History Department Announcements
boston college
| As part of the New York Times "Campaign Stops" series, PhD candidate and Clough Center Graduate Fellow Seth Meehan published an essay -- "Catholics and Contraception: Boston, 1965" -- providing historical context to the current birth control debate http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/catholics-and-contraception-boston-1965/ . Meehan discussed his research recently with the National Catholic Reporter http://ncronline.org/news/politics/cardinals-role-end-states-ban-contraception. |
| PhD candidate Jared Hardesty received the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium's fellowship. It carries a $5,000 prize and enables him to do research at 20 different repositories across New England. http://www.nerfc.org/ |
| Congratulations to Prof. Julian Bourg, Prof. Owen Stanwood, and Prof. Prasannan Parthasarathi, all of whom received promotions in February. Prof. Bourg and Prof. Stanwood were promoted to associate professor with tenure and Prof. Parthasarathi was promoted to full professor. |
| Dr. Hidetaka Hirota's manuscript, "The Moment of Transition: State Officials, the Federal Government, and the Formation of American Immigration Policy" was chosen to receive the Organization of American Historians Louis Pelzer Memorial Award. |
| Deborah Holman, a graduate of the MA program, was named Headmaster of Brookline High School starting on July 1, 2012. |
| PhD candidate Alexander Noonan received the W. Stull Holt Dissertation Fellowship from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). |
Professor Heather Cox Richardson's book, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, was named the Must Read Nonfiction book of 2011 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, which is the Commonwealth's affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. For more information, visit www.massbook.org. |
| This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. Professor Emeritus and University Historian Thomas O'Connor wrote an article in the Boston Globe in August 2011 looking at the unexpected results that the war had on Boston. Please click here to read the article. |
| Ph.D. candidate Peter Cajka was awarded First place in the category of Best Feature Article in a Scholarly Magazine at the 2011 Catholic Press Conference for his article, "Riding with Saint Paul in the Passenger Side”: The Archdiocese of Milwaukee Enters the Automobile Age, 1920-1965," published in the summer 2010 edition of the journal American Catholic Studies. Of Cajka's article the CPC wrote, "This article offers a great exploration of how technology and religion interact. Its moral implications stand next to a solid analysis of past and present use of technology within the Catholic faith." |
| The History Department is pleased to welcome Heather Cox Richardson and Sylvia Sellers-Garcia to its faculty. |
The History Department held its annual undergraduate luncheon on May 9th. The recipients are: Marie Conger (winner of the Allen Wakstein Award), Alex Gilman (winner of the Thomas O'Connor Award), Erica Lewis (winner of the Raymond McNally Award), Erin Garrity (winner of the Janet James Award), Ethan Stevenson (winner of a special Faculty Award), Caitin Cain (winner of the Rev. Francis Murphy Award), Christopher Griesedieck (winner of the Patrick Durcan Award - given annually to the highest ranking history major), Lake Coreth (winner of the Shannon Lowney Award), Eric Neumann (winner of the Andrew Bunie Award), William Cody (winner of a special Faculty Award). |
| Congratulations to 2011 Ph.D. graduate Jill Bender for receiving the Donald and Helene White Dissertation Award for her dissertation "Fears of 1857: The British Empire in the Wake of the Indian Rebellion." |
| Aditya Ashok, an undergraduate majoring in history and biochemistry, is the recipient of a 2011 Harry S. Truman Scholarship. Please click here for more information. |
| Ph.D. candidate Edward Miller was recently presented a research travel grant by the Eisenhower Foundation. Each year the Eisenhower Foundation awards $10,000 in research travel grants to scholars wishing to use the historic holdings in the archives of the Eisenhower Library in Abilene. Please click here to view more information. |
| Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Mimi Cowan, who received a 2011 OAH-Immigration and Ethnic History Society John Higham Travel Grant from the Organization of American Historians |
| Prof. Rob Savage received the 2010 James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for the Best Book in History and the Social Sciences from the American Conference for Irish Studies for his book A Loss of Innocence?: Television and Irish Society, 1960-72. |
| Prof. Jeremy Clarke, S.J., organized the exhibition Binding Friendship: Ricci, China, and Jesuit Cultural Leanings, which is on view at the Burns Library from March 21 to October 31, 2011. Please click here to view the archive of digital material related to the exhibit, here for a brief description of the exhibit, and here for the catalogue in PDF form. |
| Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Austin Mason for receiving a 2011-12 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. |
| PhD candidate Seth Meehan received the Peter Guilday Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association for his article "From Patriotism to Pluralism: How Catholics Initiated the Repeal of Birth Control Restrictions in Massachusetts." |
| Joo Yeon Koo, an undergraduate History major, was selected as one of the ten Gilder Lehrman Scholars for the summer of 2011. Please click here to read more about the Gilder Lehrman Institution of American History and their scholars program. |
| Congratulations to Prof. Sarah Ross, who was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. |
| Prof. James O'Toole explains in an article the Catholic Lenten practice of eating fish on Friday. |
| In October 2010, Prof. Lynn Lyerly was featured in the PBS documentary God in America. Please click here to view more about the documentary. |
| Boston College hosted the 29th International Conference of the Charles Homer Haskins Society, a society dedication to the study of the history of the central Middle Ages. For more information on the conference, please see: http://haskinsatbostoncollege.blogspot.com/. |
| The History Department is partnering with the Reading Public Schools and eight other Metro North school districts (Danvers, Dracut, Lowell, Haverill, North Reading, Stoneham, Wakefield, and Wilmington) in a $1 million Teaching American History grant program. Funded by the US Department of Education, the Reading TAH grant (known as History Connected) offers school day workshops and summer institutes in professional development for high school and middle school teachers in US History. During 2009-2010, the program offered a series of lectures and workshops on Equality, Citizenship and the Law, which featured presentations by BC Professors Alan Rogers, Cynthia Lyerly, Patrick Maney, and Marilynn Johnson. In 2010-11, the series will focus on War, Society, State and Citizenship and will include workshops by Professors Owen Stanwood, Seth Jacobs, Marilynn Johnson, and Franziska Seraphim. While History faculty have participated in teacher workshops and institutes for many years now, our work with History Connected is the department’s first official partnership in a Teaching American History Grant. The program will run for three years, concluding in the summer of 2012. For more information on the program, see: http://historyconnected.org/. |
| The department is pleased to welcome Prof. Julian Bourg, Prof. Charles Gallagher, S.J., and Prof. Arissa Oh to Boston College. Additionally, Prof. Jeremy Clarke, S.J., has been promoted from a Visiting Assistant Professor to an Assistant Professor. |
| Congratulations to Prof. Rebecca Nedostup, who received the Research Grant for Foreign Scholars in Chinese Studies from the Center for Chinese Studies, National Library, Taiwan, for the fall of 2010. |
| Prof. Sarah Ross is the recipient of the 2010-2011 Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Grant for Independent Research in Venice. The foundation strives to promote the advancement and perpetuation of humanistic inquiry and artistic creativity by encouraging excellence in scholarship and in the arts. |
| Prof. Dana Sajdi received a fellowship from the Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC) in Istanbul for the 2010-2011 academic year. The university annually awards a small number of fellowships to junior and senior scholars specializing in the archaeology, art history, history, and allied disciplines of Anatolia (and Istanbul) from the Neolithic through the Ottoman eras. |
| Jill Bender, a PhD candidate, received the Internationals Security Studies (ISS) Predoctoral Fellowship at Yale for the 2010-11 academic year. These awards are given to advanced doctoral candidates in the field of security studies with particular emphasis on international, diplomatic, and military history. |
| PhD candidate Rachel Ball has been awarded the Fulbright-Nehru fellowship for 2010-2011. This venerable fellowship enables her to continue her research in India during the upcoming academic year. |
| Congratulations to recent PhD graduate Jeffrey Malanson as he received the Donald and Helene White Dissertation Award for his dissertation "Addressing America: Washington's Farewell and the Making of National Culture, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1796-1852." |
| At the invitation of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Professor David Northrup participated in a study-tour of Israel, June 11-20, 2010, along with a dozen other Massachusetts academics. |
| At the invitation of the Intersections Project of Boston College, Prof. Northrup was also a participant in the "Focus On: Jamaica Summer" (August 7-10, 2010). The faculty group observed and assessed BC student volunteers who were teaching rural Jamaican youth and interacting with the larger community. |
| The department is pleased to announce that Prof. Kevin Kenny has received this year's Doctoral Teaching Award from the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. |
| As director of Asian Studies, Prof. Rebecca Nedostup was the grant author and lead faculty on a grant for Asian and Asian American Studies (which of course includes many History faculty and students) to create initiatives leading to formation of a Global Asia Center, including a film series, seminars, and workshops for undergraduate and graduate students and inviting administrator-researchers to lead faculty practicums. This received $11,000 from the Institute of Liberal Arts (http://www.bc.edu/centers/ila/major_grants.html) |
| Prof. Seth Jacobs is now excerpted in both of the leading Vietnam War anthologies: Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War, Robert McMahon, ed.; and Light at the End of the Tunnel, Andrew Rotter, ed. McMahon excerpted a chapter from America's Miracle Man in Vietnam, and Rotter did the same thing with Cold War Mandarin. |
| The Fall 2009 edition of the Boston College Magazine includes a feature on Prof. Kevin Kenny's new book Peacable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn's Holy Experiment. Please click here to read the article. |
| The History Department congratulates Prof. David Quigley, as he was recently named dean of the University's College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences after serving as interim dean for a year. |
| Congratulations to Dr. Andrew S. Finstuen, a graduate of the PhD program, who just published Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety. Grant Wacker of Duke University commented that "this book is simply brilliant." |
| Prof. James O'Toole offered his insight to the Boston Globe regarding the past, present, and future of the sacrament of confession. |
| On June 11th, Prof. Kevin Kenny published an op-ed article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. His forthcoming book, titled Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn's Holy Experiment, will be published in mid-July. |
| Dr. Ed Rugemer, a graduate of the department's PhD program, won the Francis S. Simkins Award from the Southern Historical Association for the best book published in 2007 or 2008. |
| The department is pleased to announce that Dr. Rugemer has also been awarded the 2009 Avery O. Craven Award of the Organization of American Historians for his book The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War. |
| The department is pleased to welcome Prof. Owen Stanwood to Boston College |
| Prof. Jim Cronin has taken over as the Chair of the History Department. |
| Congratulations to Prof. Rebecca Nedostup, who was recently promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. |
| The New Republic has published an article regarding Prof. Stephen Schloesser's exhibition on Georges Rouault. Please click here to view the article. Additionally, Prof. Schloesser received the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Apple Valley Foundation. |
| The History Department is pleased to welcome Associate Professor Martin Summers to Boston College. |
| Congratulations to PhD graduate Bethany Tanis, who received the Donald and Helene White Dissertation Award for her dissertation entitled "The 'Great Church Crisis,' Public Life, and National Identity in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain." |
| Prof. David Quigley has been named the Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. |
| Prof. Stephen Schloesser curated the exhibition Mystic Masque: Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault, 1871-1958 at BC's McMullen Museum in the fall of 2008. |
| PhD candidate Hidetaka Hirota recently received the George E. Pozzetta Dissertation Award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, the Gilder Lehrman Fellowship from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the John Higham Travel Grant from the Organization of American Historians and Immigration and Ethnic History Society. |
| Congratulations also to Hirota for receiving the 2008 Littleton-Griswold Grant from the American Historical Association for work in legal history. |
| Ely Janis, a former PhD history candidate, has just published an article in the Journal of American Ethnic History in Winter 2008. The article is titled "Petticoat Revolutionaries: Gender, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Irish Ladies' Land League in the United States." Please click here to read his article. |
| Prof. Kevin Kenny is the recipient of the 2008 Boston College Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Doctoral Faculty Teaching Award for significant contribution to the teaching of students pursuing doctorates. |
| Prof. Seth Jacobs was included in an article in the Washington Post on September 24th entitled "Breathing Life Into the Lecture Hall." Click here to view the article. |
| Congratulations to Prof. David Quigley, who received a Distinguished Teaching Award in May 2007. Please click here to view the article in the Chronicle. |
| Congratulations to Prof. James O'Toole, who was named the first Charles I. Clough Chair in History. |
| Congratulations to Dr. Edward Rugemer, former PhD candidate and post-doctoral fellow in the History Department, who accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of History & African American Studies at Yale University. |
| Dr. Mark Doyle, a graduate of the History PhD program, has been awarded a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Doyle will continue to focus on the topic of his dissertation, "Fighting Like the Devil for the Sake of God: Protestants, Catholics and the Origins of Violence in Belfast, 1850-1870." To read more about this fellowship program, please click here. |
| Dr. Libby MacDonald Bischof, an alum of the History Graduate Program and a former post-doctoral fellow in the History Department, was named a Research Fellow at the Georgia O'Keefe Center for American Modernism in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Dr. Bischof will be working on a project titled "Mentoring a Movement: F. Holland Day, Alfred Stieglitz, and the Development of American Art Photography." |
| Dr. Niamh Lynch, an alumna of the Graduate Program, was named Director of the Irish Institute at Boston College. |
| Third-year PhD student Aniruddha Bose was awarded a History Compass Graduate Essay Prize. This prize was for Aniruddha's article titled "Science and Technology in India: The Digression of Asia and Europe." If you would like to read the full article, please click here. To read more about Aniruddha's work, please follow this link. |
| Austin Mason, a current PhD history candidate, won the 2007 Bethel Prize from the Charles Homer Haskins Society for the paper "Buried Buckets: Ritual Behavior Before England's Conversion." |
| Prof. Franziska Seraphim received a 2007 Teaching With New Media Award. |
| Prof. Peter Weiler won the 2007 graduate teaching award from the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools and from BC's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. |
| Prof. Rebecca Nedostup launched The China Gateway, a resource site for students of Chinese history. |
| Andrew S. Finstuen, a graduate of the PhD program, is serving as a Lilly Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Valparaiso University during 2006-07. |
| Jeffrey Malanson, a fourth-year PhD student, published an article in Diplomatic History in November 2006. The article is titled "The Congressional Debate over U.S. Participation in the Congress of Panama, 1825-1826: Washington's Farewell Address, Monroe's Doctrine, and the Fundamental Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy." |