Newsletter, 2002-2003

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From the Chair

The History Department had a busy and successful year in 2002/03. 53 students graduated with a major in History in May 2003. We also saw the first fruits of a new program. The Department began offering undergraduate research fellowships to History majors 15 months ago. Sarah Jones and Margaret McKenzie took advantage of those fellowships to do research in Summer 2002 in London. They made stimulating and interesting presentations on their research to Department faculty in Winter 2003. We look forward to the hearing about the research of this year's fellowship recipients.

Another highlight was the conference that the Department sponsored, under the leadership of Michele Gillespie and Randall Hall, on religious, social, and political activist, and Wake Forest graduate, Thomas Dixon. We were pleased at the high level of scholarly work from the presenters, not least from the 5 Wake Forest undergraduates who gave papers: Jack Rafetto, "Dixon and the Spanish American War"; Jamie Kidd, "Determining Thomas Dixon"; Meg Jongeward, "Dixon's Legacy of White Supremacy"; Sean Lucas: Thomas Dixon and the Making of Modern Oratory"; and Katie Scott, "Thomas Dixon's Religious Career as an Instrument to Satisfy His Desire for an Audience."

Michael Hughes

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Graduate and Alumni News

Scott Abbott is entering in the Master Teacher Fellows program at Wake Forest, where he will be training to become a secondary social studies teacher. Brooke Bavinger will be working as a research associate for Corporate Executive Board, which provides strategic best practice research for Fortune 500 and global 1000 companies. Mary Claire Butt is moving to Washington, DC, to work for a year before going to University of Arkansas law school. Andrew Canady will be teaching NC history at Southeastern Stokes Middle School in Walnut Cove and likely living in W-S. Jessica Cannon will be entering the Ph.D. program at Rice University. Emily Conrad will be living in Winston and entering the MA program in History and Museum Studies at UNCG. Stacy Gomes, Andy Hall, and John Martinez will be attending law school, at Wake Forest, University of Pittsburgh, and Florida State, respectively. Krys Mroczkowski will be teaching history at Carson Long Military High School in New Bloomfield, PA, and taking courses for a Master's Degree in either History or Zoology.

William Norton is working at the Army ROTC dept at Wake until November before going to the Officers Basic Course in Oklahoma for 5 months. From next May he will be stationed with the 3rd infantry Division at Fort Stewart, GA for two years. Sean Prince has moved to Washington DC, where he lives with three other recent Wake Forest graduates and works for Corporate Executive Board. Jayme Shomaker will be attending Florida Coastal School of Law. Ryan Whitley will be moving to Evanston, where he will be entering Masters of Divinity program at the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, in preparation for ordination into the Episcopal Priesthood. Tim Williams is entering the PhD program in Russian History at UNC Chapel Hill (but still plans to go to every Wake basketball game at the Joel).

Urmi Engineer (2002) is entering the Ph.D. program in History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ryan Mails (2000) is entering the M.A. program at UNC Greensboro. Chad Wagner (1999) will be finishing medical school this coming May. He plans to specialize in sports medicine.

We are in the middle of setting up a history alumni directory and news section on the department website. We also hope to begin a career network that will allow history majors to contact alumni who are working in fields that they may be interested in. Please use this online form to let us know what you are up to, and whether you would be willing to be contacted by current students for advice.

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Faculty News

Ronald Bobroff spent two weeks in Paris, France, this summer beginning work on his next project, a political and cultural history of the Franco-Russian Alliance. Just after school ended in the spring, he served as the faculty advisor on a new service trip for Wake Forest students that involved helping to renovate parts of an orphanage in Moscow, Russia. He also presented a paper on Russian diplomatic history, at the Southern Conference for Slavic Studies in Savannah in March.

Simone Caron spent two weeks in Rhode Island in July 2003 where she finished the primary research for her second book, tentatively titled "Women Helping Women." She has given and is giving a number of papers on infanticide in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at the American Association of the History of Medicine in Boston in May, at Wake Forest in September, and at the New England Historical Association in October. Dr. Caron is teaching a new MALS course in the spring, "Women's Political and Social Activism from the Revolution to the Present."

The department is delighted to welcome William Connell, who will be joining us this fall as a Visiting Assistant Professor. In the fall Dr. Connell will be teaching world history and a class on modern Latin America.

Michele Gillespie was named the Kahle Family Professor this past spring. She was recently appointed to a five-year term on the Board of Editors for The Journal of Southern History and will be giving several invited talks this year, including the Malcolm Lester Lecture at Davidson College.

Jim Hastings joined us in fall 2002 as a Visiting Assistant Professor and will be teaching again this coming year. Dr. Hastings was an invited respondent at a conference on "Jaisingh's Jaipur" at Barnard College, Columbia University, and The Asia Society in February 2003. He gave a paper on literature and soteriology in 17th-Century India at the American Academy of Religion Southeastern Conference in Chattanooga in March 2003, and published another paper on "Poets, Warriors and Brothers" in Culture, Communities and Change, edited by Varsha Joshi.

Michael Hughes presented a paper on "Mastering War's Material Consequences in West Germany," and served as an "invited expert," at a conference last September in Pforzheim, Germany. The paper will appear soon in a book of papers from the conference. He has begun a new long-term project on Public Demonstrations in Germany, 1888-1993; he gave a paper on political funerals as public demonstration and political theater, at the Popular Culture Conference in Bowling Green in May. He is also giving a paper at the American Historical Association annual meeting in Washington in January, on "Restitution and Reconciliation in West Germany."

Angus Lockyer spent the last year on sabbatical, which included five months in Japan in the fall on a Social Science Research Council fellowship. He used the time to finish the research for and begin writing a manuscript entitled "Japan at the Exhibition, 1862-2005," as well as to begin research for two new projects, on Japan in the 1930s and on the history of Japanese golf. In November, he will give an invited paper on national museums in Japan at a conference at the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Tony Parent has a book forthcoming this September from the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and University of North Carolina Press, Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740. More information is available here.

Sue Rupp gave a paper on the legal profession in Late Imperial Russia, at the Southern Conference for Slavic Studies in Savannah in March, and has recently assumed the position of Department Chair.

Michael Sinclair is working on the manuscript of a book on the Sino-French War of 1883-1885. He also submitted an article on "The Opium War," for a volume entitled Smoking: A Cultural History, to be published by Reaktion Press.

Alan Williams spent July in Paris beginning work on a book length project, tentatively entitled "Self and Identity during the French Revolution." In October he will chair a session at the annual meeting of the Western Society for French History. In fall 2004 Dr. Williams and his family will be in London, as the resident faculty at Worrell House.

James Wilson joined us in fall 2002 as Assistant Professor of African History. Dr. Wilson has also worked extensively with the Peace Corps, serving in Kenya from 1985 to 1987, and recently was one of eleven people to receive the Franklin H. Williams Award, which recognizes outstanding Peace Corps volunteers of color who have put their overseas experiences to work in their communities.

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Degrees Awarded, 2002-2003

May 2003

December 2002

August 2002

Robyn Elynn Layton

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