History Department News

Spring Semester 1999

Prizes:

• Prof. Mary Kay Vaughan is the recipient of this year's Herbert E. Bolton Prize of the American Historical Association. The award goes biennially to the best book in Latin American History.
• The same book, Cultural Politics and Revolution, also won the Bryce Wood Prize of the Latin American Studies Association.

Recent Books:

• Prof. Jonathan Daly, Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866-1905 (Northern Illinois University Press, 1988).
• Prof. Perry Duis, Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837-1920 (U of I Press). The book, described as "a treasure" in one of its blurbs, received a very favorable front-page review in the Tribune book section.
• Also, U of I has recently brought out Perry's The Saloon in a paperback edition. Soon to be featured in displays at your favorite pub.
• Prof. Rick Fried, The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold-War America (Oxford University Press). Prof. Levy says it is selling well in Baden-Baden.
• Prof. Eric Arnesen (co-ed. with Julie Greene & Bruce Laurie), Labor Histories: Class, Politics, and the Working-Class Experience (U of I). Eric has a chapter in the book entitled "Charting an Independent Course: African-American Railroad Workers in the World War I Era."
• Prof. George Huppert, The Style of Paris: Renaissance Origins of the French Enlightenment (Indiana U. Press, 1999), simultaneous hardbound and paperback.
• Prof. Emeritus Edward C. Thaden, The Rise of Historicism in Russia (Peter Lang, 1999).

Other Publications and Activities:

• Douglas Bicknese (MA, 1997 and former intern, Urban Historical Collection) has completed his studies in Library and Information Science at the University of Michigan and since Dec. 1 has been working as an archivist at UIC's Library.
• Roger Biles (Ph.D., 1981), Professor of History at East Carolina University, published "Thinking the Unthinkable About Our Cities: Thirty Years Later" in the Journal of Urban History, 24 (Nov., 1988).
• Douglas Bukowski (Ph.D., 1989) wrote one in his ongoing series of feature articles in the Chicago Tribune in December, on the subject of children's toys (then and now), as well as the study and collection thereof. Historians of toys agree they really were better then.
• Prof. Paul Buelow presented a talk, "Teaching About World War I Using Selected British Poetry" to the Illinois Council for Social Studies annual meeting in Springfield (Oct. 3, 1998). In May he chaired a panel discussion of the topic "Preparing for Success: The Cooperating Teacher's Relationship with the Student Teacher" at the Great Lakes Regional Conference of the National Council for the Social Studies in Rosemont.
• Adrian Capehart (Ph.D. program) is Executive Director of the Hoop Institute, a not-for-profit research, service and educational organization seeking to improve the lives of working people in "disenfranchised communities of color" and among poor white ethnics. Its publishing arm, Inner City Press, publishes and distributes scholarly work on issues relevant to such communities. Adrian also co-taught a course last summer, "White Studies and Eradicating White Racism," which was co-sponsored by the DePaul Sociology Department and the Hoop Institute.
• Prof. Jonathan Daly presented a paper, "Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866-1905," to the Chicago Consortium for Slavic and East European Studies last April. He has received a Humanities Institute Grant-in-Aid, and an IREX grant helped fund his December sortie into the archives of St. Petersburg. Belatedly, it is noted that his book (see above) is available for holiday gift-giving.
• Prof. Gerald A. Danzer served on the Editorial Board of the Longman American History Atlas and wrote the Preface and map captions. He gave presentations at South Suburban College (South Holland); before historical society officials from the south suburbs; at the Illinois Council for the Social Studies (Springfield); to the Geographic Society of Chicago at the Harold Washington Library; and, as a commentator, at the Social Science History Association meeting in Chicago. His chapter, "The Plan of Chicago by Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett," appears in Envisioning the City: Six Studies in Urban Cartography, David Buisseret, ed. (U. of Chicago Press). A feature article in the Dec. 2 At UIC treated some of Gerry's recent map publishing ventures and next summer's month-long NEH seminar on cartography and history.
• Hasia R. Diner (Ph.D., 1975) is now holder of the Steinberg Chair of American Jewish History at New York University.
• Jose Deustua gave a lecture regarding the 19th-century Cuban revolution on December 10 in the Harold Washington Library's series marking the centennial of the war of 1898.
• Prof. Steve Fanning's article "Rex and Tyrannus in Roman Historiographical Tradition-Livy, Cicero, Josephus and Gildas" was published in Majestas 6 (1998), 3-18.
• Prof. Rick Fried gave a paper at the American Studies Association convention in Seattle in November and a lecture at the Harold Washington Library on the centennial of the War of 1898. His article comparing US and Spanish observance of the anniversary appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education of October 6. It drew critical comment in the Tampa paper about "Northern experts" (!) unaware of Tampa=s efforts to commemorate the local events of 100 years ago.
• Prof. Mel Holli spoke at Northern Michigan University's Centennial Symposium in September on "Diversity in Education: Classroom Content and Pluralism." On Nov. 21, he chaired a session "Immigrants and the Meaning of Community" at the Social Science History Conference. (One panelist: Hasia Diner, q.v.) On Nov. 14 he spoke on "Ethnic Identity and Its Many Taxonomies" at the 50th anniversary conference of the Swedish American Historical Society (North Park University). On May 16, he presented the paper "E Pluribus Unum: The Assimilation Paradigm Revisited" at the North American Studies Conference at University of Helsinki. Four days later he was Ethnic United Day speaker at the U. S. Customs Service, Port Authority of the Midwest, in Chicago. In October, he had several biographical entries on American mayors published in The Encyclopedia of Urban America: The Cities and Suburbs, N. Shumsky, ed. (ABC-CLIO).
• Cheryl Ganz (Ph.D. program) presented "The Graf Zeppelin and the Swastika: Conflicting Symbols at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair" at the 1998 National Aerospace Conference: The Meaning of Flight in the Twentieth Century (Dayton, Ohio). The paper will be published in the conference proceedings early this year.
• Robert E. Hunter (Ph.D. program) is at the National Air and Space Museum, where he has taken up the Guggenheim Fellowship he won last year. In June he gave a lecture at the West Chicago Public Library: "From Giffard to Goodyear and Zeppelin NT: A History of Airships."
• Richard R. John: from the Wilson Center comes news of four published essays by Prof. John: "Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s, The Visible Hand after Twenty Years," Business History Review, 71 (Summer 1997): 151-200; "The Politics of Innovation," Daedalus, 127 (Fall 1998): 187-214; "The Illusion of the Ordinary: John Lewis Krimmel's Village Tavern and the Democratization of Public Life in the Early Republic" (with Thomas C. Leonard), Pennsylvania History (Winter 1988): 87-96; and "Eben Norton Horsford, the Northmen, and the Founding of Massachusetts," in Essays on Cambridge History, Luise M. Erdmann et al., eds. (Cambridge Historical Society, 1988).
• And in November from Milan came news that his book received a vermeil grande prize from Italia '98, an international philatelic exposition. (The ultimate stamp of approval.)
• In July he gave a comment in a roundtable on "The Newest Political History" at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in Harpers Ferry, WV. He gave two papers at the November meeting of the Social Science History Association: "The Politics of Private Enterprise: Government Prosecution of Independent Mail Delivery Firms in the Nineteenth-Century United States"; and "Expanding the Realm of Communication: The Postal System, Public Opinion, and the Creation of a Disembodied Public Sphere, 1792-1835." He also participated in a panel discussion of the Fourth of July on WBEZ's "Oddysey."
• John F. Lyons (Ph.D. candidate) published "The Limits of Professionalism: The Response of Chicago Schoolteachers to Cuts in Education Expenditures, 1929-1933" in Journal of Illinois History, 1 (Autumn 1998): 4-22. He also gave papers on "The Meaning of Democracy: The Chicago Teachers' Union and Public Education in the 1930s" at the North American Labor History Conference (Detroit, Oct. 16) and the History of Education Annual Conference (Chicago, Nov. 1) and "Accommodation and Opposition: The Chicago Teachers' Union During World War II" before the Social Science History Association (Chicago, Nov. 22).
• Nicholas Kaster (BA, 1977) has been in recent touch. Nick, who received a law degree at DePaul is senior tax analyst at CCH, Inc., and has recently published Roth IRAs After 1998 Tax Law Changes-probably the most practical publication listed in these pages.
• Neal R. McCrillis (Ph.D., 1995) is the new occupant of the Mildred Miller Fort Chair of International Education at Columbus State University (Columbus, GA). Last summer Ohio State University Press published Neal's The British Conservative Party in the Age of Universal Suffrage: Popular Conservatism, 1918-1929.
• Thomas Murphy (Ph.D., 1997) is a visiting lecturer in American history and culture at Presov University, Slovakia. His appointment is sponsored by the Soros Foundation, Yale University and the Civic Education Project. Last summer he was a visiting lecturer for the University of Maryland European Division in Kaposvar, Hungary, where he taught U.S. and Hungarian military personnel to be deployed to Bosnia under NATO. In Fall 1999 he begins a full-time appointment with the University of Maryland European Division.
• Andre Partykevich (Ph.D., 1994) has published Between Kyiv and Constantinople: Aleksander Lototsky and the Quest for Ukrainian Autocephaly, the first monograph to be published in the series "Church Studies Papers" of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 1998). It is based on his dissertation.
• Prof. Michael Perman met with the Southern History Seminar and gave a lecture to the History Department at U of I Urbana-Champaign. At the Southern Historical Association Convention (Birmingham) in November, he took part in a panel on the state of Reconstruction historiography in the decade since Eric Foner's Reconstruction, with Foner as commentator.
• Wendy Plotkin (Ph.D. program) published "Rent Control in Chicago after World War II: Politics, People & Controversy" in Prologue, 30 (Summer 1998): 111-23. She commented on an H-NET-sponsored, AHA-affiliated panel on "Preparing History Graduate Students for the Digital Age" at the AHA convention on Jan. 8.
• Prof. Jim Sack published "William Wyndham Grenville, First Baron Grenville in Robert Eccleshall and Graham Walker, eds., Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers" (London: Routledge, 1998). His "Edmund Burke: An Ambiguous Legacy" is in Reflection: Newsletter of the Edmund Burke Society (London, 1998). He commented on papers at the Southern Conference on British Studies (Birmingham, AL) and the National Association of the Conference on British Studies (Colorado Springs).
• Greg Schneider (Ph.D., 1996) , of Emporia State University, saw his Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right published by NYU Press late last year.
• Prof. Dan Smith participated in a small conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington on the relevance of the 1790 census to the current controversy over the legality and constitutionality of using statistical sampling methods in the census of 2000. (Cf. ex-Speaker and historian Newt Gingrich=s reading of the phrase of the Constitution "actual enumeration" in his most recent book.) At the Chicago meeting of the Social Science History Association he took part in a roundtable on the relevance of Malthus after 200 years, chaired and commented on papers on skeletal demography, and chaired yet another session on the demography of institutionalized populations.
• Prof. Peg Strobel's chapter "Drop by Drop the Bottle Fills" is part of Voices of Women Historians, Nupur Chaudhuri and Eileen Boris eds. (Indiana University Press, 1999). At the (June) 1999 annual conference of the World History Association she will deliver the keynote address: "Women's History, Gender History, and World History." In July she will take part in a three-week seminar sponsored by the AHA and the Community College History Association, offering sessions on gender, race, and empire.
• Prof. Mary Kay Vaughan chaired a session sponsored by the Mexican Studies Committee at the recent AHA convention on "Paul Vanderwood's The Power of God against the Guns of Government.
• Deborah Gray White (Ph.D., 1979), who professes history at Rutgers University, recently published Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (Norton). A check of Amazon.com yields the fact that her well-received Ar'N't I A Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South is due out next month in a revised paperback edition.
• Jackie Wolf (Ph.D., 1998) defended her dissertation last June. In July she spoke at the monthly seminar of the UIC Department of Medical Humanities on "Switching from Breast to Bottle: Mothers' Decisions and Doctors' Reactions, 1892-1918." In October she spoke on "Wet Nurses as Private and Institutional Employees: A Social History" at a conference for doctors and nurses sponsored by the Physicians Breastfeeding Network of Illinois. Her article "'Don't Kill Your Baby': Feeding Infants in Chicago, 1903-1924" appeared in the July Journal of the History of Medicine. Another article has been accepted by the Journal of Social History. As of September, she took up a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Social Medicine at Ohio University.
• Prof. Eric Arnesen presented a paper, "'The Strike through the Courts': Race, Employment Discrimination, and the Law in the Railroad Industry, 1930-1960," to the American Bar Foundation Seminar in November 1998.
• Prof. Renato Barahona spoke at the Early Modern Workshop at the University of Chicago ("Chicago" to wannabe undergrads) on "The Basques and the Loss of the American Colonies, 1810-1840." On Feb. 12 he was an invited speaker at the Cervantes Institute on "The Transition to Democracy in Spain, 1979-Present." Under the heading "tough duty," he served as commentator for a session on "Public and Private Rituals in Habsburg Spain" at the meeting of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies in San Diego in April.
• Douglas Bukowski (Ph.D., 1989) published Big Bill Thompson, Chicago and the Politics of Image last summer (U. of Illinois Press). The book, a revision of Doug's dissertation, received a full-page review in the Tribune. Doug published the article "Is History history?" in the Trib on Feb. 2, 1999.
• Prof. Richard Fried was the historian quoted in a Tribune advice-and-comparisons piece on Michael Jordan's retirement.
• David Goodlett (Ph.D., 1991) is now Assistant Professor at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, where he teaches East European and European History.
• Prof. Laura Hostetler was awarded a grant from the Humanities Institute to enable her to examine the maps at the British Library.
• Prof. John Kulczycki published several articles:
• "Zrodia nowoczesnej polskiej tozamosci narodowej: Perspektywa amerykanska" [The Origins of the Modern Polish National Identity: An American Perspective], Sprawy Narodowosciowe [Nationality Affairs], VI, 2 (1997) [1998], 93-110.
• "Working-Class Nationalism among Polish Migrants in the Ruhr Region," in National Identities and Ethnic Minorities in Eastern Europe, "Ray Taras, ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, inc., 1998), pp. 122-30. (Also published in England.)
• "Scapegoating the Foreign Worker: Job Turnover, Accidents, and Diseases among Polish Coal Miners in the German Ruhr, 1871-1914," in The Politics of Immigrant Workers: Labor Activism and Migration in the World Economy Since 1930, Camille Guerin-Gonzales and Carl Strikwerda, eds. (Rev. ed.: New York/London: Holmes & Meier, 1998), pp. 145-67.
• "Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, Patriotism," Two Be: 2B (a journal of ideas), No. 13, 148-50.
• Prof. John Kulczycki also gave two lectures: "Ignace Paderewski-Great Statesman, Politician and Musician," Harold Washington Library Center, Oct. 17, 1998; and "Poles Around the World," a keynote speech to the Polish Genealogical Society of America, in Rosemont, Oct. 17, 1998. John would stress the intricate logistics of two appearances in different locales on the same day. (Who says scholarship is slow?) And he moderated a Symposium on the 20^th Anniversary of the Pontificate of John Paul II, sponsored by the John Paul II Foundation, Chicago Chapter, on Nov. 8 in Rosemont.
• Dominic Pacyga (Ph.D., 1981), who is Professor of History and Liberal Arts at Columbia College, has co-authored Chicago's South East Side: Images of America (Arcadia Publishers, 1998). A recent Trib Book Review announcement notes that the book includes over 200 "rare photos of a vibrant but little-known working class."
• Thomas Murphy (Ph.D., 1997) reports from Presov University, Slovakia, that he has received a book contract from Rowman Littlefield for his dissertation, "The Changing Image of America in Europe, 1780-1830."
• Prof. Barbara Ransby has been awarded a special $21,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant entitled: "A community-university dialogue series on democracy, diversity and directions for a new millenium." The grant, which runs through September, encompasses a series of interdisciplinary roundables involving scholars, policy-makers and community leaders from around the country who will explore the challenges of democracy and diversity in the US in the post-Civil Rights Movement era.
• Prof. Edward C. Thaden (Emeritus), besides his recent book (see above), chaired a meeting of the board of the Commission Internationale des Etudes Historiques Slaves in Vienna in November. He also gave a paper on "1848, CIEHS, and Slavic Historical Studies in the New Millenium: A Synoptic View" at the Symposium on "The Prague Slavic Congress of 1848 and the Future of Slavic Historical Studies." Ed also reports notable receptions, two rousing Austrian horn concerts, and a "Heuriger" in the foothills of the Kahlenberg, where the Poles saved Vienna from the Turks in 1683.