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Department Continues Internship Program with White House Historical Association

The department is continuing its partnership with the White House Historical Association (WHHA) on an annual internship for UA history majors. The internship program was started by WHHA president and UA alumnus Stewart McLaurin (BA, 1981) as way of giving back to his alma mater. Though Malcolm Cammeron (MA, 2019) was the first WHHA intern from UA, Jessica Brodt holds the distinction of being the first official intern from the program. Most recently, doctoral student Kristofer Roberts was selected for […]

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Graduate History Association Modifies Power & Struggle Conference

The GHA looks forward to a second paper contest. Last year’s contest, held in lieu of a face-to-face event, received 25 submissions from the US and abroad. Winners were selected in four categories: Overall Paper, Paper in Southern History, Paper in Power & Struggle (conference theme), and Paper by a Phi Alpha Theta member. This year’s contest seeks to continue that success, keeping Power & Struggle on student radars. The GHA hopes that the international interest continues when they resume […]

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Blake Scott Ball (PhD, 2017) Publishes Charlie Brown’s America

Department of History PhD alumnus Blake Scott Ball has crafted an exceptional narrative of Cold War-era America through an unlikely subject: Charlie Brown. In Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts, Dr. Ball looks into the emotional journey taken by the Peanuts comic from the Cold War to the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Ball finds that Peanuts was very political. Whether it was the battles over the Vietnam War, racial integration, feminism, or the future of […]

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Faculty Updates

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. John Beeler spent academic year 2020-21 working on two of several book projects currently in hand, chiefly a social and cultural study of the Scots professional and gentry classes in the nineteenth century focused on Euphemia (“Effie”) Milne and her husband Alexander. Julia Brock has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts […]

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Dr. Sharony Green Awarded Newberry Fellowship to Study Zora Neale Hurston

Complicated power exchanges have been a focal point of interest to Dr. Sharony Green for quite some time. After researching this topic with antebellum white and African Americans as well as people of African descent on the Florida peninsula since the colonial era in mind, Dr. Green has focused on Alabama native, author, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras. Recent headlines about the migrant crisis at the southern border prompted this move. Down on her luck in the late […]

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Faculty Publications

Joshua D. Rothman, The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (Basic Books, 2021) For the past seven years Dr. Joshua D. Rothman, chair of the Department of History, combed archives across the country, working to craft an illuminating narrative of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, three business partners who ran the largest slave-trading operation in US history. Rothman’s The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (Basic Books, 2021) debunks the […]

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Summersell Center Accepting Deep South Book Prize Nominations

The Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South and the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at The University of Alabama are pleased to announce that they are receiving nominations for the 2024 Summersell Deep South Book Prize for the best book on the history of the American South. The author of the prizewinning book will be awarded a $2500 cash prize and be invited to give an address and meet with faculty and students at […]

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Dr. Lawrence Cappello wins awards for teaching and advising

Congratulations to Dr. Lawrence Cappello, who garnered two major awards in 2021. He has won both the 2021 Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award and the 2021 John L. Blackburn Advisor of the Year Award. Dr. Cappello joined the faculty in 2018 as a specialist in legal history. His research focuses on the history of privacy and he teaches courses in American civilization, American legal history, constitutional law, and privacy law. He is also the director of the department’s Legal History […]

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Fall Edition of Historically Speaking Available Now

The Fall 2020 edition of Historically Speaking, the Department of History’s biannual newsletter, is hot off the presses! In this semester’s issue, readers will find stories on: New Degree Concentrations Faculty Research on Current Topics Faculty Retirements New and Award-Winning Publications Student Matriculations We hope you enjoy being kept up-to-date on the department’s progress and would love to hear of your accomplishments as well.  

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Spring 2020 Edition of Historically Speaking Published Electronically

Last week the Department of History published its Spring 2020 edition of Historically Speaking completely electronically. Though we’ve always made an electronic edition available online, we’ve focused our spring efforts on a print edition for Honor’s Day, traditionally. The ongoing COVID-19 National Emergency forced us to change those plans, like it has so much else in our daily lives. Nevertheless, the department and the university continue to move forward and we’re delighted to share the accomplishments of our students, alumni, […]

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Fall Edition of Historically Speaking Now Available

We are please to announce that the Fall 2018 edition of Historically Speaking  is now in print and on its way to faculty, students, alumni, and friends of the Department of History at The University of Alabama. An electronic version of the current issue is available at this link for those who can’t wait for the postman to deliver the hard copy version! Thank you to everyone who contributed to this publication, especially the members of the department’s Communications Committee: Drs. Sarah Steinbock-Pratt, Juan Ponce-Vazquez, Holly […]

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Our New Department Newsletter, Historically Speaking, Now Available!

We are pleased to announce that issue number one of Historically Speaking is now in print and on its way to faculty, students, alumni, and friends of the Department of History at The University of Alabama. Our intention is to produce and send print copies of the newsletter each fall and another, electronic version, each spring. An electronic version of the current issue is available at for those who can’t wait for the postman to deliver the hard copy version! […]

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