Welcome! The Department of History at Michigan State University is a large, vibrant intellectual community. The faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students, staff, alumni and friends of the Department of History are actively engaged in an enormous range of activities involving research, publishing, teaching, learning, and public outreach. It is my honor to share these with you.
Dr. Alegi interviewed on Soccer and Nationalism in Africa.
Full text article: http://bit.ly/wOlE1b
Pero Dagbovie is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Distinguished Speaker with special guest Gwendolyn Mildo Hall. The lecture is titled: “A Warrior for Freedom: Mabel Robinson Williams and the Civil Rights- Black Power Movement”
The lecture is on Friday, January 20th, 2012 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in Room 303 International Center
Georgina Montgomery (Lyman Briggs and History) and Dr. Linda Kalof (Sociology and Director of MSU’s Animal Studies Graduate Specialization) edited a book entitled Making Animal Meaning that has just been published with Michigan State University Press. An elucidating collection of ten original essays, Making Animal Meaning reconceptualizes methods for researching animal histories and rethinks the contingency of the human-animal relationship. The vibrant and diverse field of animal studies is detailed in these interdisciplinary discussions, which include voices from a broad range of scholars and have an extensive chronological and geographical reach. These exciting discourses capture the most compelling theoretical underpinnings of animal significance while exploring meaning-making through the study of specific spaces, species, and human-animal relations. A deeply thoughtful collection — vital to understanding central questions of agency, kinship, and animal consumption — these essays tackle the history and philosophy of constructing animal meaning.
The article, ”De senzala para a rede: Biografias de escravos serão disponibilizadas em banco de dados na Internet,” features Biographies: The Atlantic Slave Data Network, a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more see, http://www.revistadehistoria.com.br/secao/em-dia/da-senzala-para-a-rede
Professor Wheat has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for work on a project titled “Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640.” The fellowship will fund research and writing, which he will undertake in Spain between September 2012 and August 2013. Less than ten percent of NEH applicants receive funding. Congratulations David.
History faculty and Matrix staff are hosting an invited panel at the HASTAC conference at the University of Michigan (Dec. 1-3) on international collaborative projects in digital humanities. Among the projects to be discussed are: the Cape Town-based Community Video Education Trust digital archive; the Malian Photo Archives funded by the Endangered Archives program of the British Library; and the Africa Past and Present podcast hosted by Peter Alegi and Peter Limb. In addition, Alex Galarza is presenting on the Football Scholars Forum, an online academic book club based in the History Department.
Ethan Segal will be speaking on “Medieval Women and the Economy” at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Dr. Segal is currently on leave from MSU and conducting research for his next book as a Visiting Scholar at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. His first book, an economic history of medieval Japan, was published earlier this year by HUP.
Congratulations to Lewis Siegelbaum, for his recent publication “Sputnik Goes to Brussels: The Exhibition of a Soviet Technological Wonder” , in Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies
Episode 58 of Africa Past and Present, the podcast about African history, culture, and politics, is available at: http://afripod.aodl.org
In this episode, Professor Aili Mari Tripp (Political Science, University of Wisconsin Madison; President-elect, U.S. African Studies Association) discusses African women’s movements, democratization, and the paradoxes of power in Museveni’s Uganda. She also underscores the need for the African Studies Association to challenge the U.S. government’s draconian cuts to international education. With guest host Prof. Kiki Edozie (International Relations, Michigan State).
The Football Scholars Forum is holding its second fall session on Wednesday, November 9, at 2pm Eastern Time. The topic is “Soccer in the Classroom.” Peter Alegi, Alon Raab, Tom McCabe, Steven Apostolov, and Sean Jacobs will each make 5 minute presentations to spark discussion about syllabi, sources, reading lists, and teaching perspectives. Course syllabi have been precirculated on the website.
Some questions to spark discussion: (1) How can teaching a course or unit on soccer expand or contribute to disciplinary knowledge? (2) What are the challenges and opportunities of teaching a fútbol class filled with everyone from fantasy soccer geeks to soccer neophytes? (3) How can students apply what they learn in a soccer course outside the classroom?
As always, the MSU-based group will include numerous participants from afar via Skype.
In other news, FSF will be included in a poster session at HASTAC 2011, a conference on digital scholarly communication hosted at the University of Michigan in December. Peter Alegi and Alex Galarza are due to share their experiences with FSF at the conference.
View Summer 2012 Online Courses Register for online summer courses Online courses offer students at MSU and elsewhere the opportunity to study important subjects and work toward graduation while off campus in the summer. Our internationally known faculty offer 22 online summer courses.
Click on Events to see what’s going on in the department.
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