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.
In this show, Prof. Tom Turner (DR Congo country specialist, Amnesty International USA) discusses the politics of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, focusing on The Congo Wars and their complex political, economic and international dimensions, the obstacles to peace, as well as the ambiguities of the “Kony 2012″ campaign.
Subscribe to the podcast on our website and on iTunes.
Benjamin Smith has just received a $90,000 British Library Endangered Archives grant for his project entitled: “From indigenous subjects to indigenous citizens: digitizing state- society relations in the State Archive of Oaxaca”.
Professor Kirsten Fermaglich was featured on “Who Do You Think You Are?” She helped Rashida Jones trace her family. http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/video/rashida-jones/1399929
Professor Nwando Achebe’s Female King of Colonial Nigeria has won two awards, the Gita Chaudhuri Prize and The Babara “Penny” Kanner Prize from the Western Association of Women Historians. The Awards Banquet was held in Berkeley, CA on May 5, 2012.
In this new episode of the podcast hosted by MSU historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb, David Newbury (Smith College) discusses the historical dynamics of kingship, legitimacy, and violence in Central and East Africa. He focuses on Alison Des Forges’s Defeat is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1896-1931 and The Land beyond the Mists: Essays on Identity & Authority in Precolonial Congo & Rwanda. Newbury deconstructs static views of royal dynasties/chronologies, comments on the legacy of Des Forges, and discusses changes in the writing of African history.
Subscribe to the podcast on our website (http://afripod.aodl.org) and on iTunes.
Professor Liam Brockey is delivering a paper entitled “The Unpublished Travels of a European Theologian in Late Ming China”. The symposium is sponsored by the University of Bonn and the Ostasien Instititut (Bonn), and is accompanied by a museum exhibition and other festivities celebrating European-Chinese relations.
Todd Ellick has been awarded a Fulbright IIE for doctoral research in Namibia in 2012-2013. His dissertation project, directed by Peter Alegi, is entitled: “First People Still Come Second”: Nama, Rurality, and Marginalization in Namibia, 1870-1925. It aims to explore how insider and outsider perceptions of rurality, backwardness, and marginalization have converged historically to shape Nama identity. Congratulations Todd!
Melissa Klapper of Rowan University will be on campus Thursday, April 26, in connection with the Telling Family Stories: Jews, Genealogy, and History Initiative” of the MSU Jewish Studies Program this year.
She will do a brown bag talk on “Ballots, Babies, and Ballots of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Pre-WWII Activism,” at the noon hour, which will explore the social and political activism of American Jewish women from approximately 1890 to World War II. No history of American suffrage, birth control, or the peace movement is complete without analyzing the impact of Jewish women’s presence in these early feminist movements. FLYER
This will be at 12:00 pm in 340 Morrill Hall (History Department), Thursday, April 26. Free and open to the public.
It is connected with the Center for Gender in Global Context Colloquium Series.
Melissa Klapper will also offer a public lecture Thursday evening in the MSU Library, 4th Floor Conference Room, W449, on “Small Strangers: Immigrant Children in America 1880-1925.” This is an MSU Library Colloquium Series Event (series flyer). Professor Klapper is the author of Small Strangers: The Experiences of Immigrant Children in America.
The LBGT Resource Center is honored to recognize Dr. Juan Javier Pescador, professor in the department of history, and Dr. Estella Torrez, assistant professor with the Residential College of Arts and Humanities, for their outstanding work addressing intersections of sexuality, gender, race and culture. The Intersections Project is an initiative of the LBGT Resource Center funded by a grant from the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives. Drs. Pescador and Torrez are the first recipients of the Intersections Award from the LBGT Resource Center.
Dr. Pescador and Dr. Torrez developed and lead a campus and community collaboration to celebrate Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Under the thoughtful guidance of Pescador and Torrez, this year’s activities engaged diverse communities in collectively honoring victims of homophobic and transphobic hate crimes. Through a series of powerful events, the experience of navigating multiple and concurrent marginalized identities in the US context was explored.
Story and Video – Day of Dead Fall 2011 Dr. Pescador and his wife Gabrielle have done extensive work on homophobic violence and are the directors and producers of the documentary, “Just Because I Am”. While following LBGT youth working to empower themselves through theatre, the documentary filmmakers unexpectedly capture a brutal hate crime.
Congratulations Dr. Roger Rosentretter for receiving an appreciation certificate from the Army ROTC Program.
“Your support of the Spartan Battalion and specifically our Senior Cadet Staff Ride to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is greatly appreciated. You have repeatedly gone above and beyond expectations with the preparation and execution of the yearly staff ride. Your interactions with our Cadets and staff members are of the highest caliber and make this experience a memorable one. This accomplishment reflects great credit upon yourself, the Department of History, and Michigan State University”
Army ROTC Program
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.
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Donations are crucial for our endowment, graduate program, undergraduate program, and the Center for History Teaching and Learning. Donations also support faculty, undergraduate and graduate awards and can endow chairs.
