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The Department of History
July 2022 Alumni Newsletter
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|  | History honors and graduate students celebrate their graduation in May 2022
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| Dear Alumni and Friends of the History Department:
As you read this newsletter, Miami students and faculty have dispersed, construction crews are at work on campus, Alumni Weekend has come and gone, and Uptown is quietly baking in the sun. In short, it is summer in Oxford – a good time to look back on a busy, exciting, and successful academic year. With the waning of COVID-19, the spring semester felt almost like normal. Even as some pandemic stressors persisted, the History Department at times seemed to have gone into overdrive — in a good way!
This was especially evident from the number of on-campus events we were able to host. Some of these are highlighted below. Renowned historian of science Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University) gave the third in a series of lectures made possible by the generosity of Miami alumni Rick ’88 and Cyndi Sippola ’87. At the occasion of Women’s History Month, our own Kimberly Hamlin, recently appointed James and Beth Lewis Professor, gave the Wilson Lecture in American History. And Professor Andrew Offenburger organized a fascinating conference on the role of interpreters in the history of the American West.
A few weeks into the semester, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine quickly became headline news at Miami, as it did around the world. Stephen Norris, Walter Havighurst Professor of History, was much in demand, on-campus and off-campus, as an expert interpreter of the tragic events as they unfolded. In early March, Dr. Norris, director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, hosted the former President of Lithuania (2009-19), Dalia Grybauskaitė, for a spell-binding discussion of her time in office, her relationship with the Russian president, and the current events. It was a reminder of how vital history is for understanding the present. This awareness explains the growth and success of the history magazine Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, co-edited by Steven Conn in collaboration with colleagues at The Ohio State University. This newsletter also samples a few of the original class projects our students participated in. Dr. Steven Tuck’s students researched the provenance of classical artifacts on the recent art market, while Dr. Offenburger’s class on the modern Midwest continued the exploration of demographic and cultural change in a small Iowa town.
As the history major continues to grow steadily, we set a recent record in graduates. Among them, Jacob Selent won a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to teach in Germany or Austria, and Aidan McKeon was a finalist for the same award. At the end of the semester, we were pleased to gather for the History Honors Symposium, where a great group of seniors presented the research for their honors theses. Below you will find stories on the research of two of our students. We are immensely proud of the accomplishments of all our newly minted graduates. We wish them well in their future endeavors. 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 next academic year. Meanwhile, don’t forget to follow us on the department’s Facebook page.
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Sippola Family Lecture Series
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This year, the History Department returned to in-person events, including three guest lectures and class visits by leading historians. The series, made possible by the generosity of Miami alumni Rick and Cyndi Sippola, addressed the theme, “Conspiracies in World History.”
The first two lectures took place last fall. Professor Eugene Avrutin (Indiana University) lectured on blood libel cases targeting Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, while Professor Marjoleine Kars (University of Maryland-Baltimore County) discussed her research on slave rebellions in the 18th-century Americas.
In March, Professor Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University) introduced students and faculty to the historical research for her new book on economics and the relations between business and government in 20th-century America.
All three events generated lively discussion with students and faculty in the audience.
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The McClellan Symposium Returns
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Following a pandemic hiatus, the department sponsored a two-day McClellan Symposium this spring on "Interpreters in Western History."
The event featured a keynote by the prominent Western historian, Dr. Patricia Limerick, director of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado. Dr. Andrew Offenburger organized the event and will edit with Dr. Limerick a volume of collected chapters resulting from the symposium. Dr. Cameron Shriver contributed a paper on a local early-19th-century interpreter.
The event was co-sponsored by the Myaamia Center, and included an open discussion of interpreting among Miami faculty and students.
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Kimberly Hamlin presents women’s history lecture
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“Why It is Vital to Tell Women’s Stories during Women’s History Month and All Year Long.” This was the significant title of the Charles R. and Elizabeth C. Wilson lecture offered in March by Kimberly Hamlin.
Dr. Hamlin, newly promoted James and Beth Lewis Professor of History and American Studies, gave the audience a compelling overview of her research trajectory in U.S. women’s history. Her work recently resulted in a biography of a key player in the women’s suffrage movement, Helen Hamilton Gardener. Dr. Hamlin also talked about the classroom projects she developed in her courses on women, sex, and gender. Two of her students, now graduated, Alexa Lawhorn and Chelsea Cozad, joined the presentation, which was followed by lively discussion.
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|  | 2021-22 History Honors Students
Back: Joe Yeager, Chelsea Cozad, Jacob Fisher, Brett Cowan, Aidan McKeon, and Cole Schroeder
Front: Liz Talsma, Alexa Lawhorn, Madeline Phaby, Delaney Ross-Shannon, Megan Snyder, and Anikka Cook
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On May 6, the department proudly presented the annual History Honors Symposium, organized by Honors mentor Dr. Andrew Offenburger. The History Honors Program allows some of our best majors to develop individual research projects under the guidance of a faculty advisor.
This year, 12 honors students presented their projects – the result of some 16 months of work – in areas ranging from medieval England to modern Argentina, from Spanish Florida to Japan, from Mexico to recent America. Their themes ran the gamut from women’s history to popular culture, from military history to sports, from religious practices to political resistance. One of these projects is featured in the following story.
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Student Spotlight: Aidan McKeon (BA, History, ’22)
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This spring, history major Aidan McKeon conducted research in Argentina for his honors thesis. He describes his project and his experience as follows.
My senior honors thesis was titled "She Never Left You: A Transnational History of Evita and the Popular Culture Afterlife of Eva Perón." I was lucky enough to receive a grant from the Andrew R.L. Cayton Memorial Fund, which allowed me to travel to Buenos Aires to conduct research for my project.
Before sharing how wonderfully helpful this trip was, I should provide a bit of background to contextualize my project. My focus, which my advisors Drs. José Amador and Elena Albarrán helped guide me toward, was the legacy of Eva Duarte de Perón, Argentina's influential and divisive First Lady from 1946-1952. Her memory within the United States is principally shaped by the ubiquitous musical Evita, which has been presented twice on Broadway and adapted into a film starring none other than Madonna.
My four-part thesis began by summarizing the various theories of her biography, outlining the creation of Evita, placing the 1996 film in the context of the U.S. cultural Latin Boom, and finally describing the dissonance between her status as a pop culture character in the English-speaking world and her legacy as a political and quasi-religious shibboleth in Argentina.
Traveling to Buenos Aires primarily allowed me to deep dive into the archives at Museo Evita, which holds the world's most extensive library of English and Spanish primary and secondary sources on Evita. Through the museum I also had the opportunity to interview leading Eva Perón historians, giving me firsthand experience as a third-party observer of a bitter, decades-long battle to define a woman's legacy. Additionally, staying in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, a stone's throw from Eva Perón's resting place, allowed me to immerse myself in this history and to feel the constant presence of Eva Perón iconography and memory that seems to linger in Argentina.
Looking back on my Miami Experience after I graduated in May, I feel that my participation in the History Department Honors Program unlocked so much personal and intellectual growth. I will always be grateful for the time it allowed me to explore this subject for which I have so much passion.
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Student Spotlight: Hailey Knuth (MA, History, ‘22)
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History graduate student Hailey Knuth organized the exhibition, “Who Controls the Narrative?,” at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati. It presents the results of Knuth’s research into the role of the press in reporting on, and contributing to, the riots that targeted Cincinnati’s Black community in the first half of the 19th century.
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Students conducted oral history interviews via Zoom and worked with the Storm Lake Community School District to create a series of profiles of newcomers and long-established residents, dubbed " Small Town, Big World." Additionally, select students published op-eds in The Storm Lake Times-Pilot, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper. They were:
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Dr. Steven Tuck’s ancient history students conducted eye-opening research in a course on classical archaeology.
Art museums across the Western world are currently grappling with legal challenges regarding artifacts in their collections reclaimed by the countries of origin, as these objects are alleged to have improperly acquired. Students in Dr. Tuck’s class investigated the provenance of every object in every antiquities auction held by two major auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie's, for the past three years.
They found that fewer than 1% of archaeological objects had full provenance statements – that is, going back to excavation. The majority had no history earlier than just before 1970, when it became accepted international law not to buy or sell these objects without provenance. The pattern strongly suggests that the vast majority of objects in the international antiquities trade are illegally acquired and sold with flimsy provenance statements used to support that sale.
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Shea Hendry (BA ’15), a former History and Classics major and history Honors student, received a Cambridge Gates Scholarship to pursue a doctorate in history at the University of Cambridge. Hendry is the first Miami University graduate to receive this prestigious scholarship. You can find a feature story on her experiences here.
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Darlene Brooks Hedstrom (Ph.D. ’01), now a professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, returned to Miami University this spring to participate in a symposium on ancient archaeology. She gave a fascinating lecture on her research into the material culture of ancient monastic communities in Egypt. History professors Drs. Matthew Gordon and Steven Tuck also participated in the event.
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Sheldon Anderson published a memoir, Jump Shooting to a Higher Degree (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), in which he chronicles his path from professional basketball player in Communist Poland to history professor at Miami University.
Wietse de Boer published the article, “Expressions of the Self in Burckhardt’s Renaissance,” in A Renaissance Reclaimed: Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy Reconsidered, edited by Simon Ditchfield and Stefan Bauer, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 245 (Oxford University Press, 2022). With Miami art historian Dr. Andrew Casper, he organized a student-moderated research presentation on Art, Religion, and the End of the Renaissance, held at the Miami University Art Museum on April 26.
Stephen Norris gave numerous interviews, nationally and internationally, to provide commentary on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its historical roots. Regional venues included an event organized by Miami University’s Alexander Hamilton Society, WVXU’s Cincinnati Edition, and the Dayton Daily News. Also check out Dr. Norris’s conversation with Joe Meyer on the podcast “ The Neutral Ground.”
Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, recently appointed book review editor of the prestigious Journal of the Early Republic, helped see the spring 2022 issue to print.
Steven Tuck started filming a documentary entitled Pompeii: A Peoples' Story for the BBC. Over three episodes, the series will interweave a present-day narrative about the archaeological sites with a ticking-clock timeline following historical characters through three days building up to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Dr. Tuck will highlight his discoveries about the aftermath of this catastrophic event. Who survived the eruption? Where did they settle? How did they reconstruct their lives?
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Andrew R.L. Cayton, a much beloved History professor at Miami University, died on Dec 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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