Category: News


Noted Historians Address Department

Dr. Carrie Gibson, an historian and author of Empires Crossroads, a History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day, came to the History Department on Friday, February 12, to deliver a talk titled “The Deep South and its ‘Forgotten’ Hispanic Heritage.” The talk was drawn from her upcoming book, a history of the Hispanic past in the US and the historical memory of this legacy. Using the Deep South as an example, Dr. Gibson highlighted some important examples […]

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Professor Gert Melville to Present “The Pursuit of Salvation: A Fundamental Challenge in the Middle Ages.”

Professor Gert Melville, Senior Professor of History at the Dresden University of Technology, will speak on “The Pursuit of Salvation: A Fundamental Challenge in the Middle Ages” on Thursday, March 3, 2015, at 5:00 p.m. in the Summersell Room (251 ten Hoor). Melville has taught at the Dresden University of Technology since 1994, and is the author of four decades’ worth of scholarship on religious life, religious orders, and the broader religious and cultural history of the Middle Ages. He […]

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Department of History Faculty Appear on NPR Affiliates

Assistant Professors Bart Elmore and Sharony Green have each appeared on Wisconsin and Ohio NPR affiliate stations recently. On January 27, 2016, Dr. Green appeared on WVXU-FM, Cincinnati, OH to discuss the role that geography played in building antebellum Cincinnati’s population of mixed race peoples, which was the largest population of its kind outside the South during the period. On February 7, 2016, Dr. Elmore appeared on To The Best of Our Knowledge, a production of Wisconsin Public Radio that […]

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Dr. George Rable Honored for Damn Yankees

The History Department came together yesterday to celebrate the publication of Dr. George Rable’s sixth and latest book, Damn Yankees: Demonization and Defiance in the Confederate South (Louisiana State University Press, 2015). Dr. Kari Frederickson began the event by noting that the book is drawn from talks delivered for the Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History, a prestigious series that has featured some of the most notable southern historians in the country. Dr. Lawrence Kohl spoke about the contribution […]

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Dr. Carrie Gibson to Speak on the Deep South’s ‘Forgotten’ Hispanic Heritage.

The Department of History, LACLS, The Summersell Center for the Study of the South, and The Department of American Studies present Dr. Carrie Gibson, author of Empire’s Crossroads. Dr. Gibson will speak on the South’s Forgotten Hispanic Heritage on Friday, February 12, 2016, at 3 p.m. in room 251, ten Hoor Hall. The title of her presentation is, “The Deep South and its ‘Forgotten’ Hispanic Heritage: From Ponce de Leon to thet Present Day.” All are welcome to attend this […]

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“Interracial Intimacy in Antebellum America” Panel Discussion a Success.

Approximately 100 people gathered at Tuscaloosa’s Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center last Tuesday (January 26) night to hear a panel presentation on the topic of Interracial Intimacy in Antebellum America from Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of the New York Times bestseller Wench; Trudier Harris, Professor of English, The University of Alabama; Sharony Green, Assistant Professor of History, The University of Alabama; and Lisa Ze-Winters, Associate Professor of English, Wayne State University. The event was co-sponsored by The University of Alabama’s New […]

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Doctoral Candidate’s Article Accepted for Publication in Civil War History

Doctoral candidate Lindsay Ray Smith‘s article,”More than Paper and Ink: Confederate Medical Literature and the Making of the Confederate Army Medical Corps,” has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming edition of Civil War History. Smith’s work explores the influence of medical literature in the development of Confederate nationalism and vice-versa. During the Civil War the Confederate Medical Department published a number of medical texts aimed at creating an efficient Medical Corps, many of which argued that being a good […]

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“Five Ways to Read a Corpse,” with Mary Louise Roberts, WARF Distinguished Lucie Aubrac Professor and Plaenert Bascom Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin.

Is it morbid to study the history of the dead body? Historians have largely averted their eyes, as if the corpse stood beyond time and place, beyond life itself. With its stench and decay, the human corpse inspires revulsion; it compels us to look away. But the dead body arrested the attention of all those engaged in warfare–the officers, the grave diggers, the civilians, the infantrymen, and the grieving families. They were startled into witnessing, recording, and remembering the corpse […]

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Interracial Intimacy in Antebellum America: An Evening with Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Trudier Harris, Sharony Green, and Liza Ze-Winters

Black and white Southerners have “known” each other for centuries in ways not easily discussed. This conversation brings together four women scholars who have carefully addressed the subject of how these two groups have “intimately,” and not just sexually, encountered one another in complex ways before the Civil War and beyond. Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of the New York Times bestseller Wench, joins Trudier Harris, Professor of English, University of Alabama, Sharony Green, Assistant Professor of History, University of Alabama, and […]

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The Nineteenth Century City Course Attracts Following

(From Sharony Green “Why I Teach“)   Dr. Sharony Green says that even though she can’t dance, and she knows she is getting old because her students have to tell her everything that is hip, videos like the one at the top of this entry remind her of some of the things she loves about her job: you may not think the students are paying attention, but they are. That the student who made this video wasn’t even her student, […]

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A&S’s Teaching Hub Features Dr. Juan Ponce-Vázquez’s Atlatl Lesson

from The Teaching Hub As someone who teaches courses on colonial Latin American history in Alabama, and previously in the rural northeast, I have not had many chances to bring history to life for my students. In the past, I have taken students to museums when a temporary exhibit came to a nearby city. For the most part, however, teaching within my discipline involves the classic things you have come to expect from a history class: lectures, active student participation […]

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“Five Ways to Read a Corpse,” with Mary Louise Roberts, WARF Distinguished Lucie Aubrac Professor and Plaenert Bascom Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin.

Is it morbid to study the history of the dead body? Historians have largely averted their eyes, as if the corpse stood beyond time and place, beyond life itself. With its stench and decay, the human corpse inspires revulsion; it compels us to look away.   But the dead body arrested the attention of all those engaged in warfare–the officers, the grave diggers, the civilians, the infantrymen, and the grieving families. They were startled into witnessing, recording, and remembering the corpse […]

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Peacock Appointed to the College of Arts & Sciences Leadership Board

Dr. Margaret Peacock, Associate Professor of Soviet History, was recently awarded a three year fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences Leadership Board. Each year, the Leadership Board chooses three members of faculty who have demonstrated excellence as scholars and teachers to become fellows for a three-year term. During her fellowship, Dr. Peacock will conduct research on her second book, tentatively titled The Faults of Power: Cairo, Moscow, London, Washington, and the Struggle for the Modern Middle East, in […]

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The Nineteenth Century City Examines the Role of Women in Higher Education Between 1830 and 1920.

On December 2, from 4-5:30 pm, in The University of Alabama’s Gorgas House, students enrolled in “The Nineteenth Century City,” a course taught by Sharony Green, Assistant Professor of History, will present an exhibit on young women attending female academies and institutions of higher learning in West Alabama and other areas of the country. Between the 1830s and 1920, cities increasingly grew in the United States owing partly to the invention of the steamboat and railroads, two technologies that helped […]

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