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Professor Sue Peabody’s sabbatical update

A French translation of Meyer Distinguished Professor in History Sue Peabody’s multi-prize-winning book, Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets and Lies in France’s Indian Ocean Colonies (Oxford UP, 2017) has just been published as Les enfants de Madeleine: Famille, liberté, secrets et mensonges dans les colonies françaises de l’océan indien, translated and adapted by Pierre H. Boulle (Paris: Karthala, 2019). Professor Peabody is currently on sabbatical and will attend the opening of the exhibit she has co-curated at the Musée historique de Villèle, in Réunion island, a French state near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The exhibit, “L’histoire étrange de Furcy” (The Strange Story of Furcy), is based on her book, and will be open December 10, 2019-April 26, 2020.

Saltanat Mukatayeva returns home

Over the past two months, the WSU Department of History has enjoyed hosting Saltanat Mukatayeva, a doctoral student from the Department of Religious and Cultural Studies at al-Farabi Kazakh National University. Working with Dr. Charles Weller as her foreign advisor, along with support from Dr. Karen Phoenix and Dr. Brenna Miller, Saltanat conducted research and offered a public lecture on “The Heritage of (the Kazakh Reformer) Abai Kunanbaev (1845-1904) in Soviet & Post-Soviet Historiography.”

We wish her success& safe travels as she returns to Almaty to continue her studies!”

Ray Sun and Zili Chang on “Papers, Ships, and Tweets: American Policy toward European Jews in the 1930s and its Memory in Contemporary Battles over Refugees”

Raymond Sun, an associate professor in the Department of History and a specialist in the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, will show the historical parallels and roots of current official attempts to restrict the number of refugees admitted to the United States by presenting an overview of the United States’ unwelcoming policy and hostile public opinion toward German and Austrian Jews seeking safe haven between 1933 and 1939.  Zili Chang, a senior History major, will present research from her Honors thesis that examines the current memory and political usage via social media of the infamous case of the passenger liner St. Louis, whose +900 Jewish refugees were not allowed to disembark in Cuba or the United States and were forced to return to Europe, where over 250 were eventually murdered in the Holocaust. Verification of attendance available.

Click here to RSVP!

Menard to YVC!

J. T. Menard, who graduated with his MA this Spring under the supervision of Rob McCoy, has accepted a full-time faculty position in the history department at Yakima Valley College. This is a tenure track position, located at YVC’s satellite campus in Grandview, WA.

Congratulations J.T.!

Welcome Dr. Overtoom and congratulations!

The department would like to welcome Clinical Assistant Professor in Ancient History, Dr. Nikolaus Overtoom! Joining us from the University of New Mexico, Dr. Overtoom will be teaching courses in early world history and ancient Greece.

To kick off his welcome party we are excited to celebrate the publishing of his latest article in the Journal of Ancient History: “The Power-Transition Crisis of the 160s – 130s BCE and the Formation of the Parthian Empire.”

Welcome Dr. Overtoom AND congratulations!

Washington State University