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HISTORY MATTERS: LOMBARDO IN THE WASHINGTON POST
In light of the first debate of the Democratic Party's primary elections for President, in June 2019, Assistant Professor of History at USA, Dr. Timothy Lombardo, wrote on June 30, 2019 in the Washington Post about Vice President Joseph Biden's role in moving the Democratic Party to a more moderate policy perspective in the 1970s, following the turmoil of the 1960s. This analysis draws on Dr. Lombardo's extensive work on politics from the 1970s and 1980s, typified by his 2018 book examining blue collar conservatism in Philadelphia, Blue Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia and Populist Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press). See Dr. Lombardo's story for the Post here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/30/why-joe-biden-should-answer-his-record-decades-ago/?utm_term=.cc88d5913a49
HISTORY MATTERS: MEOLA, MESSENGER PART OF PROTEST AGAINST HOLOCAUST MUSEUM STATEMENT
Dr. David Meola, Fanny and Bert Meisler Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, and Dr. David A. Messenger, Professor and Chair of the Department of History at USA, joined nearly 600 other scholars in criticizing the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's June 24, 2019 statement condemning the use of Holocaust analogies when discussing current events, as U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had done on June 17, 2019 when calling U.S. camps for detaining migrants along the southern U.S. border "concentration camps." The joint letter to the Holocaust Museum leadership urged the retraction of the Museum's statement, writing that such a statement "makes learning from the past almost impossible" and that "careful historical analysis and comparison" is indeed one of the roles that historians play in a lively, democratic society. Messenger recently participated in the Museum's 2019 Curt C. and Else Silberman Seminar on Migration and Displacement in the Holocaust. The full text of the letter to the Museum leadership is posted on the website of the New York Review of Books, here: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/01/an-open-letter-to-the-director-of-the-holocaust-memorial-museum/
HISTORY STUDENTS SHARE RESEARCH, WIN AWARD
On May 1, 2019, students from Dr. Meola's History of the Holocaust course (HY 347) presented their final projects at Congregation Ahavas Chesed for the Mobile Jewish community's annual Yom Ha'Shoah commemoration (Holocaust Remembrance Day). Students formed into nine groups, each group chose a central theme, and then each student researched a derivative subject that contributed to the overall project. Groups then presented their projects before the ceremony and stayed to engage and interact with the public—to much acclaim from members of the community. Candace Pickering, a Secondary Education and History double major, as well as an aspiring teacher, presented a summary of her research at the ceremony. Ms. Pickering was awarded the inaugural Gulf Coast Center for Holocaust and Human Rights Education award for Holocaust research by a University student. Her paper was entitled “Was Nazism a Cult?” and it drew on the extensive collections at USA Marx Library in the Agnes Tennenbaum Collection. Another student, Courtney Tittle, who is a History major and President of the USA History Society (formerly History Club), was invited to the Springhill Avenue Temple to present her research, which looked at Western media portrayals of various genocides. Her presentation was well-received by the community. Additionally, for many students this event was the first time they had visited a synagogue. Dr. Meola believes that such visits are an important opportunity to incorporate more community engagement among his students—both in the Department of History and in the new Jewish & Holocaust Studies minor.
MESSENGER OFF TO DC
Dr. David Messenger has been selected as one of twenty faculty members in the United States and Canada to participate in the 2019 Curt C. and Else Silberman Seminar for Faculty at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The seminar is entitled Displacement, Migration, and the Holocaust and will be held for two weeks in June, 2019. Dr. Messenger’s participation will enhance his teaching of his University of South Alabama class on refugees, race and migration in Europe.
URBAN WINS MAJOR USA GRANT AND AHA GRANT
Dr. Kelly Urban has won a $5000 Faculty Development Council Grant from the University of South Alabama for research in Cuba and Washington, D.C. related to her book project, Politicosis: Tuberculosis, Public Health, and Politics in Cuba, 1925—1970. This is one of the most prestigious awards for research given here at USA. She also has won the very competitive Albert J. Beveridge Research Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere from the American Historical Association. Congratulations!
HOT OFF THE PRESS!
In fall 2018, books by members of our faculty are rolling off the presses:
Congratulations to Mara Kozelsky for her book, Crimea in War and Transformation, and Tim Lombardo for his book, Blue Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia and Populist Politics
Historians Make Great Novelists Too! Check out Harry Miller's first novel, Southern Rain: A Novel of Seventeenth Century China
LOMBARDO IN PRINT AND TV
Timothy Lombardo recently contributed to the "Made by History" perspectives column in the Washington Post. His piece, "Why White Blue-Collar Voters Love President Trump" appeared on September 16, 2018.
Timothy Lombardo was interviewed by C-SPAN at the April 2018 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Dr. Lombardo discussed former Philadelphia mayor, Frank Rizzo, the concerns of white-working class voters in the 1970s, and made comparisons to today's political climate. He also discussed his forthcoming book, Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia and Populist Politics to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The full interview as it aired on C-SPAN can be found here.
CAGE WINS 2018 NEH GRANT
Claire Cage has been offered a Summer Stipends award by the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct research in France over the summer of 2018 for a new book on the history of forensic science. The NEH Program is a very competitive national grant and all Summer Stipends applications are evaluated by peer review panels and by the National Council on the Humanities. This year NEH received almost eight hundred applications and only eight percent were funded. Congratulations Dr. Cage!
Multimedia
2014 Howard F. Mahan Lecture - Patrick J. Maney
“Bill Clinton and the New Gilded Age”
Dr. Patrick J. Maney, Professor of History at Boston College, delivered a lecture
on former President Bill Clinton and his administration at the 2014 University of
South Alabama Howard F. Mahan Lecture.
Maney, a political historian, has authored numerous books, including The Roosevelt Presence: The Life and Legacy of FDR and Young Bob: A Biography of Robert M. La Follette, Jr., 1895-1953. The latter book received honorable mention as runner-up for the Lyndon Baines Johnson
Library and Museum’s D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on the U.S. Congress in
the 20th century published from 1976 to 1978.
Mahan Lecture 2014--Patrick J. Maney, Bill Clinton and the New Gilded Age
from Innovation in Learning Center on Vimeo.
2013 Stallworth Lecture - Dr. Margaret Humphreys
"The South's Secret Weapons: Disease, Environment and the Civil War"
Dr. Margaret Humphreys, a Ph.D. and M.D., teaches the history of medicine, public
health and biology at Duke University, where she also edits the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. In addition, she has presented lectures at numerous universities and is the recipient
of a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship from the American Council of Learned
Societies for tenure at the National Humanities Center.
She is the author of Yellow Fever and the South, and Malaria: Poverty, Race and Public Health in the United States. Both books explore the tropical disease environment of the American South, and its
role in the national public health effort. She is also the author of Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in American Civil War followed by Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War published in 2013. Both books explore the impact of disease and medical care on troops
during the war.
A video file for the lecture is located below.
Stallworth Lecture 2013 from History Department on Vimeo.
2013 Howard F. Mahan Lecture - Dr. Wendy Goldman
“Life on the Home Front: The Soviet Experience in World War II”
Dr. Wendy Goldman, Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, delivered the
2013 University of South Alabama Howard F. Mahan Lecture, “Life on the Home Front:
The Soviet Experience in World War II."
Goldman is a political and social historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. She has
authored numerous award-winning books including Inventing The Enemy, which was awarded Honorable Mention for the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History
in 2012. This award is given for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern
Europe or Eurasia in the field of history.
2012 Stallworth Lecture - Dr. Stephanie McCurry
“The Political Status of Women and the Laws of War in the American Civil .”
The University of South Alabama Department of History presented the Sixth Annual N.
Jack Stallworth Lecture featuring Dr. Stephanie McCurry, undergraduate chair and professor
in the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania. The lecture was entitled
“The Political Status of Women and the Laws of War in the American Civil War."
A video file for the lecture is located below.
2012 Stallworth Lecture from History Department on Vimeo.
2012 Mahan Lecture - Dr. Gary Gerstle
“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free:
The Alabama Immigration Law in Historical Perspective.”
Dr. Gary Gerstle, the James G. Stahlman Professor of American History and professor
of political science at Vanderbilt University, was the guest lecturer for the 2012
University of South Alabama Howard F. Mahan Lecture Series. Dr. Gerstle's lecture
was entitled, “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Huddled Masses Yearning to
Breathe Free: The Alabama Immigration Law in Historical Perspective.”
A video file for the lecture is located below.
2012 Howard F. Mahan Lecture from Isabel Machado on Vimeo.
2011 Stallworth Lecture - Dr. Jacquelyn D. Hall
“Longer, Broader, Deeper: Rethinking the Civil Rights Movement and the Resistance
to It”
Dr. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, the Julia Cherry Spruill Professor of History at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was the guest lecturer for the 2011 University of
South Alabama N. Jack Stallworth Lecture Series. Dr. Hall's Lecture was entitled “Longer,
Broader, Deeper: Rethinking the Civil Rights Movement and the Resistance to It."
A video file for the lecture is located below.
2011 N. Jack Stallworth Lecture from Isabel Machado on Vimeo.
2011 Mahan Lecture - Dr. Mary Roldan
Dr. Mary Roldan, Dorothy Epstein Professor of Latin American History at Hunter College,
City University of New York, was the lecturer for the 2011 University of South Alabama
Howard F. Mahan Lecture Series. Roldan presented “Mobilizing the Airwaves: Radio,
Violence, and Persuasion in Colombia, 1944-1962.”
A video file for the lecture is located below.
2011 Howard F. Mahan Lecture from USA History Department on Vimeo.
2010 Stallworth lecture - Dr. James Cobb
The University of South Alabama Department of History hosted the 4th Annual N. Jack
Stallworth Lecture on October 28, 2010, featuring Dr. James Cobb, B. Phinizy Spalding
Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of History at the University of
Georgia. Cobb spoke on “The New American: The South and the Nation Since World War
II.”
A video file for the lecture is located below.
2010 Stallworth Lecture from USA History Department on Vimeo.
2010 Mahan Lecture - Dr. Susan M. Reverby
In 2010, the University of South Alabama department of history in the College of Arts
and Sciences hosted the 10th Annual Howard F. Mahan Lecture featuring Dr. Susan M.
Reverby, the Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor
of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College.
A video file for the lecture is located below.
2010 Mahan symposium from USA History Department on Vimeo.
2009 Stallworth lecture - Dr. Anthony J. Badger
In September 2009, the University of South Alabama Department of History hosted its
Third Annual N. Jack Stallworth lecture in Southern History. Anthony J. Badger, Paul
Mellon Professor of American History and Master of Clare College at the University
of Cambridge, spoke on "The New Deal and the Creation of the Modern South."
2007 Mahan Symposium
In 2007, the Department of History, in collaboration with the Journal of American
History, hosted its second Mahan Symposium, named for Howard Mahan, the founding chair
of the department. Scholars from across the nation came to Mobile to participate in
lectures and panels to reexamine the history of the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of
one of the country's deadliest natural disasters. The December 2007 Journal of American History published a series of papers resulting from the symposium.
At the conclusion of the four-day event, all panelists joined in a final roundtable
discussion:
2007 Howard F. Mahan symposium from USA History Department on Vimeo.
2006 Mahan Lecture - Dr. William Martin
On February 9, 2006, William Martin, the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Senior Fellow in
Religion and Public Policy at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public
Policy, delivered "Secular State, Religious People -- The American Model." Martin's
remarks grew out of his many years of research and writing on American evangelicalism
and the Religious Right.