History

Amy Froide, associate professor of history, has been elected President of the Middle Atlantic Conference on British Studies (MACBS). The MACBS is the Mid-Atlantic regional affiliate of the North American Conference on British Studies, which is a scholarly society dedicated to all aspects of the study of British civilization. The NACBS sponsors a scholarly journal, the Journal of British Studies, online publications, an annual conference, as well as several academic prizes, graduate fellowships, and undergraduate essay contests.  The MACBS annual conference will be held at Lehman College of the City University of New York on March 23-24, 2013.

James Grubb, professor of history, is the recipient of a 2013 USM Regents’ Faculty Award for Teaching. Regents’ Faculty Awards publicly recognize distinguished performance on the part of faculty members. This award is the highest honor presented by the Board of Regents to exemplary faculty members. The awardees are selected by the Council of University System Faculty and submitted to the Board of Regents for approval. Teaching awards are given to faculty who have have demonstrated accomplishments in areas such as course development and pedagogy, faculty development, mentorship of faculty, direction of student research projects, and leadership in teaching improvement.… Continue Reading James Grubb, History, Receives USM Regents’ Faculty Award for Teaching

Denise Meringolo, associate professor of history, has won this year’s National Council on Public History Book Award for her book Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History. The National Council on Public History is an organization dedicated to making the past useful in the present and to encouraging collaboration between historians and their public. In Museums, Monuments, and National Parks, Meringolo traces the roots of the public history field, showing that the roots of public history reach back to the nineteenth century, when the federal government entered into the work of collecting and preserving the… Continue Reading Denise Meringolo, History, Wins NCPH Book Award

The online journal Aeon has published an excerpt from associate professor of history Kate Brown’s forthcoming book Plutopia, which is due out in 2013. “For the past seven years, I have spent a great deal of time in the radiated traces of the world’s first plutonium plants — the Hanford factory in eastern Washington State and the Mayak plant in the southern Russian Urals. As countries from the Middle East to the Baltics gear up for a new generation of nuclear power reactors, it is worth taking another look at how scientists laid claim to the ‘truth’ to dismiss the… Continue Reading Kate Brown, History, in Aeon

Anne Rubin, associate professor of history, has been named the president of the Society of Civil War Historians. Rubin is the author of A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868 The Society of Civil War Historians (SCWH) is an association of scholars dedicated to exploring slavery, the sectional crisis, Civil War, emancipation, and reconstruction roughly from the 1830s through 1880. SCWH’s goal is to bring greater coherence to the historical field by encouraging the integration of social, military, political, and other forms of history and generally to promote the study of the Civil War era. In… Continue Reading Anne Rubin, History, Named President of the Society of Civil War Historians

An op-ed by George Derek Musgrove, assistant professor of history, recently appeared on The Root DC blog on the Washington Post website. In the piece, Musgrove and co-author Chris Myers Asch discuss why current discussions of gentrification in the Washington D.C. region can be so heated. “Simply put, people do not want to be gone or forgotten,” they write. “Displacement and struggles over who “owns” the city have a long history in Washington. Ours is a city both Southern and transient, where the constant churn of newcomers has amplified the importance of place and rootedness.” The authors conclude that “We… Continue Reading George Derek Musgrove, History, on The Root

Amy Froide, Associate Professor of History and Director of UMBC’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Minor, was invited to give two talks on her current book project, “The Silent Partners of Britain’s Financial Revolution: Women as Investors in Public Stocks, c. 1690-1750,” over the summer. She presented her research to the History Department at Princeton University in May and the European Women’s History Seminar at the University of London in June.

Dan Ritschel, professor of history and director of the Center for History Education, was a guest on Maryland Morning during a July 11th segment on Maryland’s newly-added government assessment test for high school seniors. The test, which will be first given in 2017, was part of a new law passed by the Maryland General Assembly this spring. Ritschel spoke of the importance of the test’s introduction, but noted also that other fields – including his own – remain somewhat neglected as the high school level. “There used to be a Maryland performance assessment in history until 2002, and following the introduction of the… Continue Reading Dan Ritschel, History, on Maryland Morning

News that Dresher Center for the Humanities director Rebecca Boehling’s was recently named Director of the International Tracing Service, has recently been covered in several news outlets. On June 22,  The Baltimore Jewish Times published a story entitled “Professor To Head International Tracing Service,” which explored Boehling’s background and that of the ITS. Boehling spoke on a number of topics which ranged from anecdotal experiences related to the ITS’s profile and the shifting discourse within Germany on the war to the possible advantage of being an American “outsider” holding such a sensitive post as hers. As to her plans for the ITS during her expected 2 1/2… Continue Reading Rebecca Boehling, History, in the News