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Posts by John Ratliff

Department Welcomes Postdoctoral Scholar for Work on University History

This fall, The University of Alabama and the Department of History welcomed to campus Dr. Jasmine Stansberry as a postdoctoral scholar. Dr. Stansberry is a proud Memphis native, University of Memphis and University of Mississippi alumna, researcher, member of the African diaspora, womanist, and poet. She is a scholar of 20th century Black social movements in the U.S. South whose research focuses on Black student activism at colleges and universities in Mississippi and Alabama. She joins us under the auspices […]

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Department to Host Visit by Fulbright Scholar

The History Department, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the Capstone International Center are pleased to welcome to campus Professor Iulian M. Damian, a scholar of European history and culture who is currently in the United States as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar. Professor Damian will present a public research presentation entitled “A ‘Hot Corner’ of 15th Century Europe: Fascination, Defense, and Resilience along the Ottoman Frontier” at 2 PM on November 15 in the Summersell Room (251) in ten […]

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Dr. Margaret Peacock Wins Outstanding Commitment to Advising Award

Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Margaret Peacock was recognized by The University of Alabama Academic Advisors Association (UA-AAA) as the recipient of the 2021-2022 Outstanding Commitment to Advising Award at last week’s Fall Campus Assembly. The Outstanding Commitment to Advising Award recognizes the importance of academic advising at The University of Alabama by celebrating outstanding academic advisors. The association’s executive board and nomination committee announced her as winner of the award on October 26. In addition to her […]

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Alumna Returns to Discuss Book That Began as Undergraduate Research Seminar Project

Dr. Isabela Morales (UA Class of 2012) returned to campus on September 29th and 30th to talk about her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom (New York: OUP, 2022). Speaking to a group of fifty undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, Dr. Morales explained how her research began in Dr. Jenny Shaw’s American Slavery Research Seminar (now HY497) during the Fall 2011 semester. The subject of that seminar was “Slavery in the Americas” and […]

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Professor Bart Elmore to Speak About Seed Money

UPDATE October 6 — This event has been postponed until the spring. Please join the Department of History as we welcome Professor Bart Elmore, who will be speaking about his recent book, Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future.  For the better part of a decade, environmental historian Bart Elmore investigated the history of Monsanto, the chemical firm turned agricultural giant that became the largest seller of genetically engineered seeds in the world. Now owned by Bayer after a […]

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Rethinking Alabama Politics from the Civil War to the Present: A History Symposium

Join the Department of History on Monday, October 3, 2022 for Rethinking Alabama Politics from the Civil War to the Present: A History Symposium. This event brings together today’s leading historians on Alabama history for a reappraisal of post-Civil-War era Alabama history. Lunch will be served for graduate students and panelists. Students should contact Brian Martin to RSVP. Camelia Room, Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library, The University of Alabama Monday, October 3, 2022 9 am – 5 pm Refreshments Available   […]

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Department Alumna Returns for Book Talk

Dr. Isabela Morales began her career as a historian as an undergraduate in The University of Alabama’s History Department (BA, 2012). During a visit to Hoole Special Collections Library as part of her Capstone Undergraduate Research class, she encountered a set of attorney papers from the nineteenth century. Those papers revealed that prominent Huntsville enslaver and cotton planter Samuel Townsend died in 1856, leaving behind a vast estate worth around $200,000 (equivalent to nearly $7 million today). Townsend left most […]

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Rothman Named Finalist for 2022 Harriet Tubman Prize

Dr. Joshua Rothman, professor and chair of the Department of History, has been named a finalist for the 2022 Harriet Tubman Prize for his his The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (Basic Books, 2021). The Ledger and the Chain debunks the notion that slave traders were social pariahs and outcasts, proving instead that they moved among the social and financial elite of both North and South. Rothman shows how Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard […]

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Graduate Students Visit Pickensville Rosenwald School Museum

Dr. Julia Brock and graduate students rounded out the semester with a trip to Pickensville Rosenwald School Museum. Museum Board members, who are also alumni from Pickens County Rosenwald schools, gave a presentation on their work restoring the school (the only Rosenwald school left standing in the county) and collaboration with Dr. Kimberly Ransom of the University of Michigan on the creation of the museum. Board members toured the museum with the students, telling their experiences in the schools and […]

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Dr. Megan Kate Nelson Speaks to Writing Workshop

This past February, historian and author Dr. Megan Kate Nelson visited The University of Alabama Department of History virtually, zooming in from her home in Boston to conduct a writing workshop entitled “Writing for Academic and Public Audiences.” In a wide-ranging presentation, Dr. Nelson shared the story of her shift from academic to popular publishing, including an explanation of how to pitch and write an op-ed drawn from her January 7, 2021 Washington Post op-ed. She also outlined the differences […]

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Sewanee’s Tiffany Momon Addresses Power & Struggle Conference

In February, as part of the annual UA Graduate Conference on Power & Struggle, graduate students and faculty welcomed invited keynote speaker Dr. Tiffany Momon, Assistant Professor of History at Sewanee: The University of the South, to address the growth and significance of Public History in our discipline. Momon has conducted architectural surveys on eight of Alabama’s nine historically black colleges and universities for the National Park Service and she has worked with graduate students to complete numerous National Register […]

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Doctoral Student Elissa Lisle Helps Organize Baseball Memorabilia at Historic Rickwood Field

Birmingham’s Rickwood Field (opened in 1910) is the oldest professional baseball park in the United States. To celebrate and remember the park’s rich history, the non-profit Friends of Rickwood formed in 1990 and has been collecting a treasure trove of Rickwood-related baseball memorabilia donations since then, including everything from autographed bats to championship rings. To organize these items, the Friends of Rickwood reached out to the department’s Dr. Julia Brock, a specialist in public history, who had the perfect intern […]

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PhD Students’ Work Featured in The Washington Post

Ashley Steenson, PhD Candidate “Standing up against one’s party can be courageous. But it can also reflect elitism,” reads the tag line for PhD candidate Ashley Steenson’s January 27 op-ed in The Washington Post, titled “Joe Manchin might be principled. Or he might scorn his own constituents.” Steenson crafts a fascinating connection between Sen. Manchin’s opposition to President Biden’s Build Back Better Framework and the complicated political philosophy of late-nineteenth century Senator (and later US Supreme Court Justice) Lucius Quintus […]

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SCSS Launches Scholars Program

The Summersell Scholars Program is an undergraduate history initiative that was launched in the fall of 2021 by Dr. John Giggie and the Summersell Center for the Study of the South. Dr. Giggie and his students imagined this program as an intentional space for undergraduates to study and reflect upon the meaning of the descriptor, “historian of the South.” Before joining the program, all Summersell Scholars must have taken at least one Summersell course: Race and Injustice; Queer Southern History; […]

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