RECENT NEWS

Film Screening: "The Innocents"

The spring Human Rights Research Network film series begins with a showing of The Innocents on Thursday, January 30, at 6:30pm in Room 120 of the School of Education Building. Dr. Jeff Jones will be moderating the film and discussion that evening. There will be a reception following the film.

The Innocents is a 2016 French Sundance Film Festive Award winning production that depicts the aftermath of the brutal rape of several nuns in a Polish convent by Russian soldiers in 1945. These rapes result in pregnancies for several of the sisters. The plot follows the efforts of a French doctor to assist the women in the convent. The film raises serious questions about the violation of human rights, not only among perpetrators of such crimes, but also among humans in good societies and in tragic circumstances such as those depicted in this much-awarded film.

Community Scanning Day

2019 Edition of The Historian Now Online

Check out what our faculty, students, and alumni have been doing during the past year in our annual newsletter: http://his.uncg.edu/documents/newsletter/Newsletter-2019.pdf

Lisa Tetrault: "When Women Won the Right To Vote - An American Fiction"
Monday, October 21st
5:30-6:30 PM, Faculty Center
Dr. Lisa Tetrault, Associate Professor of History, Carnegie Mellon

That women won the right to vote in 1920 is American scripture, but that story misleads us in countless ways. It also leaves us ill equipped to fight the modern ongoing history of disenfranchisement. One hundred years later, it's time for a new story, one that more accurately captures this complex history, confronts the legacies of racism, and enables us to pick up the still unfinished project of securing voting rights for all.

Dr. Lisa Tetrault, Carnegie Mellon University, is the author of The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 (2014) which won the OAH Mary Jurich Nickliss Book Prize.

Co-sponsored by the Department of History, HNAC, and the Program in Women's and Gender Studies.

A reception with food will be at 5:00 PM

Invited Scholar Lecture: "The Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba: Architecture, Memory, and the Future"
Thursday, October 24th, 6-7 PM, Faculty Center
Dr. Michele Lamprakos, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Univ. of Maryland

Most scholars know the Great Mosque of Cordoba as one of the great monuments of Islamic civilization. But for almost eight centuries, it has been the city's cathedral. Unlike other mosques on the Iberian peninsula, which were demolished and replaced by cathedrals and churches at some point after the Christian conquest, the Great Mosque of Cordoba survived. It was progressively adapted for Catholic worship with relatively minor changes. Then, in the 16th century, a strange thing happened: a massive choir and presbytery began to rise from the middle of the building. Over the course of the next two centuries, the surrounding fabric was progressively "christianized" — only to be "re-islamicized" in the 19th-20th centuries, in the era of Romanticism, Liberalism, and colonialism. Paradoxically, re-islamicization reached its highpoint under Franco's ultra-Catholic dictatorship (1939-1975). It might be expected that, with transition to democracy and freedom of religion, there would be greater openness to the Islamic past in Cordoba. But in fact, the opposite occurred: the last two decades have seen a new wave of christianization, as Church authorities have sought to downplay, discredit, and even deny the Islamic past. The long struggle over the building's fabric and meaning attests to the continuing power of the Islamic architectural legacy. But it is also a barometer of changing attitudes toward the Islamic past - and the meaning of that past for Spanish culture and society.

Michele Lamprakos is Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, University of Maryland-College Park. Trained as an architect and architectural historian, she specializes in the early modern/modern Arab-Islamic world and critical heritage studies. Her research focuses on two main themes: the lives and layers of buildings and sites; and contacts between faith-cultures in the Mediterranean. She is author of Building a World Heritage City: Sanaa Yemen, the first book on urban heritage to be recognized by the Society of Architectural Historians' Spiro Kostof Award (Honorable Mention, 2018). She lectures widely and has organized international symposia, including "Heritage and the Arab Spring" (Freer Gallery of Art, 2014, with Nancy Um) which explored the role of cultural heritage in a new and shifting Middle East. She has served as Technical Reviewer for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and as Desk Reviewer for UNESCO. Dr. Lamprakos' lecture draws on her second book project, Memento Mauri: the Afterlife of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, which she is advancing as a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (2019-2020).

Co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Honors College, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Civilizations, the Islamic Studies Research Network, and HNAC.

Empires Across Space and Time
Monday, Oct. 28, 5:00
SOEB 118

The North Carolina Humanities Corridor presents "Empires Across Space and Time." Join faculty and students from UNCG and NCCU for an interdisciplinary discussion on varied examples of imperial power, from the prehistoric Wari Empire to the Roman Empire to the British Empire.

What is an empire? Who built and maintained the empires of the past? How and why did they do so? What are the differences between migrants, settlers, colonizers, and imperialists?

Associate Professor of History Jill Bender will be one of the discussants.

Ayla Amon: "'Unintelligible Babel': How Enslaved Muslims Used Arabic to Pursue Freedom in Early America'"
Tuesday, Sept. 10, 5:30-6:30
EUC Auditorium, UNCG

Of the more than 12.5 million enslaved Africans transported to the New World during the transatlantic slave trade, estimates suggest that at least 25% were Muslim. They brought with them their culture, their faith, and most importantly their language. Arabic, a language minimally studied, spoken, or understood in America, provided an outlet and resource for these men and women. They used Arabic to reaffirm their faith; to plead to be returned to Africa; to condemn slavery and their slave owners; to generate rebellion; and in a few cases, to gain their freedom. This lecture will examine some of the Arabic documents they wrote in order to shed light on the lives of these remarkable people and the role that Islam played in shaping the antebellum American landscape.

Ayla Amon is a Curatorial Assistant at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture who studies enslaved African Muslims in North America. She holds degrees in Islamic Art and Architecture, Middle Eastern Studies, and Museum Studies from the University of Chicago and George Washington University, and has worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walters Art Museum, and the Tangier American Legation Museum in Morocco.

Co-sponsored by Lloyd International Honors College, the African American and African Diaspora Studies Program, the Department of History, and the Muslim Student Association.

Eger Publishes New Archaeology Book

The University Press of Colorado recently published The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers, edited by Dr. Asa Eger. "The Archaeology of Medieval Islamic Frontiers demonstrates that different areas of the Islamic polity previously understood as "minor frontiers" were, in fact, of substantial importance to state formation. Contributors explore different conceptualizations of "border," the importance of which previously went unrecognized, examining frontiers in regions including the Magreb, the Mediterranean, Egypt, Nubia, and the Caucasus through a combination of archaeological and documentary evidence."

Kriger Gives Keynote Address

Dr. Colleen Kriger gave the keynote address at the "Clothing the Enslaved in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World Conference" at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff this summer. Her talk was titled "European Woolens and African Consumption in the Early Modern Atlantic: Status, Style, and Creole Culture."

Suttell Appears in Documentary

Dr. Brian Suttell (Ph.D. in History from UNCG, 2017) contributed to "Hope's City," a documentary by Dancing Ape Films and directed by Ricardo Fleshman that had its premiere on June 22, 2019. The film addresses the history and current revitalization efforts in Pamplin City, Virginia. In the documentary, Brian discusses issues such as the impact of the railroad, the Civil War, and race relations on the history of Pamplin City. The film is available on Amazon for a small fee and is free for Amazon Prime subscribers.

Fariñas Borrego Joins Department as Visiting Assistant Professor

Please join us in welcoming our new Visiting Assistant Professor in Latin American History for the 2019/20 academic year, Dr. Maikel Fariñas Borrego! Fariñas Borrego earned his Ph.D. degree in history from UNC Chapel Hill in May 2019. He earned his M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and his B.A. in History at the University of Havana. Fariñas Borrego has taught courses on Modern Latin American History and the History of Latinos in the United States. He is the author of the book Sociabilidad y cultura del ocio (2009) and several book chapters and journal articles on voluntary associations in republican Cuba. Fariñas Borrego's research focuses on the organization of business leaders in civic associations, such as Rotary Clubs, and their transformation into regional power groups across Cuba. He will be teaching three courses in the fall: HIS 209, HIS 240, and HIS 391.

Mandy Cooper Joins Department as Instructor of Women's History

Join the history department in welcoming our newest full-time instructor Dr. Mandy Cooper! Dr. Cooper holds the Ph.D. in history from Duke University and she is joining us to teach courses in U.S. history and women/gender history. Her courses this fall include HIS 329 U.S. Women's History Since 1865 and HIS 451/551 Gender and History: "Women and Politics in U.S. History." For more information about these courses check out the course descriptions page.

UNCG Museum Studies Program Wins National Leadership in History Award

The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) has recognized our program with an Award for Excellence/Leadership in History Award (the only North Carolina winner!) for the exhibit "Etched in Stone?: Governor Charles Aycock and the Power of Commemoration" in place on the top floor of the lobby of UNCG Auditorium. In addition, this project earned the HIP (History in Progress) Award given at the discretion of the awards committee to 5% or less of the total winners of the Award of Excellence. Read more here.

Polio Hospital Highway Marker Dedication
Sat., June 15, 2019, 3:00 p.m.
710 Huffine Mill Road, Greensboro
RSVP: go.uncg.edu/marker

The North Carolina Highway Historical Marker program has approved a marker commemorating the Central Carolina Convalescent Hospital, which served as a hospital for people with polio and later as a detention center for civil rights protesters in 1963. The marker will go up nearby Wendover Avenue, but we will hold the dedication ceremony at the hospital site itself. Read the News and Record article.

Montana Joyce Wins 2019 Undergraduate Research Award

Dean of University Libraries and Professor Martin Halbert and Associate Dean for Public Services and Associate Professor Kathryn Crowe presented the 2019 University Libraries Undergraduate Research Award to Montana Joyce, a double major in history and biology, on May 2 at UNC Greensboro's Student Honors Convocation. Read the article here.

Bender Named National Humanities Center Fellow

Associate Professor of History Jill Bender has been appointed a Fellow at the National Humanities Center for the academic year 2019-2020 for her research project "Assisted Emigrants: Irish Female Migration Projects and the British Empire." For more information, see the NHC website.

Gatson Hired as Assistant Professor in Public History

The UNCG Department of History is pleased to announce that Dr. Torren Gatson has been hired as Assistant Professor in Public History at the start of the fall term. Gatson's research focuses on historic preservation, material culture, 18th-20th century United States history, African American history, and southern history. Dr. Gatson defended his dissertation "The Combative Tactics of the NAACP Against Unfair Housing Laws and Practices: A Comparative Study of the Dynamic Changes in Urban and Rural Landscapes 1920-1960" in March 2018 at Middle Tennessee State University. Currently, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the department.

Speakeasy Night at Greensboro History Museum
Fri, April 26, 2019
7:00-10:00 p.m.
Tickets: $20; Age 21+ event, bring ID.

MA in History/Museum Studies student Erin Blackledge's capstone project: "An evening of Prohibition-era jazz, games, cocktails & more for the Smart Set. Tix on sale March 20. Includes admission and two beverage tickets. Additional beverage tickets will be available for purchase at the event. For a full authentic speakeasy experience, we encourage our fellas and flappers to dress in their best Gatsby (or cocktail) attire. For more details and fun, check out @GHMSpeakeasy on Instagram But ssshhh... don't tell. (Email greensborohistory.org or call 336-373-2610 for information)"

"Reading Against the Grain: Perspectives on Atlantic Slave Trade"
Faculty Research Talk by Dr. Colleen Kriger
Thursday, April 11, 2019, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
MHRA 1607, UNCG

Dr. Colleen Kriger will discuss her new book Making Money: Life, Death, and Early Modern Trade on Africa's Guinea Coast (2017, Ohio University Press).

How did free people become captive cargoes on Africa's west coast during the Atlantic slave trade? Historian Colleen Kriger's recent book, focuses on the human complexity of this trade in commodities and captive people and how it was organized. The surprisingly detailed business records of England's Royal African Company raise interesting questions about writing "African" history from "European" sources. Refreshments will be provided.

"The Jim Crow Cigarette in China: How North Carolina Tobacco Shaped Corporate Imperialism"
Lecture by Dr. Nan Enstad
Wednesday, April 3, 2019, 6:00-7:00 p.m. (Reception: 5:30-6:00 p.m.)
Faculty Center, UNCG

This talk explores how a single tobacco variety, bright leaf tobacco, became an agricultural commodity in nineteenth century North Carolina and Virginia and eventually became the essential tobacco in cigarettes around the world. Bright leaf developed during the years of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow segregation. When bright leaf went global, it took Jim Crow with it - especially to China, the largest outpost of the British American Tobacco Company. Hundreds of white men from North Carolina went to China to build the bright leaf industry with Chinese businessmen. The Jim Crow cigarette boomed in popularity in both the US and China in the 1920s.

Dr. Enstad is the Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, an affiliate of the Gender and Women's Studies Department, the Afro-American Studies Department, and the current Director of the UW Food Studies Network. She is the author of Cigarettes Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Popular Culture and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press, 1999). She has a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota . From 1993-2001 she was faculty at the Department of History at UNCG.

"Resistance: How Did It Change the Vietnam War?"
A Conversation with Peace Activists David Cortright and Bill Ramsey, Moderated by Dr. Tom Jackson
Thursday, April 4, 2019, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
MHRA 1214, UNCG

"The 60s: Exploring the Limits" Event

The soldier revolt, draft and war tax resistance, moratorium marches in Washington - how did mounting G.I. and popular opposition to the war in Vietnam affect military strategy, presidential and congressional debate and decision-making? And how did anti-Vietnam resistance spur lives of activism in the antinuclear and peace movements?

David Cortright was an active duty G.I. activist who defended his first amendment right to oppose the war in federal court in 1971. He later became a leader in the 1980s nuclear freeze movement. Director of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Cortright is the author of Soldiers in Revolt: G.I. Resistance during the Vietnam War (2005) and Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (2008).

Bill Ramsey was a North Carolina student anti-war organizer and coordinator of local anti-Vietnam war tax initiatives. He was later active in nuclear disarmament campaigns and movements to oppose U.S. military interventions. He worked for the American Friends Service Committee and founded the Human Rights Action Service.

Moderated by History Professor Tom Jackson, who was active in the nuclear freeze campaign and anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s before becoming a historian of civil and human rights.

"Excavating a Museum: The 1930s Princeton University Antioch Project"
Lecture by Dr. Asa Eger
Wednesday, March 20, 2019, 5:30-6:30 pm
Graham 307, UNCG

During times of conflict, archaeologists can turn to older materials in museums when fieldwork is unsafe to carry out for any reason. In the 1930s, Princeton University conducted large excavations in the city of Antioch, once the 3rd largest city in the Roman world and presumed in decline, now in modern Turkey on the Syrian border. However, the excavations were only partially published and included the most beautiful museum-worthy pieces with no stratigraphic information. As such, our project investigates whether one can piece together a ninety-year-old dig through the available archive of records and material culture. In this talk, I will discuss the process of excavating a museum archive - analyzing 300 boxes of material culture heretofore untouched sitting in the storerooms of Princeton University's Art Museum. These along with a repository of saved records in the Department of Art and Archaeology's Visual Resources Department have allowed us to understand one sector of the city - a case study and pilot project - in surprising and dynamic ways. The sector of 17-O, in the heart of the city, shows us how a city transformed, adapted, and thrived over time in the face of political change, conquest, and natural disaster. This has greater implications on the ways in which we understand the afterlives of post-Roman cities, long thought to be sunken in decline or abandoned.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Archaeology Program and Archaeology Club.

How Museums Can Challenge Narratives of American History

Lecture by Alya Amon
Wednesday, January 23, 2019, 3:30 p.m.
North Spencer Hall Parlor, UNCG

Ayla Amon is a Curatorial Assistant at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture where she works on the Slavery and Freedom exhibition. Ms. Amon will be discussing interpretation in museums and the changing role of the community in developing exhibitions. Sponsored by the National Museuam of African American History and Culture, UNCG Lloyd International Honors College and UNCG Department of History.