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University of South Alabama Department of History News

Department Newsletter Fall 2024

Newsletter Archives

 

July 2026 Oral History in Mobile: Student Research Funded by the David Mathews Center 

On July 9, 2026, students from the University of South Alabama College of Arts and Sciences and University of South Alabama College of Education and Professional Studies presented original poetry and history related to the history of urban renewal in Mobile’s traditionally Black neighborhoods from 1949 through 1974. The event took place at the Historic Avenue Cultural Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. in Mobile.

(From left to right) Rylyn Spradlin (elementary education), Nakeria Woods (history) and Amber Burroughs (anthropology) conducted archival research and oral history interviews of people who lived in the historic Campground neighborhood of Mobile, which was a target of urban renewal.

This summer internship has been funded for the past seven years by the David Mathews Center for Civic Life in Montevallo, AL, and has also been secured for next summer. It is managed by Dr. David Messenger, chair of the Department of History and Dr. Ryan Morini, historian with the Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library in the Marx Library.

July 9 2026 Historic Avenue Cultural Center

 

Messenger Publishes Fourth Book 

January 2026: Professor David Mesenger, Chiar of the Department of HIsotry, just published his fourth solo-authored monograph on Spanish history. The book is entitled Civilian Bombing and Civil Defence in the Spanish Civil War: Bombs Along the Mediterrnean and is published as part of Palgrave Macmillan's Pivot series for shorter books. This book explores the impact of the bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War. The Civil War has long been recognized as bringing together the political, social and other elements key to understanding the 1930s in Europe and later, the Second World War. It was a conflict involving fascism, communism, anarchism and other movements of the day, and led to a dictatorship that kept Spain separate from the rest of Europe until the late 1970s. Recent scholarship on the Civil War has focused on the deaths of 200,000 civilians in the conflict, largely as a result of executions, a number that equals and perhaps surpasses the number of those killed in battle. This effectively recasts the conflict as one that is better thought of as a systematic attack against civilians, rather than as a traditional military conflict. What is missing from this new understanding of the Civil War is an analysis of the impact of bombing. Approximately 15, 000 Spanish civilians were killed by bombing of cities and towns across Spain. The infamous bombing of civilians in the Basque town of Guernica is widely known but, in reality, the bombardment of civilians was a regular feature of the conflict, including in Madrid, Alicante and Barcelona. Messenger has one chapter on the civil defence program in each city, as well as an overview of the bombings as a whole and an additional chapter on contemporary commemoration of the bombings.

 

Africatown Mobile County Training School Heritage Space and the Department of History

On September 24, 2025 the Mobile County Training School (MCTS) in Africatown opened its Hertage Space. This space is a miniature museum exhibit that celebrates the history of the school as a high school for African Americans in the community, which it was from 1910-1970; since 1970 it has and continues to be a middle school in the Mobile County Public School System. Panels outline the history of the school, from its origins as a "Rosenwald" School managed by Booker T. Washington and Julus Rosenwald, who built thousands of schools for African Americans across the south, to its role as a place teaching leadership and community when its days as a high school came to an end. In Spring 2025, Dr. Messenger's HY 431/531 class, Studies in US History, worked on the project by learning about the history of Rosenewald Schools and the contribution of MCTS to the city, as well as cataloguing donated items from Alumni that make up the bulk of the collection on display now. At the end of the exhibit, the Department of History is recognized for its work- congratulations MCTS! 

MCTS Display Marker

June 2025: David Mathews Center Jean O'Connor Snyder Internship Program 

For the fifth year running, the Department of History, along with the McCall Library and Archives, holds a Jean O'Connor Snyder Internship Grant from the David Mathews Center based in Montevallo, AL, meant to encourage civic engagement and community outreach in the communities students live in. Our grant is focused on collecting and disseminating oral histories from Mobile's Down the Bay neighborhood, a once vibrant African American community largely destroyed by urban renewal and the construction of the Interstate 10 highway. We have seven students participating this summer as interns. In June, directors of the David Mathews Center visited us in Mobile to discuss the project. 

IN the foreground, Chauntina Whittle (David Mathews Center McKenzie Fellow), Ayana Thompson (University of South Alabama intern), Dr. David Messenger, Eric Ware (University of South Alabama intern), Dr. Ryan Morini (McCall Library, University of South Alabama ), Chris Gibson (United Mobile and David Mathews Center board member), Scotty Kirkland (David Mathews Center Executive Director), Mike Bunn (Director of Historic Blakeley State Park), Lauren Lockhart (David Mathews Center Education Manager) 

JOIP 2025

Spring 2025 HY 290 Students in Dr. Deidra Dees Class " Introduction to Native American Studies" write an article in The Vanguard https://jagmedia.org/the-vanguard/

 

McKiven publishes new book 

April 2025. Congratulations to Dr. Henry (Mel) McKiven, who published his second book, The Consequences of Confederate Citizenship: The Civil War Correspondence of Alabama's Pickens Family with LSU Press. The book is a collection of letters between family members in the Army of Northern Virginia and those in Greene County Alabama, with introductions and commentary by Dr. McKiven throughout. Dr. McKiven was recognized for this achievement by being promoted to full professor, effective August 2025! Herer is the link to the book here:https://lsupress.org/9780807183670/the-consequences-of-confederate-citizenship/#:~:text=Expertly%20edited%2C%20annotated%2C%20and%20contextualized,and%20despondency%20brought%20on%20by

History Department well represented at South Alabama Regional History Day

In February 2025, the Mobile County Public School System (MCPSS) hosted the South Alabama Regional History Day with over 300 participants competing to take their project to the state competition in Montgomery and, ultimately, to Washington, DC for the national competition. History Day is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and in Alabama, by the Alabama Humanities Alliance. Drs. David Messenger, Michele Strong and Rebecca Williams all served as judges, as did adjunct faculty member Bill Barton and graduate students Jon Gutknecht and Liam Jones. Below is a photo of Drs. Williams and Messenger with Tyler Macon of Davidson High School, who won in the senior category for individual documentary film, and went on to win the state-wide award as well!  

Williams, Messenger, Macon

 

Urban Wins Another Grant

June 2024 Dr. Kelly Urban has been awarded a Faculty Development Council Grant of $5000 from the  University of South Alabama's Office of Research and Economic Development. She will use this grant to work on researching her second books on tropical medicine in Cuba from 1930 to the present. This is her seventh grant from the University for her research, and her second from the Faculty Council. 

Congratulations, Dr. Urban!

Miller publishes second novel

June 2024. Dr. Harry Miller has published his second novel, Meet Me at the RASCAL, with Asterism Press. It is an over-the-top reworking of a seventeenth-century Chinese account of a despicable family, transplanted into contemporary and near-future Baltimore. Dr. Miller used both his expertise in Chinese history in finding and working with the original manuscript, as well as his creativity and enthusiasm in writing the book set in his hometown of Baltimore, MD.! Congratulations, Dr. Miller! Here's the book here: https://asterismbooks.com/product/meet-me-at-the-rascal-harry-miller

Urban Publishes First Book

March 2023 Congratulations to University of South Alabama Department of History assistant professor Dr. Kelly Urban, whose first book, Radical Prescription: Citizenship and the Politics of Tuberculosis in Twentieth-Century Cuba, has been published by the University of North Carolina Press. Click here for more information: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469673080/radical-prescription/

Meola Publishes First Book

March 2023 Congratulations to University of South Alabama Department of History associate professor Dr. David Meola, whose first book, We Will Never Yield: Jews, the German Press and the Fight for Inclusion in the 1840s, has been published by Indiana University Press. Click here for more information:  https://iupress.org/9780253065223/we-will-never-yield/

Cage Publishes New Book

September 2022 Congratulations to University of South Alabama Department of History professor Dr. Claire Cage, whose second book, The Science of Proof: Forensic Medicine in Modern France, has been published by Cambridge University Press.
Click here for more information: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/science-of-proof/769EFA62E2C8A00D2342299AB9BCA66A

Recent History Department Faculty Publications