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Visit this section often to keep up-to-date on all of the exciting things happening in the Department.

Faculty News

  • Dr. Hibba Abugideiri was awarded a Visiting Scholars Fellowship at Qatar University for 2007-08.

  • James Bergquist, Ph.D., emeritus professor of history and author of Daily Life in Immigrant America, 1820-1870: How the First Great Wave of Immigrants Made Their Way in America (Ivan R. Dee, 2009) wrote an article entitled, "From Chinatown to Everytown," which appeared in the Oct. 8 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Read the full article here.  

  • Marc Gallicchio, Ph.D., chair of the history department, has written the book, The Scramble for Asia: U.S. Military Power in the Aftermath of the Pacific War, which has been published by Rowman & Littlefield.  Also, Dr. Gallicchio's edited volume, The Unpredictability of the Past: Memories of the Asia Pacific War in U.S.-East Asian Relations, has been published by Duke University Press.

  • Dr. Judith Giesberg's book, Army at Home: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front, was published by the University of North Carolina Press -- and just in time for the Lincoln Bicentennial. Learn more about the book here: http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_ detail?title_id=1640.  Dr. Giesberg has also published an article, “The Fortieth Congress, Southern Women, and the Gender Politics of Postwar Occupation,” in Occupied Women: Gender and Military Occupation and the American Civil War, LeeAnn Whites and Alecia P. Long, eds., Louisiana State University Press, 2009: 185-193.

  • Dr. Giesberg published a book review of Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859, by Elizabeth Varon. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008, in Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 133:4, (October 2009): 448-449. She was also interviewed by Civil War Talk Radio on September 18, and the interview can be heard at http://www.modavox.com/worldtalkradio/vepisode.aspx?aid=41237.

  • Christopher Haas, Ph.D., has written the article, "Mountain Constantines: The Christianization of Aksum and Iberia," which has been published in the inaugural edition of The Journal of Late Antiquity (Spring 2008), 101-126.

  • In spring 2009, Dr. Lynne Hartnett was selected as a semi-finalist for the Lindback Award for Teaching Excellence. In addition to her teaching duties, Dr. Hartnett is currently serving as the Director of Villanova’s Russian Area Studies program.  Last year Dr. Hartnett presented the paper “The Venus of the Revolution: The Interplay of Gender and Terrorism in the Life of Vera Figner” at the Annual Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

  • Jeffrey Johnson, Ph.D., discusses the dual use technology and how products and processes can be used by the military and in civilian life in Distillations, a weekly science podcast that brings listeners extracts from the past, present, and future of chemistry, produced by the Chemical Heritage Foundation.  During summer '09, Dr. Johnson chaired the organizing committee for a symposium on “Chemistry in the Aftermath of World Wars” at the 23rd International Congress of History of Science and Technology in Budapest, Hungary. He also presented the keynote address at the Congress entitled, “Crisis, Change and Creativity in Science and Technology: Chemistry in the Aftermath of Twentieth Century Global Wars.”   Dr. Johnson served as a commentator for Session 1 of the following Symposium: “Chemistry and Chemical Industry in the Aftermath of World War I.”  In August he presented his paper, “The First World War and the Shaping of Dual-Use Chemical Technologies: The Case of German Chemicals and Explosives, 1914-1925” at the 7th International Conference on History of Chemistry in Sopron, Hungary,

  • Maghan Keita, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Global Interdisciplinary Studies, has published an essay titled "Malcom X in the Company of Thinkers," in James L. Conyers, Jr., and Andrew P. Smallwood, eds. Malcom X: A Historical Reader (Durham: Carolina Press, 2007).

  • Catherine Kerrison, Ph.D., has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Association of University Women. This year, the association selected only 97 fellows out of 1,116 applicants.  Also, Dr. Kerrison's book, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South (Cornell, 2006), has been chosen by the History of Education Society as the winner for its Outstanding Book Award for 2007. Catherine was honored at the Society's Annual Meeting, where a special session was devoted to discussing her book and the award was presented.

  • Dr. Elizabeth Kolsky's,  new article “Tea, Labor, and Empire in India” appears in Steeped in History: The Art of Tea, Beatrice Hohenegger ed., Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009. Her article serves as a companion to an exhibition currently on display at UCLA's Fowler Museum. See more about the exhibit at http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/incEngine/?content=cm&cm=exhibitions. During the next school year Dr. Kolksy will be on leave conducting research overseas in India and England under the auspices of a National Science Foundation grant.   In 2008 she co-edited the volume, Fringes of Empire: People, Places and Spaces at the Margins of British Colonial India, which has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press. In addition, Dr. Kolsky's book, Colonial Justice: White Violence and the Rule of Law in British India, will be published as part of the Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society, edited by C.A. Bayly. 

  • Dr. Adele Lindenmeyr, a professor of history and former department chairperson and graduate program director, has been named dean of Graduate Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  She will succeed Gerald Long, Ph.D., who stepped down from his position in August 2009.  Dr. Lindenmeyr graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor of arts in Russian in 1971 and earned her doctorate in history at Princeton in 1980.  She taught at Princeton University, Rutgers University and Carnegie Mellon University before joining Villanova as an assistant professor of history in 1987, was named an associate professor in 1992 and a full professor in 1999.  Congratulations to Dr. Lindenmeyr! 

  • Dr. Timothy McCall  has published three articles. The first, “The Gendering of Libertas and the International Gothic: Carlo Crivelli’s Ascoli Annunciation,” appeared in Studies in Iconography 30 (2009), 168-197. The second, “Visual Imagery and Historical Invisibility: Antonia Torelli, her Husband, and his Mistress in fifteenth-century Parma,” was published in Renaissance Studies 23 / 3 (2009), 269-287. The third, “Il commercio delle amanti a corte. Corpi erotici e sistemi di scambio all’inizio dell’epoca moderna,” was featured in Sesso nel Rinascimento: pratica, perversione e punizione nell'Italia rinascimentale, ed. Allison Levy, trans. Monica Martignoni and Tiziana Gambardella (Florence: Le Lettere, 2009), 119-131.

  • Charlene Mires, Ph.D.,  has recently published two articles: one related to her work in public history, and the other connected to her current research on the many local campaigns to become the home of the United Nations. "Invisible House, Invisible Slavery: Struggles of Public History at Independence National Historical Park," in Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes, ed. Marc H. Ross (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009): 216-37, and "Sault St. Marie as the Capital of the World? Stellanova Osborn and the Pursuit of the United Nations, 1945," Michigan Historical Review (Spring 2009): 61-82.

  • Dr. Emmet McLaughlin, director of the Graduate Program in History, has recently published “Paul in Early Anabaptism,” in A Companion to Paul in the Reformation (ed. R. Ward Holder) (Leiden 2009) pp.215-240. He also had two other new publications, “Truth, Tradition, and History: The Historiography of High/Late Medieval and Early Modern Penance,” A New History of Penance ed. Abigail Firey (Leiden 2008) pp. 19-71. and “Luther, Spiritualism and the Spirit,” Luther Digest 16(2008) pp. 69-75.

  •  Bernard F. Reilly, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, presented a paper, “Alfonso VI of León-Castile (1065-1109) and His Bishops," on April 24, 2009, at a conference, “Alfonso VI en Nueva York, Encuentro de Estudiosos con Ocasión del IX Centenario de la Muerte del Rey Alfonso VI (1109-2009),”  held at New York University. The conference was intended to serve as introduction to another, three-day conference on the same theme, to be held in León and Sahagún, Spain, in October '09.  In May, Professor Reilly presented a paper, “Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada: Writing History in Thirteenth-century Iberia,” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Western Michigan University. His was one of a series of papers given at three panels there in order to celebrate the 80th birthday of the historian of medieval Spain, Professor Joseph F. O’Callaghan, emeritus from Fordham University.

  • Congratulations to Dr. Paul Rosier on the publication of his new book, Serving Their Country: American Indian Politics and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century, published by Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.  Dr. Rosier also gave a conference paper entitled “‘What the world will need to survive’: American Indian Environmental Citizenship in post-WW II America" at the November 2009 American Studies Association Annual Meeting.  Dr. Rosier received the 2009 John Topham and Susan Redd Butler Faculty Research Award in May 2009.

  • Joseph G. Ryan, O.S.A., Ph.D., has written an article entitled, "Doctor Gunning S. Bedford (1806–70) and the Search for Safe Obstetric Care, 1833–70," which was published in the August 2008 issue of the Journal of Medical Biography.

  • Paul Steege, Ph.D., is the author of Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946–1949, and Cambridge University Press has issued the book in a paperback edition. In addition, Dr. Steege's article, "Staging a Revolution 'Betwixt and Between' in Weimar-Era Berlin," has been published in Alltag, Erfahrung, Eigensinn: Historisch-anthropologische Erkundungen [Everyday Life, Experience, Eigensinn: Historical-anthropological Investigations]. Ed. Belinda Davis, Thomas Lindenberger, and Michael Wildt. (Berlin: Campus, 2008: 361-72). The volume was published in honor of Alf Lüdtke. In February '09, Dr. Steege presented the essay "Ordinary Violence on an Extraordinary Stage: Incidents on the Sector Border in Postwar Berlin" as part of the “Performing Violence” conference at Amherst College. He has also co-authored "The History of Everyday Life: A Second Chapter," The Journal of Modern History 80 (2008) 358-378 based on two panels held at a previous German Studies Association meeting. In addition, Dr. Steege's article, "Kalter Krieg: Made in Berlin," (Cold War: Made in Berlin) appeared in the German newspaper Die Welt in July 2008.

  • Dr. Rebecca Winer's,  article, "Conscripting the Breast: Lactation, Slavery, and Salvation in the Realms of Aragon and Kingdom of Majorca, c. 1250-1300," which appeared in the Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 164-184, has been selected as "article of the month" by Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index site. This Index covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages.  This article has also been selected as the winner of the 2008 Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Best Article Prize.  This award is especially impressive since, as the chair of the prize committee noted, "The competition this year was fierce and the field was very very strong."  Congratulations to Dr. Winer for this great honor!  In March 2009, Dr. Winer’s "Marriage, the Family and the Family Business: Links Between the Jews of Medieval Perpignan and Girona" was given as the keynote address for “The Times and Places of Jewish Girona” International Conference at the Institut d'EStudis Nahmanides in Girona, Spain. The conference was sponsored by the Spanish Government, in particular by the Foundation that Maintains the Restored Jewish Quarter in the City, the "Patronat Call de Girona."  Dr. Winer has also co-edited "The Elka Klein Memorial Volume” a special edition of Jewish History 22 (2008), devoted to the legacy of the historian Elka Klein and consisting of essays by many of the field's major scholars. She wrote the introduction and co-authored a review essay on Elka Klein's, Hebrew Deeds of Catalan Jews/Documents hebraics de la Catalunya medieval: 1117-1316, with Elisheva Baumgarten, the volume’s co-editor.