 2009. Cole is a branch manager at First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Charleston. Bert Frandsen (PhD ’01) has been working at Air University (Air Command and Staff College), Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama since 2002, where he teaches air power history and strategy. He was promoted to associate professor in 2006. Heather Greenemeier Christensen (BA ’05) earned a Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health in May 2008 from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Laura Douglas Megginson (BA ’01) and her husband Trice celebrated with their son Benjamin for his first birthday on August 8, 2008. Trice is a photographer for the University of Wyoming, and Laura works with Big Brothers Big Sisters and is teaching humanities at the local junior college. They have lived in Laramie, Wyoming, for the last two years. David J. Welch (BA ’01) received Master of Science in Civil Engineering from Auburn in 2003. He married Cynthia N. Schmaeman (’07) in April 2007, and in January 2008 he was promoted to Assistant Consultant Management Engineer for the Design Bureau of the Alabama Department of Transportation, located in Montgomery. Benjamine E. Wise (BA ’02) has been appointed Assistant Professor of History at the University of Florida. He won the C. Vann Woodward award from the Southern Historical Association for his 2008 Rice University dissertation, Cosmopolitan Southerner: The Life and World of William Alexander Percy. Scott Billingsley (PhD ’03) wrote It’s a New Day: Race and Gender in the Modern Charismatic Movement, which was published by the Alabama Press in April. It is included in the Religion and American Culture series edited by Wayne Flynt, David Edwin Harrell Jr., and Edith Blumhofer. Ann Ingram Carroll (BA ’01, MA ’03) and her husband Andy (’98) would like to announce the births of their children William ( July 23, 2005) and Charlotte (March 18, 2007). Jason Strada (BA ’05) will be returning to Auburn in the fall to obtain a master’s degree in communications. Paul T. Mooney (BA ’07) is pursuing a JD at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, New York. Kate Stamps (BA ’07) also received an undergraduate degree in Secondary Social Science Education and a minor in vocal music. She has been accepted into the joint Clemson University/College of Charleston master’s program in historic preservation and community planning, for which she has been awarded a fellowship. Her classes began in August at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. Austin Walsh (BA ’07) moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, after graduation to teach 7th grade Language Arts with Teach For America. Outside of teaching, he coaches his middle school football team and participates in the Auburn Alumni Club’s intramural kickball league. He got married in June 2008 to an Auburn alumna, Laura Steele. Anne Womack (BA ’07) moved to Washington, D.C., and currently works for U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R–Ala.). • WE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU Name: (Include maiden name/nickname used at Auburn) Address: Telephone: E-mail: Dates of attendance: Date of graduation: Degree(s): Business/profession: News (photos too) to share or suggestions for newsletters: Send to: History Newsletter, 310 Thach Hall, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849. This form is also available online at http://cla.auburn.edu/history/news. News and pictures for “Class Notes” can also be submitted by e-mail to [email protected]. Please include all the information requested above. Auburn University is an equal opportunity educational institution/employer. Department of History 310 Thach Hall Auburn, AL 36849-5207 www.cla.auburn.edu/history Adress service requested. Non-Profit Org. U.S. POSTAGE PAID Auburn, AL 36849 Permit No. 9