Past Perfect
News of UIC’s History Department
December 2010
Dan Smith Session at the Social Science History Association Annual Meeting.
On November 20 a panel at the SSHA meeting at the Palmer House devoted itself to
honoring Prof. Emeritus DAN SMITH with a retrospective titled “. . . A Tribute and Critical
Reappraisal of His Scholarship.”
Prof. J. David Hacker (Binghamton University), a former grad student of Dan’s at UIC,
organized the session and chaired it wittily. Five other scholars, Gloria Main (Colorado), Carole
Shammas (University of Southern California), Kate Fawver (Cal. State University Dominguez
Hills), Steven Ruggles (Minnesota), and Katherine Lynch (Carnegie Mellon) each presented an
appraisal of a different facet of Dan’s work. Given the last word, Dan offered a twenty-minute
response that not only addressed the papers but was whimsical and personal as well. He received
a standing ovation.
The buzz of characterizations of this occasion, which was witnessed by a large audience,
ranged from “marvelous” to “classy” and “wonderful.”
Coming Attractions: the American Historical Association Conference (Boston, Jan. 6-9, 2011).
The following UIC’ers will participate.
Grad student CAT JACQUET will speak on “Increased Incarceration Is Not the Answer:
Rape, Women’s Liberation, and the State” at a session on “Defining Sexual Order.”
Prof. RAMA MANTENA’s paper on “Colonial Archives and the (Re)Constitution of
Historical Fact” is part of a panel on “Revisiting the Notion of the Colonial Archive.”
Prof. SAM MITRANI (Ph.D., 2009) of American Military University will present “From
Hearth to Shield: Policing Women in Chicago, 1855-90" for the panel on “Defining Sexual
Order.” Former colleague Katrin Schultheiss (George Washington University) is the commentator
at this session.
Prof. MARGARET POWER (Ph.D., 1997) of IIT will give a paper on “The Puerto Rican
Nationalist Party and Transnational Solidarity: Latin American Anti-colonialism versus the
United States during the Cold War” at a session on “Solidarity and Human Rights in Cold War
Latin America.”
Prof. Emerita MARGARET A. STROBEL will preside at the Breakfast Meeting of the
AHA Committee on Women Historians.
Other News of the Department:
Prof. Emeritus MICHAEL ALEXANDER delivered a lecture entitled "History and Text: Two
Kinds of Ancient History" to the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at
Penn State U. in State College on Oct. 6.
Prof. CHRIS BOYER’s chapter, “Revolución, reforma agraria, e identidad campesina" appears in
_Vientos de la Revolución_ published by El Colegio de Michoacán. He traveled to Querétaro, the
birthplace of Mexican independence, to give a paper whose title in English is “Revolution in the
Woodlands, 1910-1920.”
Prof. STEVE FANNING presented the paper “Reguli and Subreguli in Early Anglo-Saxon
England,” at the meeting of the Medieval Association of the Midwest, Iowa City in September.
On Nov. 22, grad student JOSH FENNELL became a federal employee, an Historian for the
Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office in Washington. He is part of a team
charged with performing archival and geographically-based research to support investigation and
recovery missions for the more than 74,000 US soldiers still missing from WWII.
This semester grad student JULIE FOUNTAIN won a Provost’s Award, which will fund a
research trip to Portsmouth (UK) in May.
Newly installed Assistant Professor JEFF HELGESON (Ph.D., 2008) of Texas State UniversitySan Marcos presented two papers: “The Edge of the Second Ghetto: The Politics of Development
in Chicago's Black Metropolis After World War II,” at the Urban History Association Conference
in Las Vegas, on Oct. 23; and “A Decent Place to Live: The Politics of Community Development
in Postwar Black Chicago,” before the Social Science History Association on Nov. 19 in Chicago.
He also chaired a session featuring Anne Parsons, Tom Dorrance, and Ben Peterson–all UIC, all
the time–at the SSHA. He reviewed Jeff Cowie, _Stayin Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of
the Working Class_ in Working-Class Notes.
A translation of Prof. LAURA HOSTETLER's essay "Early Modern Ethnography in Comparative
Historical Perspective," appeared in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Ethnology [Minzu
xuekan], 1 (2010). It originally appeared as the introduction to Hostetler and David Deal, _The
Art of Ethnography_ (University of Washington Press, 2005).
Prof. ROBERT HUNTER (Ph.D. ) jumped in on short notice to offer “Teaching Social Studies in
the Elementary School” at Chicago State last summer. That led to a position as temporary
Lecturer in CSU's Library, Information, and Media Studies Department. Next term he’ll teach “A
History of American Information” and a course on the history of technology. And, in what may
be one way to evade TSA security searches, he recently flew in a German Zeppelin.
Prof. RICHARD S. LEVY and Albert S. Lindemann’s co-edited _Antisemitism: A History_ has
just been published by Oxford University Press.
Last summer grad student KAREN JOHNSON participated in a Lilly-funded seminar on the
power of race in American religion held at Calvin College. This fall, she gave a paper on Catholic
interracialism at the Conference on Faith and History in Oregon.
Grad student ROSA MACIAS presented the paper “Religious Persecution, Martyr Saints, and
Armed Uprisings: The Life of Fr. Jose Isabel Flores in Zapotlanejo” at the Midwest Association
for Latin American Studies Conference in St. Louis on November 6.
Prof. DEIRDRE McCLOSKEY's _Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the
Modern World_ has just been published by the University of Chicago Press. This is the second
volume in her opus The Bourgeois Era.
In October, Prof. JOHN MORELLO (Ph.D., 1998) of DeVry University served as chair and
commentator on a panel on Cold War studies at the Ohio Valley History Conference at Tennessee
Tech University. His article “Revolt, Rebellion and Insurgency” was published in John Powell,
ed., _Weapons & Warfare_ (rev. ed., Salem Press) in February and his entry on civil-rights sit-ins
appears in _The Encyclopedia of African American History_ (ABC-CLIO).
Grad student ANNE PARSONS presented “Re-writing the Rules of Confinement: Resistance and
Rights in Prisons and Mental Hospitals" at the SSHA Conference in November. Over the winter
break, she will do research at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, courtesy of a Historical
Society-Library Company fellowship with the Balch Institute.
Prof. MARGARET POWER of IIT (Ph.D., 1997) has given several papers: “From Freedom
Fighters or Terrorists to Patriots and National Heroes: Solidarity and the Successful Campaign to
Release the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners, 1980-1999” at the Empire and Solidarity with Latin
America conference, New Orleans (October); "'La Patria es Valor y Sacrificio,'" Puerto Rican
Nationalist Party Women and Resistance to U.S. Colonialism," at the Puerto Rican Studies
Association Conference (October) and at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, where she
also gave other presentations. During her sabbatical, she affiliated with the Instituto de Estudios
del Caribe at the University of Puerto Rico and conducted research on the island. Her co-edited
_New Perspectives on the Transnational Right_ (Palgrave McMillan) has just come out..
Prof. Emeritus ROBERT V. REMINI ‘s _At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the
Compromise that Saved the Union_, published last May, was reviewed in the Sunday NY Times.
On October 7 he received a plaque from LAS for “Distinguished Achievements.” On November
17 the Fordham Alumni Club in Washington upped the ante with their “Outstanding Alumnus”
Award for his “Distinguished Career Accomplishments and Life Long Commitment to Excellence
in History and Education.”
Grad student JOHN ROSEN contributed a chapter, “Work for Me Also Means Work for the
Community I Come From”: Black Contractors, Black Capitalism, and Affirmative Action in
the Bay Area" to David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey, eds., _Black Power at Work: Community
Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry_ (Cornell University Press, 2010).
Prof. MATTHEW D. ROTHWELL (Ph.D., 2010) of the University of Southern Indiana published
“The Chinese Revolution and Latin America: The Impact of Global Communist Networks on Latin
American Social Movements and Guerrilla Groups” in the recent October 2010 _World History
Connected_, an on-line journal.
Prof. GREG SCHNEIDER (Ph.D., 1996) of Emporia State University delivered the American
Enterprise Association’s Bradley lecture on Oct. 4. It was carried live by CSPAN.
Prof. KEVIN SCHULTZ’s “The Waspish Hetero-Patriarchy: Locating Power in Recent American
History” appeared in _Historically Speaking_ (November 2010). His “A Catholic Thing, or
Something More?: A Response to Slavica Jakelic’s _Collectivistic Religions: Religion, Choice and
Identity in Late Modernity_,” exists in cyberspace at The Martin Marty Center For The Advanced
Study Of Religion’s Religion and Culture Web Forum (November 3, 2010),
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/. He moderated a roundtable
discussion with grad students and Jill Lepore (Harvard and The New Yorker) in connection with
the Baskes Lecture in American History at the Chicago Humanities Festival, on Nov. 13. And he
gave a series of talks in Texas on "The 'Ground Zero' 'Mosque' Controversy and Other Attempts to
Define America as a Christian Nation.”
In November your European Correspondent dined with JAN WAGNER (B.A., 1997; MA
Journalism, Northwestern) in Frankfurt am Main. Jan is Chief Online Editor for PortfolioVerlag,
an on-line financial publication.
Prof. JACKIE WOLF (Ph.D., 1998) of Ohio University published “Film as the Medium;
Reproduction, Sex, and Power as the Message” in the fall 2010 issue of the Journal of Women's
History. She gave two invited lectures in November for Cincinnati TriHealth Perinatal Programs:
“The Medical and Social Origins of Breastfeeding Myths" and "Got Milk? Not in Public!” In June
she was a featured guest on North Carolina Public Radio’s show on Breastfeeding and Feminism.
Prof. INA ZWEINIGER-BARGIELOWSKA presented the paper "George VI, outdoor recreation
and the promotion of social cohesion in the interwar years" at the Modern British History Seminar,
University of Cambridge on Nov. 22. She also gave a talk based on her new book, _Managing the
Body: Beauty, Health and Fitness in Britain, 1880-1939_ (OUP, 2010), at the Economic and
Social History Seminar, All Souls College, Oxford, on Nov. 23. The book was launched formally
at the Contemporary British History Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, University of
London, on Dec. 1.
Please send your news to rmfried@uic.edu