The five new computers that the Department received were allocated to Department members on a "need" basis; one was placed in a common room for the use of those who have not yet received their own. Our goal is within the next year or two to have a personal computer on every faculty member's desk. Meanwhile, a number of us have signed up for interest group "lists" and Dan Rogers has become coordinator of a large and growing "list" for specialists in German history. Others are making use of a variety of data bases that have become available, and we are all enjoying the new efficiency of being able to conduct library searches from our own offices. We are truly excited about the prospects for vastly increased research productivity that will be offered by the new technology.
We were especially fortunate in being able to cooperate with other departments in seeking the grant for the Internet. Departmental equipment budgets have ranged over the past few years from non-existent to inadequate, and all of the equipment that is necessary for functioning as a modern history department has been obtained by virtue of sources outside the normal departmental budget -- grants, gifts from alumni, matching funds from the college and the graduate school, and any other sources that could be found. During my twelve years here (yes, it's really been that long!) the Department's budget has been increased only once, and has been subjected to proration twice. Because of growing responsibilities, inflating costs, new expenses brought by the new technology, and a growing student load, we have been forced to rely more and more upon our own resources and the generosity of alums and friends. With the increased pressures at the state level to upgrade education at the K-12 level, and the coming cutbacks at the national level, things can only get worse. For example, it is perfectly clear that funding will be reduced if not eliminated for the NEH, which has been a major source for us. For the next few years, at least, it is going to be necessary for colleges to rely more than in the past on the private sector. I would therefore like to close these "Notes" with a reminder that contributions may be made directly to the Department, or to the alumni association and designated for the History Department. At present, we are engaged in a long term project of raising enough funds to supplement an initial grant of $200,000 for an endowed chair, and we have a number of scholarship funds already established and needing further growth. If you are interested in helping with any of these, please call or write me. We are also willing to accept funds earmarked by the donor for any good purpose he or she may favor.
Information in the remainder of this Newsletter indicates that our faculty is a very busy one, and that our undergraduate and graduate programs are continuing to flourish. We trust that you will find news of interest inside, perhaps even concerning people that you remember.
As usual, I would like to issue a cordial invitation for you to drop in if you are ever in the neighborhood. Failing that, we would like to hear from you with information about your activities or advice for our programs. The final page of this Newsletter lists a variety of ways that we can be contacted.
Professor Betty Brandon edited, along with Virginia Bernhard, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Theda Perdue, and Elizabeth Turner, Hidden Histories of Women in the New South (University of Missouri Press, 1994). She chaired a session and commented at the Third Southern Conference on Women's History, Rice University, Houston, in June 1994.
Professor Richmond Brown taught a variety of courses on Latin American history, including Mexico, the Caribbean and a special topics course on Central America. He was an organizer and session chair of a public conference on "Cuba: Today and Tomorrow" held February 3, 1994 at Bernheim Hall, and co-sponsored by the University of South Alabama, Spring Hill College, the University of Mobile, and the Society Mobile-La Habana.
Brown presented a paper at the November 1993 meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Orlando entitled "Juan Fermín de Aycinena and the Origins of the Guatemalan Elite." He attended the American Historical Association meeting in San Francisco in January 1994, and the Latin American Studies Association meeting in Atlanta in March 1994. In April, Brown travelled to Lafayette, Louisiana, for the SECOLAS meeting, where he served as a panelist on a session on modern Central America.
Aided by a generous grant from the University of South Alabama Research Council, Brown spent the month of August 1994 in Guatemala City, continuing his research into Juan Fermín de Aycinena and the Aycinena family. In the meantime, he is revising an article for future publication in the Hispanic American Historical Review, entitled "Hispanic Capitalism in the Kingdom of Guatemala: The Rise of Juan Fermín de Aycinena, 1750-1796."
Professor Chen-Kuan Chuang reviewed the book Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China, edited by Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Shirokuaer, for the Journal of Asian and African Studies. In addition to teaching Asian Civilizations and History of Traditional and Modern China, Chuang continues his research on the liberal movement in nineteenth and twentieth-century China and is continuing work towards a book manuscript tentatively entitled Alabama's Connection with East Asia. In the spring of 1995 he will be offering a new course, "History of Modern Japan," with emphasis on the period since World War II.
Professor Charles W. Connell began teaching in the Department in the winter quarter of 1995 after three years as Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs. He will offer courses on Western civilization and ancient and early medieval Europe.
Professor Aaron Fogleman's book manuscript, Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, has been accepted for publication by the University of Pennsylvania Press. His article "Hernhutter Frauen auf dem Weg von Pennsylvania nach North Carolina: Das Reisejournal von Salome Meurer, 1766," appeared in the German journal Pietismus und Neuzeit in the spring of 1994, and an English version appeared in Pennsylvania History in the spring under the title "Women on the Trail in Colonial America: A Travel Journal of German Moravians Migrating from Pennsylvania to North Carolina in 1766."
Fogleman travelled to the meeting of the American Historical Association in San Francisco in January 1994 and delivered a paper on "German Immigrant Settlement and Mobility in Colonial America" and reviewed a book for the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.
Professor Larry Holmes is preparing a course on the history of education in the twentieth century in Russia, China, and the United States, to be taught jointly with Professor Elliot Lauderdale from USA's Personalized Study Program for Adults and Professor Joe Newman from the College of Education. His new book, Soviet Social History, 1917-1941, has just been published in Russian by Rostov State University Press. An article, "What Next? The Agenda for the Study of Soviet Education in the 1930s," has been accepted for publication by the journal East-West Education. Holmes translated an article by F.A. Fradkin, "The Banning of American Methods of Education in Soviet Russia," for East-West Education and has written for the same journal an obituary of Fradkin, who died in December 1993.
Holmes is in the final stages of completing a book manuscript with the title School No. 25, 1931-1937: An Essay on Stalinism, and has written a review essay of the book in Russian by E.D. Dneprov, The Fourth School Reform in Russia (Moscow, 1994), appearing in the 1994 issue of the Newsletter of the Institute for the Study of Russian Education.
He read a paper on the historiography of Soviet education in a session on "New Approaches to the History of Education" at the conference "Contemporary Central and East European, Russian and Eurasian Education: Common Legacies and the Struggle for Reform," New York, June 15, 1994. He attended the conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, November 1994.
Holmes has organized the meeting of the Southern Conference of Slavic Studies, which Mobile and the University of South Alabama will be hosting March 16-18, 1995. He expects a good turnout, and a well-balanced and stimulating program. The noted biographer of Stalin, Robert Tucker, will be the banquet speaker with a presentation, "Reflections on Soviet History." Professor Holmes would appreciate hearing from you if you would like to be on the mailing list for the conference or participate in it.
Professor W. Robert Houston taught the history of World War II from a biographical standpoint this last year, and is continuing his study of the British regimental system. He published a book review in History: Reviews of New Books, and has given several talks in a program sponsored by Auburn University and the Alabama Humanities Foundation.
Professor Leonard Macaluso is continuing his research on Antoine Christophe Saliceti and presented a paper to the meeting of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe in Huntsville, Alabama, on "Antoine Christophe Saliceti and the Loss of French Corsica." He published "Between Clan and Nation: Antoine Christophe Saliceti, 1789-1793" in the 1994 Proceedings of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe.
Professor Mel McKiven has finished all work on his book, Iron and Steel: Class, Race, and Community in Birmingham, Alabama 1870-1920 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995). The book will be out in the spring. McKiven served on the program committee of the Southern Historical Association, and along with Professors Thomason and Daniels has sponsored and led summer seminars at USA for public school teachers of Alabama history (see separate story below).
Professor Joseph A. Nigota returned to London in the summer of 1994 for a three-month research trip. He continued his study of the origins and development in the fifteenth century of the use by the English crown and legal establishment of the previous century's "anti-papal" statutes to curtail and control (eventually) the Church's independent jurisdiction. Nigota worked at the Public Record Office (Chancery Lane) and at the Guildhall Library, just a four-minute walk from his flat at the Barbican, where he used the archives of the Dean of the Chapter of St. Paul's. At the Public Record Office, besides the plea rolls of the Court of King's Bench, he was able to work with the long-forgotten (and covered with the dust and grime of the ages) film of writs and memoranda of that court. As a result of the research, Nigota reports that he continued to encounter a well-known phenomenon: confidently established theses and conclusions are destroyed by new discoveries. While in London, he attended the annual meeting of the Selden Society, the venerable association of English legal historians.
Nigota again in 1994 won the Phi Alpha Theta History Teacher of the Year Award.
Professor Maureen Ogle has finished her manuscript entitled All the Modern Conveniences: American Household Plumbing, 1840-1890 for Johns Hopkins University Press. The book is due out in late 1995 or early 1996.
She read a paper at the American Studies Association conference in Nashville in October 1994, and one at the American Historical Association meeting in San Francisco in January 1994.
Last spring, Professor Dan Rogers offered a new course on the Holocaust. Just after the class ended, he had the opportunity to increase his personal knowledge of the Holocaust by travelling to some of its most important remaining sites. Thanks to grants from the College of Arts and Sciences Support and Development Awards and the Holocaust Educational Foundation, Rogers was able to take a two-week trip in June 1994 to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Along the way, he and the forty American scholars and teachers in his group visited the very few remains of the Warsaw ghetto; the death camp at Majdanek, near Lublin in eastern Poland; the remnants of the Jewish ghetto of Krakow, where the film Schindler's List had recently been filmed; the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau near Krakow; the Jewish section of Prague; the transit ghetto and concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezˇn) near Prague; sites of Nazi terror in Berlin; and the concentration camps of Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen near Berlin. Rogers took over a hundred slides, increased his personal knowledge of how the Holocaust occurred, and refined his views thanks to the close company of forty other teachers of the subject. He feels the trip was one of the most important things he's ever done. Moreover, it kept him out of the country while everybody at home was watching Ford Broncos on the L.A. freeway.
Rogers' book manuscript on the rebirth of party politics in Germany after World War II was accepted in February 1994 by Macmillan, and will appear in early 1995 under the title Politics after Hitler: The Western Allies and the German Party System. An American edition will be published simultaneously by New York University Press. Rogers' review of a book on the pioneering work of a German Social Democrat after World War II appeared this past year in the Journal of Modern History.
Rogers delivered a paper at the annual international conference of the German Studies Association in Dallas, Texas, in October 1994. Entitled "The Cold War and the Founding of West German Television, 1950-1963," the paper formed part of a panel examining the role and effect of the media during the Cold War in Germany. Later that same month Rogers attended a conference on the Holocaust at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Not only was it a gathering of scholars on the subject from around the U.S. and the rest of the world, but the conferees had the pleasure of hearing a speech by Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate for peace in 1986 and survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1944-1945.
Rogers took on the job of Secretary-Treasurer of the Alabama Association of Historians after his election to the office at the February 1994 meeting in Tuscaloosa, and he has since been involved in organizational and planning work for that Association.
Professor Michael Thomason continues to offer his courses on Alabama history, the history of photography, and the history of Africa. He is in his tenth year as managing editor of the Gulf Coast Historical Review, and has recently completed editing the proceedings volume from last year's Gulf Coast History and Humanities conference on "The Gilded Age along the Gulf Coast."
Thomason is publishing "Commercial Photography in the Gilded Age in Mobile" in the Gulf Coast Historical Review (Fall 1994) and History of Photography (Winter 1995). He is working on a book on photographer William Hightower of Clayton, Alabama, who was active from the 1920s to the 1970s and left behind an important body of work.
This year Thomason serves as the chair of the selection committee for a new award sponsored by the Alabama Association of Historians. The award, which carries a cash prize of $500, will be presented to the outstanding history teacher in the public or private schools of Alabama from grades seven through twelve. He helped organize and run the second annual "Alabama History for Teachers" seminar at USA last summer, which brought fourth and ninth grade teachers to our department for a week-long series of presentations designed to enrich the teaching of our state's history to school children.
Thomason received two mini-grants to help the Museum of the City of Mobile with its African-American exhibit and the Uriah Art Council with its local history project.
Thomason continues to serve as a member of the Alabama Humanities Foundation Speakers Bureau, has reviewed books for the Auburn Arts and Humanities Center, has served on the executive committee of the Alabama Historical Association and on the board of the Museum of the City of Mobile. Last July he was a planner of and a scholar for the Alabama Humanities Foundation Super program on Africa at Birmingham-Southern College.
President Mike Mansfield graduated with a B.A. in history from Auburn University in 1986, specializing in southern history. Following graduation, Mansfield spent six years, three months and thirteen days as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy, "serving time" in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans. Prompted by the strong desire to further his education, Mike resigned his commission to pursue graduate studies. He arrived at South in the fall of 1993, and has received several awards for academic excellence, including the department's Stephanie B. Hardin award, and a citation from the Alabama Chapter of the Colonial Dames of America. Both awards were in recognition of essays related to his graduate thesis, "The Founding Fathers and the Contradiction of Slavery." A comparative study of the views of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison, Mike's work focuses on the paradox of the American Revolution: the existence of slavery in a new republic based on the concepts of human equality and liberty. Upon completion of his M.A., Mike plans to pursue a Ph.D. in history.
Vice-President Jireh Seow hails from Selangor, Malaysia. He attended Damansara Utama College in 1990-1991 and is now a senior at USA with a double major in history and economics. Jireh plans to attend Christian ministry school after completion of his undergraduate degree. He was a scholarship recipient from AHEPA, the Mobile chapter of a Hellenic cultural educational organization from which he received $1,000 towards studying in Greece. He has studied Latin and Greek, and his major interests are religious history and early Christianity. Jireh will graduate in the summer of 1995. He is also a member of Alpha Chi and Golden Key National Honor Societies.
Secretary-Treasurer Beau Doolittle is a 1988 graduate of Baker High School in Mobile. He is a junior at USA with a double major in history and communication, and he aspires to be a professional video producer (he already owns a video-production business). Originally from Baton Rouge, Beau is a sports enthusiast and is a member of the History Department softball team. He is distantly related to General James Doolittle of the famous Tokyo raid of the Army Air Corps in 1942.
Historian Margie E. Law is a native of El Paso, Texas, and a senior history major. After ending a career in private industry, she is now fulfilling a personal goal to complete her college education. She plans to pursue graduate work in Iberian studies and take advantage of her double majors, history and Spanish. Her special field of interest is the late colonial period. Margie was the recipient of a History Department scholarship for the outstanding junior student and of the Foreign Languages and Literature Department outstanding senior Spanish student for the 1993-1994 school year.
The chapter will have a formal initiation the third week in January 1995 in conjunction with the observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. Among other activities, the chapter will assist the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies meeting in February 1995 and the Southern Conference of Slavic Studies meetings in March 1995. We hope to send delegates to the state meeting of Phi Alpha Theta to be held in Auburn in March. Phi Alpha Theta will hold its annual book sale during the winter quarter in the Humanities courtyard.
Finally, we would like to commend Thekla Wilkinson for her two years of outstanding service as chapter president.
We thank Margie Law for this report
Michael Brown is practicing law in Jackson, Mississippi.
Tod Childs has served a stint in the Peace Corps in Ukraine.
Jeffrey Dunford, a foreign service officer in the U.S. State Department, is currently assigned to Washington, D.C., after a tour in Burma.
Rebecca Gaines received a full scholarship to attend law school at the University of Alabama.
First Lt. Robert Payne of the U.S. Air Force has been assigned to the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, to pursue a masters degree in operational analysis.
Angela Powell is in her second year of the M.A. program in history at Auburn University.
Donna Shaw has successfully completed her first semester in law school at Florida State University.
Steven Roland Baxley, BA
Rebecca A. Gaines, BA
William Smith Peck V, BA
Teresa Celeste Platt, BA
Donna Jane Shaw, BA
Laura Lee Thornburg, BA
Richard Muir Meikle, BA
Artemesia Frangela Stanberry, BA
Michael Jeffrey Turberville, BA
Debbie is married to Don Thomaston, and they and their children Missaha, Shanna, Amanda, and Bryan live in Eight Mile. Debbie reports that they are a sports-loving family who enjoy softball, soccer, and track.
Helga is married to Dan Filla, and they make their home in Mobile. Helga was born in Heidelberg, Germany, and grew up there, California, Guatemala, Alabama, and then back in Germany. As a result, she is fully bilingual in German and English (and she knows French to boot).
We were happy to see them come, but we were also sorry to lose long-time secretaries Ellen Williams and Jerry Dixon. Jerry left in early 1994 to take a position in the office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences; Ellen left in September to join the Registrar's office. We are grateful for their years of friendly and patient help, and wish them the very best.
Patsy Busby Dow, "Joseph N. Langan: Mobile's Racial Diplomat"
George H. Ewert, "Old Times Will Come Again: The Municipal Market System of Mobile, Alabama, 1888-1901"
John Foster Hays, "A History of Incendiary Fire in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 1931-1988"
Martha Jones Mercer, "British Brides, American Wives: The Immigration and Acculturation of War Brides in Mobile, Alabama, 1945-1993"
Rebecca A. Boone, "Claude de Seyssel and the Three Estates of France"
The SCSS is the largest, best funded, and most active of the AAASS affiliates. It now has almost 600 members, sound finances, and a newsletter published twice a year.
Professor Holmes describes the SCSS as "a great group, friendly, active, supportive. When I first started making my way in the profession, the SCSS meetings were a big help -- not only because it was a chance to present a paper, but also because my senior colleagues were so encouraging and helpful. That's one reason I was willing to take on the job of hosting the SCSS in Mobile."
On the evening of March 17, Robert C. Tucker will follow the banquet with the presentation "Reflections on Soviet History." Professor of history and political science at Princeton University, Tucker is best known for his first two volumes of a planned trilogy on Stalin: Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879-1929: A Study in History and Personality (1973) and Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 (1990). In the first, the author undertakes a thoughtful psychological analysis of Stalin's behavior as a child and an adult politician. The second volume is the first Western work to use Stalin's personal archive, now accessible at the former Central Party Archive in Moscow. Tucker served in the American embassy in Moscow during World War II and married a Soviet citizen; he was thus forced to remain in Moscow until Stalin's death in 1953 due to new rules promulgated in 1945 that prevented Soviet citizens from emigrating. Upon returning to the United States, Tucker earned a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1958.
For information on the program and on any of the other events planned, such as the banquet or the Saturday afternoon "Taste of Southern Cookin'," please call Professor Holmes in the History Department.
Attendance has generally been good, and there have been at least six meetings of the colloquium per academic year. Several have been extremely memorable. Professor Fogleman relates that "to me, the Columbus Day Colloquium of October 1992 (on the 500th anniversary) was our finest hour. Not only did we have the largest crowd of faculty and students (nearly 40), but we also had a variety of interdisciplinary presentations which covered a wide and appropriate range of topics and yet provided a nice fit. Joe Nigota (History) talked about the tradition of exploration in the merchant community of Genoa. Pam Long (Foreign Languages and Literature) presented a literary view of the diary and letters of Columbus. Lastly, Marvin Smith (Anthropology) discussed the effects of the Spanish encounter on the Coosa Indian population in North America. Many people were extremely impressed with Jim Swearingen's (English) presentation on poetic thinking last February. His material was the topic of discussion for days thereafter in many small groups. The food fight from last November was also memorable."
It isn't always easy getting commitments from faculty members to present their research as the topic of the colloquium, since many, according to Fogleman, think that they must prepare a highly refined presentation. "We must convince them that relaxed, informal presentations of works in progress are highly desirable. Also, articles, books, etc., that have already been published could be presented. To my knowledge this has not been done yet, but it could be. Perhaps someone would like to share with USA colleagues what they have presented already at a conference or in an article."
Professor Fogleman rates the colloquium a success so far, but notes there's still room for improvement. "To a significant degree, the colloquium does what we had hoped it would do from the beginning: it provides a relatively amicable forum for presentation of faculty research projects. It gives people a chance to present the results of their work to their colleagues, in the hopes that they will receive helpful criticism as they proceed. Conference presentations are not enough: they are too rigid, too crowded, and can be unfriendly. Here you have 1-1/2 hours of attention on your subject. It gives the presenters a chance to air their thoughts. You don't know what you believe sometimes until you talk to others about it. Also, the colloquium gives us some time to come together and find out what other people are doing and simply talk about some important issues in the humanities and social sciences."
As for the future, the colloquium has great potential, if we are willing to think big, says Fogleman. "Perhaps we could get humanities and social science scholars at Spring Hill College and the University of Mobile interested in participating. Perhaps we could meet on their turf occasionally. An historian from Spring Hill College attended our last meeting - an encouraging sign. Recently Larry Holmes mentioned that we ought to get together anytime someone has published a book or important article and discuss it. This would involve the attendees reading the piece before meeting, which would require a serious commitment on their part. I have participated in such groups on numerous occasions and found it highly stimulating. It can work, and it can work here, but the faculty, beginning with the History Department, has to really want this."
The program focuses especially on those areas where the teachers themselves have felt the need for improvement, and has therefore devoted more time to such issues as slavery and race relations.
Each participant is given a collection of slides, documents, and scholarly articles for classroom use, and discussions are held on the best uses for the materials and for the information acquired through the visits of prominent scholars who come to Mobile to teach individual sessions of the seminar. The groups also visit local historic sites and have the chance to consider how to link local history to state and national experiences.
Rogers had to recruit an editorial board of scholars, find another moderator to share the duties, draw up statements of purpose for the list, and write advertisements that would be sent over the Internet to allow those interested in German history to discover the list's very existence. Once he had done this, "H-GERMAN" was ready to go as the daily electronic forum for professional scholars and teachers of German history. It commenced service on April 21, 1994, and from its humble beginnings with a handful of members it has now grown to include 400 members from throughout the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Australia, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, and Denmark. Almost every day list members receive information dispatched by Rogers or his co-moderator, Norm Goda of the University of Maine at Presque Isle.
The information includes queries from H-GERMAN members on research or teaching matters, information about professional conferences, book reviews, and other general news of interest to scholars actively researching or teaching about Germany. Rogers comments: "The hard work of this project has been very satisfying, because almost every day I get to help people do their jobs better. I wouldn't have missed it for anything."