{"id":2294,"date":"2021-03-16T14:23:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T21:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/history-newsletter\/?page_id=2294"},"modified":"2025-07-01T14:41:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T21:41:41","slug":"2021-letter-from-the-chair-dr-matthew-sutton","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/history-newsletter\/2021-letter-from-the-chair-dr-matthew-sutton\/","title":{"rendered":"2021, Letter from the Chair, Matthew Sutton"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\r\n\t\tLetter from the Chair\t<\/h1>\r\n\t\t<\/header>\r\n\n\n
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\"Matthew<\/p>\n

Dear Alumni & Friends of History at WSU:<\/small><\/strong><\/h2>\n

No football games, no crammed lecture halls, and no discussion groups over coffee on campus. This has been a year unlike any other for the Department of History. Yet despite the many challenges we are all facing, faculty and students have much to celebrate.<\/p>\n

Together we all learned how to navigate the latest technology and to make the most of new opportunities as our classes moved online this year. For some of us who had never taught online (like me), the experience was positive in many ways, helping us rethink the work we do in the classroom and how to better reach our tech-savvy students. The pandemic forced us to reconsider not just how we teach but what we teach. For example, I added a new segment on pandemics, masking, and the Spanish Flu to my freshman introduction to American history course. In our classes we wrestled with everything from shifting democracy in ancient Greece to the ongoing civil rights movements to the 2020 presidential election. While we missed our in-person discussions, we enjoyed exploring the past together in virtual spaces.<\/p>\n

One of our most exciting current research projects is being led by Ray Sun and a team of students. Called \u201cFallen Cougs Project,\u201d the group is diving into the archives, poring over old newspapers, and studying military records to learn the fate of approximately 200 WSU students who gave their lives for their country during World War II. Their stories will be available to the WSU community and the general public soon.<\/p>\n

We are pleased to welcome to the department Alan Malfavon, who will begin teaching this fall as an assistant professor of history. He graduated from the University of California, Riverside, this spring. His research explores the lives of Afro-Mexicans who lived in the Port-City of Veracruz and its hinterland, known as Sotavento (Leeward), during the late 18th and early 19th century. He resituates Mexico\u2019s socio-political, cultural, and economic networks with the Atlantic World and the Greater Caribbean and dissects and problematizes those networks by centering the Black and Afro-Mexican experience. His work contributes to ongoing interdisciplinary debates about sociopolitical representation of Afro-Mexicans, whose historical and contemporary presence in Mexican society remains deeply contested. He will teach courses for us on race and slavery in the Americas, the history of Mexico, and, our freshman course, Roots of Contemporary Issues.<\/p>\n

Faculty continue to rack up honors and awards for teaching, research, and service. Tracey Hanshew won the College of Arts and Sciences Early Career Achievement Award for career-track faculty. This award recognizes faculty who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in teaching, scholarship, and creative and\/or service activity early in their professional career. Linda Heidenreich won the WSU Bayard Rustin LGBTQ+ Excellence Award. This award recognizes an individual who is an advocate for LGBTQ+ communities of color and activism. Jesse Spohnholz won the WSU Office of Research Award for Creative Activity, Research, and Scholarship for his long list of award-winning publications and substantial international grants. Aaron Whelchel won the WSU Global Campus Excellence in Online Teaching Award. Jeff Sanders and Laurie Mercier each won research grants from WSU\u2019s Center for the Arts and Humanities.<\/p>\n

Once again, faculty published important and pioneering books that will shape their fields moving forward. Linda Heidenreich published Nepantla Squared: Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Times of Global Shift<\/em> with the University of Nebraska Press. Jeffrey Sanders published Razing Kids: Youth, Environment, and the Postwar American West <\/em>with Cambridge University Press. Shawna Herzog published\u00a0Negotiating Abolition: The Antislavery Project in the British Straits Settlements, 1786-1843<\/em> with Bloomsbury Press. Eugene Smelyansky published\u00a0Heresy and Citizenship: Persecution of Heresy in Late Medieval German Cities<\/i>\u00a0with Routledge<\/span>. Most recently, Puck Brecher published Japan\u2019s Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930<\/em> with Brill.<\/p>\n

This year we also celebrated the publication of a new book series. Tackling some of the world\u2019s most pressing issues from energy supply to mass migration and public health, five current and former WSU faculty each published a volume in the Roots of Contemporary Issues academic series, released by Oxford University Press. The series is coedited by Jesse Spohnholz and Clif Stratton, and includes individual volumes by Spohnholz, Stratton, Karen Phoenix, Ken Faunce, and Sean Wempe. The books reflect the thematic structure and successful teaching approach of the\u00a0Roots of Contemporary Issues program\u00a0(RCI) and introduce WSU\u2019s pioneering teaching approach to educators and students around the country.<\/p>\n

Faculty have also published and\/or contributed to important collections of essays. R. Charles\u00a0Weller\u00a0co-edited and contributed chapters to\u00a0Reason, Revelation and Law in Islamic and Western Theory and History, <\/em>published with Palgrave Macmillan. Bob Bauman and Robert Franklin celebrated the publication of their co-edited Echoes of Exclusion and Resistance: Voices from the Hanford<\/em> Region<\/em> published by WSU Press.\u00a0Noriko Kawamura published \u201cNaval Powers in the Pacific at the Crossroads,\u201d in Beyond Versailles: The 1919 Moment and a New Order in East Asia<\/em>. Sue Peabody published \u201cSlaves as Witnesses, Slaves as Evidence: French and British Prosecution of the Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean,\u201d in Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World: \u201cThe King is Listening.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Faculty have also been publishing articles in academic journals based on their latest research. Andra Chastain published \u201cRethinking Basic Infrastructure: French Aid and Metro Development in Postwar Latin America\u201d in Comparativ<\/em>, and \u201c\u2018A Shameful and Uncivilized Spectacle\u2019: Taxibuses, Students, and the Conflicted Road to Deregulation in Pinochet\u2019s Chile, 1975\u20131978\u201d in the\u00a0Journal of Transport History<\/em>. Tracey Hanshew published \u201c\u2018Here she comes wearin\u2019 them britches!\u2019 Saddles, Riding Skirts, and Social Reform in the Turn-of-the-Century Rural West\u201d in Montana: The Magazine of Western History<\/em>. JoAnn LoSavio published\u00a0\u201cBurma in the Southeast Asia Peninsula Games, 1950-1970: Buddhism, Bodhisattvas, Decolonization, and Nation Making through Sport\u201d in the International Journal of the History of Sport<\/em>. Nikolaus Overtoom published \u201cThe Parthians\u2019 Failed Vassalage of Syria: The Shortsighted Western Policy of Phraates II and the Second Reign of Demetrius II (129-125 BCE)\u201d in Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. <\/em>Clif Stratton\u00a0published \u201cBronze Hammer: Race and the Politics of Commemorating Henry Louis Aaron,\u201d in\u00a0Atlanta Studies<\/em>.\u00a0Finally, Jennifer Binczewski, who earned her PhD at WSU in 2017 and is currently teaching history for the WSU Global campus, published the article, \u201cPower in Vulnerability: Widows and Priest Holes in the Early Modern English Catholic Community,\u201d in the journal British Catholic History<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A few faculty have also written articles for general media outlets, helping to put current events into historical context. I published \u201cThe Capitol Riot Revealed the Darkest Nightmares of White Evangelical America,\u201d in the\u00a0New Republic<\/em>. Lawrence Hatter published \u201cThe similarities to the last invasion of the Capitol matter\u2014so do the differences\u201d in the Washington Post<\/em>.\u00a0Hatter also writes a regular column for the Pacific Northwest Inlander<\/em>. Faculty have been contributing essays to a new radio series, \u201cPast as Prologue,\u201d distributed across the state by Pacific Northwest Public Radio.<\/p>\n

Last but not least, I want to acknowledge the crucial role played by our donors, alumni, and friends. Your support is critical to the success of our programs.\u202fWithout it, we would have a harder time supporting and rewarding the fine teaching, learning, and scholarship for which the department is known.\u202fAs the 2020-2021\u00a0record of achievement indicates, this help is having a positive impact.<\/p>\n

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