Publication Date

September 1, 2013

Perspectives Section

News

AHA members are encouraged to submit news about their careers, including prizes, promotions, honors, tenure, and new jobs. If you have an announcement that you would like to publish, please send it to Perspectives on History, with the subject line, “Member News.”

Angus Burgin's book, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression (Harvard Univ. Press) was named a Book of Exceptional Merit by the Society for US Intellectual History.

Bettye Collier-Thomas, professor of history at Temple University, has won the 2013 Temple University Faculty Research Award for her book, Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010). The award, which includes a $5,000 honorarium, is given annually. Other awards for Jesus, Jobs, and Justice include 2010 ABWH Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Award, 2010 National Women’s Political Caucus EMMA Award, and 2011 Organization of American Historians Darlene Clark Hine Award.

Astrid M. Eckert, an associate professor at Emory University, is the 2013 recipient of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) for her book,The Struggle for the Files: The Western Allies and the Return of German Archives after the Second World War (Cambridge Univ. Press). The award will be presented at a ceremony during the Council of State Archivists and SAA Joint Annual Meeting in New Orleans, August 11–17, 2013. The award is given for writing of superior excellence and usefulness in the fields of archival history, theory, and practice. The Award Committee noted that the book is “fascinating detective work, filled with detail, and supported by examples. While a historical topic,The Struggle for the Files contains lessons and scenarios that archivists, historians, politicians, and others can utilize in their work.”

Norman Etherington, emeritus professor of history at the University of Western Australia, was made a member of the Order of Australia, AM, in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List on June 10, 2013, “For significant service to education, particularly in history, through contributions to heritage preservation, and to the community.”

Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District Superintendent Dr. Henry Kiernan officially announced his retirement at the Board of Education meeting. After 39 years in education, including eight years in Bellmore-Merrick, Kiernan will be stepping down from his position on July 1, 2013.

Barbara Miller Lane, life member of the AHA, was named a fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians on April 11, 2013,at the annual meeting of this organization in Buffalo, New York.This award is given to an individual who has made “a lifetime of significant contributions to the field of architectural history”(read the full citation).

Wm. Roger Louis, editor of I. B. Tauris’s Adventures with Britannia series, has been awarded the Royal Society of Literature Benson Medal, given to recognize “many years of outstanding service to literature.” Louis, who recently retired as director of the AHA’s National History Center, has directed the faculty seminar on British studies at the University of Texas for 40 years. The seminar forms the basis for the Adventures with Britannia series, collections of essays on British cultural and political life. Eight books have been published so far over an 18-year period: a new volume, Irrepressible Adventures with Britannia, will be published in November. Previous recipients of the Benson Medal have included Edith Sitwell, E. M. Forster, Wole Soyinka, and Nadine Gordimer.

Sharon McQueen has received the 2013 Phyllis Dain Award from the American Library Association for her doctoral dissertation, a socio-cultural history of the 1936 children’s picture book, The Story of Ferdinand. The award committee touted McQueen’s work “as a model for histories of similar publishing mass phenomena such as the Harry Potter books,” and stated that, “She well serves the author and illustrator of Ferdinand, Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson, as de-mythologizer and biographer.” The award committee lauded the depth of McQueen’s research, her polished writing style, her original use of illustrations and the success with which she transforms an exacting book history into socio-cultural history of the first order. A book based on McQueen’s dissertation is expected in 2014.

Charles O'Brien, professor emeritus of history at Western Illinois University, has published a historical mystery novel,Death of a Robber Baron (Kensington, 2013), the first in trilogy set in America’s Gilded Age.

Bette W. Oliver, an independent scholar specializing in late 18th-century France, is the author of a new book, Surviving the French Revolution: A Bridge Across Time (Lexington Books, 2013). She is the author of two previous books on the French Revolution, From Royal to National: The Louvre Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale and Orphans on the Earth: Girondin Fugitives from the Terror, 1793–1794.

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen has been awarded the 2013 Society for US Intellectual History Annual Book Award, which honors the best book in American intellectual history published in 2012, for American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (Univ. of Chicago Press).

Lawrence Wittner, professor of history emeritus at SUNY–Albany, has written a novel, What's Going On at UAardvark? Published in May 2013, it is a satire on university corporatization and rebellion.

Guggenheim Fellows

The following AHA members were named the recipients of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for 2013. According to the foundation,

In its eighty-ninth annual competition for the United States and Canada, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and scientists. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants.

Jon Coleman, professor of history, University of Notre Dame: “Movement in Preindustrial America.”

Kyle Harper, associate professor of classics and letters, University of Oklahoma: “A Biohistory of the Fall of the Roman Empire.”

Jane Landers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History, Vanderbilt University: “African Kingdoms, Black Republics, and Free Black Towns across the Iberian Atlantic.”

Sophia Rosenfeld, professor of history, University of Virginia: “The Choices We Make: The Roots of Freedom.”

Daniel Sharfstein, professor of law, Vanderbilt University Law School: “Thunder in the Mountains: The Clash of Two American Legends, Oliver Otis Howard and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.”

Leigh Schmidt, Edward C. Mallinckrodt University Professor, Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis: “Public Atheism: An American History.”

Elaine Tyler May, Regents Professor of American Studies and History, University of Minnesota: “The American Quest for Security, 1960 to the Present.”.

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