Our Faculty

Letter from the Chair

Welcome to the inaugural Ball State History Department alumni e-newsletter! We bring you greetings from current department chair, Dr. Abel Alves.

Good News

83% of our social studies teaching majors secured a teaching position by the time they graduated in May 2019.

Prof. Ronald V. Morris has written a book about the history of the Yountsville woolen mill. Indianapolis Oasis members will tour the mill site with Dr. Morris and receive a copy of the book as part of their experience.

Prof. Max Felker-Kantor wrote an article that made The Washington Post’s “Made By History” section.

Hardworking department scholars were nationally recognized, with Dr. Sarah Drake Brown and Dr. Carolyn Malone being invited to give keynote addresses, and Jennifer DeSilva selected to be one of the three editors of The Sixteenth Century Journal.

We had two Fulbright recipients! Congratulations to Prof. Ken Hall and graduating senior Zachary Wishart.

We appointed the first professor to focus in Asian Women’s History at Ball State, Dr. Shiau-Yun Chen.

The Center for Middletown Studies, Dr. James Connolly in history, and Dr. Frank Felsenstein in English received an NEH grant to continue important work with the “What Middletown Read” archive.

New Faculty

Dr. Shiau-Yun Chen joined our faculty this semester as an Assistant Professor of History and Women's and Gender Studies. Her research focus is inter-relationships of law, culture, family authority and family violence in Ming China, with a special focus on wives and concubines. Prof. Chen is also a specialist in women’s and gender history and has published articles in Chinese language journals.

Read our New Faculty Profile for her perspective on teaching, her current project, and more.

Our Community

2019 Student History Conference

The annual Student History Conference is one of our most important events. History students are introduced to the discipline of history by sharing research in the form of papers, teaching units, and multimedia presentations.

students socializing in the art museum on campus

Fall 2019 Welcome Mixer

This year, we partnered with the Women and Gender Studies program and held the annual Fall Welcome Mixer in the always-beautiful David Owsley Museum of Art. Lots of students and faculty attended, and it was a great way to kick off a new academic year.

See photos from the event.

Sabbatical Presentations

The KGB Operations against the USA and Canada in Soviet Ukraine

Dr. Sergei Zhuk spent eight months traveling in Ukraine, Austria, and Italy doing archival research for "The Seductive Adversary," his new book project about Soviet meddling in U.S. and Canadian politics during the Cold War--a timely topic!

Dr. Frederick Suppe, a medieval historian, spent his sabbatical writing an article “’Irish’ Welshmen: the Social and Cultural Connotations of the Nickname ‘Gwyddel’ in Medieval Wales,” which has been accepted for publication in the refereed journal, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies.

Vietnam Moratorium Committee 50th Anniversary

This October, original members of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee (VMC) Ball State chapter reunited for the committee’s 50th anniversary at an exclusive luncheon. Ball State also hosted a conference with panel discussions, a memorial, and a keynote speech by David Harris.

The history of the Vietnam War protest at Ball State is archived in an online scrapbook on the VMC’s Ball State website. Key pieces from the scrapbook were featured as they happened fifty years prior in a thread on the History department’s Twitter that has now been archived as a Twitter Moment.

You can also read the Ball State Daily News article and listen to the WFYI’s Podcast “The Friday Pitch-In” (13:00 into the show).

Our Students

HIST200 Middletown Projects

The Middletown Projects are the culmination of HIST 200: Introduction to History and Historical Methods. They build on Felsenstein and Connolly’s What Middletown Read by using materials from Ball State University’s Archives and Special Collections.

These projects from Spring 2019 focus on the foundational disciplinary skills used by historians, and are an excellent example of what the history major cultivates in students. Learn more about Civil War veteran pension programs in Muncie, how the “Oldest Profession” flourished in the city, and how the gas boom led to a saloon boom.

I am First Generation - bsu.edu/students

#FirstsGenBSU

Were you the first in your family to attend college? Do you remember how tough it was? Studies show that first-generation college students graduate at a much lower rate, and Ball State is tackling that problem. First-gen faculty identified themselves with posters on their office doors, and the Counseling Center offered a new First-Generation Student Outreach Group.

Here in the History department, we decided to join in on the English department’s #FirstGenBSU social media campaign and share our own stories. Read more about the experiences of Dr. Abel Alves and Dr. Heather Schuerer.

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Muncie, IN | 47306 US

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