Undergraduate Honors Student Thesis Spotlight: Kasey Schempf

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Holden, Constance

UConn History undergraduate alum Kasey Schempf blends questions of taxation and representation in her examination of Vivien Kellems. Interested in exploring a “feminist rebranding” of the crusader for tax equality, Schempf looks to the CT-based activism of a woman considered to a feminist visionary.

Kasey Schempf, “Unveiling the Feminist Character of Vivien Kellems”
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Peter Baldwin

Vivien Kellems was undoubtedly a crusader for tax equality, inspiring many later movements. The Connecticut businesswoman openly despised the Federal Income Tax, among other taxes. She certainly wasn’t afraid to share her opinion, even if it wouldn’t make her any friends. However, in the late 1960s, Kellems began to appeal to a new demographic: young, unmarried women. She moved away from her radical, conservative language and assumed the role of the “spinster,” advocating for younger women. She aligned herself with the movement against the Singles Penalty, or the notion that single tax filers were “penalized” for remaining single. As a result, Kellems is typically praised by scholars as a feminist leader and supporter of Second-Wave Feminism.

This paper aims to examine the transformation of Vivien Kellems from a radical political character to a common household name as she strategically campaigned for single tax filers. Moreover, this study will highlight the activist efforts of Kellems and investigate the possibility of a “feminist rebranding” to secure more supporters for her true motive: to overhaul the American tax system.

Prof. Manisha Sinha Reflects on Teaching Black History Month

Posted on February 15, 2022 by Holden, Constance

This Black History Month, the legislative and political attacks against teaching the histories of race and racism have forced history educators to reckon with what and how they teach in their classrooms. In an Axios article, journalist Russell Contreras zooms into the legal terrain that restricts teachers from teaching students about the complex and violent realities of the past. 35 states have taken legal steps to limit how teachers discuss racism and sexism, according to Contreras. In some states, Contreras points out, teachers “may introduce Malcolm X, but not read his speeches” or “point out Rosewood, Florida or Tulsa, Oklahoma,” but “not talk about the racial atrocities that occurred there.” Many educators will still go forward with their Black History Month lesson plans, while others decry anything related to critical race theory as a departure from the core tenets of morality that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. espoused.

Much of the criticism against critical race theory, which began as a legal framework for understanding patterns of systemic racism, relates to concerns around white students’ affective responses to the histories of slavery. Axios turned to UConn History Professor Manisha Sinha, a scholar of slavery and abolition, to describe the influence of these laws on student learning. Sinha explains that “there is no reason why a white student can’t identify with the abolitionist or the civil rights leader rather than a slaveholder.” “These laws supposedly protecting white students from guilt say more about the authors of the law than the students,” Sinha elaborated.

Black History Month began as Negro History Week in 1926, partially as a strategy for teaching Black history in public schools. Carter G. Woodson, the historian behind this celebration of Black history, created Negro History Week as his organization, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, responded to the need to expand political and cultural consciousness about Black experiences. In 1976, Negro History Week became Black History Month in response to the wide-sweeping cultural and political movements that advanced the causes and goals of freedom. Fore more on teaching Black History Month within the current contested landscape, read “New Rules are limiting how teachers can teach Black History Month,” where Professor Sinha contributes her thoughts alongside those of analysts and educators.

Faculty Spotlight: Nancy Steenburg on Venture Smith

Posted on February 11, 2022February 14, 2022 by Holden, Constance

From February 4 – February 27, the Stonington Historical Society will debut a new and permanent exhibition on slavery. Thanks to the dedicated research of two members of the UConn History community, Professor Nancy Steenburg and former graduate student Liz Kading, the story of Venture Smith will shed light on the multifaceted landscapes of slavery and freedom in 18th century New England. The exhibition, entitled, “My Freedom is a Privilege that Nothing Else Can Equal,” will mark the re-opening of the Lighthouse Museum. Admission will be free throughout the month. Below, Nancy Steenburg shares some insights into the research process and what she hopes the exhibition will achieve.

How did you become involved in research on slavery in New England, and specifically the life of Venture Smith?

I first learned of Venture’s amazing life in the early 1990s while a graduate student in UConn’s Ph.D. program, taking a class on African-American history with Professor Donald Spivey. He had assigned Arne Bontemps book Five Black Lives, and I read Venture’s narrative as a part of that assignment. After I earned my Ph.D. at UConn, I continued to teach both at Storrs and at Avery Point, but I’ve taught only at Avery Point since about 2003. When I taught classes at UConn Avery Point, starting in 1996, I included Venture’s narrative as an assignment in US history classes and in a class on the history of the family. I love to use field trips for my classes, and I took my HIST 231 class (the current HIST 1501) to the Hempstead Houses in New London. As the students listened to the docent explain early American family cooking, I stepped back into the small “store” and saw a family genealogy for Joshua Hempstead and suddenly realized that one of my 4X great grandfathers was a grandson of Joshua Hempstead, a slaveowner who lived in New London.

I’m not much into genealogy, but I knew that another of Hempstead’s grandsons was Hempstead Minor, one of the whites who enslaved Venture for a short time. In 2005 I set out to research Venture’s life in Stonington, CT, starting with the land records to try to confirm the truth of Venture’s narrative. With the assistance of Elizabeth Hannan Kading, a graduate student in UConn’s History Department, we combed through thousands of deeds in the town hall deed books, reading literall7 thousands of deeds in cramped and sometimes nearly illegible 1th-century handwriting. We found two deeds – Venture’s purchase of 26 acres in 1770 and his sale of that same land in 1774. We then searched for the actual location of that land. Eventually we ran into a dead end. The owner of the land that had been Venture’s had lost the land in 1854 to The Washington Trust in a mortgage foreclosure – one of over 150 foreclosures that year. It was impossible to identify the land when the bank sold it.

Here serendipity entered the picture. Peg Stewart Van Patten, a fellow UConn employee at Avery Point, saw me one day when I was looking very discouraged and asked me what the problem was. I explained my dilemma, and she said that her grandparents had owned the land once owned by Venture as a part of a 400-acre farm in the Barn Island Area of Stonington, land that had been sold to the State of Connecticut in the 1960s. Eventually (it’s just too convoluted to go into detail) we located the plot of land that included a foundation of what had been Venture’s dwelling in the early 1770s! Ever since that discovery I have been adding to my research of Venture’s life and the African community in 18-century Stonington. In 2019 Liz and I received grant funding from the Stonington Historical Society to research Venture’s time in Stonington and the lives of other members of Stonington’s African and African-descended community. That research is the basis of the new permanent exhibit on Venture.

What were some of the most surprising findings?

One of the most surprising findings was that the records of people of color in Stonington were so challenging to tease out of the documents. In some cases, some people had sought to obscure the records by removing references to people of color – whitewashing the records, in effect. Another surprise was how legends of Venture had persisted in publications about Stonington into the early 20th century, making it a challenge to separate legends from the actual facts.

What were the challenges to this work?

The challenges to completing this work included the intense of amount of detailed research needed to tease out the evidence – reading every real estate deed over a fifty-year period, reading all the probate records, justice of the peace records, court records, diaries, merchants’ book accounts – all of the minutia needed to reconstruct the past while Liz and I were both working at other jobs. I was working as a full-time academic advisor at Avery Point while also teaching history as an adjunct, and Liz was working as an interpreter at Mystic Seaport. Our hours for research had to fit in when we could find the time.

What do you hope that patrons take away from this exhibition?

What I hope patrons take away from the exhibit is an understanding of the integral place the Africans and their descendants had in colonial and early national Connecticut. When Liz and I stood by the sign in the Barn Island Reserve, back in 2005, I said that someday I wanted Venture’s homesite to be on the Connecticut Freedom Trail so people could understand the contributions made by enslaved and formerly enslaved people to Connecticut’s development.
The exhibit makes it possible for people who can’t make the hike out into the woods to the site of Venture’s former home to visualize the life that Venture and other enslaved people in Connecticut had to endure. The lesson of Venture’s life is that formerly enslaved people could become successful members of society despite rampant racism and discrimination if he or she had a fair chance to make a living. Actually, I think that’s a lesson that still needs to be learned.

Nancy Hathaway Steenburg is currently an adjunct instructor in History at the University of Connecticut, Avery Point. She earned her A.B. in History at Radcliffe College, Harvard University and then went on to earn her Master’s in American History at Trinity College. She pursued her Ph.D. in United States History at the University of Connecticut. She has worked in higher education since returning to school at UConn in 1991 to complete her Ph.D. in history. She served as the Program Coordinator for Maritime Studies and American Studies at UConn’s Avery Point campus; she was the Director for the General Studies program at the Avery Point campus from 2007 to 2020, and the Associate Director for campus advising from 2013 to 2020. She was awarded the UConn Outstanding University Advising Award for 2018-2019.

Nancy has won several outstanding teaching awards. She teaches an array of courses that include Constitutional History of the U.S., Europe in the 20th Century, Social and Cultural History of Connecticut and New England, History of the Family, and History of Connecticut.

Outside of UConn, Nancy has served on numerous non-profit boards in the field of history, including serving as president of the Association for the Study of Connecticut History, president of the New London County Historical Society, and president of the Connecticut Coalition for History. She also served as book review editor and interim editor for Connecticut History Review, the only scholarly journal of Connecticut history.

Undergraduate Honors Student Thesis Spotlight: Shankara Narayanan

Posted on February 11, 2022February 11, 2022 by Holden, Constance

UConn ’21 grad Shankara Narayanan explored the power of discourse in the making of US-China relations. A fascinating and timely study.

Shankara Narayanan, Knowing China, Losing China: Discourse and Power in U.S.-China Relations
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Alexis Dudden

The U.S. government’s 2017 National Security Strategy claimed, “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” Three years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the U.S. foreign policy community’s discursive shift towards Realist competition with China, with officials from the past three presidential administrations coming to view China as a threat to democratic governance and America’s security posture in Asia. The discourse underpinning the U.S.-China relationship, however, remains understudied. During key moments in the relationship, U.S. policymakers’ Realist intellectual frameworks failed to account for Chinese nationalism, suggesting a problem embedded within America’s strategic discourse. This manuscript uses discourse analysis to analyze why and how American officials failed to create a strong, united, and democratic China during the Marshall Mission (1945-1947), arguing that the use of Realist constructs, great-power frameworks, and theories of geopolitical realism prevented them from accounting for Mao Zedong’s postcolonial nationalism, leading to the Mission’s failure.

Stefon Danczuk ’16 Named New Circuit Rider for Preservation CT

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Holden, Constance

Preservation CT has welcomed Stefon Danczuk (’16) as a field service consultant for the Circuit Rider Program. He will provide on-site archaeological services that provide technical support and promote the importance of archaeological preservation. While working at Preservation CT, Danczuk is also pursuing a Master’s in Public History at Central Connecticut State University. All the details about Danczuk’s new and exciting role are profiled in this article, New Preservation CT Staff. A job well done!

Undergraduate Honors Student Thesis Spotlight: Nicole Mooradd

Posted on February 4, 2022February 4, 2022 by Holden, Constance

For their senior honors thesis, UConn History ’21 graduate Nicole Mooradd explored Progressive Era children’s literature, marking shifts in gender norms, child-rearing, and notions of “respectable” girlhood. A job well done!

Nicole Mooradd, “’Just Be Glad’: Fiction for Girls during the Progressive Era, 1897-1920”
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Peter Baldwin

Prior to the early twentieth century, most children’s books were written for boys and focused on a specifically masculine set of characteristics. Following the release of Little Women in the mid-nineteenth century and the emergence of first-wave feminism, the Progressive Era brought about a new time for literature to thrive, specifically books written explicitly for female children. Many of these books written for girls were by female authors and focused on domestic stories of girls going through an average and expected life. These stories reflect the distinct gender roles expected for female children to adhere to as they grow older and enter into adulthood. This essay argues that these stories use “goodness” and its influence on the concept of feminine duty to highlight typical feminine gender roles that the authors want young readers to emulate as they grow older. Although the women’s place was changing in society, there were still a continuing emphasis of domesticity, womanhood, and childhood that females could not escape. I will focus on three domestic fiction stories, Kate Douglas Wiggins Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Eleanor H. Porter’s Pollyanna, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables to explore these themes. These stories were staples of literature that were popular for young American girls during the Progressive Era and continue to be incredibly famous stories that influence society in the present.

February 4: New Exhibit on Slavery in Stonington

Posted on February 2, 2022February 2, 2022 by Holden, Constance

From February 4 – February 27, the Stonington Historical Society will debut new and permanent exhibition on slavery. Thanks to the dedicated research of two members of the UConn History community, Professor Nancy Steenburg and former graduate student Liz Kading, the story of Venture Smith will shed light on the multifaceted landscapes of slavery and freedom in 18th century New England. The exhibition, entitled, “My Freedom is a Privilege that Nothing Else Can Equal,” will mark the re-opening of the Lighthouse Museum. Admission will be free throughout the month. For more information:

Undergraduate Alumni Spotlight: Sulema DePeyster in the Field

Posted on February 1, 2022February 2, 2022 by Holden, Constance

We are thrilled to announce that UConn History ’21 graduate Sulema DePeyster has decided to continue her work in community-based historical engagement. She has joined the Windsor Historical Society as the first Community History Specialist. In this newly created position, DePeyster will design oral history projects that engage the Windsor community. During her time at UConn, DePeyster worked with History Professor Fiona Vernal on several oral history projects that made the untold stories of Windsor residents more visible and accessible. DePeyster’s commendable work garnered awards including the Undergraduate History Excellence Award and the Sandra Rux Fellowship. Read more about Sulema DePeyster in this article from the Windsor Historical Society. Congratulations! We look forward to this next chapter.

Undergraduate Honors Student Thesis Spotlight: Abigail Meliso

Posted on January 26, 2022 by Holden, Constance

For their senior honors thesis, UConn History ’21 graduate, Abigail Meliso, reflected on the roles and contributions of women to theater in Ancient Greece. Great work!

Abigail Meliso, “Greek Women and the Theatre: An Analysis of the Presence and Participation of Women in Ancient Greek Theater”

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Joseph McAlhany

Western drama can trace its lineage back thousands of years to classical Greece. We see the impact of classical playwrights still in modern theater, as well as various other areas of our society. Even now, students are assigned Antigone in high school and Oedipus has had his troubles immortalized in psychiatric jargon. However, as ubiquitous and easily accessible as it is now, scholarship throughout the years has debated how inclusive classical Greek theater was, particularly in regards to whether women were permitted to participate in or even observe performances. While it has proven popular to deny this possibility, given the occasional raunchiness of the plays and the limited autonomy of women at the time, some evidence suggests that, not only were women present in the audience of theatrical festivals, but sometimes a few select women would perform publicly.

Graduate Student Spotlight: Matthew Novosad

Posted on January 26, 2022 by Holden, Constance

In November 2021, UConn History Master’s student Matthew Novosad presented at UConn’s annual Graduate Research Conference. This conference is an opportunity for 2nd year graduate students to engage their research ideas with the broader UConn community. The work presented at this conference is based on research conducted during the 5102 course, “Historical Research and Writing.” Matthew Novosad’s research examines perceptions of submarine warfare during the First World War. His paper was titled, ” ‘The law of nations, the law of man, and the law of God’: Discourse on Submarine Warfare in American Newspapers during the First World War.” He is also the president of the Franklin Historical Society and board member of Ashbel Woodward Museum in Franklin, CT.

1) What is your 5102 research project about? What are the central research questions? What are some of your findings?

My 5102 Research project was about the discourses about submarine warfare during the First World War in the United States. I primarily utilized newspapers for this project, drawing especially on editorials, advertisements, and letters to the editor. One of the guiding questions for all of my research, not just this project, is why did the submarine come to be almost exclusively associated with Germany during the World Wars, even when other countries made extensive usage of their submarine fleets? As well, I am also interested in how was the submarine understood during the war. I felt that one potential way to explore these questions was to look at how submarines were being discussed in the United States and to thus see if the discourse was about the submarine as an object. As I discovered, the conversations were mostly about the usage of submarines and how people viewed that usage within a legal framework. Additionally, I was interested in how the submarine was viewed in a wider cultural context but was only able to scratch the surface of that theme with this project. Films, I feel, would be an interesting angle to explore as there were multiple submarine related movies produced and released during the war that didn’t have much utilize the conflict as a theme – such as The Submarine Pirate in 1915 which starred Charlie Chaplin’s half-brother Sydney Chaplin. Another was the 1916 production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

2) How did you become interested in your research topic?

My father was a submariner during the late Cold War and he served onboard the USS George Washington Carver (SSBN 656) and the USS Augusta (SSN 710) so I grew up in a Navy household covered in Navy and submarine decorations. I also attended the Avery Point campus for my BA and most days I drove by a sign which stated that Groton is the “Submarine Capital of the World”. We could look out of our classroom windows and maybe see a Submarine leaving the Thames River and Long Island Sound for the Atlantic. I’d say I’m a product of my environment.

Additionally, I’ve always had an interest in the First World War and when I was an undergraduate, I discovered pictures of British and French submarines which had participated in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. I had never known, up until that point, that the Allied powers utilized submarines during the First World War. It sent me on an odyssey to discover as much as I can about them. There are many questions I feel that can be explored through the Allied usage of submarines: What challenges does a naval war pose to coalition warfare? How did the Allied powers fit the usage of submarines into their strategies? How did they ‘sell’ their usage when they were condemning the Germans for Unrestricted Submarine Warfare? What relationship existed between civilians and an, at the time, relatively new weapons system? What can we glean about an emerging military-industrial complex (or as other scholars have termed for this period a “naval-industrial complex”)? How were the experiences of the First World War absorbed institutionally by Allied navies, how did that affect them going into the Second World War?

That’s a bit of a long-winded way of saying I became interested in this particular topic for my 5102 Paper in an effort to hopefully learn a little bit about the disconnect between the Allied usage of submarines during the war, and why they are almost non-existent in many accounts of the war at sea during the First World War. The specific shape that the project took, analyzing material that mostly came from newspapers, was the result of circumstance. COVID-19 and attending my first year of Graduate School online made doing other sorts of research more problematic.

3) What were some of the strategies that you used to organize your research? Did you use any digital tools or software?

My main organizational tool was Zotero. It made not only saving and organizing the secondary literature easy, it also let me maintain a well-organized database of my primary sources. I sorted them principally by date as I was exploring responses to the submarine at certain “flashpoints” such as the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 or the German resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917. Zotero also made citations much easier!

4) What was your favorite part of this research project?

The cozy days I spent with tea or hot cocoa (two of the three major drinks in the Royal Navy during the First World War) sifting through the mountains of material I had uncovered. There’s a sense of adventure and discovery as you get to actually start reading through your primary sources. I like to envision myself almost like Gandalf in Fellowship of the Ring when he goes to do research on the “One Ring”, although with far less at stake than the fate of Middle-Earth! I will say though, that for this project, I did miss the physicality of in-person research.

5) What was a memorable finding that you uncovered during your research?

It was easily the advertisements. Some of them were very humorous with slogans such as “Submarine Prices, Aeroplane Quality” while others can make you scratch your head such as a two week, two page spread of a “Submarine Sale” which used the imagery of unrestricted submarine warfare to sell clothing. At the very least, the companies who utilized these sorts of motifs did not believe that there was enough public animus against the submarine as an object that they could use it to try and sell their wares so I found that to be extremely memorable.

6) How did this project shape how you conceptualize your future career and/or research goals?

It has clarified for me that Allied Submarines were nearly forgotten during the war, let alone after it. I’d love to explore more deeply how they were (or weren’t) utilized in propaganda and in the construction of post-war national narratives. It has also helped show me that there is no work which deals with the design and usage of the submarine in a truly transnational context. For example, many histories treat John Holland, an Irish immigrant to the United States, as the “inventor” of the submarine. Holland’s big innovation was combining already existing inventions which had been used in submarine construction in countries like Spain and France, and then selling his version to the US Government. I’d love to see how inventors across the globe envisioned their submarine designs and research from the 1850s onwards. I’d also love to explore the concept of Connecticut as an “arsenal” of the United States. Both major American submarine designers and manufacturers were based in Connecticut: Electric Boat was (and still is) in Groton, while Lake Torpedo Boat Company was based in Bridgeport. Both companies sold their designs to the United States Navy and to other governments around the globe.

7) What inspired you to pursue a graduate degree in history?

Like Ishmael in the opening chapter of Moby-Dick, I accounted it was high time I went “to sea” once again. Graduate school, for me, was the next logical step in my career. I had taken time off after completing my BA in 2018 to take stock and see what I really wanted to do. In October 2019, after a year and a half of part-time jobs (some of which I loved, some of which I didn’t) I decided it was finally time to apply and to take my history career to the next step. I don’t see myself doing much outside of the realm of history – although what form that explicitly takes, I am not yet currently sure of.

8) What do you appreciate about studying history?

The freedom. I get to explore topics that interest me and even more importantly I get to share what interests me with other people. Research and studying are a paramount part of the job, but I find that what’s key to me is sharing historical knowledge and methods with a wider audience. It’s why I participate in the “AskHistorians” project, why I’ve appeared made podcast appearances, why I reenact as a hobby, and why I work so hard on local history as President of the Franklin Historical Society and as board member of the Ashbel Woodward Museum in Franklin, CT – because the teaching of history is what really excites me. I like sharing my insights and excitement with others!

9) If you could teach any course, what would it be and why?

I’m torn, I would love to teach a course about the First World War or a course about local history. The First World War I hope is at least a little obvious based on my earlier answers! I feel there’s a lot that students could gain from a course on the war and the way that we still very much live with its legacies. I envision such a course focusing not just on the European theatres, but its global dimensions and impact. It would also give me a chance to talk not only about submarines and the war at sea, but also about cavalry which is a rabbit hole of mine!

On the other hand, I’m in many ways wedded to local Connecticut history. It’s my firm belief that all history is local history in at least some way and I get so much personal value out of my work at the Franklin Historical Society and Museum. I’ve found in my tenure as the Franklin Historical Society President that my very small town as a very big history which connects it to so many major events and social movements. Franklin has both been influenced by, and has itself influenced, the larger world. No place is “unchanging” and it’s extremely fulfilling to help tell new narratives and stories in a town which had a fairly “static” history. I also find that local history has much more immediacy for people and makes the “big” more tangible. To be able to share Connecticut history with students would be an honor.