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 […]
Category: Newsletter
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; […]
Summersell Center’s Queer History Project Hosts Galloway School Students
Dr. John Giggie and Isabella Garrison hosted high school students from Atlanta who are enrolled in the Galloway School’s southern queer history course. The students were led by Dr. Margaret Montgomery, a UA Department of History alumn, in an experience-based course about researching southern queer history. The visit centered on undergraduate research and experience, with an emphasis on learning the practice of local queer history. The high school students opened their visit with a campus tour led by Summersell Scholar […]
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2021-2022 Award-Winning Graduate Students
[ua_row class=”row”][ua_col class=”col-sm-6″][ua_image_boxes title=”Frank Lawrence Owsley Memorial Scholarship for Superior Competency in American History Brian Martin” alt_text=”Brian Martin” bg_color=”light” type=”horizontal” bordered=”false” centered=”false” image=”https://history.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Brian-Martin.jpg”][/ua_image_boxes][/ua_col] [ua_col class=”col-sm-6″][ua_image_boxes title=”Albert Burton Moore Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Student in European, Latin American, or Asian History Trayce Hockstad” alt_text=”Trayce Hockstad” bg_color=”light” type=”horizontal” bordered=”false” centered=”false” image=”https://history.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Hockstad.jpg”][/ua_image_boxes][/ua_col][/ua_row] [ua_row class=”row”][ua_col class=”col-sm-6″][ua_image_boxes title=”Gary B. Mills Endowed Dissertation Support Fund Aaron Hoggle” alt_text=”Aaron Hoggle” bg_color=”light” type=”horizontal” bordered=”false” centered=”false” image=”https://history.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Hoggle.jpg”][/ua_image_boxes][/ua_col] [ua_col class=”col-sm-6″][ua_image_boxes title=”Christopher G. Swindle Teaching Award Mauren Schindler” alt_text=”Mauren Schindler” bg_color=”light” type=”horizontal” […]
Senior Tejas Dinesh Wins 2022 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award
Senior Tejas Dinesh is the recipient of the 2022 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, one of UA’s Premier Awards. The Ohio native is a double major in History and Environmental Engineering. The Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award recognizes two graduating seniors and one non-student award winner for their character excellence and service to humanity. As a part of the University Fellows Experience, Dinesh has served the West Alabama region through “Project Catalyst,” which provides creative writing seminars for area high school students. […]
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2021 – 2022 Undergraduate Award Recipients
The Lee David and Florence Weinberg Black Scholarship in History Kara Hutchinson Mary Payne James Hands Anna Kate Manchester Amelia Pugh Tenisha Ciby The Russell Bryant Scholarship Aliya Jaramillo The Charles Grayson Summersell Memorial Scholarship for Most Distinguished Undergraduate in History John Pace Caitlyn Jones The Howard Jones Endowed Scholarship Sarah Jaggears Washington Moore Colonial Dames Award for Most Outstanding Paper in American Colonial History James Cummings Henry Pettus Randall, Jr. Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award Faith Oldham Algernon Sydney Sullivan […]
Marsalis Jones: Dad, Dispatcher, Aspiring Teacher
Tuscaloosa’s Marsalis Jones wears many hats. He’s a history major, a father, and a University of Alabama police dispatcher. But he has yet another mission in mind: becoming a high school history teacher. “As An African-American male, I only had one black male teacher my entire time in public school from K-12. History has always been my favorite subject and I believe it would benefit the next generation of young black men to see greater representation of people who look […]
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Senior India Rose Cary to Apply Historical Skills as a Contracts Negotiator After Graduation
While taking Dr. Lawrence Cappello’s Right to Privacy course, Senior India Rose Cary realized she had a deep fascination with the subject of privacy and the complicated interaction between history, law, and daily life. In this course, Cary learned that history should not just be studied for how it will impact the future but for its own sake as well. “While it is undoubtedly true that history can provide a great deal of insight into the contemporary and subsequent world,” […]
Undergraduate Anna Kate Manchester Wins Fulbright Award
By complete happenstance, senior Anna Kate Manchester scrolled through her barrage of emails when she noticed a message about a Canadian study abroad opportunity through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Though Canada had never been at the forefront of her mind, Manchester was intrigued by the thousands of research opportunities the program offered, specifically projects involving her interests in international law and human rights. Excited by the possibilities, she applied. Three months later she received a congratulatory e-mail notification that […]
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PhD Candidate Ashley Tickle Odebiyi Wins Fulbright
Ashley Tickle Odebiyi knew that pursuing her love of Italian history to a Ph.D. at UA would require conducting hands-on research of documents in Italian. When Odebiyi discovered the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, she was struck by not only the amazing research opportunities the program offered but also the prestigious reputation that receipt of the award carries. Named after Senator William J. Fulbright, who established the Fulbright Program in 1946 to promote mutual understanding and academic exchange between the U.S. and […]
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Alabama Memory Project Seeks to Reclaim Lost Lives, Inspires Future Researchers
The Alabama Memory Project is an undergraduate research course directed by Dr. John M. Giggie and sponsored by the Summersell Center for the Study of the South. Launched in 2017, this project seeks to memorialize publicly the lives lost to lynching in the state of Alabama. Working on a county-by county basis, Alabama Memory students commit themselves to recovering every historical detail possible about each lynching case. Most importantly, this project seeks to not only uncover why these men, women, […]
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Jackson Foster Wins 2022 Marshall Scholarship
Jackson Foster has a passion for people. The 2022 Marshall Scholarship winner decided to become a history major because of his profound interest in the complexities of people and their relationships to each other. Foster explained, “I care deeply about the communities, institutions, and relationships that structured and enriched their daily lives, the ways they succeeded – and failed – in navigating periods of profound change.” He hopes to use this knowledge of our histories to “create a more humane, […]
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From The Chair
Thank you for taking some time with the Fall 2022 newsletter from the Department of History. Although it will likely be nearly the end of the semester by the time this issue gets into everyone’s hands, I would take that as a reflection of how much we have had going on at ten Hoor Hall since the fall semester began in August! We have been able to host a number of exciting events in recent weeks alone. Among them was […]
Dr. Lesley Gordon & Students Visit Vicksburg Battlefield
Dr. Lesley Gordon took her Civil War class (HY 315) and UA History grad students on a tour of Vicksburg National Military Park this past March. They were joined by Dr. Susannah Ural and some of her students from the University of Southern Mississippi as well as UA and Southern Mississippi ROTC members. Park rangers and graduate students, such as UA History PhD students Brian Martin and Trace Brusco, co-led the tour. Undergraduate students also presented about the battle at […]
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