Seth Archer won the 2019 Social Science History Association’s President’s Book Award for Sharks upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawaiʻi, 1778–1855. He also published an article in American Nineteenth Century History and conducted research for a new project on smallpox and preventive medicine in Native North America. He presented papers at the annual conferences of the Western History Association and the American Association for the History of Medicine. In October he co-organized and hosted a Tanner Talk, “Race, Ethnicity, and Health: Historical and Contemporary Disparities,” with Dr. Guadalupe Marquez-Velarde (Sociology).
Lawrence Culver received a Western American History Fellowship Award from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University for archival research and travel. He also served as a member of the national award selection committee for American History for long-term (12-month) fellowships for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was one of only two CHaSS faculty included in USU’s new Research Landscapes (Air, Land, Water) environmental research initiative.
Angela Diaz published a chapter, “At the Center of Southern Empire: The Role of Gulf South Communities in Antebellum Territorial Expansion,” in a new book, Inventing Destiny: Cultural Explorations of US Expansion (edited by Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr.) from University Press of Kansas.
Dr. Julia Gossard has been appointed the Bennion Faculty Fellow with the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies. In this position, she will oversee the yearly Bennion Teachers’ Workshop for the Perpetuation of Democratic Principles. This workshop connects K-12 educators from Utah and the greater Mountain West with (inter)nationally renowned scholars, speakers, and activists on topics related to “democratic principles.” She also earned her Teaching Scholar Certificate by completing the Empowering Teaching Excellent badge program to earn the distinction of “Teaching Scholar.” Her article, “Breaking a Child’s Will: Eighteenth-Century Parisian Juvenile Detention Centers,” was published in French Historical Studies (Vol 42, No. 2, 2019, pp. 239-59). She was invited to present a paper at the Omohundro Institute of Early American Culture at William & Mary College. This paper deals with “filles de roi” that were sent from France to New France in the seventeenth century. Dr. Gossard worked on this paper with undergraduate research assistant, Arie French, through a CHaSS summer mentorship.
As Centenary of the First World War winds down, Susan Grayzel is continuing to give a variety of academic and public lectures on this subject. Last autumn, she presented papers at three different conferences in Britain, including the keynote for the James Ford History Workshop on “Women’s History in Britain and Ireland: Recent Developments and Future Trajectories” sponsored by Women in Humanities, at the University of Oxford (UK). She also delivered the keynote lecture for the Canadian Military History Conference in May and was a guest scholar for an NEH Summer Seminar for Teachers on World War I at Hood College in July 2019. Her contribution to the series “One British Thing: The Babies’ Anti-Gas Protective Helmet” came out in the Journal of British Studies in June and her essay, “‘Needles En Avant!’: The Militarization of Sewing and Knitting during the First World War in France, Britain and the United States” just appeared in French Fashion, Women, and the First World War (Yale University Press), the catalogue for Special Exhibit at Bard Graduate Center running from September 2019 to January 2020. In October 2019, she will take up an appointment as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford and from January to July 2020, she will be the UK Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Leeds. She is looking forward to finishing her book and starting new research in the UK.
Victoria Grieve was promoted to Full Professor in April 2019. She will be the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where she will be teaching from February thru July 2020.
Ravi M. Gupta is on sabbatical this academic year, during which he will spend two months at Oxford University as the Khaitan Research Fellow. He is currently working on an undergraduate textbook for Oxford University Press called “Hinduism: The Primary Sources.” He has submitted a chapter for the forthcoming Bloomsbury Research Handbook on Vedanta, and another chapter for an academic publisher in Sweden. Last year, Ravi delivered invited presentations in Stockholm, Kolkata, Oxford, and Logan. His favorite presentation was called, “Battling Serpents, Marrying Trees: Models for Ecological Care from the Bhagavata Purana.”
Patrick Mason published Mormonism and Violence: The Battles of Zion, with Cambridge University Press as part of the press’s Elements in Religion and Violence series. He also published a chapter, “Mormonism and Race,” in The Oxford Handbook on Race and Religion in America, and his Mormon History Association presidential address, “‘When I Think of War I Am Sick at Heart’: Latter Day Saint Nonparticipation in World War I,” in the Journal of Mormon History. He delivered invited lectures at the Chautauqua Institution and Illinois State University, and participated as a panel at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting on preparing scholars of religion for non-academic careers.
Colleen O’Neill’s article, “Testing the Limits of Colonial Parenting: Navajo Domestic Workers, The Intermountain Indian School, and the Urban Relocation Program, 1950-1962,” was published in Ethnohistory 66 (July 2019), 565- 592.
In November, Tammy Proctor was an invited speaker at the National World War I Museum’s conference, 2019 Symposium – 1919: Peace? Her presentation was entitled: “The Myth of Isolation: American Intervention in Postwar Europe, 1919-1924” and it examined US food relief programs. For more information on the conference, see the link: https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/2019-symposium
Eliza Rosenberg delivered a paper, "Expulsion and Binding: Canonical Perspectives on the Sons of Abraham," at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Denver. She is currently authoring a paper, "'There's Power in the Sacrifice of a Son': Neil Gaiman's Pantheistic Midrash," for an edited volume in Rowman & Littlefield's Theology and Pop Culture series, Neil Gaiman and Theology, edited by Zachary B. Smith. She also become a Biblical Studies contributor to Point of View Publishing, which develops at-cost course readers aimed at introducing undergraduate majors to academic research and publications in their area of study.
Jamie Sanders published “Histories of Elites, Redux: Oligarchs, Families, and Power (Book Review Essay)” in Latin American Research Review 54, no. 3 (2019): 739-746. His essay “Decolonizing Europe” appeared in The First Wave of Decolonization. Ed. Mark Thurner. He also gave two invited keynote lectures: “La democracia, el republicanismo popular, y las esferas públicas en Colombia en el siglo XIX: Una historia global” for the Universidad Javeriana and Universidad del Valle. Cali, Colombia; and “La vanguardia en América: Nuestra tarea para desafiar la historiografía global actual” for the Universidad de Cartagena, Colombia. He was also invited to participate in a symposium on “Tradition and Transition: Political Practice and the Benefit of Continuity in the Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850” at Leiden University in The Netherlands.
In May of 2019, Sue Shapiro gave an invited lecture at Ionian University in Corfu, Greece on “The Seven Sages as Historical Figures.” Also in May she attended the annual conference of the Mediterranean Studies Association in Crete and gave a presentation titled “Sappho 58: The Remarkable Tale of Sappho's Tithonus Poem.” She was also made a Fellow of the Mediterranean Studies Association in recognition of her work as editor of their journal, Mediterranean Studies. Her article, “Medea as Innocent Victim and Vengeful Killer” was published in The German-Greek Yearbook of Political Economy, and on September 13 she gave the keynote address at the Utah Classical Association Conference. The title of the talk was “Chilon of Sparta: The Man and the Legend.”
In May, Dominic Sur was invited by the University of Hamburg and the Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship to present his research at Shechen Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal at the Tibetan Buddhist Textual Studies Conference conducted in association with the Academic Research Program Initiative (APRI). He was also invited to present his research in Paris at the International Association of Tibetan Studies Congress. He organized and will convene a conference on Buddhism and Ecology at the American Academy of Religion's annual conference where he will also present a paper on the same panel.
Norm Jones published Being Elizabethan. Understanding Shakespeare’s Neighbors with Wiley/Blackwell in 2019. He is now working on a biography of Lord Burghley, and helping organize the Lord Burghley at 500 project, which culminates in an international conference at Cambridge University in 2020. In the fall of 2018 he ran a conference on regime change at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. In 2020 he will run a conference on an unusual illuminated manuscript of 1567, the Heroica Eulogia, under a grant from the Huntington Library. Chairing the College Board’s AP Higher Education Advisory Committee, he continues to be engaged in the national discussions of general education. For the American Historical Association, he recently wrote a study of the role of history departments in general education, and he serves on the AHA’s Gateway Project on history first year courses. As Chair of the Utah Regents’ Task Force, he is organizing his 22nd annual “What is an Educated Person” conference on general education for Utah’s faculty. Now he is embarked on making his first podcasts for Aggie Parents, and a social media campaign on general education for the Utah System of Higher Education. To make more time for these hobbies, he retired from the History Department in July 2019.
Dan McInerney focused most of his work in 2019 on projects tied to teaching and learning. He was named as an adviser to the American Historical Association’s new “History Gateways” project focused on introductory courses, and co-hosted a webinar on the program in September. He delivered conference presentations to the annual meetings of the American Historical Association, the Pacific Branch of the AHA, the AHA Texas Conference on Introductory Courses, and the Assessment Institute (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). Working with the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), Dan visited several campuses for day-long workshops on student learning, traveling to Hiram College, Purdue University Northwest, Truckee Meadows Community College, the University of Toledo, and Idaho State University, In June, he hosted a visiting Japanese scholar, Dr. Tomoko Torii, on visits to USU, Weber State, the University of Utah, and the Utah System of Higher Education to review academic reform projects in the state. He returns to teaching in Spring 2020 in a large intro class on campus – and a new, online, competency-based history course to regional campuses.
Bob McPherson is conducting the final edit of his book Traders, Agents, and Weavers: Developing the Northern Navajo Region (U of OK Press, Spring 2020), has published a chapter in Steve Trimble’s Capitol Reef Reader and submitted chapters in two other works (Utah History with David Lewis and another on the archaeology of Montezuma Canyon [U of U]). He has also published three book reviews and submitted three others, served as editor/contributor to a local history magazine Blue Mountain Shadows, conducted a three-day staff ride to the Custer Battlefield (MO) for USU/Weber State ROTC students, and is currently working with state and tribal leaders to preserve the 1921 Oljato Trading Post in Monument Valley. His current writing project is a trilogy on Navajo traditional teachings.
Charles Prebish launched his “Generations of Buddhist Studies” project in which senior Buddhist Studies scholars from around the world are submitting chapters of biographical reminiscence about their careers. Nearly forty chapters, including Professor Prebish’s, have been posted on the H-Buddhism website (https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/pages/3572157/generations-buddhist-studies). Dr. Prebish also presented a podcast focusing on American Buddhism and Buddhist Studies at (https://soundcloud.com/imperfect-buddha-podcast/33-ibp-charles-s-prebish-on-american-buddhism-buddhist-studies. He continues to serve as Co-Editor of the Routledge “World Religions” book series, and as Co-Editor of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics Ebook Project, which furnishes Religious Studies Ebook texts, at affordable prices, to college students worldwide (www.jbeonlinebooks.org). He also published “American Buddhism: Looking Backward, Looking Forward,” in Buddhism Around the World, and “The Vinaya,” in The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics.
Leonard Rosenband is an emeritus professor of European history. His recent articles include: “Journeymen Paperworkers, the Industrious Revolution, and the Industrial Enlightenment in Europe, c. 1700-1800,” Ferrum, vol. 91, 2019; “Practice and Vision: Papermaking and the Encyclopedias of the Eighteenth Century,” and co-author of “Introduction,” in Labor before the Industrial Revolution: Work, Technology and their Ecologies in an Age of Early Capitalism, ed. Thomas M. Safley (Routledge, 2018); “Work, Skill, and Technology,” in The Cultural History of Work, vol. 4, The Age of the Enlightenment, eds. Deborah Simonton and Anne Montenach (Bloomsbury Press, 2018); “The Industrious Revolution: A Concept Too Many?” International Labor and Working Class History, number 90, Fall 2016; “La papeterie en Ardèche: Les Montgolfier, les compagnons papetiers, et l'innovation, 1780-1822,” Mémoire d’Ardèche et Temps Présent, number 127, August 2015. The rest is commentary.
Mufti Nadimul Quamar Ahmed is a graduate student in his second year, pursuing a doctorate in sociology at USU. He recently helped survey Utahns to see if environmental concerns affect the decision to have children.
Utah State University President’s Office recently held receptions for this year’s round of inaugural lectures. Three recently promoted faculty in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences presented thoughtful reflections on their research and the even...
