May 2008

New Japanesehistorian appointed

Suzanne O’Brien, currently Assis-tant Professor of Modern Asian Historyat Loyola Marymount University inLos Angeles, has been appointed Assis-tant Professor at Boston University, ef-fective September 2008. After five yearswithout being able to offer a course inJapanese history, the department is es-pecially pleased to welcome her.

Professor O’Brien received her BAfrom Stanford University and her MAand PhD from Columbia University,the doctorate in 2003. Her book manu-script, based on her dissertation and en-titled “Customizing Daily Life: Repre-senting and Reforming the Quotidianin Nineteenth-Century Japan,” ex-plores the relationships among dis-courses about fuzoku (customs, publicmorals), people’s daily practices, andimaginings of history and communitysince the late 1700s in Japan. Her futureresearch plans center on cultural andgender history; for her next project,tentatively titled “Manning the Eco-nomic Miracle: New Masculinities inPostwar Japan,” she will investigatetransformations in postwar masculini-ties.

In fall 2008 Professor O’Brien willteach the survey of modern Japanesehistory, hi 391, as well as a colloquium,“Interwar Japan and the Pacific War.” Inthe following spring she will offer a sec-tion of “The Historian’s Craft” (thecore course required of all concentra-tors) and a new course entitled “Samu-rai in Myth and History” (which will becrosslisted with a course in the ForeignLanguages department).

Scholarly pursuits in the south of France

Professor Barbara Diefendorf writes as her semester-long leave of absence in Franceapproaches its end:

I continue to enjoy my semester as a Fellow of the Camargo Foundation inCassis, a small town on the Mediterranean just east of Marseilles. My apart-ment on the Foundation’s “campus” has a stunning view of the harbor at

Cassis and the thousand-foot-high cliffs that Louis XIV is said to have called “themost beautiful in my kingdom” (see photo below). The steep, narrow roads thatseparate Cassis from Marseilles and Aix-en-Provence do complicate getting to thearchives, where I spend my days researching the new charitable and religious insti-tutions that were founded in the seventeenth century (I seem destined to spend mylife as a commuter), but it is a pleasure to return to this lovely setting each night.

I enjoy the stimulating company of the twelve other fellows for a weekly semi-nar and more informal activities in our off-hours. The fellows are a deliberately var-ied lot—an international group that includes artists as well as academics and gradu-ate students as well as senior faculty—and seminar presentations have included po-etry, readings from a novel-in-progress, and discussion with a composer about howhe writes music, along with products of academic scholarship.

I was in Paris briefly in March to chair a session of a symposium on early modernhistory at the Sorbonne and will return there in May to comment on a panel on pi-ous women and their spiritual directors at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. I will alsopresent my current research to the Reformation Seminar at the University ofGeneva in early May.

The semester is going by much too quickly; at the same time, I look forward—asalways—to re-turning homewhen my fellow-ship finishes atthe end of May.My summerplans are simple:to hunker downin Maine, tendmy garden, andwork throughsome of the fas-cinating materi-als I have gath-ered in this se-mester of re-search.

Page 2 NEWS

NEWSof the History Departmentat Boston University

is published monthly Septemberthrough May at the department office,226 Bay State Road, Boston, MA02215, telephone: 617-353-2551, E-mail: history@bu.edu, Website:www.bu.edu/history.

Editor: James T. Dutton, Depart-ment Administrator

Items of interest for publication andchanges of address should be sent tothe editor.

Professor Emerita Merle Goldmanhas written an article entitled “De-veloping Human Rights in Post-MaoChina,” published in Insights on Lawand Society (American Bar Association,Winter 2008). On April 18 she gave thekeynote address at the opening of aconference in Paris on “Beijing Olym-pics 2008: Winning Press Freedom.”Among its sponsors were Reporterswithout Borders and the World PressFreedom Committee.

On April 11 Professor EugenioMenegon presented his forthcomingbook’s concluding chapter at the con-ference “Christian Missions and Na-tional Identities: Comparative Studiesof Cultural Conversions in the MiddleEast, Africa, South Asia and East Asia,”organized by the area studies centers ofthe University of Pennsylvania. Mene-gon’s presentation, entitled “WhoseHistory? Sino-Vatican Relations, LocalCulture, and Christian History inChina,” centered on the contemporaryhistoriographical battles over themeaning of Christianity in modernChinese history and the tension be-

tween local communities and the cen-tral government’s management of reli-gion in the People’s Republic of Chinatoday.

At the same conference ProfessorBetty Anderson gave a paper entitled“Proselytizing for Modernity: Conver-sion and Transformation at the SyrianProtestant College (SPC).” In Marchshe delivered a talk entitled “Prosely-tizing for Modernity: The Case of theAmerican University of Beirut (AUB)”at the Center for Contemporary ArabStudies, Georgetown University inWashington.

In mid-April Professor JamesMcCann lectured at Colby College onthe topic “Unintended Consequences:Global Health and EnvironmentalChange.” Two weeks prior he hadserved as Master Respondent at theRadcliffe College Symposium on “Cre-ativity in the Ethiopian Diaspora.” InMarch he was invited by NorthwesternUniversity’s Center for HistoricalStudies to respond to Stanford Univer-sity’s Richard White on new themes inenvironmental history.

On April 10-12 Professor JamesSchmidt was a speaker at a workshop atthe Folger Library chaired by J. G. A.Pocock on the subject of exchanges inpolitical thought and literature be-tween the British kingdoms and otherpolitical communities in an early age ofglobalization, 1750-1800. He discussedBritish appropriations of German phi-losophy at the close of the century.

Professor Simon Payaslian pre-sented a paper, titled “Three Republicsof the Caucasus: Independence andHuman Rights in Armenia, Azerbaijan,and Georgia,” at the annual conferenceof the Midwest Political Science Associ-ation, April 3-6 in Chicago. On April 11he gave a public lecture at the Univer-sity of Montreal on US foreign policyand the recognition of the ArmenianGenocide. The event was co-sponsoredby the Zoryan Institute of Toronto andl’Association des étudiants arméniensde l’Université de Montréal, in addi-tion to a number of student and com-munity organizations in Montreal.

Professor Thomas Glick was key-note speaker at the “Symposium on theHistory and Representation of Spanish

Science,” held at the University of Col-orado, Boulder, April 11-12. The subjectof his lecture was “All Over But theShouting: Science and Civil Discoursein Spain, 1898-1945.” The title referencesJosé Ortega y Gasset’s observation thatscience cannot be pursued while shout-ing, an allusion to the overheated ideo-logical climate of early twentieth-century Spain.

Graduate student François Lalondereports that the Eisenhower Founda-tion has awarded him a travel grant tohelp fund two weeks of research at theEisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas.He will also present a conference papertitled “The Transatlantic Dialogue onthe Laotian Crisis: How France andBritain Influenced the Kennedy Ad-ministration’s Laotian Policy” at Uni-versity College Dublin on June 7. Thetheme of the conference is “Reformand Renewal: Transatlantic Relationsduring the 1960s and 1970s.”

Professor Allison Blakely presentedthe keynote addresses at Phi BetaKappa chapter initiations in April atTexas Tech University on “America Fu-ture” and at Spelman College on “Cele-brating Excellence in a MulticulturalWorld.” He was also one of five schol-ars, reporters, and activists invited tomake presentations before the US Hel-sinki Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe at a hearing onAfro-Descendants in Europe, heldApril 29 at the Rayburn House OfficeBuilding in Washington.

Professor James Johnson delivereda lecture and, as pianist, accompaniedthe Boston-based baritone DanaWhiteside in a program of French andAmerican songs at Oregon State Uni-versity in mid-April. The presentation,sponsored by OSU’s Departments ofHistory and Music, was entitled“French Impressions. A Musical Voy-age.” It featured the music of NadiaBoulanger, Francis Poulenc, SamuelBarber, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem,and Scott Wheeler.

Professor Jonathan Zatlin won thecontest run by H-German, the onlinediscussion forum focused on scholarlytopics in German history, for the bestsyllabus in German history. The judgeswrote that they “were impressed by the

May 2008 Page 3

range and quality of the readings usedin Zatlin’s syllabus and its combinationof political, social, and cultural his-tory.”

In April Professor Nina Silber spokeat the Massachusetts Historical Society,commenting in the final meeting of thecolloquium series on Gender and His-tory on a paper on African Americanwomen and electoral politics. She wasalso interviewed by WITF—the Harris-burg, Pennsylvania, public radio affili-ate—regarding the new museum at Get-tysburg.

Graduate student Anne Blaschkehas received a Moody Grant from theLyndon Baines Johnson Foundation totravel to Austin, Texas, this fall to usethe LBJ Library. She also presented apaper, entitled “Manhood, Politics,and Sports: The 1968 Mexico CityOlympic Games as Contested Spacefor Gender Redefinition,” at a confer-ence at Chestnut Hill College in Phila-delphia called “The Legacy of 1968: AnInterdisciplinary Conference.”

On April 27 Professor Cathal Nolantook 25 students from his hi 537 class

(“History of World War II”) on an all-day field trip to Battleship Cove in FallRiver, Mass. Students toured a US bat-tleship, destroyer, submarine, torpedoboats, and several types of landingcraft, all of which saw active service inWWII. They viewed captured Japanesemanned-torpedoes and suicide boatsand an extensive exhibit of Allied andJapanese weapons, equipment, anddocuments housed in a museum in theinterior of the battleship USS Massa-chusetts. They listened to recordings ofthe Veterans’ Voices Oral History Pro-ject from an on-site collection. Addi-tional exhibits pertain to post-WWIImilitary and international history, in-cluding a Soviet missile boat from themid–Cold War and Vietnam War–erahelicopters and aircraft. On April 26Nolan delivered a lecture at Fox HillVillage retirement community on “De-fensible Deceit: Franklin Roosevelt,Presidential Lying, and U.S. Entry intoWWII.” Professor Nolan has alsolearned that the American Academy ofReligion has added his name to“Religionsource,” an online database ofscholars with expertise related to reli-gion or ethics, based upon his ongoingwork with the Carnegie Council onEthics and International Affairs and hisAge of the Wars of Religion, 1000-1650(2007) and prior publications on ethicsin international affairs.

Professor Andrew Bacevich’s recentpublications include: “An Army atRisk,” The New York Times (April 8);“The Great Divide: The Crisis of U.S.Military Policy,” Commonweal (March28); and “The Right Choice?” The Amer-ican Conservative (March 24). He gavethe annual Paul McNutt Lecture spon-sored by the History Department at In-diana University on March 26 on thesubject “US Foreign Policy After Iraq.”

Professor Emeritus DietrichOrlow’s The History of the Nazi Party,1919-1945, which was originally pub-lished in two volumes in 1969 and 1973,has been reissued by Enigma Books ofNew York in a one-volume edition, en-titled The Nazi Party, 1919-1945: A Com-plete History, with a new introduction bythe author.

Professor Bruce Schulman madethe rounds of the conference circuit in

Charles Capper winsACLS fellowship

Professor Charles Capper haslearned that the American Council ofLearned Societies has awarded him avery competitive and generous fellow-ship for the 2008-09 academic year. Asthe organization informed him, the ra-tio of applications to awards was 16:1.

Professor Capper will use the award,together with the Boston UniversityHumanities Foundation senior fellow-ship previously announced, to work onhis next book, now titled “The Tran-scendental Moment: Romantic Intel-lect and America’s Democratic Awak-ening.” The project aims to be the firstcomprehensive history of AmericanTranscendentalism, focusing on themovement’s leaders, interactions, andwritings in a narrative of connected epi-sodes embedded in overlapping net-works of their followers, publics, andmilieus. As America’s primordial“avant-garde” intellectual class, theTranscendentalists, Capper will argue,foreshadowed major tensions betweendemocratic values, liberal religion, andcultural critique in the modern era.

With the two fellowships he haswon, Professor Capper will be on leavefor the entire 2008-09 academic year.

Kathryn Cramer Brownell was selected as thedepartment’s winner of the 2008 Teaching FellowPrize, awarded to the student the department(represented by the Graduate Studies Committee)deems to have “demonstrated the greatest skill,enthusiasm, and dedication in his or her teachingduring the current academic year.”

Katie has been a TF in Professor Keylor’sinternational relations course and in several ofProfessor Schulman’s modern US history classes.

April, joining co-editor Julian Zelizerfor a panel on their anthology, Right-ward Bound, at the Woodrow WilsonSchool , at tending the annualconvention of the Organization ofAmerican Historians (where he com-mented on a panel on education re-form in the 1970s), and participating inthe 3rd Annual BU-Cambridge-Princeton American Political HistoryConference in New Jersey (the confer-ence will return to Boston in March2009). In May he will deliver the key-note address, “Sock It to Me: 1968 andthe Birth of the New Cultural Politics,”at a conference on 1968 in America atthe Rothermere Institute at Oxford. Inthe meantime, Schulman’s recent op-eds and reviews have appeared in theChronicle review, the Boston Globe, andthe Washington Independent. ♦

Page 4 NEWS

Each year we ask the department’s graduating seniors to let our readers know whatthey plan after commencement, and the responses always run a wide gamut.

Ryan Early: I plan to work with a documentary filmhouse and travel through-out Africa and Scandinavia.

Brooke Feldman: As of August, I will be teaching world history at Boston Col-legiate Charter School in Dorchester, Mass.

Brian Soares: I am unsure about what I will be doing next year. Either I will gostraight to law school, or take a year off, work, and then reapply to law schools.

Olga Romanova: After graduation, I plan on taking a two-month trip to Eu-rope, including Germany, Serbia, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, and France.After returning, I aspire to pursue a career in the public sector. By December, I wantto move out of Boston, hopefully to New York.

Catherine Imes: After graduation, I will be attending medical school at theUniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda,Maryland, and will be commissioned as an officer in the Navy.

Andrew Shapira: After graduation, I plan to teach English abroad (most likelyin South America) for 1-2 years. After that, I would like to pursue a career in publish-ing or journalism back in the United States.

Jorge Vela: I will be attending the Trans-Atlantic Master’s (TAM) Program at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill next year. I will be living in threeplaces in the next 14 months (Chapel Hill, N.C.; Paris, France; and Madrid, Spain)and earning an MA in Political Science TAM in the process.

Elizabeth Marshall: This summer I will campaign for Tracey Brooks, Demo-cratic congressional candidate for New York’s 21st District. When not working thecampaign trail I plan to attend the annual Cain Family Reunion in Mesquite,Texas, and enjoy many performances of the New York City Ballet at their summerhome in Saratoga Springs, New York. After some fun in the sun hammering nailsfor Habitat for Humanity, I will begin my legal studies at Boston College LawSchool!

Charles Pollack: I will be starting the Master’s in History program here at BU inthe fall. I will also be working fulltime within one of the CAS administrative of-fices.

Dianne Pierce: After graduation I will be interning at the National Endowmentfor the Humanities in Washington, D.C.

Kathryn Lynch: I will be attending Northeastern University and studying for aMaster’s in Public History.

Monica Sawhney: I will be attending Boston University’s School of PublicHealth to get my Master’s in Public Health.

Imry Halevi: I plan to attend theNortheastern Graduate BusinessSchool starting next year, and get myMBA.

Amy Puliafico: After graduation Iwill be attending Suffolk Law.

Lauren Kurkul: I plan on staying inBoston and working at a companycalled Shoebuy.com (it is an online re-tail company that sells shoes) as a mar-keting associate and project manager. Iwill be starting June 2nd.

Kyle Getz: After working in MiltonPublic Schools teaching early world his-tory this past semester, I will be going toColumbia University to study cogni-tive education. Following my master’s,I plan to teach in the Greater Bostonarea.

Christina Walters: After com-mencement I will be working withGrassroots Campaigns to get the Dem-ocrats elected in November. I don’tknow where I will be working yet butfor now it is enough to have a job aftercommencement!

Michael Weinhold: After gradua-tion I’m heading down to D.C. to in-tern for Congressman Mike Capuano(D-MA) for the summer. Then, in thefall I’m headed to St. Louis to attendLaw School at Washington University.

Hope Shannon: This summer I willbe the Lab Director on an archaeologi-cal dig in Bermuda. After that I will en-ter the workforce in a field relating tohistorical archaeology.

Reid Jewett: I am going on to BrownUniversity to get my Master’s in His-tory and work on a Master’s Thesiswhile I begin applying to doctoral pro-grams in History. I intend to focus onAfrican-American and Atlantic His-tory.

Adina Rosenthal: I plan to receivemy Ed.M. in Education Policy andManagement at Harvard.

Christopher Wiener: I’ll be attend-ing the University of CaliforniaHastings College of the Law in SanFrancisco this fall.

Claire Bennett: I will be returningto Houston with my family, where Ihope to find work relating to museums.In a year or two, I plan on returning toschool to get an M.A.H. in MedievalArt History. Eventually I would like to

May 2008 Page 5

The following students had the disser-tation prospectus approved:

On March 31, Anne Blaschke: “Man-hood, Feminism, and Sports :Gendered Racial Protest at the 1968Mexico City Olympic Games.” Thefirst reader will be Professor BruceSchulman, and the second will be Pro-fessor Nina Silber.

On April 23, David Mislin: “FaithUnbounded: Christian Explorationand the Making of Modern AmericanReligion, 1880-1930.” The first readerwill be Professor Jon Roberts, and thesecond will be Professor BrookeBlower.

The following students had research pa-pers approved:

David Beale: “Horror in Hartford”Natalie Mettler: “Naf�n: The Ingre-

dients of Ethnic Identity in the MandeRegion of West Africa”

get my Ph.D. in Medieval Art History,as well as a Master’s in MuseumStudies. As a long-term goal, I wouldlike to be a curator in a museum thatdeals with the Middle Ages particularly.

Kate Birmingham: My plans aftergraduation are to get a social studiesteaching job for middle school or highschool, either in NYC or in Boston.Eventally I plan on obtaining my mas-ter’s in a field that interests me, but un-til then I will pursue teaching.

Jana Sico: I am graduating withhonors as a BA, History and BA, Inter-national Relations. This summer I willbegin my full-time job on Wall Street. Iam working as a Capital Markets Intelli-gence Associate at Thomson-Reuters.So far, I plan on going to graduateschool in a few years and I particularlywould like to get an MBA in finance oran MA/PhD in history.

Hilaria Duran: I was accepted to theStillman School of Business at SetonHall University to pursue a dual mas-ter’s degree, an MBA in business ad-ministration and an MS in sport man-agement. However, I have deferred myadmission a year and will be taking theyear off, during which I will be coach-ing cross country at my former highschool, as well as working alongside mydad at Bob Hope Enterprises. ♦

African Studies Centerholds graduate conference

Every year, the second-year gradstudents in African Studies host aconference for grad students from BUand other schools to make contactsand present projects in progress.

This year’s conference, held March14-15, was titled “Transcending Bound-aries, Bridging the Continent: The16th Annual Graduate Research Con-ference in African Studies.” From theBU History Department, BrianCasady presented “On the Hot Seat:Confrontations over Firewood in Nai-robi’s Early Years,” and Natalie Mett-ler presented “The Kitchen Is Olderthan the Mosque: Cooking and Plantsin Bamana Landscapes of Knowl-edge.” Andrea Mosterman chaired thepanel “Communication, Media, andPropaganda,” and Anne Blaschkechaired the panel “Gender,Power(lessness), and Resistance.”

The keynote speaker at the event(Friday night, March 14) was the Rev-erend Gloria White-Hammond, whospoke on “The Anatomy of the Advo-cacy Movement.”

Anne Blaschke

Jeffrey Rubin spends abusy sabbatical

Professor Jeffrey Rubin has beenworking on four projects during hissabbatical this year, for which he re-ceived a fellowship from the AmericanPhilosophical Society: a book on therural women’s movement in southernBrazil; the curriculum project on Bra-zilian Social Movements he developedwith his daughter, Emma Sokoloff-Rubin; a multi-country research projectcalled “Enduring Reform,” funded bythe Open Society Institute, based at theInstitute for Culture, Religion, andWorld Affairs at BU, for which he isprincipal investigator; and a US–LatinAmerican research consortium based atUMass Amherst and funded by theFord Foundation, for which he is a co-

principal investigator.Professor Rubin’s book on the Bra-

zilian women’s movement combinesanalysis of rural women’s activism andchanging gender roles with attention tomethodological innovation: Whatdoes it mean to be a father-daughter re-search team in a place where womenhave defined themselves by defyingtheir fathers? Professor Rubin andEmma, who is now a freshman at Yale,presented their curriculum (“Music,Land, and Women’s Rights: CitizensMaking Change in Brazil and the US”)at Yale, UCSD, and Brown this year.The Brown workshop included notonly secondary school teachers, butuniversity professors, Brown under-graduates, and Brown graduate stu-dents. Next year, the curriculum willform the basis of a Portuguese Depart-ment course at Brown, and undergrad-

uates will teach lessons from the curric-ulum in Providence schools. The use ofvideo interviews in the curriculum in-spired a graduate methodology courseat Duke University last fall on the roleof interviews in scholarly research andteaching about globalization, and Pro-fessor Rubin and Emma will be con-tributing to the edited volume thatcame out of that course.

The Enduring Reform project exam-ines the responses of businesspeople,on the one hand, and leftist activists,on the other, to cases of progressive,civil-society based reform in six placesin Latin America, including Zacatecasand Chiapas in Mexico, Rio de Janeiroand Porto Alegre in Brazil, Buenos Ai-res, and rural Bolivia. The goal of theproject is to examine how two groups

See RUBIN, page 9

Page 6 NEWS

FACULTY

Betty Anderson: For the first timein years, I’m not traveling to the MiddleEast this summer to do research. In-stead, I am planning to write my bookon the history of the American Univer-sity of Beirut. Except for a short vaca-tion in Rome, I’ll be in Boston all sum-mer.

Andrew Bacevich: My summerplans include attending the SydneyWriters’ Festival in late May and a con-ference at Bar-Ilan University in Israelin June. I will also be reviewing the pageproofs of my book The Limits of Power:The End of American Exceptionalism,which will be published in mid-August.

Clifford Backman: I will be teach-ing throughout the summer, coachingour son’s baseball team to global domi-nance, putting up a fence around ourback yard (so our boys can finally gettheir long-promised dog), and trying tofinish my biography of the Iberianking, James II. I will also be travelingback to Minneapolis (Salve, magnaparens!) to help celebrate my mother’s80th birthday.

Charles Capper: My plans thissummer include Modern Intellectual His-tory editorial board meetings in Lon-don in early July and after that a presen-tation of my new collection, MargaretFuller: Transatlantic Crossings in a Revolu-tionary Age, at the Italian embassy inDublin.

Houchang Chehabi: I will deliver apaper on Iranian-Iraqi relations at Yalein late April and give another paper on“The Importance of Beirut for IranianModernity” at Harvard in early May.

After commencement, I plan to fly toMalta, where I will give one or two lec-tures at the University of Malta. In JuneI plan to attend the annual conferenceof the International Qajar Studies Asso-ciation in Leiden and Amsterdam,where I will deliver a paper on the aboli-tion of titles in Iran in 1925. On June 19 Iam scheduled to take part in a forum onAfghan-Iranian relations at the Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg inGermany and hope to visit some of theminor princely capitals of Thuringia(Weimar, Gotha, etc.) after that. In lateJuly I will return to North America toattend the Seventh Biennial Confer-ence on Iranian Studies in Toronto,where I am scheduled to deliver a paperon the introduction of family names inIran. I have as of yet made no plans forAugust, but may go up to Hudson Bayto visit Inuit settlements if I am notcompletely broke by then, which is notunlikely given the value of our cur-rency.

Samuel Deese: This summer I willbe teaching US history at NortheasternUniversity. In July, I’ll be traveling tothe UK to make a research visit to theBritish Library and to give a paper atOxford on Julian Huxley and the rise ofglobal environmentalism during theCold War. I also plan to visit Californiato see friends and family.

James McCann: In May I will travelto Ethiopia to help organize springplanting for farmers who are sowingbuffer crops to assess their ability to re-duce malaria rates in area of high cornproduction. I will also lecture at AddisAbaba University on the topic of “TheEthiopian Paradox.”

Eugenio Menegon: I will spend thesummer in East Asia, gathering materi-als for a new course on the History ofMaritime Asia I am developing andalso researching possibilities for a newbook project. Thanks to a grant fromthe Ministry of Education of Taiwan,obtained through the sponsorship ofthe Taipei Economic and Cultural Of-fice in Boston and the good offices ofthe Cultural Section’s director, Dr.Chang Shan-nan, and his collaborator,Angela Yao, I will be in residence at theInstitute of History and Philology ofAcademia Sinica (the vast central re-search institution of the Republic ofChina) for three weeks in May-June,present my research at a workshop, andmeet several scholars in research andteaching centers in Taiwan to discussthe recent developments in the fields ofmaritime and Asia-Pacific history. I willthen move on to the “Chinese Las Ve-gas,” Macao, the former Portuguesecolony now part of China. Rather thangamble away my time there, however, Iam planning to use the library of theMacau Ricci Institute and present myresearch at the Institute’s monthly fo-rum (and maybe have a peek at the oldchurches and at the Venetian Casinoreplica under construction on theocean front). The next stop of my Asiatour will be Xiamen (Amoy), a lovelycity in coastal Fujian, focus of my re-cent research, where I will reconnectwith colleagues in Chinese history. Af-ter two weeks in Beijing to check out theOlympic sites while in residence at theBeijing Center for Language and Cul-ture, I will finally settle until August atFudan University in Shanghai, where

May 2008 Page 7

BU has recently opened its China of-fice, exploring local libraries and ar-chives, and occasionally cooling offfrom the steamy weather and the pollu-tion with some outings in the nearbyhistoric rural towns.

Simon Payaslian: During the sum-mer I will conduct research in Armenia.I will also give a lecture on the Arme-nian Genocide on July 31 at the Geno-cide and Human Rights University Pro-gram of the Zoryan Institute, the Uni-versity of Toronto.

Bruce Schulman: Once I close thebooks on 2007-08, I’ll return to my ma-jor research project, a volume coveringthe years 1896-1929 for the Oxford His-tory of the United States. Mostly, I’ll besitting and writing, but I’ll also spend acouple of weeks doing research at theHoover Institution archives in Califor-nia and the Library of Congress Manu-script Division in Washington.

Nina Silber: June looks like it willbe a Civil War month for me. In earlyJune I’ll be in Gettysburg for the open-ing of the new museum and visitors’center, a project for which I have servedas consultant for the past nine years!Not that I had much to do with discus-sions about the new cafeteria, or themassive number of restrooms. But I’llbe excited to see how a bunch of aca-demic discussions about the Civil Warwill translate into exhibit cases and mu-seum displays. In mid-June I’ll be at-tending the first meeting of the Societyof Civil War Historians in Philadelphia,where I will be speaking on a panelabout Civil War veterans. June will alsobe the month when I review the finalpage proofs for my manuscript, to bepublished in the fall by the Universityof North Carolina, based on the lec-tures I delivered in the fall of 2005 ongender and the sectional conflict. AfterJune, I look forward to focusing on mynew project, still somewhat diffuse andvaguely defined, but which will some-how deal with discussions and memo-ries of US slavery in the mid-twentiethcentury. In late August I’ll be travelingwith my family to points west—proba-bly the Grand Canyon, maybe Utah,definitely Berkeley.

Jonathan Zatlin: I’ll be working onmy second book project, sorting out ar-

chival finds and reading neo-Kantianphilosophy and sociology. I’ll also de-liver a eulogy for my friend and men-tor, Gerald Feldman, at the Universityof California at Berkeley.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Ilona Baughman: I will attend theannual conference of the Associationfor the Study of Food and Society inNew Orleans this June and give a paperentitled “The Tastes of Exile.”

Anne Blaschke: For most of thesummer I will be working at BU, butduring two trips home to Santa Barbarain June and August, I will be celebratingmy grandparents’ 65th anniversary, go-ing wine tasting, and visiting the beach.I’m also going camping at Big Sur withlong-time friends from home to cele-brate our 30th birthdays.

Andrew Chatfield: I’m getting to-gether my summer plans. I’ve appliedto two programs at the Woodrow Wil-son Center for Scholars in Washington,D.C., which I would love to take partin.

Jolanta Komornicka: For a week atthe end of July I will be attending acourse at Keele University in Stafford-shire, England, on Latin and Paleogra-phy.

François Lalonde: After the last fi-nal exam is graded, I will be going toAbilene, Kansas, for a research trip atthe Eisenhower Library. Hopefully thetwo weeks I’m spending there with thehelp of a travel grant from the Eisen-hower Foundation will be enough forme to get all the material I need. I’msure Abilene is lovely, but I hope not tohave to go twice. Soon after I get backfrom Kansas, I’ll be getting on anotherplane and fly the other way to Dublin,Ireland, where I’m presenting a paper atUniversity College Dublin on June 7.Then in July I’m teaching the summercourse on the history of internationalrelations since 1945 at BU. Followingthat, I’ll hopefully be able to spendsome time at the Kennedy Library be-fore I leave for Paris and a year of re-search in Europe, either in late Augustor early September.

Kathryn Lamontagne: I will be

spending the summer in Balham, Lon-don, preparing for my oral exams. I willalso be volunteering at ThomasCarlyle’s House in Chelsea.

Sarah Westwood: First, I would likeeveryone to know how thrilled I am tobe accepted to the PhD program. I willbe working this summer, most likelywaiting tables in Boston at some yet un-determined location. I will also, hope-fully, do some traveling to Montanaand to my hometown, Evanston, Illi-nois, for my 10-year high school re-union. Best of all, I will have plenty oftime to read all the books I didn’t havetime for during the school year which,for some odd reason, are also all historybooks.

STAFF

James Dutton: This will be a differ-ent sort of summer for me. First,around commencement time the reno-vation of my kitchen will begin, with allthe chaos such a project entails. Every-one tells me I will be happy when it isfinished, and since I always expect thebest in life, that calms all my fears. ThenI will fly to Virginia (for perhaps the lasttime) to assist my sister, who has beenworking hard cleaning out ourmother’s house to prepare it for sale.After we finish, she, her husband, and Iwill drive to Boston, where I will try tobe a good tour guide and show themsome of my favorite sights.

Annalisa Amicangelo: This sum-mer I will be hosting full-time at LegalSea Foods in Chestnut Hill, hoardingoyster crackers behind the front deskand reminding patrons in high-trafficzones to fold up their walkers. In myfree time, I will attempt to convinceemployers in the communications sec-tor of the relevance of my history de-gree. In the off chance that this doesn’thappen to work, I will pursue my life-long dream of being interviewed byVanity Fair magazine.

Danielle Caramico: This summer Iwill be interning at Harrison andShriftman Public Relations in NewYork City and working in their fashionand special events department for eightweeks. After my internship is complete,

Page 8 NEWS

Zbysek Brezina

Zbysek Brezina defendsdissertation on Czechjournalist and politician

On April 4 Zbysek Brezina defended hisdissertation entitled “The CzechoslovakDemocrat: The Life, Writing, and Politics ofHubert Ripka from 1918 to 1945.” The firstreader was Professor Anna Geifman, the sec-ond was Professor Thomas Glick, and thethird was Professor Allison Blakely. Othermembers of the defense committee wereProfessors William Keylor and CathalNolan. Below we reprint the abstract:

Historical analyses of the politi-cal and cultural developmentof interwar Czechoslovakia

(1918-1938) and of the Czechoslovak lib-eration movement in exile duringWorld War Two (1939-1945) have oftenunderestimated, if not forgotten, thesignificance of the journalist, scholar,diplomat, statesman, and politicianHubert Ripka (1895-1958). From the mid-1920s onward, Ripka ranked among themost influential Czechoslovak journal-

ists. He was an active and importantsupporter of the “Castle,” or the influ-ential political network of first Czecho-slovak President Tomas G. Masarykand Foreign Affairs Minister (and laterPresident) Edvard Benes. As a politicalemissary of Benes, Ripka was alsodeeply involved in Czechoslovak do-mestic and foreign politics. Further-more, Ripka became one of the mostprominent advocates of Benes’s foreignpolicy regarding the Little Entente, theLeague of Nations, and the politicalfriendship with France and later withthe Soviet Union. During the war,Ripka was among the key Czechoslo-vak political representatives in exile.His efforts during the war centered onpropaganda, intelligence, and mainlyon his work in the Ministry of ForeignAffairs, where Ripka participated in for-mulating the Czechoslovak foreign af-fairs agenda that had an immense influ-ence on the postwar development inEast-Central Europe.

A detailed examination of Ripka’slife and work from 1918 to 1945 providesus with a greater understanding of inter-war Czechoslovakia and of the politicalwork of the Czechoslovak communityin exile in France and Great Britain. Bylooking at the life and times of HubertRipka—and in particular by looking atRipka’s writing and political activities—one may better understand the culturaland political ambitions of the Czecho-

I will return to work at Midlantic Mar-keting in my home town of Haw-thorne, New Jersey. Other summerhighlights will include my 21st birthdayand spending as much time at the Jer-sey shore as possible.

Andrew Naramore: After success-fully completing my double major inhistory and political science (whichshould be grouped with the rest of CASmajors to form the “college of unem-ployable studies”), I will continue mysearch for a decent paying job. BecauseI have not heard back from any otherfederal agency, I will probably end uppatrolling the southern border as a Cus-toms and Border Patrol agent. There isalso the possibility that I will enlist inthe Army. Regardless of where I am in afew months, I know that I will continueto regret not majoring in MechanicalEngineering or Finance. Good luck tothe rest of the graduating history ma-jors! I hope that you all did well enoughthese past four years to get into gradu-ate school. ♦

slovak intellectual elite which cameinto existence with the birth of Czecho-slovakia.

This thesis is the first English-language study examining the life andpersonality of Hubert Ripka. The studydraws primarily from archival materialfrom the National Archive and the In-stitute for Contemporary History ofthe Academy of Sciences both locatedin Prague, the Czech Republic. It alsodraws from a wide range of publishedprimary and secondary sources to ana-lyze Ripka’s private and public life.

Belete Bizunehcompletes dissertationon southern Ethiopia

On April 15 Belete Bizuneh defended hisdissertation entitled “An Agrarian Polityand Its Pastoral Periphery: State, Societyand Pastoralism in the Borana Borderlands(Southern Ethiopia), 1897-1991.” The firstreader was Professor James McCann, andthe second was Professor Diana Wylie;other members of the defense committeewere Professors Louis Ferleger, Jean Hay,and Parker Shipton (of the AnthropologyDepartment). We are pleased to reprint thedissertation abstract:

This dissertation examines thehistory of Borana sub-province,a peripheral region that strad-

dles the strategic borders of Ethiopia,Kenya and Somalia. Since its conquestby the Ethiopian imperial state in thelate 19th century, Borana and itsOromo and Somali-speaking pastoralpopulations had experienced major po-litical, economic and ecologicalchanges. The most important amongthese include: the creation of an inter-national border that bisected the previ-ously culturally unified populationsinto different states; the introductionof alien systems of economic and polit-ical control; the rise of inter-ethnic vio-lence among the various pastoralists ofthe region; and two major trans-borderinsurgencies that involved all threeneighboring states in the region.

This dissertation seeks to under-stand how these major political andeconomic events and processes trans-

May 2008 Page 9

formed the lives of Borana’s pastoral-ists and in what ways local pastoralistsresponded to these challenges. Theanalysis bases itself on hitherto unuti-lized Ethiopian archival documents,oral interviews, and British and Kenyandocuments.

I argue that security considerationwas the most important factor thatshaped Ethiopia’s administrative pol-icy towards Borana and its pastoral in-habitants during the period 1897 to 1991.The Ethiopian state’s agrarian orienta-tions also significantly impacted thestate’s economic and social policies to-wards Borana. In the pre-1941 period,the Ethiopian state’s major concern inthe region was to counter the perceivedthreat the British posed to its politicaland economic interests in the region.In the post-1941 period, the growth ofSomali nationalism among the Somaliof Borana posed a serious threat to theEthiopian state’s authority and legiti-macy in the region. An exaggerated fearof this threat led the Ethiopian state toreact strongly towards all Somali inBorana that led to the outbreak of a ma-jor insurgency (1964-1970) in the region.Similar policies under the military gov-ernment (1974-1991) facilitated theemergence of a second Somali-led in-surgency that significantly contributedto the economic and political marginal-ization of the region. This study has abroader comparative value since it illu-

minates the problematic of nationbuilding in peripheral borderlands inAfrica and elsewhere in the world.

Two students win GraduateResearch AbroadFellowships

In April Brian Casady and AndreaMosterman learned that they had re-ceived fellowships from the GraduateSchool to support travel abroad fordissertation research. Each will receivea grant of $10,000, plus the costs ofparticipation in the health insuranceprogram and continuing study fees.

Brian Casady is researching a dis-sertation called “An African City’sMetabolism: A History of Nairobi’sEnergy Supply, 1890-2000,” in whichhe will examine Nairobi’s historicaluse of firewood, electricity, fossil fu-els, and charcoal to uncover theofficial and unofficial stories of thecity’s growing appetite for energy andthe physical and social networks thatconnected Nairobi’s energy consum-ers to the city’s hinterland. His goal isto illuminate the history of the city’secological footprint by linking urbanconsumption to rural landscapechange in order to clarify how envi-ronment, governance, economy, andculture interact to shape a city’s rela-tionship with its hinterland.

Andrea Mosterman plans a disser-tation entitled “Sharing Spaces in aNew World Environment: African-Dutch Contributions to North Ameri-can Culture, 1626-1826.” Her intent isto examine the origins and develop-ment of African-Dutch cultural prac-tices and traditions in the HudsonValley region, an area in which Euro-peans of various ethnic origins werefamiliar with Dutch culture and usedthis common denominator to createorder and a sense of community. Shewill argue that cultural exchanges andsocial interactions between Africanand Dutch descendants in these com-munities brought about a unique setof practices and traditions that areparticular to this region.

that are conventionally hostile to pro-gressive reform—businesspeople, whooften see it as too radical, and leftist ac-tivists, who often see it as too limited—have responded over time to practical,non-utopian socioeconomic and cul-tural innovations that have demonstra-bly improved people’s daily lives.

The social movements consortiumran an international conference atUMass in April (“Social Movements,Civic Participation, and DemocraticInnovation”) that examined the ten-sions between activism “within demo-cratic institutions” and “in the streets”in Latin America in recent decades.Professor Rubin is co-editing an editedvolume of articles from the conference.

This summer, Professor Rubin willspend a month in Brazil for the En-during Reform Project. He will studythe responses of businesspeople inPorto Alegre to the city’s ParticipatoryBudgeting initiative, which began in1989 and continues today. ♦

RUBIN (cont. from page 5)

Belete Bizuneh

One of our alumni submitted anothermemory of the late Professor Robert Bruce:

When I took my general doctoral oralexam in what was then the Lincoln Roomon the top floor of the CLA library, my mi-nor field was early national US history andRobert Bruce was the examiner. When theboard finally got around to that field, I wasgetting a little ragged. Bruce and I ranaround the block on the issue of states’rights vs. federal government in the 1840sand ’50s for about ten minutes. Somehow, Imanaged to finish to his satisfaction, but Iwas sweating as I waited in the corridor forthe ax to fall or for congratulations. Itturned out to be the latter and there werehandshakes all round. Then, as Bruce and Iwaited in the corridor for the elevator totake us down, he smiled at me and said,“Got kind of stuck in the Clay, didn’t you?”That broke the awkwardness I felt andadded to my sense of accomplishment athaving jumped that hurdle on the way tomy career.

Robert Bruce was the kindest person Ican remember in all my years in academe.

John F. Battick, PhD, 1967

Assoc. Prof. of History Emeritus

University of Maine

Page 10 NEWS

Carrie Mountain

New secretaryoccupies thedepartment desk

After seven long weeks without a de-partment secretary, Carrie Mountainbegan working in the office in lateMarch. We are pleased to have her in-troduce herself to our readers:

I graduated from BU last May with adegree in International Relations,

and I am happy to be back at the univer-sity. I have experienced BU from quitea few different perspectives. My fatheris a professor of Biomedical Engi-neering here, and my mother is the De-partment Administrator for the EarthSciences department. My sister is asophomore in CAS. After graduation, Iworked in the Barnes and Noble at BUselling textbooks before joining theHistory Department as the new secre-tary. It’s nice to see friends around cam-pus and help students and professorsthat I remember from my classes.

In my spare time I like to watch mov-ies, play computer games, read, andwrite. My time studying abroad in Lon-don reawakened in me a love of travel-ing, and I hope to be able to save upenough soon to go back to all the in-credible places I visited in Europe andto discover some great new destinationsas well. In my time as an IR major, Istudied environmental issues and sus-tainable development, issues that arestill close to my heart. I hope that whileI work here I will be able to continue tak-ing some classes and exploring my inter-ests. At some point I plan to go to gradu-ate school, though I still am not entirelysure what my long-term plans are.Hopefully, my time here in the HistoryDepartment will help inspire me.

At commencement this yearthe department will bid farewellto two of its most valued stu-dent employees, AndrewNaramore and AnnalisaAmicangelo. Both history ma-jors, they have spent their en-tire BU working careers in thedepartment office, where theyhave suffered through moun-tains of photocopying andprobably acquired tendinitisfrom stapling untold historyclass handouts. The depart-ment wishes them well in theirfuture endeavors.

I hope everyone has had a good year,and I would like to thank everyone whois making my first month in the HistoryDepartment a great one!

American historysearch continues

The American political historysearch of the current academic year re-sulted in offers to two candidates, bothof whom eventually turned down theoffer from BU. Therefore in late Aprilthe search resumed, with two more fi-nalists coming to campus.

Sarah Phillips received her PhDfrom Boston University and is now anassistant professor at Columbia. She isthe author of This Land, This Nation:Conservation, Rural America, and theNew Deal (Cambridge, 2007).

Wendy Wall, who received her PhDfrom Stanford University, served as as-sistant professor at Colgate Universityand is now at Queen’s University,Kingston, Ontario. She authored In-venting the “American Way”: The Politics ofConsensus from the New Deal to the CivilRights Movement (Oxford, 2008).

Given the lateness in the academicyear, it is probable that the person ap-pointed will not join the faculty untilfall 2009.

May 2008 Page 11

Professors William Keylor and Andrew Bacevich participated in a public symposium at Lafayette College onApril 21 as part of the college’s celebration of the Legacy and Ideals of the Marquis de Lafayette. The title ofthe symposium was “Freedom, War, and World Peace.” The third participant in the symposium wasProfessor Arnold Offner, former Professor in the History Department of Boston University, now Cornelia F.Hugel Professor at Lafayette College. The three are pictured above (from left, Keylor, Offner, Bacevich)outside the Department of History at the college.

History major’sinternship project leadsto benefit concert

On April 19 rising BU senior Caro-line Smartt organized a concert at theOld South Church in Copley Squarefor the benefit of the Children ofJimma Project (the photo aboveshows one of the children).

The performance of Rachmani-noff ’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and JohnWilliams’s Hymn to the Fallen was byEric Niessner of the Berklee Collegeof Music and included 43 musiciansand choir assembled from BerkleeCollege, Harvard, the New EnglandConservatory, and the Boston Con-servatory. Caroline introduced the oc-casion and made a presentation aboutthe project she had developed as partof her internship with Professor JamesMcCann’s project on malaria. About300 people attended the event.

Caroline is a history/pre-med ma-jor and next year will complete aWork for Distinction thesis on thehistorical agro-ecology of tropical dis-ease in Africa under the direction ofProfessor McCann. She has receivedfunding from Boston University’s Un-dergraduate Research OpportunitiesProgram to support her travel.

On March 24, a delegation of Boston University students (including some in History) met with ASIABUfaculty advisor, Professor Eugenio Menegon, with IR faculty Joseph Fewsmith and William Grimes, and withthe Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education Victor Coelho to discuss the undergraduateinternational conference of the “Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations,” which the studentswould be attending. The delegates’ registration expenses for the conference were covered by a $2,500grant from the Student Affairs Office and the new Grants for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarship. OnApril 5-6, BU faculty in Asian art history (Alice Tseng), public health (Lora Sabin), sociology (Nazli Kibria),international relations (Min Ye), and history (Eugenio Menegon) presented their research in several panelsto an eager audience of US and Asian students at the Harvard conference, focusing on the general theme“Cosmopolitan Asia.” BU delegates bonded with students from Korea, China, Thailand, and other Asiancountries over scholarly discussions and in more convivial moments at local eateries and at the final gala ina swanky hotel in Boston’s downtown.

Department of HistoryBoston University

226 Bay State RoadBoston, MA 02215

Holder of Armenianchair gives inaugurallecture

Professor Simon Payaslian gave anumber of talks in March andApril. As the first incumbent of

the Kenosian Chair, he gave his inaugu-ral lecture, titled “Daniel Varoujan,

Siamanto, andthe Last Gen-eration in His-toric Armeniabefore the Cat-aclysm,” at theCast le onMarch 26. Theevent was co-sponsored bythe Interna-tional History

Institute of BU. Professor WilliamKeylor, Director of IHI, emceed theevent, and Professor Charles Dellheim,Chair of the History Department,talked about the significance of theKenosian Chair and introducedPayaslian. Professor Payaslian thankedthe audience for attending the eventand said: “I dedicate this lecture to the

memory of Charles Kenosian. I am sadto note that the only time I saw Mr.Kenosian was at a lecture I gave inWatertown about five years ago on therole of intellectuals in the Armeniancommunity and regret that I never hadan opportunity to discuss his interestswith him. It is a distinct honor to be theholder of the Charles and ElisabethKenosian Chair in Modern ArmenianHistory and Literature at Boston Uni-versity. It is indeed my great privilege tobe a member of the Department of His-tory, and I would like to thank Profes-sor Dellheim and members of the De-partment for being such great col-leagues. I would like to take this oppor-tunity to express my appreciation to theInternational History Institute for itsgenerous co-sponsorship of this event.Special thanks to Professor Bill Keylor,the Director of the Institute, and to Pro-fessor Cathal Nolan, the Executive Di-rector of the Institute, for their encour-agement, advice, and support.”

Payaslian’s talk presented the evolu-tion of Armenian political thoughtfrom romantic ism in the mid-nineteenth century to radicalism by theearly twentieth century and focused ontwo of the most influential poets in Ot-toman or Western Armenia, Daniel

Varoujan (Varoujan Chbukkiarian,1884-1915) and Siamanto (Atom Yarjan-ian, 1878-1915). Armenian nationalism inthe early part of the nineteenth centuryappeared in the form of cultural re-awakening, although by the end of thatcentury it had evolved into an ideologyof revolutionary struggle in reaction tooppressive Ottoman rule. In the pro-cess, Armenian nationalism benefitedenormously from the importation ofEuropean philosophies of culture, na-tionalism, and socialism. The mostsignificant intellectual currents wit-nessed in the transformation from cul-tural re-awakening to radical revolu-tionary philosophies were liberalismand westernization, romanticism and“nostalgic nationalism,” political real-ism and anti-imperialism, socialism, ni-hilism, and paganism. The evolutionwitnessed in the works of DanielVaroujan and Siamanto representedthe cumulative effect of these intellec-tual movements as both poets dis-carded their earlier romanticism andembraced nihilism and paganism. Bothpoets were among the Armenian intel-lectuals and community leaders ar-rested on April 24, 1915, exiled to the in-terior in Turkey, and murdered soonthereafter.