Ph.D. candidate Nathan Braccio was named an Omohundro Institute–Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation fellow, which enabled Braccio to conduct research over the summer in Williamsburg and Jamestown. While Braccio’s dissertation, “Parallel Landscapes: Algonquian and English Spatial Epistemologies 1500-1700,” focuses on how New England colonists and Algonquians described and learned about their landscape before 1700, his fellowship enabled him to broaden his research to include the culture of professional surveying and mapmaking among early colonists.

Braccio shared his fellowship experience and details relating to his fascinating research on OI’s “Uncommon Sense” blog. A link to his post can be found here.

This past week it was announced that Manisha Sinha, the UConn History Department’s James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History, is a recipient of a 2019-2020 fellowship from Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

With an acceptance rate of 3.7 percent and an applicant pool of more than 1,000 distinguished academics, it is a well-earned honor for Professor Sinha to serve as one of the fellows. Specifically, her research on “the limits and possibilities of progressive constitutionalism through study of gender and race issues that arose during Reconstruction” will contribute to the Institute’s 19th Amendment Project associated with Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.

For more information, please see the Institute’s fellowship announcement listed here.

The Department is extremely pleased to announce that Dr. Hilary Bogert-Winkler has accepted the position of Director of Pastoral Studies at Montreal Diocesan Theological College, an Anglican institution affiliated with McGill University.

Bogert-Winkler recently defended her dissertation, titled “Prayerful Protest and Clandestine Conformity: Alternative Liturgies and the Book of Common Prayer in Interregnum England,” in April 2019. In addition to studying liturgy and church history at UConn, Rev. Bogert-Winkler also has served in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. Bogert-Winkler is “thrilled” to be joining Dio and states that “In learning more about the college, I have been so impressed with the creativity, excitement, and passion for the Gospel I see. The church is being challenged to find new ways to train all its members to be ministers of the Gospel, and I look forward to joining in that work in Montreal.”

 

Congratulations, Hilary!

 

UConn Gives is a 36-hour giving initiative from March 27-28th that donates to various aspects of the University, including the History Department! All donations raised by the department will be given right back to the students through new opportunities for student research, internships, and experiential education. 

The best part? Our faculty has promised to match all donations up to $2,500 – making each donation go twice as far!

Click here to donate now!

We are pleased to announce that Ph.D. candidate, Marc A. Reyes, has received a World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship from the Smith-Richardson Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is to “contribute to important public debates and to address serious public policy challenges facing the United States.” Marc’s dissertation considers U.S. foreign policy towards India, particularly in regards to how Indians imagined what nuclear energy could mean for their nation’s future.

Marc currently is on leave as a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow in India for 2018-2019.

On April 6, 2018, historian Julia Irwin will speak at the History Department as part of its Foreign Policy Seminar Series. 

Dr. Julia Irwin earned her PhD degree from Yale University; she is now an associate professor in the University of South Florida. Receiving the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award of USF in 2015, Irwin teaches classes focused on the history of the United States and its foreign relations. Her research centers on the place of humanitarianism, health, and welfare in 20th century U.S. foreign relations. Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening is Irwin’s first book and was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. Making the World Safe tells the story of U.S. relief and assistance for foreign civilians in the era of the First World War, and focuses on both the diplomatic and the cultural significance of humanitarian aid in these years. Based on the records of the American Red Cross and key personnel, Irwin’s research “examines the lives of a cosmopolitan cadre of American civic leaders, philanthropists, and medical and social scientific professionals—individuals who embraced foreign assistance as a new way to participate in the international community” (p. 2) However, Making the World Safe not only focuses on ARC leaders and staff, but also examines the American public in the importance of foreign aid to American foreign relations. Besides the monograph, Irwin also published many articles that examine American humanitarianism, health, and social welfare as a window into both U.S. domestic and international histories. Some of the topics that she wrote about are child health, nursing, and ethnic tensions. Currently, Irwin is writing her second monograph, Catastrophic Diplomacy: A History of U.S. Responses to Global Natural Disaster. Her current research is to examine how the United States government, American charities and relief organizations, and the U.S. public have responded to disasters caused by overseas tropical storms, earthquakes, floods, and other so-called “Acts of God” since the late 19th century.

In addition to researching and teaching achievements, Irwin also participates in several professional programs. She is currently council member for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and member for the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize Committee. She is also the membership secretary of Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.