Monday, April 28, 2008

Dissertation Defense

Doctoral Dissertation Defense

"A More Beautiful Future: Class, Race and City Planning in Glasgow and Chicago, 1890-1968"

by

Matthew P. McCabe

May 5, 2008
3:30pm
Powers 121

Monday, March 31, 2008

Spring 2008 Dept Newsletter

Our Spring 2008 Department Newsletter has hit the printers and the postal service. But you can also find it here:

http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/history/pdfs/hstdeptnewsletter08.pdf

Friday, March 28, 2008

Speaker: 2008 Graduate History Colloquium Keynote Address


“Fortuyn (killed), Van Gogh (killed) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (banished): Driving out The Unholy Trinity from the Netherlands”

By Dr. Henri Beunders, Professor of the History of Society, Media, and Culture, Erasmus University Rotterdam

April 3, 2008
in the Park Library Auditorium at 3:00pm

Professor Beunders, a renowned expert in the history of media and society, having worked as a journalist and foreign desk editor with the Dutch newspapers Haagsche Courant and NRC Handelsblad that involved extensive travels throughout Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa, will speak on the matter of Islam in contemporary Europe, looking at how countries like the Netherlands are dealing with the problems and tensions that have arisen from this new social and cultural dynamic. There will be a reception afterwards in the Baber Room of Park Library that is free and open to the public.

(Sponsored by the Department of History and the Center for Transnational and Comparative History)

Friday, March 14, 2008

Fall 2008 Course Spotlight: "London, the Seminar"


HST 496: Research Seminar/HST 744: Seminar in Nineteenth Century European History
"London, the Seminar: From the Great Fire of 1666 to the Present"



Professor James Schmiechen
Tuesdays, 7:00-9:50pm

In its heyday of the 19th century, London was not only the capital of Britain, but also the world’s largest city, the financial and cultural capital of the world, and the center of the world’s largest empire. This seminar looks at how the physical makeup of the city—including the character of its people, its spatial layout, architecture, housing, and services infrastructure—was shaped and reshaped by industrialization, new cultural/political values, population growth, and war. It is also an attempt to discover how and why “London” was a hotbed for great invention and creativity and architectural wonder.

Each student in the seminar will participate in collective reading/discussion and take on a specific research sub-topic—anything from street entertainment and food/housing for the lower classes to the building of great concert halls, new Houses of Parliament, the role of the monarchy in the history of the city, and the rebuilding of London following the Great Fire of 1666, the onset of industrialization, and the bombing ‘Blitz’ of World War Two.

For each student the outcome of the seminar will be a seminar paper. Course assessment will include, as well, seminar discussion participation and analysis of select readings.

Fall 2008 Course Spotlight: "Ethiopia and the Horn"


HST 597L Special Studies
"Ethiopia and the Horn
(Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, and Djibouti)"

Professor Solomon Getahun
Mondays, 6:30-9:30pm

This course explores the sub-region in light of the history of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is one of the oldest nations and a country that has never been colonized. It is also one of earliest and oldest Christian nations which also became one of the first to accept Islam. Such oddities coupled with maritime trade, migration and wars made the country in particular and the Horn of Africa in general a melting pot as well as a center of competing ideologies and nationalisms.

Throughout the semester, we will study the evolution and development of the Ethiopian state since the earliest times to the present. While doing so, we will critically examine the role of competing interests such as the rise of Europe (Portugal and Spain) and the Ottoman challenge of the 16th century and its impact on political developments in the Horn of Africa, the legacies of colonialism, Cold War politics, globalization and the rise of ethno-nationalism, and religious fundamentalism in the making and unmaking of the states in the Horn of Africa.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Speaker: 2008 Bulger Lecture in Biography

William T. Bulger Lecture in Biography

"Getting to Know General Washington"

by

Dr. Edward F. Countryman
University Distinguished Professor at
Southern Methodist University,
William P. Clements Department of History

March 10, 2008
Park Library Auditorium
7:00pm

Free and Open to the Public

(Sponsored by the Department of History and the William T. Bulger Lecture in Biography)

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Thesis Defense

Thesis Defense

"Alexandria's Internal Improvement Struggle and the Eventual Rise of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad"


by

Joseph A. Camisa, Jr.

February 29, 2008
2:30pm
Powers 121

Monday, November 19, 2007

Doctoral Dissertation Defense

Dissertation Defense

Anglo-German Diplomatic Relations in the Inter-war Period, 1919-1939

by

Keith Sohler

Thursday, November 15, 2007 at 4:00pm in 121 Powers Hall

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Speaker: 2007 Blackburn Lecture

George M. Blackburn Endowed Lecture on the Civil War and Reconstruction

Treason or Politics as Usual?: Dissent, Party, and Federal Power in Civil War Cooperstown, NY

by

Dr. Thomas Summerhill
Associate Professor of History, Michigan State University

November 14, 2007
Park Library Auditorium
5:30pm

Free and Open to the Public

[Sponsored by the Department of History and the George M. Blackburn Endowed Lecture on the Civil War and Reconstruction]

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Spring 2008 Course Spotlight: "The Third Reich"

HST 496: Research Seminar/HST 758A: Seminar in Twentieth Century European History
"The Third Reich and Genocide in Comparative Perspective"

Professor Eric A. Johnson
Tuesdays, 3:30-6:20
Spring 2008

This course focuses on The Third Reich in broad perspective. The goal is for students to write high quality research papers of 25-40 pages dealing with a specific aspect of the history of dictatorship and genocide whether in Nazi Germany or elsewhere. Of particular interest for this semester are papers based on correspondence between Europeans and Americans during the years of the Third Reich, but other topics can be arranged with the instructor’s approval.

Required Texts:

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Samantha Powers, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide
Eric A. Johnson, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany
Elie Wiesel, Night
Jan Gross, Neighbors
Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power