History Newsletter
April 2003
Celebrating Student Accomplishments:
UNF history majors excelled in research during the past year. The annual History Prizes, awarded for the best research paper, went to undergraduate Andrew Holt for his paper on A The Rise of Anti-Islamic Sexual Propaganda During the Crusades, and to graduate student Linda Howell for A The Illegitimate Princess: Lucretia Borgia. Andrew Holt was also named Outstanding BA graduate for the 2002-2003 academic year. Allison Coble has been awarded a graduate scholarship from the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.
Majors and alumni also presented their research to audiences outside UNF. Graduate student Chuck Glasheen traveled to Australia for a conference on the Crusades, where the program included his paper A Providing food for Peter the Hermits journey from Cologne to Constantinople, 1096.John Blade, an Honors in History student, presented his research at the National Council on Undergraduate Research Conference in Salt Lake City. MA alumna Elizabeth Simmons gave a paper at the 2003 Popular Culture Association Conference on A The Rejection of the Manège Tradition in Early Modern England. She is currently teaching at Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans, and is considering pursuing a Ph.D.
Students in Professor Dan Schafers fall term honors course on Museum Design created and installed a display in the University Gallery. The exhibit, entitled A British East Florida, 1763-1784, included maps (both 18th century and modern satellite versions), text, pictures, and recreations of British, Creek, and Seminole living spaces of the time B like the chickee pictured above.
The students pictured at right are members of Professor Philip Kaplan's spring honors class Slavery: Ancient and Modern. They visited the replica of the Amistad when it docked in Jacksonville.
Faculty News:
Here are three new books to add to your bookshelves:
Elizabeth Furdell's Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (University of Rochester Press, 2002) draws on her interests in the history of medicine and in the expanding realm of print culture in England. Dr. Furdell, the 2002 UNF Distinguished Professor, has been nominated for a CASE outstanding teacher award.
Theophilus Prousis published Russian-Ottoman Relations in the Levant: The Dashkov Archive (Minnesota Mediterranean and East European Monographs, 2002). The book provides us with a unique view from a man who commented on everything from his travels through the middle east to the nature of relations between the two empires.
Dan Schafer's Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley (University of Florida Press, 2003) introduces the reader to one of the most interesting women in East Florida, and through her, to the history of early 19th century Florida.
New Faculty Members:
Two new historians will join the department in fall 2003.
Harry Rothschild has just completed his Ph.D. from Brown with a specialty in Chinese history; his dissertation examines China= s only female emperor. He will teach a two-term survey of Chinese history, and will offer a senior seminar in the spring.
Aaron Sheehan-Dean has just completed his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, where he concentrated in nineteenth-century U.S. and southern history, with a minor field in African history. His dissertation explores the social and political experience of the American Civil War among participants in Virginia. While at UVa, he worked for several years on the Valley of the Shadow project at the Virginia Center for Digital History, concentrating on geographic information systems and database design and analysis.
History Lecture Series for 2003-2004:
This will be the third year of our lecture series, which brings to campus scholars who have written important recent works on the subjects under study in one of the department's seminars. For fall 2003 the scheduled speaker is Roger Launius, holder of the Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History, Division of Space History, National Air and Space Museum. Among his most recent books are Imagining Space: Achievements, Possibilities, Projections, 1950-2050 (Chronicle Books, 2001) and Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite (Harwood Academic, 2000). This series is funded by a UNF Trustees Initiative grant.
Also scheduled to visit UNF during the fall term is Professor John Bratzel of Michigan State University, author of The Shadow War: German Espionage and United States Counterespionage in Latin America during World War II.
Internships:
History students may be interested in internship opportunities with the National Park Service Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. Interns provide essential services on a daily basis to park visitors. It is a great opportunity to apply your education and build your resume. Primary duties include greeting and orienting visitors in the Visitor Center, answering questions about the park, and recording statistical data. Park interns may also assist rangers in interpretive and educational programs, create their own programs for visitors, or develop exhibits and bulletin boards.
Those interested in summer opportunities away from Jacksonville might want to consider applying for a historical internship with NASA or through the Washington Center. For more information about setting up a history internship, contact department chair Dr. Dale Clifford.
Summer and Fall 2003 schedule
The summer and fall 2003 schedules are printed at the end of this newsletter, together with a tentative list of spring courses. Registration begins on April 24th and will continue until classes begin for each term.
Important Note: As of summer 2003 the history department has adopted a mandatory first-day attendance policy. Students who will miss the first day of class must contact the department beforehand, or risk being removed from the roll so that a student on the waiting list can be given a seat in the class.
Graduate Seminars for Fall:
AMH 6936/AG 131 - Diplomacy of World War II - Leonard, Tuesday, 6-8:45 p.m.
The seminar will place four key issues into the broader context of World War II diplomacy: United States-Japanese relations 1937-1941; the Nazi problem in South America; President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime diplomacy and; the fragmentation of wartime alliance. Michigan State University's Dr. John Bratzel will meet with the seminar to discuss the Nazi threat in Latin America.
Undergraduate Seminars for Fall:
AMH 4291/AB 031 - Seminar: Aviation in US - Courtwright, Tuesday, 6-8:45 p.m.
Aviation in the United States explores American aviation from the Wright brothers to September 11. Students will research the "pioneer" days of American aviation, the maturation of the airlines, the growing importance of military aviation, the rise and fall of the manned space program, and how mastery of the skies altered the course of American history. A history seminar, it is recommended for those students who have taken the Craft of the Historian and who have good research and writing skills.
EUH 4294/AA 021 and EUH 5934/AL 141 - Seminar: Hitler and Stalin - Prousis, Thursday, 6-8:45
This is an undergraduate seminar for history majors. It is strongly recommended that students have some background or coursework on 20th century Europe. The course examines Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia by focusing on the political personalities and policies of both Hitler and Stalin. The course also covers major (and controversial) issues, events, and legacies of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Assignments include a variety of readings, class discussion, weekly written essays, use of library resources, research papers, and student presentations.
Other new courses for Fall:
AMH 3932/AC 041 - American Business History - Ginzl, Tuesday-Thursday, 12:15-1:30
Recent news headlines have focused on the corporate meltdowns of Enron, WorldCom, and other large companies amidst charges of executive wrongdoing and questionable financial practices. Are Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, and others greedy, unethical crooks, or are they visionary businessmen blindsided by outside events and unsavory associates? Well, not much has changed in the last 100 years. Back then B during the A Progressive Era@B the debate raged over whether John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan were A robber barons@ or A industrial statesmen. And just like today, politicians and government leaders were calling for more business regulation and demanding the break up of large corporate monopolies.
Can we understand the present-day corporate problems without understanding 200 plus years of American business history? As President Calvin Coolidge told a group of newspaper editors in 1925, A The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. If that observation is in fact true, then an understanding of American business and the entrepreneurs, managerial innovations, and corporate entities that dominated its development is critical to understanding the history of the United States.
AMH 3932/AJ 140 - Harlem Renaissance - Williams, MWF 11-11:50
This course is part of a Common Boundaries pairing with a literature course on the same subject. It will examine the meaning and significance of the early 20th century flowering of African American culture and politics. The class will begin with an exploration of the African Diaspora, particularly in North America and the Caribbean. The focus will then shift to the convergence in Harlem of people of African descent from different regions in the U.S. and the West Indies. The role of artists, writers, scholars and political activists in shaping the new African American identity called the A New Negro will be investigated. How the contributions made by people of African descent to art, music, literature, the theatre and other cultural endeavors in the 1920s and 1930s facilitated the movement for the political empowerment of black people in America will be a major theme of this course.
LAMH 3932/AL 161 and AMH 5934/AL 141 - Atlantic Slave Trade - Sheehan-Dean, TR 4:30-5:45
Students in this course will explore the origins, operation, and abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that ran from the mid-15th to the late 19th century. Particular attention will be paid to the motives and experiences of the people on four continents who participated in all aspects of the trade. Students will also consider the relationship between the slave trade and the growth of both capitalism and democracy in the New World.
ASH 3932/AD 061 and HIS 5934/BX 973 - Traditional China - Rothschild, Wednesday, 6-8:45
Chinese History I (Traditional China) begins a two-semester survey of Chinese history. The course traces Chinese civilization from its pre-historical origins to the end of the 18th century. It is designed to provide the student with an understanding of the historical evolution of China= s cultural, economic, political, and intellectual traditions.
Traditional China evokes a vision of a virtuous emperor in the center, who, with the help of a cumbersome bureaucracy, broadcasts to the empire timeless Confucian ethical principles such as loyalty and filial piety, so as better to govern a stable and compliant agrarian society. Fortunately, this apparently rigid mold proves, more often than not, to be plastic. Broken up by periods of chaos and upheaval, traditional China, in fact, features a flamboyant pageant of characters--megalomaniacal emperors, devious palace women, sycophantic poets, wandering scholars, calculating merchants, scheming ministers, Daoist mystics, and rebel peasants who claim appointment from HeavenC who collectively flaunt, challenge, and reshape its structure.