Dear Graduate Students and Faculty,

Please join the History Graduate Student Association for two events on Wednesday, April 30, 2008.

At 12.00 pm, Nicholas Schlosser, Ph.D. candidate, will present his paper “‘The Road to Hell is Paved with RIAS Broadcasts,’ The East German Campaign Against RIAS Berlin, 1950-1961.” Andrew Palmquist, Ph.D. student, will comment. This colloquium event will meet in Taliaferro Hall, room 2110. Several copies of his paper are available in the Graduate Student Lounge, and it can be downloaded here: http://hgsaumd.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/schlosserhgsacolloquium30apr.pdf

At 4.00 pm, we will be joined by Prof. Bernard Moitt, Chair and Associate Professor at the Department of History, Virginia Commonwealth University. Prof. Moitt will give a talk on “Slavery, Emancipation, and ‘Adoption’ of Minors in Urban Senegal, 1848-1905.” This event will also meet in Taliaferro Hall, Room 2110.

Spring 2008

April 14, 2008

HGSA Meeting April 14, 2008

• HGSA Colloquium to return
Chas Reed announces dates: April 15 Andrew Kellett, April 30 Nick Schlosser, sometime in May Elizabeth Connor

• HGSA Colloquium Faculty Talk
Eric Ruark announces talk for April 30, 4:00 in TLF 2110
Bernard Moitt of VCU will be presenting sponsored by Pepsi

• HGSA Elections for Fall 2008-Spring 2009 will begin April 30
Andrew Kellett made responsible for elections, Melissa Kravetz will facilitate the online election.
4/14 through 4/22 nominations made
4/22 through 4/29 campaigning period
4/30 and 5/1 online elections

Please send all nominations to Andrew Kellett at akellett@umd.edu.

If no one is nominated for a position, nominations for that position will remain open until 4/24. Campaigning will go through 5/4, and the online election will be held 5/5 and 5/6 instead.

• HGSA Board Positions and Committee Positions Explained, term begins July 1, 2008

o President (1 person): duties include assigning desks and mentors to new students; being involved with the HGSA Graduate Student Conference; meeting with the Director of Graduate Studies to advocate for graduate student issues; leads and calls HGSA meetings
o Vice President (2 people): duties include assisting the President in various tasks, devising and implementing projects (i.e. Grad Colloquium, Faculty Talks, HGSA Conference)
o Secretary-Treasurer (1 person): duties include taking notes at HGSA meetings; maintaining HGSA funds; collecting dues; assists the HGSA board in its various projects
o Undergraduate Committee Rep (1 person): duties include meeting with the Undergraduate Committee (has met twice in the past two years); discusses issues such as undergraduate requirements for graduation, class availability for majors and honors program
o Graduate Committee Rep (1 person): duties include meeting with the Graduate Committee (approximately once or twice an academic year); occasional meetings with the Director of Graduate Studies; advocating for graduate student interests such as TA load, comprehensive exams, etc.
o Executive Committee Rep (2 people): duties include meeting with the Executive Committee (approximately once a month); attend meetings regarding appointment, promotion and tenure of faculty and budget meetings
o CHS Committee Rep (1 person): duties include meeting with the CHS Board; addressing logistical concerns for CHS presentations; evaluate faculty grant submissions; encourage funding for HGSA-sponsored events
o APT Committee Rep (2 people): duties include attending Appointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee meetings; discusses potential job candidates; assesses faculty promotions

• APT Committee Report (Melissa Kravetz)
Dean canceled Israel search due to a breach of confidentiality.

• Undergrad Committee Report (Melissa Kravetz)
Honors requirements for undergraduates were decided.

• Graduate Committee Report (Amy Rutenberg and Sherry Myers)
Amy and Sherry had a meeting with Dr. Williams this past Tuesday to discuss issues regarding TAing. Specific issues addressed at this meeting were: new faculty and TA workloads, TA evaluation availability, teaching expectations for adjunct professors and inconsistency across survey courses.

Issues that were discussed at the meeting also addressed: making faculty aware of issues resulting from TAing, possibility of TAs evaluating professors, Grad Committee members asking for more feedback for grad students (both as TAs and as students), enforcing the use and writing of a grad committee report on new faculty.

Finally, TA issues should be brought to the attention of Grad Committee members and appropriate faculty whenever they come up. We want to ensure that TA issues aren’t written off as personality differences. Specifically, when one has problems with an adjunct professor teaching inappropriate and/or incorrect material he or she should bring this to the attention of Dr. Ridgeway.

• Executive Committee Report (Mike Soracoe)
Mike was not allowed into the most recent Executive Committee meeting, Melissa is following up to determine why this occurred. At the meeting prior to this, the negative effects of the CORE plan were discussed.

• CHS Committee Report (Jeremy Best)
Jeremy says that there are various candidates scheduled to speak next year.

• HGSA Book Sale to be held May 6 and 7 from 10 to 4
Volunteers are needed both for manning the sale during the day and for bringing books down and taking them back up both days. A sign-up sheet will be up tomorrow, April 15.

• Chas Reed asks about the transparency of the selection of 208 courses. The Undergrad Committee Rep and/or an HGSA board member will contact Dr. Barkley-Brown for guidelines.

• Chas Reed nominated for HGSA president and seconded.

Andrew J. Kellett
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland

But My Dad Was Black: Masculinity, Modernity, and Blues Culture in Britain

Comment by:
Malia McAndrew
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Francis Scott Key 2120 (Merrill Room)
1.00 p.m.

Papers copies available in Graduate Student Lounge, or e-mail creed@umd.edu to request an electronic copy.

It’s called iPaper, and it uses a Flash-based document reader that can be embedded into a Web page. The experience of reading neatly formatted text inside a fixed box feels a bit like using an old microfilm reader, except that you can search the documents or e-mail them to friends.

Read more here.

Curious: Is this a win for open-source sharing or does this bring students too close to plagiarism for comfort?  Comment away….

You are cordially invited to the Third Annual History Graduate Student Conference at the University of Maryland on February 7th and 8th, 2008 (information).

In support of good scholarship and our fellow History grad students:

The third Local Americanist talk for 2007-8 will be on Friday December 7, 3:30pm, in 1101 Susquehanna Hall. Anna Brickhouse, Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia, will speak on “Hemispheric Jamestown.” Professor Brickhouse is the author of Transamerican Literary Relations and the Ninteeenth-Century Public Sphere (Cambridge UP, 2004), an influential study of American literature c. 1820-1865 in a hemispheric and transatlantic context.

There will be 2 respondents: Kelly Wisecup, a doctoral student in English, and Scott Heerman, a doctoral student in History. Following the talk there will be a reception in the Main English Office lounge.

The HGSA will congregate (gloriously) one last time in 2007 — on Monday, December 3 at 3.30 pm in the graduate student lounge. Topics to include: the holiday party, the Pepsi Enhancement Fund, etc.

Please join the graduate community on Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 11.00 a.m. in Francis Scott Key 2120 (Merrill Room) for the final colloquium session of the semester and the year. Jon White, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, will present his paper “Free Speech in Civil War Pennsylvania.” Stephen Johnson, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, will comment. Discussion will be based on a pre-circulated paper, available in the graduate student lounge or here.

Starting at 1.00 p.m. in TLF 2110 on Wednesday, October 17, Malia McAndrew, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland, will present her paper “‘But You Don’t Look Like a Negro’: The Transnational and Domestic Business Ventures of African American Female Entrepreneurs in the Fashion, Modeling, Charm and Cosmetology Fields during the Mid-Twentieth Century.”

Andrew Kellett, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland, will comment.

Link to electronic ‘copy’ of Malia’s paper

Links: GMU announcement, Center for History and New Media, Washington Post obituary

Professor Rosenzweig graciously agreed to give the keynote address at our graduate student conference last year, even as he underwent treatment for his illness. We are saddened by his death but grateful to have basked in the glow of his enthusiasm for history.

From George Mason University:

Roy Rosenzweig, a historian and pioneer of digital technology and new media, died from cancer on Oct. 11. He joined the Mason faculty in 1981.

Rosenzweig, 57, was the Mark and Barbara Fried Chair and director of the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), which he founded in 1994. CHNM has been at the forefront of efforts to use new media and digital technology to promote an inclusive and democratic understanding of the past while reaching new and diverse audiences

Just a few weeks ago, Rosenzweig was named as one of the Mason professors to lead CHNM in creating an online National History Education Clearinghouse. The online project will help K-12 history teachers become more effective educators and show their students why history is relevant to their daily lives.

“Roy was obviously one of the most distinguished faculty. He was truly an imaginative historian, from his first book that I still use to the pioneering work he did on the Center for History and New Media. He will be greatly missed personally and professionally, but we will be building on his accomplishments for a long time to come,” says Provost Peter Stearns.

Rosenzweig was involved in a number of different digital history projects, including web sites on U.S. history, historical thinking, the French Revolution, the history of science and technology, world history and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Earlier this year, Rosenzweig received the Distinguished Service Award from the Organization of American Historians in recognition of his contributions to significantly enriching the understanding and appreciation of American history.

Rosenzweig was a graduate of Columbia College and studied at St. John’s College of Cambridge, England before receiving his PhD from Harvard University. Before coming to Mason, he was an assistant professor of history and humanities at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, and a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

In 2005, Rosenzweig’s web-based project, “History Matters,” earned him and the CHNM the James Harvey Prize of the American Historical Association. In 2003, he was awarded the second Richard W. Lyman Award for his work with CHNM, particularly the “History Matters” project and the September 11 Digital Archive.

The $25,000 prize recognized scholarly achievement of unusual merit and impact and innovative use of information technology in humanistic scholarship and teaching. These projects are attempts to make new and rare historical documents free and accessible to anyone and explore how technology can be used to enhance the study of history.

In 1999, Rosenzweig was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Award, the commonwealth’s highest honor for faculty at public and private colleges and universities in Virginia.

He was the coauthor of numerous books, including “The Park and the People: A History of Central Park,” which won the 1993 Historic Preservation Book Award and the 1993 Urban History Association Prize for Best Book on North American Urban History. He also co-wrote “The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life,” which has won prizes from the Center for Historic Preservation and the American Association for State and Local History.

Rosenzweig was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and lectured as a Fulbright professor. He also served as vice president for research of the American Historical Association.

Rosenzweig is survived by his wife, Deborah Kaplan, a professor of English at Mason.

Information on memorial services will be announced in the Gazette and E-Files as soon as it becomes available.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Rosenzweig’s memory may be made to the Center for History and New Media (CHNM). Make checks payable to the George Mason University Foundation, 4400 University Drive, MS 1A3, Fairfax, VA 22030. Please note that your gift is for the CHNM.