PAST PERFECT
News from UIC’s Department of History
September 2008
Changes at WRGUE:
Prof. LEON FINK, founder of the Department’s graduate concentration in Work, Race and
Gender in the Urban World, with a year’s leave to start in January, has stepped aside as
WRGUW director. Prof. ERIC ARNESEN has succeeded him. Leon notes with justifiable pride
that the first cycle of WRGUW grad students have completed their degrees. He warns and
promises that he plans to remain fully involved.
Graduate Student Loot:
UIC’s graduate students won the following extra-departmental awards for 2008-9:
KATIE BATZA: Dean’s Award
GREG WILSON: Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois (DFI)
JOHN WEBB: renewal of DFI.
LARA KELLAND: Provost’s Award
ADRIANNE PHELPS COCO: Provost’s Award
ALLISON MALCOM: Legacy Fellowship of the American Antiquarian Society
JOHN REDA: National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Illinois
MICHAEL GOODE: Margaret W. Moore and John M. Moore Research Fellowship of the
Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College.
CAT JACQUET: Alice Dan Dissertation Award of UIC’s Center for Research on Women and
Gender.
And they won the following departmental awards:
DAN HARPER: Robert V. Remini Award.
ALLISON MALCOM and JOHN ROSEN: Marion S. Miller Award.
JOEY LIPARI: Leo Schelbert Award.
MICHAEL GOODE: Bentley B. Gilbert Award
CORINNE LOUW: John B. and Theda Wolf Award.
MARK PODLESNIK: Deena Allen Award.
MICHAEL KWIECIEN: History of Poland Award
CHRISTOPHER SZURLEY: Polish National Alliance Endowed Research Award
Other News of the Department: There’s lots of news over the summer–scholarly
accomplishments, additions to families, prizes, even a sports update.
Prof. ERIC ARNESEN had two reviews in the Chicago Trib and chaired a session on a book
dealing with Ida B. Wells at the Printers Row Book Fair in June; the program ran on C-Span
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Booknotes and is archived on-line. At The Historical Society’s June conference at John
Hopkins, Prez Arnesen spoke on “Periodizing and Politics in Civil Rights History: Reconsidering
the 'Long Civil Rights Movement'”; and chaired two panels. He lectured in May on “The
Promise of Emancipation? African Americans and the Fate of Freedom in the Civil War
and Reconstruction Eras”; at the Lincoln emancipation exhibit at Elgin’s Gail Borden Public
Library and took part in a conference on “Tracking Down Industrial America: New Research
Agendas in Industrial History” at a Conference at Rutgers University-Camden in June.
Prof. CHRIS BOYER was an invited speaker at the Oaxaca Summer Institute for Latin American
History. As chair of the Mexican Studies Committee of the Conference of Latin American
Historians (an AHA affiliate), he raised funds to establish a book prize in Mexican
history. He was a panelist for the NEH Grants for University Teachers competition. And he a
co-founded the brand-new Newberry Seminar on Latin American history, whose inaugural
session will be on October 3, with a very special presentation by University of Arizona professor
William Beezley.
Prof. JUSTIN COFFEY (Ph.D., 2003) of Quincy University gave the paper “Becoming Nixon’s
Nixon: Spiro Agnew’s Media Attacks” at the Policy History Conference in St. Louis in May.
Dr. BETH COLLINS defended her dissertation, “Redbaiting Public Women: Gender, Loyalty,
and Red Scare Politics,” in August, shortly before the official start-up of her tenure-track position
at Triton Community College. Among her courses there is one on American Popular Culture.
Since May Prof. JOHN D’EMILIO has been writing a biweekly column for the Windy City
Times on Chicago gay and lesbian history. Seven have appeared so far.
BRUCE FISHER (MA, 1983) is now Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies
and Visiting Professor of Economics and Finance at Buffalo State College, a city college in the
SUNY system. As founding director of this interdisciplinary center, he will work with grad
students, faculty, public officials and community leaders to address challenges facing Great
Lakes urban regions. He has been named to the Obama for President Urban Policy Advisory
Committee. He continues his weekly web column on public policy issues.
In May, Prof. RICK FRIED gave the paper “‘Operation Polecat’: Tom Dewey and the
Communist Issue in 1948" at the Policy History Conference in May.
Grad student SARAH GOLDBERGER is teaching Virginia History full-time at Old Dominion
University in Norfolk while she finishes her dissertation.
Dr. JEFF HELGESON acquired doctoral status last May. In June he gave a paper at The
Historical Society Conference in Baltimore: “‘They Keep Us Moving All the While’: The
Politics of Migration in Black Chicago, 1935-1965.”
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Dr. ROBERT HUNTER (Ph.D. conferred last May) has won a year-long Guggenheim
postdoctoral fellowship at the National Aeronautics and Space Museum to extend the research in
his dissertation “Fingers on the Button.” This is his third NASM/Guggenheim! He also
was awarded a Haynes Research Stipend by the Historical Society of Southern California, for
research in the LA area. In May he gave the paper “The Air Force Takes Command: Strategic
Bomber Films of the 1950s” at “The International Community of Flight: A Centennial History”
conference at Wright State University. His proposed paper on the film “On the Beach” has been
accepted at next year’s OAH.
In June Grad student CAT JACQUET presented the paper “‘'An accusation easily to be made and
hard to be proved': Rape law in the mid-20th century US” at the Berkshire Conference on the
History of Women in Minneapolis.
Prof. RICHARD R. JOHN published “Turner, Beard, Chandler: Progressive Historians” in
_Business History Review_, 82 (Summer 2008); and “Rethinking the Early American State” in
_Polity_, 40 (July 2008). He was cited in an essay in the June Atlantic Monthly on
Barack Obama’s success in online campaigning, and interviewed about mail rate hikes in the
New York Review of Magazines. He was recently appointed to the advisory council of the
history and politics section of the American Political Science Association.
Prof. RICHARD S. LEVY’s chapter “The Migration of Discredited Myths: The Wandering
Protocols” appears in Michael Berenbaum, ed., _Not Your Father's Antisemitism: Hatred of the
Jews in the 21st Century_ (Paragon House, 2008).
RAYMOND LOHNE (Ph.D. 2007) won two medals at the 5th Annual Bally's Traditional Martial
Arts Tournament–in Tae Kwon Do Yellow Belt Form (Bronze) and Yellow Belt Breaking
(Bronze). At age 52 he was the oldest competitor among 600- plus participants.
In June Prof. DEIRDRE McCLOSKEY collected an honorary doctorate from the National
University of Ireland at Galway. Earlier, University of Michigan Press published her co-authored
_The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and
Lives_. She has submitted the book manuscript for the second in her series on the
Bourgeois Era to the University of Chicago Press.
Grad student ALLISON O'MAHEN MALCOM recently held a monthlong fellowship at the
American Antiquarian Society, where she presented a paper based on her research: “A Taxonomy
of AntiCatholicism.” She has a review of Mitchell Snay's _Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern
Whites_ in the Fall Issue of the Irish Literary Supplement.
On Sept. 6, Prof. Emeritus BOB MESSER delivered an address and co-chaired a panel on
“Vietnam Then and Now” at “Experience UIC,” sponsored by UIC Office of Alumni Affairs.
Prof. DOMINIC PACYGA’s (Ph.D. 1981) chapter “Chicago Slaughterhouse to the World” is out
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in Paula Lee, ed., _Meat, Modernism and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse_(New England
University Press, 2008). On May 19 he spoke on “Ethnic Chicago: The Development of a Global
City,” at a workshop on American Ethnicity at The Jagiellonian University, Krakow. He is back
this fall at Columbia College/Chicago after a year-long leave to finish his latest book manuscript.
G rad student MATT POPOVICH received the King V. Hostick Award from the Illinois State
Historical Society this summer.
Prof. Emeritus BOB REMINI will have published three books this summer and fall: _A Short
History of the United States_ (HarperCollins–just 350 pages), an edition of U.S. Presidents’
Inaugural Addresses (Penguin); and a book on Andrew Jackson's military career in Palgrave
MacMillan’s Great General series. The first two books have been picked up by several book
clubs.
Grad student JOHN J. ROSEN weighs in with two book reviews: Robert Zieger's _For Jobs and
Freedom: Race and Labor in America Since 1865_ in the North Carolina Historical Review,
April 2008; and Risa L. Goluboff _The Lost Promise of Civil Rights_ for Historical Methods,
Fall 2008.
JUDITH RAE ROSS (Ph.D., 1978) has retired from college teaching. She had an article in last
May’s Journal of Women's Studies at the University of Allahabad: “The Riddle Goes On: The
Continuing Saga of the Scarlet Sisters Everleigh.” This summer she taught World History at
Loyola Academy. She was elected to the governing board of CEDA in Evanston. She is
currently advising the Chicago Academy High School on their history curriculum.
Former grad student JOSH SALTZMANN defended his dissertation “Safe Harbor: The Political
Economy of Chicago's Waterfront, 1847-1918" on April 30. He presented the paper “Justice
Stephen Field’s Instrumentalist Understanding of the Public Trust Doctrine,” at the Policy
History Conference, St. Louis, in May.
Prof. GREG SCHNEIDER (Ph.D., 1996) of Emporia State University has a book and an essay
coming out this November. He will be blogging for First Principles, a website journal for the
Intercollegiate Studies Institute. In May he chaired and commented on a panel of papers on
“Beating Back Defeat: The Conservative Movements’s Response to 1964.”
CLAIBORNE SKINNER (Ph.D., 1990) of Illinois Math and Science Academy saw his book
_The Upper Country: The French in the Great Lakes Region, 1673-1754_ published by Johns
Hopkins University Press in April
Prof. DAN SMITH presented a paper, “Fighting for Independence: The Importance of Region,”
at the annual conference of the Institute of Early American History and Culture in Boston on
June 7.
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ERIC SMITH (Ph.D., 2007) of Illinois Math and Science Academy reviewed Wayne Bowen's
Spain During World War II (University of Missouri, 2006) in the Society for Spanish Portuguese
and Historical Studies Bulletin 33, No. 1 (2008).
Prof. BEN WHISENHUNT (Ph.D., 1997) of College of DuPage, has two books on this fall’s list.
His and co-author Marina Swoboda’s _A Russian Paints America: The Travels of Pavel P.
Svin’in, 1811-1813_ (McGill-Queen’s University Press) is in print, and Ben’s history of the
College of DuPage is due out later.
Prof. JACKIE WOLF (PhD 1998) of Ohio University, published “Got Milk? Not in Public!” in
the summer 2008 issue of the International Breastfeeding Journal. She chaired the panel
“Mothers, Wetnurses, and Evolution of Reproductive Medicine in Pre-Modern Europe” in June
at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in Minneapolis.
Prof. CHRIS YOUNG (Ph.D., 2001) of Indiana University Northwest presented two papers:
“George Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality and the Struggle for Public Opinion: How
Foreign Affairs Contributed to the Democratization of American Politics” to the Society for
Historians of American Foreign Relations in Columbus in June; and “The Death of Louis
XVI, the Neutrality of George Washington, and the Fight for Public Opinion” to the Society for
Historians of the Early American Republic in Philadelphia the next month. His article “Two
founders died on nation's 50th birthday” appeared in The Times of Northwest Indiana on July 4.
In June Prof. INA ZWEINIGER-BARGIELOWSKA presented “The Making of a Modern
Female Body: Beauty, Health and Racial Fitness in Britain in the Early Twentieth Century,” at
the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in Minneapolis. In September she gave two
papers in Scotland: “A Progressive Aim? The National Fitness Campaign in Britain during the
1930s,” at the Society for the Social History of Medicine Conference, University of Glasgow,
and “‘Keeping Fit’ in the 1930s: Women’s Health and Beauty in Interwar Britain,” Women’s
History
Network Conference, at the same university.
Please send news to rmfried@uic.edu
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