Newsletter – Page 2 – Department of History

Summersell Center Partners with Elmore County Black History Museum

May 18, 2023

The Summersell Center for the Study of the South’s (SCSS) spring semester has produced new research for its lynching research initiative, the Alabama Memory Project. Eighteen undergraduate researchers are working to document the lives of the thirty known victims of lynching in Elmore County, Alabama, attempting to reconstruct the entirety of the victims’ lives, not just their end. The course is co-taught by SCSS Director Dr. John Giggie and MA student Jana Venable, the current Vivian Malone Fellow and an […]

The Summersell Scholars Program

May 18, 2023

The Summersell Scholars Program is a leadership initiative that offers both undergraduate and graduate students the chance to develop new community history programs as well as work in existing ones, enabling them to lead ongoing programs and perform high-level historical research. Scholars share their experiences with each other through a weekly seminar class and the creation of structured reflections on their research. The Spring 2023 Summersell Scholars are Brooklyn Coleman, Molly Elliott, Gavin Jones, and Carson Silas. One current project […]

Program Offers Students Course Credit for Research

May 18, 2023

A new initiative spearheaded by Assistant Professor Lucy Kaufman allows undergraduates to earn credit for their research efforts with a professor in their field of interest. “Our students have huge amounts of curiosity and energy,” Dr. Kaufman said. “I think of [them] as historians” and we want to give them “the ability to make history their own; to train them in essential skills that it takes to be a researcher, not just in history, but also more broadly.” After putting […]

2022-2023 Award-Winning Undergraduate Students & Honors Theses

May 18, 2023

The Dr. Russell Bryant Endowed Scholarship Established in 2020 by a former student of Professor Bryant, this award is given annually to an outstanding first-generation undergraduate majoring in History. The 2023 recipient of this award: Bradley Fuller The Charles Grayson Summersell Awardfor Most Distinguished Undergraduate History Student Established in 1974, this award is given annually to the most distinguished undergraduate student or students majoring in History. The 2023 recipients of this award: Gavin Jones and Olivia Ricche The Charles Grayson […]

Fred Brugge, Class of ‘81, Remembers Dr. F. Russell Bryant

May 18, 2023

Alumnus Fred Brugge, Class of 1981, recently visited the University’s campus for the first time in twenty years. Wandering around the halls of ten Hoor (nearly identical to when he had been a student), he wondered if the students today might sit in the exact chairs he did. They sure look the same, he thought. He wondered if his favorite professor might still teach classes and host dinners for his students. When Brugge attended the Capstone, the student population numbered […]

Stewart McLaurin, Class of ‘81, Director of the White House Historical Association

May 18, 2023

Stewart McLaurin, a 1981 graduate of The University of Alabama Department of History and current president of the White House Historical Association (WHHA), returned to campus on March 1st to speak to a packed audience as part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute‘s lifelong learning lecture series. His lecture, titled “The White House Historical Association and Five Chapters of White House History,” traced the history of the United States’ Executive Mansion from President George Washington’s selection of the site in […]

MA Student Jana Venable Named Vivian Malone Fellow

May 17, 2023

MA student Jana Venable began working with the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South as an undergraduate in January 2020, when she enrolled in Dr. John Giggie’s “The Long Civil Rights Movement” course. While a student in that course she began researching lynching and racial violence in her home community of Elmore County, Alabama. Over the last three years Jana has continued that research, working alongside Dr. Giggie and her student colleagues to create a partnership […]

Kristina Mullinex Judges Alabama History Day Projects

May 17, 2023

On Friday, March 3, PhD student Kristina Mullinex participated in the annual statewide Alabama History Day, an opportunity for students from grades six through twelve to conduct year-long research and create exhibits on historical subjects. Kristina served as a judge for senior high school projects on the theme of “frontiers.” She was very impressed on multiple levels, including the participants’ creativity and the level of scholarship. The winning exhibit dealt with the frontier of women’s fashion in the 1960s, specifically […]

Graduate Students Participate in Night at the Museum

May 17, 2023

Saturday, March 4 was the 12th annual Night at the Museum community event hosted by the Graduate School at The University of Alabama. The program brought graduate students from various academic departments to the Museum of Natural History, where they hosted interactive stations catering to young people from the Tuscaloosa area. The Department of History sent six volunteers: Joey Dykes, Brian Martin, Brianna Meyer, Genesis Ranel, Milum Richardson, and Filipe Robles. This year’s theme, “Around the World,” provided a great […]

2022-2023 Award-Winning Graduate Students

May 17, 2023

Frank Lawrence Owsley Memorial Scholarship for Superior Competency in American History Tagen Haga Albert Burton Moore Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Student in European, Latin American, or Asian History Stephen Boutwell Gary B. Mills Endowed Dissertation Support Fund Jessica Brodt Christopher G. Swindle Teaching Award Luke Voyles Masters Student Teaching Award Katherine Friday Fulbright U.S. Student Scholar – Czech Republic Andrew Deaton Return to the Historically Speaking Homepage.

From the Chair

May 17, 2023

I hope that everyone has had a peaceful and productive beginning to the 2023 calendar year. Welcome to the Spring 2023 newsletter from the Department of History. As usual, it has been a busy semester in which time has flown by. Nearly all classes in the Department this semester were once again full, and with the University still anticipating ongoing growth in its incoming classes we expect healthy enrollments even as changes to the core curriculum will start getting implemented […]

Senior Olivia Ricche Wins 2023 Alumni Student Award

May 17, 2023

Congratulations to Olivia Ricche, who has been named the winner of the 2023 Alumni Student Award. Each year, The University of Alabama National Alumni Association recognizes just two students from the entire graduating class who have demonstrated exceptional achievement and personal character and whose contributions to the University exemplify the spirit of the UA tradition. The Oak Ridge, Tennessee native is a Randall Research Scholar triple-majoring in history, mathematics, and Spanish. She interned at the American Historical Association and used […]

New Internship Program for Both Graduate and Undergraduate Students

May 17, 2023

Though internships are traditionally associated with degree programs outside of the humanities, they are increasingly crucial for students of all backgrounds, including History. To help our students succeed in the world beyond ten Hoor, our faculty are hard at work establishing a new internship program for our department. Several students have already taken advantage of the initiative: PhD candidate David Ferrara traveled to archives in Florida and Mississippi, gathered records related to the history of the Gulf Islands National Seashore […]

Summersell Center Pushes Forward with Numerous Groundbreaking Initiatives

December 9, 2022

The Frances J. Summersell Center for the Study of the South’s (SCSS) fall 2022 semester marked new developments in its southern queer history project. Dr. John Giggie and Vivian Malone Fellow and doctoral student Isabella Garrison co-instructed the Southern Queer History course, the only course of its kind in the SEC dedicated to southern queer history research. Thirty undergraduates in the course worked with the Summersell Scholars, all returning undergraduate and graduate students, as they met with community leaders to […]

Undergraduate Historical Society Hosts Conference

December 9, 2022

On April 2, 2022, the Undergraduate Historical Society hosted its third annual Capstone Research Symposium. The conference, organized and led exclusively by our department’s undergraduate researchers and leaders, featured a full day of research presentations–two panels, with nine papers in all. Topics ranged from slavery and Sherman’s “march to the sea” to the travels of Marco Polo, Westernization in Japan, and criminality in early modern London. Dr. Lucy Kaufman, one of the faculty mentors for the conference, described it as […]

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