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Provost Teaching Fellowships Awarded to Three RCI Faculty!!!

Jesse SpohnholzJesse Spohnholz (RCI Director), Clif Stratton (RCI Asst. Director) and Katy Fry (RCI Curriculum Coordinator) received Provost Office Teaching Fellowships for the coming academic year. A joint application was submitted as part of the Provost’s Office efforts to promote education innovation at WSU.

 

 

Katy FryFry will start the work this Fall by redesigning RCI lesson templates, with revised versions that maximize the opportunities offered in Pullman by the new learning spaces and digital tools offered by the Digital Classroom Building. Stratton and Fry will pilot draft lessons in Spring 2018. Fry will then offer training to all ROOTS (RCI) faculty.

 

 

Clif StrattonStratton will conduct an assessment of learning outcomes to identify areas where new technologies are or are not having measurable effects on student learning. As Director, Spohnholz will be supervising the project. He plans to take talented WSU students around the state in a series of organized events aimed a wider public that will use WSU students to make the case for how critical creative and innovative history learning is for the future of our state, nation, and world.

 

PhD candidate, Greg Atkins’ entry published by ABC-CLIO

ABC-CLIO published Atkins’ entry on Josiah Strong in their encyclopedia, Reforming America: A Thematic Encyclopedia and Document Collection of the Progressive Era.  The entire article can be read here.  Congratulations, Greg!

Dr. Jeffrey Johnson edited the two-volume encyclopedia and took his PhD from WSU.

“Reforming America presents a detailed look at the individuals, themes, and moments that shaped this important Progressive Era in American history, this valuable reference spans 25 years of reform and provides multidisciplinary insights into the period.”

 

 

 

“Legacies of the Manhattan Project at 75 Years” call for papers

The Hanford History Project and Washington State University Press are soliciting papers for a collection of essays on the March 2017 conference theme, “Legacies of the Manhattan Project at 75 Years.”  The collection is NOT a “conference proceedings” but rather an effort to gather recent, cutting-edge research that reflects current scholarship on any aspect of the Manhattan Project/Cold War inheritance. We would be delighted to consider for inclusion any work you are presently engaged in pertaining to that theme. See the flyer here for submission information and deadline.

Well over 100 people registered and participated in the March conference. There were outstanding panel discussions, informative updates regarding the evolution of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, and a round-table discussion that concluded the formal program.  The Park’s Hanford unit was visited as well as its crown jewel, B Reactor.

The conference in March also underscored the need to continue to expand the scope of historical inquiry and interpretation, to encompass those stories that have yet to garner the attention they deserve: the stories of often-overlooked groups (African-American and domestic laborers, for instance) without whose efforts the Manhattan Project would have remained a thing of whimsy, a pipe-dream; the stories of the Native American tribes-people and the pre-1943 farming families who were peremptorily uprooted, abruptly divorced from their traditions and ways of life, in order to make way for the government’s massive undertaking; the stories of the tragic human and environmental impacts that were the unintended consequences of an arms race conducted with a war-time sense of urgency; and, more positively, the stories of scientific and technological innovation and advancement developed to remedy those consequences.

The Hanford History Project will be hosting another conference at a date yet to be determined (spring or fall 2019).  A series of events is also planned for Fall 2017…more information forthcoming.

World Politics & Statecraft Fellowship for PhD research available

The Smith Richardson Foundation is pleased to announce its annual World Politics & Statecraft Fellowship competition to support Ph.D. dissertation research on American foreign policy, international relations, international security, strategic studies, area studies, and diplomatic and military history.

The purpose of the program is to strengthen the U.S. community of young scholars and researchers conducting policy analysis in these fields by supporting the research and writing of policy-relevant dissertations through funding of field work, archival research, and language training.

The Foundation will award up to twenty grants of $7,500 each.

The deadline is October 20, 2017.

For further information, please visit: https://www.srf.org/programs/international-security-foreign-policy/world-politics-statecraft-fellowship/.

Please submit your application to worldpolitics@srf.org do not mail a hard copy.

Smith Richardson Foundation
60 Jesup Road
Westport, CT 06880

New RCI Teaching Postdoc, George Njung, to join faculty in Fall 2017

George Njung will begin serving as an RCI Teaching Postdoc in Fall 2017. Dr. Njung earned his PhD in History in 2016 from the University of Michigan, with a dissertation titled “Soldiers of their Own: Honor, Violence, Resistance, and Conscription in Colonial Cameroon during the First World War.” He has experience teaching college courses on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the History of Africa to 1850, and The Holocaust.

 

PhD Candidate, Matthias Baudinet, receives Foley Grad Student Fellowship

Congratulations go out to Matthias Baudinet upon his recent award of a fellowship from the Thomas S. Foley Institute.  The notice was sent by Richard Elgar of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service “thanks to the generosity of Alice O. Rice.”

The Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service was established at Washington State University in 1995 to honor Speaker Foley’s mor than 30 years of public service to both state and nation as the 57th Speaker of the House of Representatives.

“In a cynical age, I still believe that we must summon people to a vision of public service. For, in the end, this ethic determines more than anything else whether we will have citizens and leaders of honor, judgment, wisdom, and heart. These are the qualities this institute will nurture and advance, helping this nation become what it has always been destined to be, the best hope of a free people to live in an open and just society.”

—The Honorable Thomas S. Foley

See more information on the Thomas S. Foley Institute here.

Dr. Matthew Unangst’s article to be published in CEH Journal

Matthew Unangst’s article, tentatively titled “Men of Science and of Action: The Celebrity of Explorers and German National Identity, 1870-1890,” has been accepted for publication in Central European History.

Central European History is a peer-reviewed academic journal on history published quarterly by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association.  It covers all aspects of central European history from the Middle Ages to present day.  It was established in 1968 and is edited by Andrew I. Port and Julia Torrie.

 

Dr. Robert McCoy receives CDSC 2017 Summer Fellowship

Robert McCoyThe Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation (CDSC) announced the 2017 Summer Fellows. Dr. Robert McCoy is one of two fellowship recipients.  He will begin a new public history project on the Spokane River system as a site of contested cultural narratives about the Columbia Plateau region.

The CDSC facilitates and sustains digital scholarship, research and teaching at WSU.  Their mission is to promote socially engaged and ethically minded uses of technology as part of long-term partnerships across disciplines and communities.

 

World History Assoc Phi Alpha Theta award application deadline is June 1

The deadline for another student award, the Phi Alpha Theta Student Paper Prize, is approaching.  This award includes a $500 prize, a one-year membership to the WHA, a letter and a certificate from our office.

With less than a month before the June 1, 2017 deadline, now is the perfect time to prepare for the Phi Alpha Theta prize.  It is open to undergraduate as well as graduate students and submissions should be sent directly to the committee chair, Professor Jon Davidann.  For more information about this award, please click here. 

Should you have specific questions about these award opportunities, feel free to contact Kerry Vieira of the WHA at 617-373-6818, fax 617-373-2661.

Casey McNicholas, History and Political Science major, chosen to carry CAS gonfalon

Casey McNicholas, a U. S. Army officer and senior in history and political science, has been selected to carry the College of Arts and Sciences gonfalon at the 2017 commencement ceremony Saturday, May 6.  Casey is a 4.0 GPA student with a minor in military science in addition to his double major.  He will graduate as a commissioned U. S. Army second lieutenant.

Congratulations, Casey!

See the complete article here.