History Department news for September 2016

September 23, 2016

Public History graduate student Regan Everett has been selected to appear on a panel at the National Council on Public History annual meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana. The panel, “Historical Documentary Film at the Crossroads,” will feature Everett’s discussion about her role as coordinator of the inaugural Ogeechee International History Film Festival, scheduled for March 24-25, 2017 in Statesboro. The film festival, which is the first of its kind in the United States, is Everett’s Public History graduate non-thesis project.

Caitlin Woodie was hired as a Pathways Intern with the National Park Service at Fort Pulaski National Monument.  This position will allow her to be converted to a permanent employee upon her graduation from the Public History Graduate Certificate / History MA program.  The internship involves working within the Interpretations and Cultural Resource divisions at the National Park, conducting tours, creating interpretive programming, and working within museum collections.

Former Undergraduate and Graduate History Student Shannon Browning-Mullis was named Curator for History and Decorative Arts at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia.

Former Graduate Student Lilith Logan was named Lead Interpreter at the Owens-Thomas House Museum in Savannah, Georgia.

Dr. Jonathan Bryant’s Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope won the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of an Archive. The award was established in 2003 to recognize outstanding efforts in archives and records programs in Georgia.  In May Dr. Bryant worked with the Georgia Capitol Arts Standards Commission to choose a sculptor for a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to be placed on the Capitol grounds. From June 12 through 24 he was an invited participant at a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, “The Constitution and Westward Expansion” held at the University of Oklahoma.  In July Dr. Bryant chaired a session, “Lawyers, Litigants, and the Legal Culture of Slavery in the Upper South,” at the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic meeting in New Haven, Connecticut.  In August he participated in a two-day symposium of Historians, Museum Professionals, and Historic Preservationists sponsored by the Historic Savannah Foundation to create a new interpretative narrative for the Isaiah Davenport House Museum.

Christina D. Abreu was invited to present “‘They hanged a Cuban boy last night on a cross of rope:’ Boxing, Television, and the Tragedy of Benny ‘Kid’ Paret” at Athleticism, Violence, and Society: A Symposium hosted by the Department of History and Lady Eaton College at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, on October 17, 2016.

Kathleen M. Comerford presented the paper “Serenissima Signora: Letters to Maria Maddalena from Muzio Vitelleschi” at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Bruges, Belgium in August.  She also organized five sessions, including the roundtable “How and Why to Network: Advice for Graduate Students and Recent Graduates.”  She will become Vice President of the SCSC starting in January 2017.