News

Department of History

Jonathan Earle and other Civil War historians evaluate impact of Border Wars
As part of the nation’s Civil War sesquicentennial, 17 of the nation’s leading scholars on the Border Wars, including Professors Jonathan Earle and Jennifer Weber, will discuss the issues and circumstances that shattered the Union during the Civil War. Earle and his counterpart at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Diane Mutti Burke, have organized a national public conference on Border Wars from Nov. 10 to Nov. 12 at the Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library. Please read more about the conference here: http://www.news.ku.edu/2011/october/25/borderconference.shtml.

Professor: 'Border Wars' concept belongs to modern coaches, not history

Today’s use of "Border Wars" to describe athletic rivalries between the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri did not evolve in the decades that followed the Civil War, according to a study at the University of Kansas. http://www.news.ku.edu/2011/october/21/borderwars.shtml

Charles Stansifer Gifts Latin American Collection

An extensive gift of more than 20,000 Latin American books, pamphlets and papers from a KU emeritus professor will serve to deepen an already substantial collection that he helped to create. Charles Stansifer, professor emeritus of history and a former director of the KU Center of Latin American Studies, has donated his personal collection and papers, including items from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, Paraguay and other Central and South American countries. Please read more about the donation here: http://www.news.ku.edu/2011/september/21/libraries.shtml

Sara Gregg Wins Book Award

Sara M. Gregg has won the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award for 2010. Given since 1977, it rewards superior scholarship in forest and conservation history. In Managing the Mountains: Land Use Planning, The New Deal, and the Creation of a Federal Landscape in Appalachia, Gregg explores the redevelopment of the Appalachian Mountains from the 1910s through the 1930s. Her use of case studies reveals the ecological as well as economic impact local, state, and federal land management policies had by moving farmers off their subsistence farms in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and Vermont's Green Mountains to create public forests and parks. The book is published by Yale University Press.

Professor Hagith Sivan receives Research Achievement Award for 2010

Dr. Hagith Sivan Professor Hagith Sivan has received a Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Award for 2010. Her particular honor is the Balfour Jeffrey Award in Humanities and Social Sciences. For complete details see: http://www.oread.ku.edu/2010/october/4/stories/highuchi.shtml

Dr. Kristen Epps receives Distinguised Dissertation Prize

Dr. Kristen Epps (shown with her advisor, Professor Jonathan Earle) received the university-wide 2010 Marnie and Bill Argersinger Dissertation Prize at commencement in May. She defended her dissertation, "Bound Together: Masters and Slaves on the Kansas-Missouri Border, 1825-1865" with honors earlier in the Spring semester. This fall Epps begins a job as visiting assistant professor at Colorado State University at Pueblo.

Hannah N. Ballard Receives Scholarship to Attend a Gilder Lehrman History Scholars Program

A University of Kansas junior majoring in history is one of 30 students in the nation selected for an intensive one-week program at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City.

Hannah N. Ballard received a $1,500 scholarship to attend a Gilder Lehrman History Scholars Program to be held June 12-19. The Wellington High School graduate is the daughter of Joe Ballard of Wellington and Sharon Ballard of Winfield.
http://www.news.ku.edu/2010/june/2/ballard.shtml

History Faculty News

Worster Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Donald Worster, the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Professor of U.S. History at the University of Kansas, has been named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies. Worster joins Mario Capecchi, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology: 19 foreign honorary members, including former South African President Nelson Mandela; and Academy Award, MacArthur Fellowship, Tony Award and National medal of the Arts recipients in the 2009 class. Worster is a nationally renowned historian and the author of several books, including “A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir,” “A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell,” “Rivers of Empire,” “Dust Bowl” and “Nature's Economy.” “A River Running West” won the Byron Caldwell Smith Award, and “Dust Bowl” won a Bancroft Prize. Three of his books have been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes. Worster, a KU faculty member since 1989, said he is honored to be selected by the academy. “The University of Kansas and the State of Kansas as a whole have been very good to me and given me an excellent academic home where my work could thrive,” Worster said. “I am grateful to the academy for electing me, but even more I'm grateful to KU for is steadfast support.” A Native of Kansas, Worster earned a bachelor's in 1963 and a master's in 1964, both from KU. He earned his doctorate in American History and Literature at Yale University in 1971. A noted pioneer in the field of environmental history, he has been president of the American Society for Environmental History and has served as editor of the Cambridge University monograph series “Studies in Environment and History.” “Since 1780, the academy has served the public good by convening leading thinkers and doers from diverse perspectives to provide practical policy solutions to the pressing issues of the day,” said Leslie Berlowitz, chief executive officer and William T. Golden chair. “I look forward to welcoming into the academy these new members to help continue that tradition.” Worster and his fellow inductees will be honored at a ceremony Oct. 10 at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

History Department Boasts Six Teaching Awardees in '09

Leslie Tuttle, assistant professor, won a prestigious Kemper Award. Watch her receive the surprise award in class!

http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/august/24/kempers4.shtml#tuttle

Sheyda Jahanbani, assistant professor, won the 2009 Silver Anniversary Award for distinguished teaching, given to only one untenured professor at the University each year.
http://oread.ku.edu/~oread/2009/may/11/stories/distinguished.shtml

Ted Wilson received the Byron A. Alexander Graduate Mentor Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences this past spring. The award honors outstanding faculty who are selected on the basis of nominations received from graduate students in the college. Ted will co-direct a NEH seminar with Janet Sharistanian in the English Department at KU on "America and The Great War: An Interdisciplinary Seminar in Literature and History." For five weeks next summer 16 elementary and secondary teachers will examine America's relationship to World War I through a combination of literature, history, and visual arts.

Anton Rosenthal, associate professor of history, received a 2009 Ned N. Fleming Trust Award for teaching, scholarship, and service.
http://www.news.ku.edu/2008/may/14/teaching.shtml.

Last but not least, Megan Greene, associate professor, and Eve Levin, professor, both were recognized for their excellence in teaching by the Center for Teaching Excellence in Spring of 2009. Greene was lauded for her accessibility to students. Graduate students Emily Lowrance-Floyd and Steven Tucker noted, "When educators say their office is always open, few mean that in a literal sense. Prof. Greene, on the other hand, has made it a point to be available to graduate students both inside and outside her field." Levin was recognized for her rigorous approach to working with graduate students. "Dr. Levin pushes her students to a higher standard of scholarship, and we are better historians because of her leadership," said Shelly Cline and John Schneiderwind, graduate students in the department.

Karl Brooks: Three Books and an Expert Witness in '09

Karl Brooks published his second book, Before Earth Day: The Origins Of American Environmental Law, 1945-1970, with The University Press of Kansas earlier this year. The University of Washington Press published a new paperback edition of Karl's first book, Public Power, Private Dams: The Hells Canyon High Dam Controversy (2006), as part of the Weyerhaeuser Environmental History series. Truman State University Press published his edited book, The Environmental Legacy Of Harry S. Truman, as volume 5 of the Truman Library's "Truman Legacy Series." Karl wrote the book's introduction, chronology, photo and document essays, and survey of relevant literature. The book captures papers and presentations from the 2007 Truman Legacy Conference on the Environment, an annual symposium held in Key West, Florida at the Truman Little White House.

The appropriately-named and indefatigable Brooks has also advised the Idaho Attorney General's Natural Resources Division as an expert witness for a watershed management case that was settled this summer. The State of Idaho negotiated a settlement of its state-court litigation against Idaho Power Company regarding management of the Snake River basin's waterflows.

Kuznesof wins Woodyard International Educator Award

Elizabeth Kuznesof, professor of history and director of the Center of Latin American Studies at the University of Kansas, won the 2009 George and Eleanor Woodyard International Educator Award.

The award recognizes faculty on the Lawrence campus who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in strengthening KU's international dimension in such areas as curriculum development, study abroad programs, relationships with international partner institutions and collaboration with international colleagues in significant research and publications.
More Information at: http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/november/13/kuznesof.shtml

Worster Wins Lofty Ambassador Book Award

The English-Speaking Union of the United States has given its 2009 Ambassador Book Award to Donald Worster for his book A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir, in the category of biography. The Ambassador Book Awards are given to works that make “an outstanding contribution to interpreting the life and culture of the United States for people abroad.” Recent winners of the award include David Levering Lewis, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Nasaw, and David McCullough. The awards ceremony took place on June 4 in New York City. Worster was also a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History for the same work.

Graduate Students Making Headlines

Graduate Student Wins Student Research Competition

On February 23, 2009, History Department Graduate Student Ryan Gaston received a Second Place prize in the Humanities and Fine Arts category of the Graduate Student Research Competition, sponsored

by the KU Office of Research and Graduate Studies. The prize is for his presentation

“Cultivating a Reform: Masculinity, Agricultural Policy and Conservation of the

Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth Century,” based on Gaston's dissertation research.

He was recognized for the prize at the Graduate Student Awards Ceremony, April 29, 2009. CONGRATULATIONS!

In June 2009 Kevin Benson gave a talk at the Truman Project, a "think tank" in Washington, DC, to staff members of House and Senate committees, department staff members from Defense, State, Justice, Homeland Security and Treasury, and NGO staff members. The title of the talk was "Decision Making at the Strategic and Policy Level." He also gave a presentation at the Yale University Summer session in July on "Turning a Blank Sheet of Paper into a Policy Guided Plan." Attendees included graduate students from Yale, Duke, and UC-Berkely, and international students from the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the People's Republic of China. Benson's critical review of Brian McAllister Linn's book, The Echo of Battle, appeared in Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College, in the Spring 2009 edition. He also co-authored a series of three essays for ARMY magazine, the magazine of the Association of the US Army. The first, "Principles of Design for the Army the United States Might Need," was published in the March 2009 edition. The second, "Transformation or Reclamation: Organizing to Win the War We Have and Those We May Have to Fight," appeared in the May edition. The third in the series, "Persistent Warfare or Containment" appeared in the September edition.

Dusty Clark was awarded a National Security Education Program (NSEP) David L. Boren Fellowship to study in Japan for a year beginning in the spring 2010 semester.

Kristen Epps was recently asked to contribute an article to an anthology of primary

sources called Milestone Documents in African American History, which is edited by Paul Finkelman. She will be writing a summary and analysis of Frederick Douglass's speech "Men of Color, To Arms!," which he delivered in 1863 to encourage black enlistment during the Civil War. It is scheduled to appear sometime in Spring 2010. Kristen also received a Hall Center Summer Research Award this year.

Tim Miller

Recent Grad Researches Food & the Fifties

The 1950s were marked with extreme change in American living. The war was over, babies were booming and, perhaps most importantly, the TV dinner was invented. Tim Miller of Holton, Kansas, who recently earned a doctorate in history from the University of Kansas, researched the era for his dissertation, specifically looking at the the kinds of foods people ate and how they reflected the cultural shifts taking place in that time period. His findings squash the notion that food is just food. He recently accepted a tenure-track job at Laredo Community College in Texas. http://www.news.ku.edu/2008/july/24/timmiller.shtml

Chris Rein had two conference papers accepted this year, including "An Environmental History of the U.S. Air Force Academy" to be presented at the USAFA Department of History's 22nd Military History Symposium this September 2009.

Darrick Taylor received a 2009 Hall Center Summer Research Award.

Hearty congratulations to History faculty members Katherine Clark, Megan Greene, Liz MacGonagle, and Marta Vicente, who have been tenured and promoted to associate professor, and to Hagith Sivan, who has been promoted to full professor.

We are pleased to welcome the following new faculty in 2008–09:

Adrian Lewis, American and International Military History.
Lindy Eakin, United States Expansion History.

Recent Books by History Faculty Members

Karl Brooks, Public Power, Private Dams: The Hells Canyon High Dam Controversy (University of Washington Press 2006)

Anna Cienciala, "La politique etrangere de la Pologne dans la periode de l'Appeasement et des revisions des traites. Les vues et la politique du marechal Pilsudski et du colonel Beck, 1933-1939," dans La Pologne et l'Europe. Du partage a l'elargissement (XVIIIe-XXIe siecles), red. Par Isabelle Davion, Jerzy Kloczowski et Georges-Henri Soutou (dir), PUPS Paris 2007: 119-146

Steven Epstein, Purity Lost: Transgressing Boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1000-1400 (Johns Hopkins 2007)

Megan Greene and Robert Ash, eds., Taiwan in the 21st Century: Aspects and Limitations of a Development Model (Routledge 2007);
Megan Greene, William Bowman, and Frank Chiteji, eds., Imperialism in the Modern World: Sources and Interpretations (Prentice Hall 2006)

Paul Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715 (University of Nebraska Press, 2007)

Norman Saul, Friends or Foes?: The United States And Soviet Russia, 1921-1941 (University Press of Kansas 2006)

William Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, eds, In Godzilla's Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage (Palgrave, 2006);
William Tsutsui, ed., A Companion to Japanese History (Blackwell, 2007)

Marta Vicente, Clothing the Spanish Empire: Families and the Calico Trade in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Palgrave 2007)

Jennifer Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North (Oxford University Press 2006).

Recent External Fellowships for History Faculty

Eric Rath, "Nurturing Communities Through Local Food Networks" Japan Foundation for Global Partnership (2008)
Luis Corteguera, NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Huntington Library (2007–2008)
Greg Cushman, Fulbright Senior Scholar Award (2007–2008)
Jon Earle, Ray Allen Billington Visiting Chair in U.S. History at the Huntington Library and Occidental College (2006–2007)
Eric Rath, Japan Foundation Short-Term Research Fellowship (2006)
Hagith Sivan, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania (2007–2008)
Kim Warren, National Academy for Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2006–2007)