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Professors and Department News | Book Publications | Current Graduate Students | Alumni

Professors and Department News 2012-2013

• Christopher Loss's book, Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press in 2012), is the winner of the 2013 American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award.
• Daniel J. Sharfstein was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for his project, “Thunder in the Mountains: The Clash of Two American Legends, Oliver Otis Howard and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.”  Sharfstein was one of 175 scholars appointed from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants “on the basis of impressive achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.”
• Jane Landers was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for her project, "African Kingdoms, Black Republics and Free Black Towns across the Iberian Atlantic". Landers was one of 175 scholars appointed "on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise" from a pool of almost 3,000 applicants.
• Thomas A. Schwartz received The Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching on April 3, 2013 at the Spring Faculty Assembly.
• Dennis Dickerson has received The Berlin Prize for a Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin spring 2014.
• Jane Landers has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for 2013-14. The award will help fund the project: "African Kingdoms, Black Republics and Free Black Towns in the Iberian Atlantic."
• Alistair Sponsel has been named the 2013 Ritter Fellow by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The Ritter Memorial Fellowship is awarded biennially to a historian, scientist, or other scholar whose research enlarges and deepens understanding of the history of the earth, ocean, and atmospheric sciences.
• Catherine Molineux has been awarded the Ryskamp Fellowship, by the American Council of Learned Societies, for the 2013-14 academic year.
• Frank Robinson has been elected president of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies and will hold this position until March 2014.  Frank has served as the principal organizer for the SECOLAS 60th annual conference in Panama City, Panama that will be held March 6-10, 2013.
• Jane Landers will deliver the Nathan I. Huggins Lectures at Harvard University in fall 2013.  The Huggins Lecture Series brings a distinguished scholar to deliver a series of lectures related to African American history.
• Leor Halevi has won a senior fellowship from the Institut d'études avancées de Paris for the 2013-2014 academic year, as well as a 2-year grant (2012-2014) from the Social Science Research Council under the New Directions in the Study of Prayer initiative.
• Christopher Loss has been awarded a 2012-13 Visiting Scholar Fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This is to support his current book project, Front and Center: Academic Expertise and its Challengers in the Post-1945 U.S.
• Sarah Igo has been awarded a large New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation to be used over the next three years. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's New Directions Fellowships provide support for "exceptional faculty members in the humanities" who are pursuing innovative research to "acquire systematic training outside their own special fields."  Professor Igo plans to use the fellowship to pursue training in sociolegal thought and jurisprudence at U.C. Berkeley's Law School and Center for the Study of Law and Society.
• Moses Ochonu has been awarded an ACLS Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies for 2012-13.
• Daniel Sharfstein's article, “Atrocity, Entitlement and Personhood: The Value of Violence in Property Law,” (forthcoming in the May 2012 Virginia Law Review) was honored with the Association of American Law Schools’ 2012 Scholarly Paper Prize, and Sharfstein presented his work at the organization’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on January 6.
• Samira Sheikh has been awarded the Ryskamp Fellowship, by the American Council of Learned Societies, for the 2012-13 academic year.
• Celso Castilho and Catherine Molineux are recipients of a 2012-2013 Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Fellowship in conjunction with the Sawyer Seminar entitled “The Age of Emancipation: Black Freedom in the Atlantic World.” (see the description of the project listed below).
• Our new colleague, Celia Applegate, has just been voted "Vice President elect" of the Central European History Society, and will assume her term as president in 2014. The Central European History Society is the central organization of historians of Germany and of the Habsburg Empire in North America.
• The Smithsonian has appointed Gary Gerstle as Goldman Sachs Visiting Scholar for 2012.  In this capacity, he will be working with curators to develop a major, permanent exhibit on immigration to be installed in the National Museum of American History in 2014-15. Gary Gerstle has also been named the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University for the 2012-2013 academic year. 
  

2012 - 2013 Book Publications

• Joel Harrington, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)
• Lauren Clay, Stagestruck: The Business of Theater in Eighteenth-Century France and Its Colonies (Cornell University Press, 2013)
• Paul Lim, Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, August 2012) is now on OUP’s website. 
• Gerald Figal, Beachheads: War, Peace, and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012)
• James Epstein, Scandal of Colonial Rule: Power and Subversion in the British Atlantic during the Age of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
• Peter Lorge, Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and editor of, Debating War in Chinese History; History of Warfare, Volume 83 (Brill, 2013)
• Catherine Molineux, Faces of Perfect Ebony: Encountering Atlantic Slavery in Imperial Britain (Harvard University Press, 2012)
• Christopher Loss, Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton University Press, 2012), winner of the 2013 American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award.

Current Graduate Student Articles and Awards

• Ashish Koul has been awarded the Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship for 2013-14. 
• Sonja Ostrow has been awarded a Social Science Research Council (SSRC) International Dissertation Research Fellowship to conduct research in Germany during the 2013-14 academic year.
• Cassandra Painter has been awarded a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to conduct dissertation research in Germany during the 2013-14 academic year.
• Ansley Quiros has been awarded a Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Graduate Fellowship for 2013-2014 that will fund the completion of her dissertation, "'Me and God Stood Up': Lived Theology in the Civil Rights Movement in Americus, 1942-1978."
• Matt Owen has been awarded The Harry S. Truman Library Institute Dissertation Year Fellowship for the 2013-2014 academic year that will fund the completion of his project, "For the Progress of Man: The TVA, Electric Power, and the Environment."
• Lance Ingwersen has been awarded a Fulbright-García Robles Grant to conduct dissertation research in Mexico during the 2013-14 academic year.
• Lu Sun has been accepted by the 2013 U.S. Foreign Policy Colloquium for a three-day conference in May 2013 in Washington, D.C. to discuss issues of U.S.-China relations and foreign policy.
• Angela Sutton has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Mellon dissertation finishing fellowship for the 2013-14 academic year.
• Paula Gajewski will present a paper, "Public Policies for Private Capital: How Labor’s Pensions became Wall Street’s Retirement Plans,” at a conference at The Huntington, "Capitalizing on Finance: New Directions in the History of Capitalism," to take place April 13, 2013.
• Erica Hayden's article, “‘She Keeps the Place in Continual Excitement:’ Female Inmates’ reactions to incarceration in Antebellum Pennsylvania’s Prisons,” has been published in Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Vol. 80, Winter 2013, Number 1, pp. 51-84.
• Nicolette Kostiw's dissertation, "A Lost Generation:  The Tutelage of Minors, Slavery, and the Black Family in Rio de Janeiro," has been awarded the 2012 Ida B. Wells Graduate prize from the Coordinating Council for Women in History.
• Miriam Martin was awarded the HASTAC Scholar Award for 2012/13 through the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. Miriam has been working closely with Mona Frederick at the Warren Center to advance digital humanities conversations within Vanderbilt and with the other HASTAC Scholars at more than 75 universities worldwide. Miriam and Mona recently hosted a conference here at Vanderbilt, and they are excited to continue these conversations at the AHA in January as well as the HASTAC conference in Toronto in April.
• Caree Banton is the recipient of a 2012-2013 Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Graduate Student Fellowship in conjunction with the Sawyer Seminar entitled “The Age of Emancipation: Black Freedom in the Atlantic World.”

Alumni

• Nicholas M. Beasley (PhD, 2006) The Reverend Nicholas Beasley is Rector of the Church of the Resurrection Episcopal, in Greenwood, South Carolina. His book Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies 1650-1780 was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2009. More recently, he has published book reviews in Anglican and Episcopal History and Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief. Dr. Beasley taught history courses in the European Studies summer program at University of the South in 2008 and 2009.
• Paul H. Bergeron (PhD, 1965) is Professor of History, Emeritus at the University of Tennessee. His latest book, Andrew Johnson's Civil War and Reconstruction, was published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2011.
• Jeff Broadwater (PhD, 1989) is Professor of History, Barton College in Wilson, North Carolina. His most recent book, James Madison: A Son of Virginia and a Founder of the Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), recently received the 2012  Ragan Old North State Award from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association as the best work of nonfiction by a North Carolina author.   
• Michael Boden (PhD, 2010) Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, Retired, and, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Dutchess Community College, Poughkeepsie, NY
• Tim Boyd (PhD, 2007) is a history teacher at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Boyd's book, Georgia Democrats, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Shaping of the New South (Gainesville, 2012) is available from the University Press of Florida. An article based on a chapter from the book on the 1966 election of Lester Maddox appeared in the Journal of Southern History (May 2009).
• Christina Dickerson Cousin (PhD, 2011) is an Adjunct Professor in Humanities, Cumberland County College, Vineland, New Jersey.
• Michael Crane (PhD, 2009), is Assistant Professor of History, University of Arkansas - Fort Smith.
• Mike Davis (PhD, 1996) is Head of School, Colorado Academy, a 900 student preK through 12 school in Denver. www.coloradoacademy.org.
• Rachel Donaldson (PhD, 2011) is a Lecturer, Program in American Studies, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee.
• Pablo Gomez (PhD, 2010) is an Assistant Professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison. His work has been published in the edited volume “Differenz und Herrschaft in den Amerikas: Repräsentationen des Anderen in Geschichte und Gegenwart,” the Encyclopedia of Plagues, Pestilence, and Epidemics and in several medical journals. Pablo is the director of the British Library funded project "Creating a digital archive of Afro-Colombian history and culture: Black Ecclesiastical and Notarial records from the Choco, Colombia."
• Mark Hampton (PhD 1998) Associate Professor of History at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, since January 2007. Associate Professor (tenured) and Assistant Professor at Wesleyan College, Macon, GA, 1999-2006. His books include: Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850-1950 (University of Illinois Press, 2004), and, Anglo-American Media Interactions, 1850-2000, (co-edited with Joel H. Wiener; Palgrave, 2007). His current book project is: "Britishness and Hong Kong, 1945-1997," (forthcoming 2012). He is co-editor of the journal Media History (since 2005).
• Cheryl Hudson (PhD, 2011) Tutorial Fellow (American Studies), University of Sussex, England. Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies's book, "Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies," was published by New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.
• Robert Hutton (PhD, 2009) is a lecturer at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN. Hutton's article, "Reconstructing Appalachia: The Civil War's Aftermath" will appear in the University Press of Kentucky's New Directions in Southern History series.
• Natalie Inman (PhD, 2010) is Assistant Professor of History, Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee. Dr. Inman has published articles in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly and the Journal of East Tennessee History.  She has a chapter entitled, “Militant Families in the American Revolution” in a forthcoming collection of essays published by the University of Tennessee Press.
• David C. LaFevor (PhD, 2011) is Assistant Professor, Berry College, Georgia.
• R.A. Lawson (PhD, 2003) is Associate Professor of History, Dean College, Massachusetts. Professor Lawson’s book Jim Crow’s Counterculture: The Blues and Black Southerners, 1890-1945 (LSU Press, 2010) has been awarded the Michael V.R. Thomason Book Award for best book of 2010-2011 by the Gulf South Historical Association.
• Werner D. Lippert (PhD, 2005) is Assistant Professor, Department of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania has published The Economic Diplomacy of Ostpolitik: Origins of Nato’s Energy Dilemma.
• Andrew McMichael (PhD, 2000) is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean, Potter College of Arts and Letters, Western Kentucky University. As Assistant Dean he is involved in technology and electronic "outreach," as well as curriculum development, and grants. The second edition of his first book, History On The Web: Using And Evaluating The Internet, is forthcoming.
• Steven P. Miller (PhD, 2006) is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Goshen College (Spring 2010). A resident of St. Louis, Miller teaches history at Washington and Webster Universities. His first book, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), has received favorable reviews in such publications as The New York Times Book Review, Christian Century, and H-Net Reviews. His website can be found at http://sites.google.com/site/stevenpmillersite/.
• LeeAnn Reynolds (PhD, 2007) is Assistant Professor, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama.
• Larry O. Rivers (PhD, 2010) is Assistant Professor, University of West Georgia. Larry's article "'Leaning on the Everlasting Arms': Virgil Darnell Hawkins's Early Life and Entry into the Civil Rights Struggle" was published in The Florida Historical Quarterly (Winter 2008).
• Selena Sanderfer (PhD, 2010) is Assistant Professor, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Her dissertation, titled, For Land and Liberty: Black Territorial Separatism in the South, 1776-1904 examines lower class black separatist movements from the South to Nova Scotia, Liberia, and the Midwest.
• Mary L. Sanderson (PhD, 2010) is an adjunct instructor in Dayton, OH, where she teaches at Wright State University and the University of Dayton.
• David Wheat (PhD, 2009) is Assistant Professor of History at Michigan State University.  His latest article "The First Great Waves: African Provenance Zones for the Transatlantic Slave Trade to Cartagena de Indias" was published in The Journal of African History 52:1 (2011): 1-22.  Wheat was recently awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2012-2013 in support of his book project, "Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640."