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History News & Events |
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For earlier news items, please visit our news archive.
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July 06, 2011 Innsbruck and New Orleans Professors Exchanged Places
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Dr. Mary Mitchell spent the spring semester 2011 at the University of Innsbruck teaching courses in American History at the American Studies Department, while Dr. Christina Antenhofer from the University of Innsbruck History Department taught courses in Medieval History at UNO. Dr. Molly Mitchell, Fulbright Exchange Professor from the University of New Orleans' History Department in front of a portrait of Claudia de Medici, notable regional ruler of Habsburg lands.
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June 12, 2011
Dr. Bischof Completes International History Project on the Vienna Summit with Austrian, Russian, and German Colleagues
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Kennedy and Khrushchev
Günter Bischof recently completed a project with colleagues in Austria, Germany, and Russia on the US – Soviet “Vienna Summit of 1961.” He is co-editor of the project’s final 1056-page volume Der Wiener Gipfel 1961: Kennedy – Chruschtschow , for which he co-authored two essays with formerUNO History Department graduate students Richard Williamson and Martin Kofler as well as the introduction; a shorter English volume is in the making. Dr. Bischof has also coauthored an essay with UNO history graduate Martin Kofler on Kennedy’s alliance management around the Vienna Summit in the contemporary history journal HISTORICUM and another essay on US – Austrian relations in 1962 in the Journal of the Austrian State Archives. He also co-organized and presented lectures on “Kennedy at the Vienna Summit” in conferences at Harvard University and at the Austrian Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. In addition, he delivered lectures on “Kennedy and the Vienna Summit” at UNO, LSU, Tulane, and the Universities of Innsbruck and Vienna. He has also coauthored an essay with his former graduate student Philipp Strobl, “California Dreaming: Arnold the Quintessential American Immigrant,” in: Michael Butter et al., Arnold Schwarzenegger – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Body and Image. Heidelberg 2011.
For more information select: Vienna Summit
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May 28, 2011 14 M.A. Graduates Spring 2011
14 History graduate students succesfully defended their theses as part of their M.A. degree requirements and participated in the Spring Commencement Ceremony.
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May 21, 2011 2010-11 Honors Convocation, Department of History
Joseph Logsdon Scholarship awarded to Andrew Rowland |
Marcus B. Christian Memorial Prize awarded to Andrew Brooks and Sara Ormes
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Apr 21, 2011 Katie Conley's Internship at the Louisiana State Museum Leads to Civil War News article Graduate student Katie Conley is researching the history of Reconstruction-era Louisiana history for her MA thesis. Mrs. Conley's work focuses upon Louisiana state Treasurer Major Edward Burke, who is best known for running the corrupt Louisiana state lottery before fleeing the country in the late 1800s with more than one million dollars in government funds. As part of her public history concentration, Mrs. Conley is interning at the Louisiana State Museum's Collections Division. Her internship has led to an interesting quest. She is trying to locate a temporary exhibition place for one of the museum's artifacts that is too big for display within the museum: the funerary carriage that carried the body of Jefferson Davis through the streets of New Orleans. Mrs. Conley's following article, also published in Civil War News, explains the situation.
Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederacy, died after contracting malaria while on a trip to New Orleans in December of 1889. His death brought thousands of mourners throughout Louisiana to pay their respects as his body was laid to rest with all the pomp of a presidential burial. In true honor, Davis was placed in a ceremonial funerary carriage, or catafalque, atop an artillery caisson and limber. The catafalque featured six cannons which supported a canopy featuring flaming cannonballs at each corner. In May of 1893, Davis’s body was reinterred in Richmond, Virginia. Davis was placed on the catafalque again and ceremonially carried from his grave to the railroad in New Orleans. From there, his funeral train made several stops in prominent cities, at each of which his body was placed on other catafalques and regally processed throughout each downtown. Though several catafalques were used to carry Davis, the New Orleans catafalque is the only one known in existence today.
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The catafalque was donated to the Louisiana State Museum in 1912 by the Washington Artillery Battalion to commemorate the Louisiana Statehood Centennial, and was on display for several years, resulting in a need for restoration. Repairs were put on hold and the artifact was dismantled and placed in storage.
In the late 1980s, the Louisiana State Museum recovered it from storage and placed it on loan to Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis’s final home in Biloxi, Mississippi and now his official shrine. Extensive restoration was done in order to reassemble the catafalque to most accurately resemble its original state. The loan was renewed and it stayed in Davis’s home until 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the area. Please download the following file in order to read the entire article: Jefferson Davis Catafalque
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Apr 18, 2011
2011 French Quarter Festival: Dr. Connie Atkinson & UNO History students in the community
Associate Professor Connie Zeanah Atkinson, Associate Director of the Midlo Center, serves as an officer of the Board of Directors of the French Quarter Festivals, which includes the French Quarter Fest, Satchmofest, and Christmas in New Orleans. Amid the food and music one finds a range of scholarly presentations regarding various aspects of New Orleans music history. The French Quarter Festival is only one of the community events in which history students and faculty are involved. The educational components to festivals and fairs, including lectures and panels, give an opportunity to circulate knowledge on the city’s history to the community. This year more than 530,000 people attended the festival, which is the largest free music festival in the South.
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The New Orleans International Music Colloquium is a consortium of scholars and musicians who seek to promote and disseminate research on New Orleans music and culture to the general public by The Midlo Center plays a central role in planning each colloquium. This year marked the 15th anniversary of the music scholarship aspect of the festival. Dr. Atkinson presented the 2011 Henry Kmen Awards for music scholarship to Lynn Abbott and Drs. Lawrence Gushee and Bruce Raeburn.
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| Apr 16, 2011 Craig Whittington: History graduate student and EMT
History graduate student Craig Whittington responded to the call for an Emergency Medical Technician while attending New Orleans' Earth Day Festival, which was held alongside Bayou St. John on April 17. After a girl was slightly injured by a dog, festival organizers asked for someone with emergency medicine skills to lend a hand.
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Craig trained and served in the United States Marine Corps as a medic before moving from Philadelphia to study with Drs. Gunter Bischof and Allen Millett. Craig's area of interest is World War II, and he also volunteers with the National World War II Museum. |
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Apr 16, 2011 8 Grad Students attended National Council on Public History conference
Several UNO graduate students attended the April 2011 National Council on Public History conference, which was held in Pensacola, Florida. Laurel Dorrance and Paula Fortier (2010 history MA & currently a UNO Urban Studies PhD student) presented their research as part of a medical history panel titled "Just What the Doctor Ordered: Presenting Cathartic History to the General Public." Ms. Dorrance organized the panel, which was chaired by the Curator of the National Library of Medicine, Manon Parry. Ms. Dorrance's paper centered upon the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, and Ms. Fortier's presentation will be on Touro Infirmary School of Nursing. Two dozen people attended the session, which has helped to generate interest in presenting more medical history at future NCPH conferences.
Ms. Capo and Ms. Nunez both defended their MA theses earlier this month. Both also were presented the history department's Public History Award for 2010-11 because of their innovative history projects. Chanda interned at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum and curated an exhibit based on the history of "praline candy" or pralines in New Orleans.
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Lissa Capo presented her unique Mardi Gras public history research, which developed out of the history department’s ongoing Oak Street History project. As part of the graduate students' work in alliance with the New Orleans Po-Boy Festival and the Carrollton merchants who sponsor the festival, Ms. Capo researched the history of the neighborhood's Mardi Gras parade organization: the Krewe of Carrollton, the 4th oldest carnival krewe in New Orleans. She created a pamphlet history of the parade organization which members of the krewe tossed from their floats during their February 2011 parade.
Chanda Nunez and Dr. Mizell-Nelson presented a progress report on a project still under development that intends to create a localized or “Creole” Kids’ Meal so New Orleans sandwich shops can better compete with franchise fastfood restaurants. The first kids’ activity booklet centers upon the history of praline vendors, which Ms. Nunez investigated as her thesis topic. Her presentation on praline history and the Creole Kids' Meal project was also awarded second place honors at the conference. American University won first place, and the University of South Carolina was awarded third place honors. This is the largest contingent of UNO history department graduate students ever to attend the conference. To learn more about the innovative realm of public history, the conference program is available via the following link: Public History
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Mar 18, 2011 Battle of New Orleans Bicentennial
UNO Graduate Student Michael Edwards Appointed to Two Battle of New Orleans Bicentennial Commemoration Committees Michael Edwards will serve on the Books and Publications and Historical Research Committees. The Commission, sponsored by UNO History graduate and 94th District Representative for the State of Louisiana Nick Lorusso, will commemorate the victory of American forces over the British in the final battle of the War of 1812. The following excerpt from the official legislation states: “The legislature further recognizes that during the Battle of New Orleans, for the first time, Louisiana citizens of diverse cultural, ethnic, social, religious, and racial backgrounds united and fought not as former colonial subjects but as American citizens.
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The service and sacrifice of Freemen of Color, warriors from the Choctaw Nation, Barataria pirates, militia from Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee, United States Marines, United States Navy sailors, and Regular Army units, including the 7th and 44th Infantry Regiments, helped to establish a national identity and ensure continued American control of the Mississippi Valley, which would facilitate the westward expansion of the nation.”
UNO History undergraduate Kimberly Edwards exhibits two photographs in local museum
Kimberly Ewards had two of her photographs selected for inclusion in a photography exhibit at the McKenna Museum of African American Art. The museum is located at 2003 Carondelet Street in New Orleans. Titled "A Handful of Photographs," the exhibit contained images of the human hand captured by a diverse group of photographers. The exhibition captured the hand in its various uses as tools for communication. The show opened on March 19 and closed on April 9.
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Feb 03, 2011 Dr. Bischof’s Prague Spring Book wins Choice Award
Dr. Günter Bischof’s book on Prague Spring has appeared in paperback and has been selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2010. An excerpt from the award committee review stated: "The detail of negotiation in the ideological Cold War context is fascinating in these universally well-written/translated essays. Indispensable for any library with even a bare-bones Cold War collection.... Essential."—July 2010, Choice "Of the many books that have been trying to look at the 1968 Czechoslovak crisis from different perspectives, this is the first one to do so in a balanced way while using substantive new evidence as well."—Vojtech Mastny, Cold War historian, author of The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years Günter Bischof is Marshall Plan Professor of History and Director of Center Austria at the University of New Orleans. Part of the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion in 1968 originated during a conference held at UNO in 2008. For more information about the book, please see the following webpage: Prague Spring For more information about Center Austria, please see: Center Austria
5 Grad Students to present at National Council on Public History conference in April Laurel Dorrance and Paula Fortier (2010 MA & currently a UNO Urban Studies PhD student) will present their research as part of a medical history panel titled "Just What the Doctor Ordered: Presenting Cathartic History to the General Public." Ms. Dorrance organized the panel, which will be chaired by the Curator of the National Library of Medicine, Manon Parry. Ms. Dorrance's paper centers upon the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, and Ms. Fortier's presentation will be on Touro Infirmary School of Nursing. Chanda Nunez, Kristin Wanek, and Dr. Mizell-Nelson are presenting a progress report on a project still under development that intends to create a localized or “Creole” Kids’ Meal so New Orleans sandwich shops can better compete with franchise fastfood restaurants. The first kids’ activity booklet centers upon the history of praline vendors, which Ms. Nunez is investigating as her thesis topic. Ms. Wanek created original artwork for the activity book. The conference program is available via the following link: Public History
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Dr. Madelon Powers Consults with The Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum tells the stories of immigrant families. Located in the heart of Manhattan's Lower East Side, which has been an immigrant portal for 200 years, 97 Orchard Street was home to an estimated 7,000 people from over 20 nations from 1863 to 1935. Inside, visitors view restored apartments and learn about the struggles of past generations in the hope of providing historical perspective on the experiences of today's newcomers. For more about the museum, please visit their website:
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum
Joseph Stoltz: Texas Christian Univ. PhD Student
2 Grad Students to present at USM conference regarding Southern Women and Politics Two first-year UNO history graduate students will present their research at a conference that will be held at the end of March. The University of Southern Mississippi is presenting a one-day conference titled: "Court House, State House, Her House: Southern Women and Politics” on March 31st, 2011. Kristin Wanek is presenting a paper titled: “The Black Club Women of the Louis Martinet Notarial Records. ” Sarah E. Neil’s paper is titled: “’Skyscrapers Not as Good as Crawfish’”: The Life of Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore, 1861-1929.” The conference will be held in Gulfport, Mississippi. To access the entire conference program, please use the following link: Southern Women
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Jan 26, 2011
Dr. Andrew Goss’ new book The Floracrats just published Situated along the line that divides the rich ecologies of Asia and Australia, the Indonesian archipelago is a hotbed for scientific exploration, and scientists from around the world have made key discoveries there. But why do the names of Indonesia’s own scientists rarely appear in the annals of scientific history? In The Floracrats: State-Sponsored Science and the Failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia, Andrew Goss examines the professional lives of Indonesian naturalists and biologists, to show what happens to science when a powerful state becomes its greatest, and indeed only, patron.
“A smart, elegant study of science in the East Indies, both in a time when Indonesia was Dutch, and when it finally reverted back to its own subject-citizens. The book is lively, clever, and well written.”—Eric Tagliacozzo, author of Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915
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With only one purse to pay for research, Indonesia’s scientists followed a state agenda focused mainly on exploiting the country’s most valuable natural resources—above all its major export crops: quinine, sugar, coffee, tea, rubber, and indigo. The result was a class of botanic bureaucrats that Goss dubs the “floracrats.” Drawing on archives and oral histories, he shows how these scientists strove for the Enlightenment ideal of objective, universal, and useful knowledge, even as they betrayed that ideal by failing to share scientific knowledge with the general public. With each chapter, Goss details the phases of power and the personalities in Indonesia that have struggled with this dilemma, from the early colonial era, through independence, to the modern Indonesian state. Goss shows just how limiting dependence on an all-powerful state can be for a scientific community, no matter how idealistic its individual scientists may be. For more information about the book, including ordering information, please see the University of Wisconsin Press website: The Floracrats
"Wielding sharp and subtle analytic skills, Andrew Goss meticulously tracks how, when, and why colonial biologists embraced the gospel of enlightenment, progress, and science."
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Jan 20, 2011 Pralines! Pralines! Pecan Candy!
The African-American praline women are part of the city’s backdrop. Well into the twentieth century, they could be seen in central parts of the city selling their “pecan candy.” These women dressed in what many consider to be the stereotypical “mammy” style of clothing: long skirts, starched white aprons, checkered scarves, and colorful tignons wrapped tightly around their heads. The likenesses of such women made it onto postcards and product packaging. Depicted as servile “mammies,” they were, in fact, entrepreneurs whose decision to use such garb improved their sales to white customers. |
Today’s pralines are likely to be sold in offices, near streetcar and bus stops as well as on the Internet. This new exhibit examines the misconception and reality of the 19th century mammy and celebrates the 21st century praline businesswomen and men who now work as entrepreneurs unencumbered by the “mammy” mystique.
Ms. Nunez interned during the fall 2010 semester with the Southern Food and Beverage Museum when she began to develop the exhibit. For more information, please see: The above sketch was created by history graduate student Kristin Wanek, who earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before entering the MA program in Fall 2010. The exhibit will remain open through 2011.
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Jan 15, 2011 George Windell Distinguished Lecture Series UNO History Department with National World War II Museum "Nazi Propaganda and Policy toward North Africa and the Middle East During World War II and the Holocaust: New Research about Old Questions" National World War II Museum
Jeffrey Herf is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research and teaching focus on the intersection of ideas and politics in modern European history, especially in twentieth century Germany.
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His publications include Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press, 2009; pb. 2010), which won the 2010 Bronze Prize of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy for works on the history of the Middle East; The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2006), winner of the National Jewish Book Award in 2006 for work on the Holocaust in 2006; Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Harvard University Press, 1997), winner of both the George Lewis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association, 1998, and co-winner of the Fraenkel Prize of the Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library in London in 1996; War By Other Means: Soviet Power, West German Resistance and the Battle of the Euromissiles (Free Press, 1991); and Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984), which was translated into Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.
In recent years, he has examined antisemitism in Nazi propaganda within Germany and beyond Europe. He is beginning a project on “Extent and Limits of Reintegration: Former Nazis in German and Austrian Politics after World War II.” He received his doctorate in 1981 from Brandeis University and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1969. He has been a regular contributor for many years of reviews and essays to The New Republic and has also published essays and reviews in the Partisan Review, The Washington Post and major newspaper in Germany. He has held fellowships from the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, the American Academy in Berlin, the Yitzak Center for Israel Studies in Tel Aviv, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, both in Washington, D.C. Before coming to the University of Maryland in 2000, he taught at Harvard University and Ohio University in Athens. |
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Dr. Christina Antenhofer
Dr. Bischof presented the results of the "Vienna Summit 1961" project to a capacity audience at the Austrian Embassy in Washington D.C. on June 22, 2011. Austrian Ambassador Dr. Christian Prosl chaired the session; Dr. Aviel Roschwald, Professor and Chair of History, Georgetown University, commented on Bischof's presentation. The next day Dr. Bischof gave his paper on "Kennedy and the Vienna Summit" at the annual meeting of the Society of Hitorians for American Foreign Relations in Alexandria, Virginia, on a panel with Dr. Mark Kramer of Harvard University and Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx from the Graz, Austria, Boltzmann Institute for the Study of Consequences of War. again with Ambassador Prosl as Chair and Dr. Roshwald as commentator..jpg)
John Mangipano
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The History Department’s 2011 George Windell Distinguished Lecture filled the National World War II Museum in January.Photo Credit: Kimberly Edwards