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The University of Alabama to Observe the Quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation 1517-2017: 500 Years of Faith, History, and the Arts Monday October 30, 2017 Moody Music Building Concert Hall The University of Alabama Reception and Book Exhibit 5:00 p.m. Program 6:00 p.m. Scholarly presentations and performances by University of Alabama faculty, as well as a curated book exhibit, to commemorate the Protestant Reformation. Sponsored by The University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Music, University Libraries Special Collections, and the Hudson Strode Program in […]

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Mississippi State University Professor Jason Morgan Ward to Speak Thursday, Oct. 12, at 5 PM

The Summersell Center of the Study of the South and The University of Alabama Department of History will host Professor Jason Morgan Ward of Mississippi State University on Thursday, October 12, 2017, at 5 o’clock in room 30 ten Hoor Hall. Ward is the author of Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century (2016) and Defending White Democracy: The Making of the Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965 (2011). Ward’s talk is entitled, “Lifting the Veil: […]

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Our New Department Newsletter, Historically Speaking, Now Available!

We are pleased to announce that issue number one of Historically Speaking is now in print and on its way to faculty, students, alumni, and friends of the Department of History at The University of Alabama. Our intention is to produce and send print copies of the newsletter each fall and another, electronic version, each spring. An electronic version of the current issue is available at for those who can’t wait for the postman to deliver the hard copy version! […]

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GHA Holds Conference on Power and Struggle

This past weekend, graduate students in the Department of History held the ninth annual Conference on Power and Struggle. Dr. Kate Brown of the University of Maryland delivered the keynote address at the opening banquet on Friday, speaking about the afterlives of Chernobyl. On Saturday, there were four sessions with two panels each, covering a broad array of topics and geographical foci. Participants, who came from all over the United States, presented interesting and innovative research, and contributed to lively […]

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Mississippi State University Professor Jason Morgan Ward to Speak Thursday, Oct. 12, at 5 PM

The Summersell Center of the Study of the South and The University of Alabama Department of History will host Professor Jason Morgan Ward of Mississippi State University on Thursday, October 12, 2017, at 5 o’clock in room 30 ten Hoor Hall. Ward is the author of Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century (2016) and Defending White Democracy: The Making of the Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965 (2011). Ward’s talk is entitled, “Lifting the Veil: […]

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UA Students enrolled in a Southern memory course tell the stories of Tuscaloosa County lynching victims.

This article appeared originally on The University of Alabama’s Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility’s website. by Erin Mosley and Jamon Smith Dr. John Giggie describes the eras most Americans refer to as Reconstruction, the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties as periods of racial terror for a significant portion of the country’s population. “At a time when the United States was in fact growing and prospering, many African-Americans feared for their lives,” says Giggie, associate professor of history and […]

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Professor Matthew Karp Discusses Slaveholders and Foreign Policy

On September 20th, Dr. Matthew Karp of Princeton University delivered a lecture in ten Hoor Hall, entitled “Slave Power: How Southern Slaveholders Mastered U.S. Foreign Policy.” In addition to providing an overview of his book, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy, Karp discussed how slaveholders in the Antebellum South viewed themselves and their domestic and foreign policy interests. Karp highlighted the anachronisms that frequently color our understanding of the South and Southerners leading up […]

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Howard Jones’s My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness Explores Infamous Vietnam Massacre

This June, Professor Emeritus Howard Jones published My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness, a look into one of the most infamous incidents in the Vietnam War. On March 16, 1968, a group of American troops entered a South Vietnamese hamlet referred to as My Lai, the name of one of the hamlets. Within three hours, they had killed over five hundred unarmed civilians. Though the army attempted to suppress coverage of the event, helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson […]

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Department Holds Annual Welcome Back Party

On September 17, the History Department hosted its annual Welcome Back Party at the Tuscaloosa Sailing Club. New faculty members Drs. Lucy Kaufman and Matt Lockwood were welcomed to the department and the faculty, staff, and graduate students celebrated the beginning of the school year. Additionally, Dr. Rothman thanked our instructors for their contributions to the department. Thank you to everyone who came, and may the 2017-2018 school year be a good one!  

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Power & Struggle Conference Begins Friday, September 22

Registration for the 2017 Power & Struggle Conference will begin on Friday, September 22, at 5:00 pm, in Smith Hall. A reception will follow from 5:30-6, supper from 6-7:00, and the keynote address from Dr. Kate Brown, Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, will begin at 7:00 pm. Saturday’s events begin at 8:00 am and are detailed in the conference program. For more information, please contact Sarah Craddock (sacraddock@crimson.ua.edu).

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Department Hosts Panel on the American Civil War Online and in the Public Sphere

On September 14, 2017, the Department of History was proud to host “The American Civil War Online and in the Public Sphere,” a panel with Susannah J. Ural of the University of Southern Mississippi, Judith Giesberg of Villanova University, and Anne Rubin of the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Each presenter spoke about their respective backgrounds in Civil War digital humanities projects. Dr. Ural documented her work with the Beauvoir Soldiers’ Home, a former Confederate veterans’ home in Biloxi, MS, on […]

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Symposium on “Dixie’s Great War: World War I and the American South,” to be held Friday, October 6, 2017

Register today and plan to attend the one-day symposium, “Dixie’s Great War: World War I and the American South,” to be held Friday, October 6, 2017 at the Ferguson Center Great Hall on The University of Alabama’s campus in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The Dixie’s Great War symposium, hosted by the Summersell Center for the Study of the South, “is considered to be the largest conference in the country on World War I and the South,” says John Giggie, Associate Professor and Director […]

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Professor Joshua Rothman Part of Team that Receives $300,000 NEH Grant

This story was published originally in The University of Alabama College of Arts & Sciences’ Desktop News. Can you imagine opening a newspaper and seeing an advertisement for a runaway slave? In today’s world, it’s hard to fathom what it must have been like to live in a time when slavery was accepted. Dr. Joshua Rothman, a professor of history and chair of the Department of History, is on a mission to make understanding that world—and the many things we […]

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Department Hosts Professor Karen Ordahl Kupperman for talk on Children in Early North American Colonies

On 31 August 2017, Dr. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History Emerita at New York University, delivered a talk to the History Department entitled, “Double Agents in Early Jamestown: Pocahontas, Thomas Savage, Henry Spelman, and Robert Poole.” Kupperman’s scholarship focuses on the 16th and 17th century Atlantic World, and her presentation focused on the role that children played in the earliest European settlements in the Americas. These children were seen as cross-cultural agents, the fluid identities of youth enabling […]

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