Publication Date

October 1, 2005

Perspectives Section

In Memoriam

Editor's Note: The purpose of this column, which is published in Perspectives as space permits, is to recognize and honor the accomplishments of AHA members. Submissions are welcome; entries will be published in alphabetical order. To submit an entry, e-mail or write to David Darlington, Associate Editor, AHA, 400 A Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003-3889.

James F. Brooks became the new president/CEO of the School of American Research (SAR) on August 1, 2005. Trained across history and anthropology, Brooks held SAR resident scholar and summer scholar fellowships in 2000–01 and joined the SAR research faculty as press director in 2002. His previous appointments include professorships at the University of Maryland and the University of California at Santa Barbara and membership in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. A decade of experience in the business of publishing, advertising, and graphic design preceded his career in the academy. An interdisciplinary scholar of the indigenous past, he has concentrated on the practice of violence and accommodation in the intercultural borderlands of North America and beyond. His book, Captives & Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002), made an unprecedented sweep of eight scholarly prizes in 2003, including Columbia University’s Bancroft Prize for the best book in American history. Dr. Brooks’s goals for SAR in the future include extending its programs to international venues, increasing its embrace of indigenous artists and intellectuals, and engaging in public outreach and education programs in the greater Southwest. The School of American Research is a unique, nonprofit center for advanced study in anthropology, the social sciences, the humanities, and Native American arts. The campus, located on Santa Fe’s historic east side, was built in the 1920s as the home of Amelia Elizabeth White and her sister Martha Root White. SAR has earned an international reputation as a place where scholars and artists engage in stimulating interaction and pursue individual projects free of external pressures.

John Whiteclay Chambers II has received the 2005 Outstanding Teaching Award from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, where he is professor of history and has taught since 1982. Exactly 30 years ago, in 1975, as an assistant professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University, he received Barnard’s first Outstanding Teacher Award. His latest publication, George Washington in Cranbury: The Road to the Battle of Monmouth, won the Distinguished Achievement Award from the League of Historical Societies of New Jersey in 2003.

Michael Chapman (Boston Coll.) won the 2005 Northeast Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual prize for the best paper presented by a graduate student, Ellery Sedgwick's Hidden Agenda: The Atlantic Monthly, Franco's Spain, and Un-American Yankee Humanism, 1938.

Alon Confino (Univ. of Virginia) will be a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies and an honorary Lady Davis Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel for 2005–06.

Richard W. Davis, emeritus professor, Washington Univ. in St. Louis, has received an Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowship for two years, 2005 and 2006, to complete his book on the House of Lords from 1811–46.

Brian Donahue (Brandeis Univ.) won the New England Historical Association annual book award for The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (Yale University Press).

John C. Fredriksen was inducted into the 2005 edition of Who's Who in America.

Katherine C. Grier will join the academic staff at Winterthur Museum & Country Estate as a professor in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, starting September 1. The position carries with it a joint appointment at the University of Delaware. Grier’s research and writing projects focus largely on the 19th and 20th centuries. Her current project examines pets as insightful expressions of material culture. Her book,Pets in America: A History will be published by the University of North Carolina Press later this year, and she is serving as guest curator of an accompanying exhibition.

K.P.L.G. (Carool) Kersten (formerly of Payap Univ. in Thailand, now at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London) has published Dr. Muller’s Asian Journey: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos (1907–09) (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2005). This is his second study of a historical travel account dealing with Southeast Asia. His previous book, Strange Events in the Kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos (1635–44) was also released by White Lotus in 2003.

Jane Lancaster (Brown Univ.) won the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association 2005 book award for her book Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth—A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen" (Northeastern University Press).

James Loewen (Catholic Univ.) has published Sundown Towns, telling the story of thousands of towns across America that drove out or kept out African Americans (and sometimes others) between 1890 and 1940, some continuing to the present. The History Book Club has made it a selection.

Charles O'Brien (Western Illinois Univ., emeritus) published Lethal Beauty (Severn House), the fourth in his Anne Cartier series of historical mystery novels. The story is placed in the Louvre, Paris, at the Salon of 1787.

Kathleen Sheldon (UCLA) has published a Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (Scarecrow, 2005), the first comprehensive reference book on African women. She participated on a roundtable on “Historical Dictionaries and Encyclopedias” at the 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences, July 2005 in Sydney, Australia.

Jessica Chapman (Univ. of California at Santa Barbara),Jiun-Chyi (Jessey) Choo (Princeton Univ.), Rebecca Goetz (Harvard Univ.), Bethany Moreton (Yale Univ.), Katrina B. Olds (Princeton Univ.), Jennifer L. Pettit (Rutgers Univ.), andKarin A. Velez (Princeton Univ.) have been awarded Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowships for PhD dissertations on ethical and religious values by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. These fellowships support PhD students in the final year of their dissertation work at 18 institutions nationwide. Each fellow receives an award of $18,000 for one year. Since their inception in 1981, the Newcombe Fellowships have supported nearly 1,000 doctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences. Many Newcombe Fellows are now noted faculty at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and abroad. For more information, visithttps://www.woodrow.org/newcombe.

The Woodrow Wilson Center is pleased to announce that several historians will be among the 23 scholars and practitioners selected as resident fellows for the 2005–06 academic year. For information about the 2006–07 fellowship competition, please see the Wilson Center web site at https://www.wilsoncenter.org. The AHA members who are fellows are listed below with the titles of the projects they will pursue.

  • Sara Berry (Johns Hopkins Univ.), “Questions of Precedence: History, Ownership and Value in Contemporary West African Political Economies.”
  • Melissa Bokovoy (Univ. of New Mexico), “The Politics of Commemoration: Memory and Mourning in Serbia and Croatia, 1918–41.”
  • John D. French (Duke Univ.), “Building Movements in a World in Flux: Leadership, Consciousness, and Mobilization among Metalworkers in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1950–80.”
  • Joseph Harahan (U.S. Dept. of Defense), “With Courage and Persistence: The United States, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine and the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, 1992–2004.”
  • Sonya Michel (Univ. of Maryland at College Park), “Old-Age Insecurity: Instabilities and Inequities in U.S. Retirement Provision, 1945 to the Present.”

The Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study has announced the 2005–06 Radcliffe Institute Fellows. These fellows will work individually and across disciplines on projects chosen for both quality and long-term impact. Together, the fellows' distinguished academic, professional, and creative endeavors are the center of a scholarly community convened to pursue and generate new knowledge. The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is unique among its peers because it accepts scholars from all academic disciplines and the creative arts into its residential community. For more information about the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program, please call (617) 495-8212 or visit https://www.radcliffe.edu/fellowships. The following AHA members are Radcliffe Fellows for 2005–06:

  • Vincent Brown (Harvard Univ.)
  • Eva Haverkamp (Rice Univ.)
  • Tera W. Hunter (Carnegie Mellon Univ.)
  • Kathy Peiss (Univ. of Pennsylvania)
  • Rebecca Jo Plant (Univ. of California at San Diego)
  • Julie Reuben (Harvard Univ.)
  • Eve M. Troutt Powell (Univ. of Georgia).

At its annual meeting held in Savannah, Georgia, the North American Society for Oceanic History announced the recipients of its John Lyman Book Awards, which recognize outstanding books dealing with the maritime and naval history of North America. The following AHA members had books published during 2004 and received prizes:

For U.S. Naval History:

  • Michael J. Bennett (Saint Louis Univ.), Union Jacks: Yankee Sailors in the Civil War (Univ. of North Carolina Press).

For U.S. Maritime History:

  • Paul A. Gilje (Univ. of Oklahoma), Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press).

For Biography and Autobiography:

  • Kathleen Broome Williams (Bronx Comm. Coll., CUNY), Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea (Naval Institute Press).

 

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