Department News
Our Faculty
[September 2008] Alonzo Hamby, Emeritus Professor of History, is the author Beyond the New Deal, listed as one of the best books about presidential administrations according to a story in the 5 September 2008 Wall Street Journal.
[May 2007] Benita Blessing, Assistant Professor of History, received a Distinguished Service Award from the Ohio University Office of Nationally Competitive Awards.
[November 2006] Nicholas Creary, Assistant Professor of History, received a Research Challenge Grant to conduct research in Belize for a project that compares four literary movements that occurred during the 1920s and 1930s including the Harlem Renaissance in the U.S., Claridade in Cape Verde, the New African Movement in South Africa, and the Afro-Creole Belizean Nationalist Movement in Belize.
[September 2006] John Brobst, Associate Professor of History, was invited to participate in a conference on "A Strained Partnership: European-American Relations and the Middle East from Suez to Iraq" in Zürich, Switzerland. The conference, which brought together academic specialists and policy practitioners from both sides of the Atlantic, was hosted by the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at Switzerland's distinguished Federal Institute of Technology.
[May 2006] Chester Pach has been named Ohio University Outstanding Graduate Faculty Member for 2005-2006. This prestigious honor is awarded competitively each year by the Graduate Student Senate. As part of the award, Professor Pach will give the commencement address at the 2006 Graduate Commencement.
Our Graduate Students
[November 2007] Jack Epstein [PhD student] has received two grants from presidential libraries to further his research. He received a research travel grant from the Gerald Ford Foundation to work on his doctoral dissertation. This highly competitive grant was award to only a few scholars, many of them already established historians. Epstein also received a Moss Grant from the Lyndon Johnson Library/Foundation to also help in his research.
[May 2007] Alex Ferrell [MA 2001] has been accepted into the graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas, where he also received a James Michener Fellowship.
[May 2007] Thomas Bruscino [PhD 2005] is now Assistant Professor in the Command and General Staff College, School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
[October 2006] Three Ohio University PhDs gave presentations at a US Department of State/George Washington University conference. These included Adam Cathcart, Qiang Zhai and Scott Kaufman. The topic of the conference was "Transforming the Cold War: The United States and China, 1969-1980".
[October 2006] Paul Chatsko [Ph.D 2002] has been named the Director of the International Relations program at the University of Calgary. He also appeared on Canadian Business Television to discuss at length the future of Alberta’s oil sands. The oil sands are the subject of Paul’s prize winning book, Developing Alberta's Oil Sands: From Karl Clark to Kyoto (University of Calgary press, 2004).
[August 2006] Philippe Girard [PhD 2002] has recently published his second book, Paradise Lost: Haiti's Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hot Spot. He teaches at McNeese State University.
[May 2006] Richard Garlitz has been named TA of the Year by the Graduate Student Senate. In addition to teaching World History, he also filled in for Professor Quinn during Winter Quarter.
[May 2006] Julie Mancine [MA 2006] has received a Hagley Fellowship from University of Delaware's "Hagley Program in History of Technology and Industrialization," affiliated with the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. More details.
[April 2006] Robert Davis has been announced as the winner of the John F. Cady Fellowship for 2006-07. He was ranked first among the five winners of this year's Graduate Fellowships awarded by the Graduate Council. This is the third year in a row that a history doctoral student was awarded one of these highly competitive fellowships. James Waite won the Cady Fellowship for 2004-05, and Arsen Djatej won it for 2005-06. John Cady was a faculty member in the History Department in the 1950s and 1960s.
[April 2006] Another Ohio University History Department PhD recipient, Kevin O'Connor, has published a new book. His recent work on Russian Nationalism and the Gorbachov Revolution has been released by Lexington Press. More details.
[March 2006] Paul Chastko, who earned his PhD at Ohio in 2003 and teaches at the University of Calgary, won the the 2004 Book of the Year award from the Petroleum History Society. More details.
[March 2006] Jimmy McJamerson, a 1977 History MA and now a faculty member at Grambling State University, recently was awarded a prize for his poetry. More details.
[March 2006] Steve Taaffe, a 1996 Ohio University History PhD and now faculty member at Stephen F. Austin State University, has recently published his third book, a study of Civil War command. The book was published by the University Press of Kansas. More details.
Our Undergraduate Students
[January 2008]Two Ohio University history majors presented papers in the Phi Alpha Theta National Convention, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, earlier this January. Peter Locascio’s paper, "The Break: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson," examines political relationships during the early Republic through a study of the Adams-Jefferson friendship. Melissa Luthman's paper, "Gender and Gender Roles in Cherokee and Iroquois Society, 1600-1800," explores how Christian missionaries and American legal practices after the Revolution affected gender roles within those Native American communities. “Encouraging and helping students to present their research outside of OU not only allows them the opportunity to fully experience the historian's profession,” says history undergraduate director, Kevin Uhalde, “but also shows the talents and professionalism of our students to a broader audience."
[January 2008] Harrison Crumrine wrote a paper for his 301J class last year on "The Oxford Martyrs and the English Protestant Movement, 1553-1558." That paper has been awarded the Lynn Turner Prize by Phi Alpha Theta (for best undergraduate paper in the country). In addition to the $300 prize money, the paper has been accepted for publication in The Historian.
[September 2007] Janice Frisch ('07) has received the Phi Kappa Phi Love of Learning Award--one of only fifty students to receive this new award from Phi Kappa Phi. She received $500, which she will use during her graduate studies at Indiana University.
[May 2007] The History department named its Outstanding Graduates for the 2006-2007 academic year. KaSandra Emler [A&S] and Janice Frisch [HTC] received the award at the History Honors award ceremony.
[June 2006] Andrew Connor, History Honors Tutorial student, has been admitted to the MA degree program in Ancient History at the University of Cincinnati.
