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Category: Newsletter

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

Dr. Isabela Morales (UA Class of 2012) returned to campus September 29-30 to talk about her first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom (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 following a visit to the W.S. […]

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Department Host Inaugural Session of Southern Conversations

Last April, students and faculty gathered for the inaugural session of Southern Conversations, a series of informal discussions about southern history and historical methodology that is guided by student questions and interests. The first Conversation’s theme, “Gender Matters,” covered the past, present, and future of gender analysis in southern historical scholarship. Drs. Lesley Gordon, John Giggie, and Julia Brock each gave a short introduction of how gender analysis and their own gendered experiences in academia have shaped their academic careers […]

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Recent Graduate Placements, Awards, Service, & Publications

Fellowships & Service   Andrew Deaton – Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in the Czech Republic and is living in Prague now doing dissertation research. David Ferrara – Awarded a fellowship to work with the department’s Dr. Julia Brock, in partnership with the National Park Service, researching the history of national park lands on the Gulf Coast. Daniel Leon – Represents the department’s graduate students in the university’s Graduate Student Association. Recent Graduate Job Placements   Ashley Tickle Odebiyi, PhD (2022) […]

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Graduate Students Visit Pickensville Rosenwald School Museum

Dr. Julia Brock and graduate students rounded out the Spring 2022 semester with a trip to the Pickensville Rosenwald School Museum, in Pickens County, Alabama. The Rosenwald School program began in the early 1900s as a partnership between the Tuskegee Institute’s Booker T. Washington and Samuel Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, to provide schools for rural African Americans. Museum Board members, who are also alumni from Pickens County Rosenwald schools, gave a presentation on their work restoring […]

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Research Faculty Activity

Associate Professor Margaret Abruzzo is writing a book about changing conceptions of sin and wrongdoing—and what it meant to be a “good person”—in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American moral thought. Professor John Beeler devoted his spring sabbatical semester to working on a book manuscript examining the lives of Effie and Alexander Milne, two members of the Scottish gentry during the Victorian era. Over the summer he spent two months in Great Britain conducting research for another book project, this one on […]

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Recent Publications

Di Luo, Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900 –1945 (Brill, 2022). Assistant Professor Di Luo’s Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900-1945 (Brill, 2022) focuses on the role of literacy in building a modern nation-state by examining the government provision of adult literacy training in early twentieth-century China. Based on untapped archives and diaries, Dr. Luo uncovers people’s strategic use of literacy and illiteracy in social interactions and explores the impact of daily experiences on […]

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Dr. Kari Frederickson’s Deep South Dynasty Wins Michael V.R. Thomason Award

Dr. Kari Frederickson’s recent publication, Deep South Dynasty: The Bankheads of Alabama (University of Alabama Press, 2022), was named the winner of the 2022 Michael V. R. Thomason Award for the Best Book in the History of the Gulf South by the Gulf South Historical Association. The award committee praised the book as “a gripping study of the New South that deftly weaves the political, economic, and cultural story of the region with the personal triumphs and travails of its […]

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Department Sponsors Symposium on Alabama Politics

On October 3, 2022, the Department sponsored “Rethinking Alabama Politics from the Civil War to the Present.” Over 100 students, faculty, and community members attended the day-long symposium that brought together today’s leading historians on Alabama history for a reappraisal of post-Civil-War era Alabama history through the lenses of diverse elements such as interracial relationships, immigration, Lost Cause mythology, and organized protest. Participants included Auburn University’s Dr. Jennifer Brooks and Dr. Steven Brown; Auburn University at Montgomery’s Dr. Ben Severance; […]

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Department Alumni and Friends Make Contact, Connections

The University of Alabama Department of History is proud of its many alumni—over 6,000 in all. They can be found around the country and around the world, but many are close to campus, especially in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, and the department has been actively working with young alumni to grow its “Friends of History” program, a network of alumni and supporters who gather to build relationships and enrich their understanding of the past. In addition to a faculty steering committee, […]

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Dr. Margaret Peacock Wins Outstanding Commitment to Advising Award

Associate Professor Dr. 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 the Fall Campus Assembly on October 26. Though often overlooked or dismissed in the wider crush of university teaching and research, advising students is a vital part of what faculty do from week to week. “Advising is one of the rare times each semester when History students have a chance to sit […]

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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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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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