Spring 2020

  • Please join us in thanking Dr. Stephanie Chalifoux for her three years of service as Director of Graduate Studies, and help us in welcoming Dr. Charles Lipp to the position this semester!
  • Congratulations to Dr. Elaine MacKinnon and Dr. Daniel K. Williams on the publication of their newest monographs!  In January of this year, Dr. MacKinnon's translation of Ludmila Miklashevskaia’s memoir was published by Bloomsbury under the title Gender and Survival in Soviet Russia: A Life in the Shadow of Stalin’s Terror. Dr. Williams's book The Election of the Evangelical: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and the Presidential Contest of 1976, was published by University of Kansas Press in February 2020.
  • Dr. Ihor Pidhainy participated in a collaborative webinar hosted by UWG's Center for Diversity and Inclusion entitled “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Connections: Demystifying Asian Pacific Islander Bias” on April 23. This webinar provided historical, scientific, and personal perspectives related to anti-Asian bias being reported around the world. UWG partners for this webinar included the Institute for Faculty Excellence, the Department of Educational Technology, the Department of History and the Asian Studies Program, the Department of Biology, President's Commission on Campus Inclusion, and the International Student Admissions and Programs.
  • This Spring, we had two professors participating in UWG's School of the Arts The Other Night School Series. In February, Dr. Keith Bohannon presented a talk and a Saturday Seminar. On February 18, discussed the new phase of debate and discussion over Confederate symbols in his talk entitled "Remembering the Confederacy" at the UWG Newnan Center.  He continued that conversation at the UWG Newnan Center on February 29 in a Saturday Seminar which explored how historians work on memory and the Civil War, and discussed recent controversies surrounding public Confederate monuments and the display of the confederate battleflag. Dr. Colleen Vasconcellos's March 24 lecture on the changing nature of childhood and youth culture in the Jamaican plantation complex was postponed due to COVID-19. 
  • Dr. Ihor Pidhainy presented a paper entitled “On a Shift in Biographical Approach in the Study of a Ming Figure” at the inaugural Intercalary Conference on Late Imperial China at Emory University on February 29, a conference that Dr. Pidhainy helped to organize.  Dr. Pidhainy also organized a series of talks on Asian History this Spring. Dr. Gary Van Valen discussed the Phillippines and Western imperialism on January 22, Dr. Tim Schroer discussed peace-making in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion on February 10, and Dr. Elaine MacKinnon will discuss Central Asia as a religious crossroads on April 15.
  • In January, Dr. Colleen Vasconcellos participated in a panel discussion entitled "Strategies for Redesigning Introductory Courses in History" at the American Historical Association's Annual Meeting in New York City. Drawing on the AHA’s History Gateways initiative, this panel brought together experienced teachers from a range of institutions to offer insights on how introductory courses in history can be redesigned to better serve students with a range of preparation and motivations. Dr. Vasconcellos discussed her work in redesigning our HIST 2111 survey, as well as the lessons learned.

Fall 2019

  • We are pleased to welcome two new faculty members to our Department!  Dr. William Stoutamire comes to us from Kearny, Nebraska where he served as Director of the G.W. Frank Museum of History and Culture and Graduate Lecturer of History at the University of Nebraska at Kearny. He received his PhD in Public History from Arizona State University in 2013, and his fields of study are Material Culture, Historic Preservation, and Memory Studies, as well as the 19th Century US, US West, Heritage Tourism, Cultural History. Dr. Stephanie Laffer, who received her PhD from Florida State University in 2010, joins us as an Instructor at the Newnan Center. Her current research interests include British Imperialism and the impact of memory on the imperial process. Welcome Drs. Laffer and Stoutamire!
  • This semester, Dr. Ihor Pidhainy has worked with the Late Imperial China Scholars of Southeast USA to organize that organization's inaugural meeting at Emory University to be held in February 2020. The conference will feature research centering on Ming (1368-1644) and the preceding and succeeding dynasties, with presentations ranging from transnational studies to religious practice, drama, music, and art and antiquities. 
  • Dr. Ann McCleary serves as national co-curator and state scholar for Crossroads: Change in Rural America, a traveling exhibition that examines the evolving landscape of rural America. Georgia Humanities has announced that in Georgia, Crossroads will travel from August 24, 2019, through June 6, 2020, on display for six weeks each in Thomaston, McRae-Helena, Monticello, Cuthbert, Summerville, and Blue Ridge. The exhibition is presented by Georgia Humanities, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, in partnership with the Center for Public History at the University of West Georgia and Georgia EMC. The exhibition's Georgia grand opening took place on August 24, 2019, at 10:00am, with a community ribbon-cutting ceremony, followed by musical performances, a farmer’s market, vendor booths, and a vintage car and tractor show around the Thomaston downtown square.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Keith Pacholl, who has been appointed Fellow for UWG's Institute for Faculty Excellence this academic year (2019-20). He will help with areas of course design and enrichment, pedagogy consultations, classroom observations, and other CTL projects.
  • In August of this year, Dr. Colleen Vasconcellos joined the History Gateways Project as a Discipline Advisor. The project is an endeavor undertaken by the American Historical Association (AHA), the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, and 11 institutional partners to evaluate and revise core curriculum courses in an effort to meet the changing needs of college students.  Dr. Vasconcellos will serve as an advisor and mentor to faculty implementing the program within their department's core history courses.
  • Dr. Aimee Genell has been busy this semester! In October, she presented a paper entitled “From the Legalist Empire to the Sovereign State” at the Law and Legality in Modern Eastern Europe Conference held at Princeton University as part of a panel discussing overlapping and contested Sovereignties.  She gave a second talk in November as part of the Vanderbilt Legal History Colloquium held at Vanderbilt University. That talk, on November 11, was entitled "Ab Imperio: From "Privileged Provinces” to Mandates,” is part of her manuscript: "Empire by Law: The Ottoman Origins of the Mandate System in the Middle East.” Also in November, she presented a paper at the Middle East Studies Association's Annual Meeting in New Orleans called “From the Legalist Empire to the Sovereign State: International Law at the Treaty of Lausanne.” Lastly, she's just had a book chapter published in Beyond Versailles: Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and the Formation of New Polities after the Great War (Indiana, 2019) entitled "The End of Egypt’s Occupation: Ottoman Sovereignty and the British Declaration of Protection.”
  • In November, Dr. Michael de Nie presented a paper entitled "The Press, Public Opinion, and Imperial Policy" at the Southern Conference on British Studies Annual Meeting in Louisville, KY and a paper entitled "A True Irishman? The Irish Press, Imperial Service, and General Wolseley" at the North American Conference on British Studies Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC.
  • Dr. Molly McCullers' article "Betwixt and Between Colony and Nation-State: Liminality, Decolonization, and the South West Africa Mandate" appeared in the December 2019 issue of The American Historical Review.

Summer 2019

  • This summer Drs. Steve Goodson and Charles Lipp traveled to Strasbourg, France for our biennial History Where It Happened Study Abroad program. Students took classes on America in France during the World Wars and Post-War periods, as well as travel throughout France and Germany.  We are also busy planning an upcoming trip with Drs. Molly McCullers and Ann McCleary to South Africa, who took a field reconnaissance trip to the country this summer, so stay tuned!

Spring 2019

  • Dr. Michael de Nie's article "'Our Dead Chief': The Irish Press and the Death of Parnell" appeared in the spring 2019 issue of New Hibernia Review.
  • Dr. Nadejda Williams participated as the guest speaker at LaGrange Biblical History Center's innaugural "History Happy Hour," on May 3, where she gave a fascinating talk on the history of the ancient Roman military, on the eve of their annual Roman Army day.
  • On April 30, 2019, Dr. Colleen Vasconcellos served as a Featured Speaker at the History Gateways to Completion 2019 Launch Meeting, where she discussed the Department of History's G2C efforts with the HIST 2111 survey, an initiative that has focused largely on increasing student engagement and lowering our DFW rates for the course. Her talk, entitled "Lessons Learned," also focused on the successes and complications of the Department's G2C efforts, as well as future plans and goals for HIST 2111's G2C initiatives.
  • On April 10, 2019, Dr. Daniel K. Williams discussed whether a new era in American politics is beginning with Dr. Chapman Rackaway, Professor of Political Science and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of West Georgia, at a Political Realignment Event hosted by the Penelope Melson Society at UWG's Ingram Library.  The event was well attended.
  • UWG's Xi Rho Chapter of the Phi Alpha Theta National Honor Society hosted the 2019 Phi Alpha Theta Georgia Regionals Conference on March 30, 2019.  Organized by Dr. Colleen Vasconcellos, chapter advisor, Dr. Stephanie Chalifoux, Director of Graduate Studies, and Ms. Jan Ridgway, Department of History Office Manager, the Xi Rho Chapter hosted students and faculty from 5 states and 17 different schools.  Thanks also to Drs. Chuck Lipp, Steve Goodson, Michael de Nie, Gary Van Valen, and Keith Bohannon who volunteered to serve as panel moderators.  The event was a great success, and was supported and co-sponsored by UWG's College of Arts and Humanities and Graduate School.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Stephanie Chalifoux, who was recognized this semester as a Best of the West Faculty Member, who was also awarded the 2019 Michael Goodroe Faculty Service Award for her work as Director of Graduate Studies and the 2019 J. David Griffin Award for Superior Teaching!  Our office manager, Ms. Jan Ridgway, was also recognized as a 2019 Best of the West Staff Member.  Best of the West awards recognize excellence and the promotion of colleague collaboration in the categories of Values, Strategic Imperatives, and Cross-Divisional Collaboration.
  • On March 5, 2019, Dr. Stephanie Chalifoux gave a talk at The Hub at Hudson Mill in Carrollton entitled "A Revolution in Manners and Morals" as part of the UWG School of the Arts The Other Night School Lecture Series. Her talk discussed youthful rebellion and the music, manners, and social mores of the 1920s. 
  • Also in March, Dr. Michael de Nie gave a paper entitled "Pat and the Land War" at the annual meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies in Boston.
  • Dr. Matthew Hild has enjoyed a very productive year. The University of Missouri press published his monograph Arkansas’s Gilded Age: The Rise, Decline, and Legacy of Populism and Working-Class Protest in the fall of 2018. It received the Arkansas Historical Association's 2019 J.G. Ragsdale Book of the Year Award. In addition, he co-edited another book that was published in 2018 by University of Florida Press. That work, titled Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power, received the United Association for Labor Education's Best Book Award.
  • In February, Dr. Colleen Vasconcellos was interviewed about her book Slavery, Childhood, and Abolition (Georgia 2015) for the Society for the History of Childhood and Youth podcast as part of their Featured Books Series.
  • In conjunction with an exhibit on the history of immigration in Georgia in the Thomas B. Murphy Reading Room this semester, Ingram Library’s Special Collections hosted a panel discussion on Tuesday, February 26 that featured our own Dr. Steve Goodson. Priyanka Bhatt, staff attorney for Project South and J. Salvador Peralta, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of West Georgia, also served as panel participants. The panel was moderated by exhibit curator W. Michael Camp, and was followed by a reception and exhibit tour.  The exhibit titled Borders Real and Imagined: Georgia Immigration Politics in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries examines anti-Catholicism in the 1910s, refugees from Eastern Europe resettled in the state in the 1940s and 1950s, the Mariel Cubans cases of the 1980s, immigration reform bills presented in the US Congress in the 1990s, and the activities of the Multicultural Community Alliance in Carrollton in the early 2000s. Displaying items held by UWG’s Special Collections library, the exhibit illuminates the complex history of immigrants and refugees in Georgia, as well as the efforts of Georgia politicians to mold and shape national immigration policy.

Fall 2018

  • Dr. Larry O. Rivers gave a talk on December 4, 2018 at The Inn at Serenbe entitled "Hip Hop & Dr. Martin Luther King," as part of the UWG School of the Arts The Other Night School Lecture Series. The talk discussed the curious convergence of Hip Hop and the Civil Rights Movement as sparked by the musical tribute organized by Dexter King on the first-ever federal holiday observation of King scheduled for January 20, 1986.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Keith Pacholl, who has been selected by the University System of Georgia as an inaugural Chancellor’s Learning Scholar. The Chancellor’s Learning Scholars (CLS) program is comprised of USG faculty who will work on their respective campuses to design and facilitate faculty enrichment learning communities (FLCs). Each of UWG’s Chancellor’s Learning Scholars will work with UWG’s Institute for Faculty Excellence to develop and facilitate semester-long Faculty Learning Communities, beginning in the spring.
  • Ms. Keri Adams, Assistant Director of the Center for Public History, gave two guided tours of the Monestery of the Holy Spirit this semester, the first on October 27 and the second on November 23. Each tour group is joined by a Trappist monk on the last leg of the tour, usually Brother Callistus. If you missed these, check back for future dates.
  • On November 13, 2018, Dr. Michael de Nie gave a talk at the UWG Newnan Center entitled "The Great Famine and the Irish World," which examined how the failure of the potato crop in Ireland led to the creation of a global Irish diaspora.  The talk was a part of the UWG School of the Arts The Other Night School Lecture Series. 
  • Congrats to UWG Center for Public History and the UWG History Project for receiving a Community Foundation of West Georgia Community Impact grant! With this grant, The Center will develop a new arts initiative, the West Georgia Music Trail, traveling through Carroll, Haralson, and Heard Counties. This new trail will derive from their Regional Music Project and feature live musical performances.
  • Dr. Nadejda Williams gave a talk on November 6, 2018 entitled "Life and Death in the Roman Army" as part of the UWG School of the Arts The Other Night School Lecture Series. Her talk discussed what was it like to be in the army of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known by focusing on such aspects of the Roman legionary experience as training, diet, love life, birthday parties, and funerals. 
  • On November 3, 2018, Dr. Steve Goodson spoke on the life and times of music great Johnny Cash at the Carrollton Center for the Arts as part of their Icons of Southern Music Series.  His talk was accompanied by live music performed by Tony Sims with the Kris Youmans Band.
  • On September 28, 2018, a delegation from the Department of History attended the UWG LEAP Summit to learn more about how to enhance student engagement and learning.  In attendance were Drs. Charles Lipp, Molly McCullers, Ann McCleary, Colleen Vasconcellos, and Ms. Keri Adams
  • Dr. Colleen Vasconcellos attended the October Georgia Gateways to Completion (G2C) Regional Meeting and participated as a featured speaker.  Her talk focused on the Department of History's G2C efforts with the HIST 2111 survey, which have focused on increasing student engagement and learning and lowering our DFW rates for course.  Dr. Keith Pacholl and Ms. Keri Adams, along with Dr. Vasconcellos, are spearheading the Department's G2C efforts with this course.
  • On September 27, 2018, the Department of History hosted a panel entitled Dr. Martin Luther King's Legacy at 50 as part of the College of Arts and Humanities Dean's Signature Series, which featured presentations by Dr. Molly McCullers, Dr. Daniel K. Williams, Dr. Steve Goodson, Dr. Larry O. Rivers, and Dr. Stacy Boyd Director of the UWG Africana Studies Program and Minor and Professor of English.  The event was moderated by Dr. Colleen Vasconcellos.  The event was co-sponsored by UWG Center for Diversity and Inclusion.
  • Congratulations to UWG History Instructor Ms. Jennifer Egas, who was one of several eFaculty awarded a 2018 eHero Award for Teaching Excellence for her work with eCore.