Department News for May 2017

May 1, 2017

Several Honors History majors successfully completed their Senior Honors Theses. Donald Lewis Roberts (advisor: Craig Roell), Juliana Hafner (advisor: Johnathan O’Neill), Cierra Tomaso (advisor: Brian Feltman), Caleb Still (advisor: Christina Abreu), Malik Raymond (advisor: Christina Abreu), and Nancy Balcziunas (advisor: Christina Abreu) also gave successful presentations at the Honors Research Symposium on April 21, 2017.

History graduate student Caitlin Woodie has been offered and accepted a full-time position with the National Park Service. She will be working as a Museum Technician for the Lake Superior Museum Collections Center located at Keweenaw National Historical Park in Calumet, MI.  She will work with accessioning, cataloging, environmental monitoring, and exhibit upkeep at the visitor centers for three different national parks (Isle Royale National Park, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and Keweenaw National Historical Park). Caitlin previously worked as the Pathways Intern with the National Park Service at Fort Pulaski National Monument.  This position will allowed her to be converted to a permanent employee upon her graduation from the MA and Public History program.  Her internship involved working within the Interpretations and Cultural Resource divisions at the National Park, conducting tours, creating interpretive programming, and working within museum collections.  (see attached photo)

Jeffrey D. Burson presented a paper, entitled, “Varieties of Enlightening on the Margins of Enlightenment Catholicism” at the annual meeting of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, c. 1750-1850 held in Charleston, S.C. on Friday February 24, 2017.  On April 21, 2017, at the annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies held in Washington, D.C., he also presented a paper entitled, “Revising the Soul and Reclaiming the Natural Sentiment of Humanity from the Jesuits to the ‘Antiphilosophes’.”  In addition, he commented on a panel about recent research in Early Modern British History at the Georgia Association of Historians on Jekyll Island, February 18; and he recently organized, and presented upon, an interdisciplinary round table about the teaching of World History at the Southwestern Social Science Association in Austin, TX, on April 14. Finally, Dr. Burson currently serves as a member of the first annual Charles Crouch Memorial Paper Prize at the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era.

Kathleen M. Comerford co-edited From Rome to Zurich, Between Ignatius and Vermigli (Brill), released in March 2017, with Gary Jenkins (Eastern University) and Torrance Kirby (McGill University).  She participated in the Jesuit Studies Roundtable (Loyola University of Chicago, March 29, 2017) and gave the paper “Vernacular Texts in Northern Jesuit College Library Collections,” at the 2017 Renaissance Society of America meeting in Chicago, IL on April 1.

Paul A. Rodell, published “Reaching for the Vision: The ATWS/AGSS Story,” co-authored with William Head, Journal of Global South Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Fall 2016) pp. 17-71.

Craig H.  Roell had several previously published pieces reprinted: “The Goliad Campaign of 1836”; “Amon Butler King”; “José Nicolás de la Portilla”; “Burr H. Duval”; “Battle of Refugio”; “Battle of Coleto”; “Goliad Massacre” appeared in  Goliad: A Handbook of Texas and Southwestern Historical Quarterly Companion, Independence Road to the Texas Revolution History Series, ebook. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2016.

Johnathan O’Neill published “William Howard Taft and the Constitutional Presidency in the Progressive Era,” in Bradley C.S. Watson, ed., Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution: A New Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 196-225.