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The Department of History
Alumni Newsletter: Summer 2020
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| Andrew R.L. Cayton, a much beloved History professor at Miami University, died on December 17, 2015 following a long illness. To honor his legacy, the Department of History has established the Andrew R.L. Cayton Memorial Fund.
The fund commemorates Professor Cayton’s profound impact as an instructor, advisor, and mentor of generations of students in the History Department and at Miami University. The fund will support History students’ research, internships, and other opportunities to expand their education and to prepare them for a wide range of careers.
Donations can be made by clicking the red button below. Please reference “Andrew R.L. Cayton Memorial Fund” in the memo section.
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Dear History Alumni and Friends:
You receive this newsletter in the most unsettled circumstances the world has seen in a long time – a combination of a devastating pandemic, a sudden economic recession, and a national awakening over racism and inequality. Amidst the upheaval I hope you and your loved ones are well.
It goes without saying that all of us in Miami’s History Department – faculty, staff, and students – have been affected as well. Like other schools around the country, we moved all instruction online during the second half of the spring semester. The change happened literally overnight, and our faculty had to do – and did – yeoman’s work to reorganize the classes and rethink their pedagogy. From one day to the next, we found ourselves at home in Zoom meetings with students, uploading video-lectures, and asking students to tape their own class projects. In early May, the research of our honors students was featured on our Facebook page in videos curated by Dr. Andrew Offenburger. Congratulations to them and all other History graduates!
I am very grateful that we made it through the semester without anyone falling ill with Covid-19. Equally important, high-quality instruction continued during the long weeks of the lockdown. When we surveyed students at the end of the semester, they reported satisfaction with the ways in which their history professors had adjusted to a most unusual situation. At the same time they clearly missed the lack of personal engagement that is at the core of residential college life. In this way the last few months have reaffirmed in many of us – students and faculty alike – the value of a ‘normal’ Miami experience.
But these troubled times also offer an object lesson in the value of a history education. In fact, we have been living through history in the making. Historical perspective is invaluable to cut through the haze of daily news and rumor, and to gain a deeper understanding of what is happening. In the department we are responding to these challenges. For example, this fall Dr. Amanda McVety is offering a new course on Pandemics in World History (a course, I’m pleased to report, that was among the first to fill). We will also be highlighting the many courses in our curriculum that deal with slavery, race, and inequality across history.
I close with a few personnel announcements.
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We are delighted to welcome Dr. Steven Tuck, a long-time member of the Department of Classics, to our department. Dr. Tuck, a specialist in Roman history and archaeology, will fill a long-felt need for courses in ancient history. We are also bidding farewell to two valued colleagues. Dr. Nishani Frazier, Associate Professor of African American History, will be joining another institution. Dr. Peggy Shaffer, Professor of American History and American Studies, will be pursuing other opportunities. We are immensely grateful to both of them for their engaged teaching and scholarship, and we wish them well.
On behalf of the History Department, I send you our best wishes for the summer season. We always welcome your news and look forward to being in touch again in the winter.
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| Exploring the History Behind Current Issues
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 | Micco Spadaro, Piazza Mercatello (Naples) During the Plague of 1656
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| The problems that have been roiling the nation and the world in recent months are being explored historically in online journals sponsored by the History Department.
In 2019, students in Dr. Amanda McVety’s course on Medicine and Disease in Modern Society presciently researched a range of diseases in the U.S. in the 1930s. Some of the results, now very relevant, are published in the special issue on “Medicine and Disease” of Journeys into the Past, edited by Dr. Stephen Norris.
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Naming Buildings for Women
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|  | Meredith Engel presents her renaming project
to Dr. Hamlin’s Women in American History class.
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Students in Kimberly Hamlin’s course on Women in American History reimagined the Miami University campus if buildings, rooms, plaques were named for women. The results were phenomenal, even though students were unable to present their revised campus map at the (cancelled) Race, Class, & Gender Symposium.
Student Meredith Engel proposed a renaming project in her hometown. Her project is approved, funded, and set for unveiling this summer.
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The Yalta delegation, in-person...
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| Re-enacting Yalta, 1945
Professors Stephen Norris and Amanda McVety offered a special 1-credit sprint course this spring on the 1945 Yalta Conference.
Built around a role-playing game created by John Moser and Nicolas Proctor for the Reacting to the Past series, the course asked the students to work together to construct the Final Protocol—the written document that decided the fate of millions in the postwar world. Each student was assigned an individual role from the Soviet, U.S., or British delegation, which they maintained for the entirety of the class. In their respective role, they had to give speeches, work within their delegation, and negotiate with other delegations. During their meetings—in a circle, just like at Yalta—the students debated the division of Germany, the future of Poland’s government, the invasion of Japan, and more, alternatively compromising and taking a firm line in an effort to get the best outcome possible for their delegation. It was both great fun and an incredible learning experience. Many students came in costume. The students also got together outside of class and continued negotiations through texts and emails when they were forced home by the pandemic. Class meetings continued via WebEx and proved very successful in that format.
Here's how a few students commented on their experiences in the Yalta class:
“I played Stalin, one of the Big 3, and as Dr. McVety said, “the most knowledgeable man in the room.” As per instructions, I was very skeptical of everyone and everything, and I was very careful about stating my intentions and what I wanted. This meant that almost all of my communications about plans were vetted through Molotov before being disseminated, as he was the only one I really trusted, although I did tell Beria to spy on everyone, including him. I was also very firm about my decisions unless I was presented with a very convincing argument, but I made sure it was advantageous in some regard.” - Alex Adams
“From the very start, I found this to be a very interesting and new way to learn history. . . It’s no longer just reading something from a page, it’s being there in the moment, experiencing this event even if it did happen in the past.” - Josh Hubbard
“One of my biggest takeaways from this course was understanding the motivations. Learning what was driving the delegates helped illustrate and make Yalta a complete picture. Seeing the true cost of the war and how that impacted who was able to ask for what demonstrated to me why Yalta was important.” - Megan Snyder
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Jonathon Dreeze (BA 2011), just defended his dissertation at Ohio State and received a tenure-track job at Cornell College in Iowa.
Eric Rhodes (MA 2019) describes the history behind Ohio's Confederate flag controversy in Belt Magazine.
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| Faculty Publications and Other Accomplishments
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| Elena Jackson Albarrán published “Educating the Nation’s Youth,” in the Oxford Handbook of Mexican History (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Wietse de Boer co-edited the book, La ghianda e la quercia. Saggi per Adriano Prosperi [The Acorn and the Oak Tree: Essays for Adriano Prosperi] (Rome: Viella, 2019), to which he contributed the article “L’imputato suicida. Morte, vita, memoria” [“Suicide in Prison: Death, Life, and Memory”].
Stephen Norris published:
- “Two Worlds: Boris Efimov, Soviet Political Caricature, and the Construction of the Long Cold War” in Aga Skrodzka, Xiaoning Lu, and Kasia Marciniak, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019): 519-541.
- “On Russian Cinema Going West (and East): Fedor Bondarchuk’s Stalingrad (2013) and Blockbuster History” in Andy Byford, Connor Doak, and Stephen Hutchings, eds., Transnational Russian Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019): 197-212.
- “Defenders of the Russian Land: Viktor Vasnetsov’s Warriors and Russia’s Bulwark Myth” in Heidi Hein-Kircher and Lilya Berezhnaya, eds., Rampart Nations: Bulwark Myths in East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019): 319-343.
Steven Tuck published:
- “Harbors of Refuge: Post-Vesuvian Population Shifts in Italian Harbor Communities,” in Reflections: Harbour City Deathscapes in Roman Italy and Beyond. Analecta Romana Instituti Danici – Supplementum LIII (2020), 63-77.
- “The Ancient Roman Origins of Government Disaster Response,” in Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, 2020.
- “Classical Corner: Searching for Survivors from the AD 79 Eruption of Vesuvius,” Biblical Archaeology Review (Jan/Feb 2020), 17-18.
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254 Upham Hall • 100 Bishop Circle • Oxford, OH 45056
Phone: 513-529-5121 • Email: history@MiamiOH.edu
© 2020 Miami University. All rights reserved.
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