On this Juneteenth Day, a quote from Professor Manisha Sinha‘s book, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, begins an important New York Times op-ed (written by Jamelle Bouie) on “Why Juneteenth Matters.” Professor Sinha’s argument that slave resistance was crucial for the abolition movement nicely introduces Bouie’s argument that it was enslaved people “who turned a narrow conflict over union into a revolutionary war for freedom” and who continued to fight for their freedom and citizenship.
To join us in reading and reflecting on this Juneteenth, please click here.
Assistant Professor Melanie Newport published a timely op-ed today in the Washington Post titled “Bail funds are having a moment in 2020.” Following the increase in philanthropic donations to bond funds in response to the protests surrounding the killing of George Floyd, Newport traces the long history behind bail, as well as the modern jail system. She writes that “bail emerged tandem with the rise of the modern jail” and soon was used to unfairly target the poor and those perceived as dangerous to a community. However, by the mid-twentieth century, bond funds were established to challenge the unfair jailing system and pretrial process. Newport argues that this legacy of mid-century bail reform has become clear through the Black Lives Matter movement and the “public recognition of the harms of jailing.”
We would like to congratulate UConn-Stamford rising senior, Maria Oliveira ’21, for being just one of twenty students in the country selected as a Key into Public Service Scholar by The Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation’s most prestigious academic honor society. This award recognizes students who have revealed a passion for working in the public sector and who demonstrate a strong academic record in the arts, humanities, mathematics, natural sciences, and social sciences. Scholars receive a $5,000 undergraduate scholarship and will participate in a virtual conference in late June that provides training, mentoring, and reflection on pathways into active citizenship (in the tradition of Phi Beta Kappa’s founders).
As an honors history major with a minor in mathematics, Oliveira is an exceptional student. She is President of the Student Government Association at UConn-Stamford, and was named a Babbidge Scholar in 2019 and 2020, earned the 2019 Cohen and Henes Scholarship for Judaic Studies, and received the 2019 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mathematics and the 2018 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry. Oliveira is a member of both the Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi Societies, and is on the dean’s list with a 4.0 GPA following her third year. Additionally, we are must excited to read Oliveira’s upcoming honors thesis on the 16th and 17th century Portuguese empire in India, which according to Professor Edward Guimont is “truly excellent work” especially given the recent Covid-19 restrictions on materials.
To read more about Maria Oliveira’s hard work and wonderful success, please click here.
The Day (of New London) interviewed five historians from Connecticut colleges and universities in an attempt to place the current moment of nationwide protests in the context of US history. The article includes Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music, who refers to the nine straight days of protests and global movement as “unprecedented.” According to Ogbar, the only historical moment of possible comparison was the reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.
To read more of the discussion, please click here.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UConn has launched a new initiative, called The Pandemic Journaling Project, that allows people to document their experiences for personal use and for posterity. The multi-disciplinary journaling project is led by Sarah Willen, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UConn and Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at UConn’s Human Rights Institute, along side Katherine Mason, Assistant Professor at Brown University, but was sparked by an email from Richard Brown, a historian and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UConn. Open to anyone 18 or older, the project hopes to include an array of participants, including those from communities hit hardest by the pandemic. Upon collection, the responses will be submitted to a digital data repository and made available for researchers right away. For more information, click here.
On June 1st, UConn Today featured the exciting news of a new minor to be offered by the University – Digital Public History! Featuring collaboration between the Department of History and the Department of Digital Media and Design, students who declare the minor will take five transdisciplinary courses: “Introduction to Digital Humanities, Topics in Public History,Collaborating with Cultural Organizations,an experiential Digital Public History Internship with a local library, archive, museum, or other cultural organization, and a project-based capstone course, the Digital Public History Practicum, co-taught by faculty from both History and DMD.”
The funding for this minor comes from a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) $35,000 planning grant awarded to two UConn faculty, Associate Professors Fiona Vernal (left) and Tom Scheinfeldt (right). Students interested in the minor can begin taking classes in Fall 2020. To read the article, click here.
Concourse (atrium) at Uconn Stamford on Oct. 17, 2018. (Sean Flynn/UConn Photo)
The Office of Undergraduate Research has announced the selection of 50 undergraduate students to receive SURF Awards in support of their summer undergraduate research projects.
Jenifer Gaitán, a senior honors History major / Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor will research a project titled “Voces: First–Generation Latinx Students Discuss Their Support Networks.” Jenifer’s faculty mentor is Dr. Laura Bunyan, Sociology.
This research project is in support of Jenifer’s University Scholar project by the same name. Her faculty advisor committee members are: Laura Bunyan, Sociology (Chair); Ingrid Semaan, Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and Joel Blatt, History.
Project Summary: In the last decade, the number of Latinx students who have enrolled in college has increased by over 80%. Many of these students are first-generation college students, who as a whole make up approximately one-third of all college students. Despite being the largest ethnic minority group in the U.S., Latinx students are understudied. Those who are the first in their families face unique challenges while often balancing familial, work, and academic responsibilities with limited institutional support. Through in-person interviews, this project explores the systems of support first-generation Latinx students utilize through the completion of their undergraduate educations.
Jenifer is also the President of Husky Outreach for Minority Education (HOME). She is a first-generation college student and proud daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants.
Professor Micki McElya‘s latest op-ed adds a powerful voice to the pages of the Washington Post. Building off of her recently published book, The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery, which was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, McElya asks why there is no collective mourning for those Americans lost to Covid-19. She answers, “The reason is as simple as it is terrible: We share no understanding of these staggering losses as ours, as belonging to all Americans, as national.” McElya argues that a sense “national kinship” is lost as the pandemic’s victims are “disproportionately urban, people of color, immigrants, the undocumented, the incarcerated, the elderly in nursing homes and state care facilities, the poor, the uninsured, the chronically ill, service workers and delivery people.”
To read more of this timely op-ed, please click here. Or, find it in this Sunday’s print edition!
Second, the Woodrow Wilson Center accepted Stauffer into the Center’s Nuclear Proliferation International History Project’s (NPIHP) 2020 Nuclear History Boot Camp. The Boot Camp selects a handful of international participants from disciplines such as history, political science, and international affairs, to travel to Rome. The participants gather at the University of Roma Tre at a former ACE High NATO communications relay site in the village of Allumiere, Italy, for ten days of research and discussion.
A hearty congratulations to UConn History Ph.D. (’19) alum, Amy Sopcak-Joseph, for receiving the Zuckerman Dissertation Prize in American Studies from the McNeil Center for Early American History at the University of Pennsylvania. The Zuckerman prize is awarded to “the best dissertation connecting American history (in any period) with literature and/or art… evaluated for the seriousness and originality with which the dissertation engages relationships among history, art and/or literature, the significance of the treatment to scholarship in the field, and the overall quality of the writing.” Sopcak-Joseph’s dissertation, titled “Fashioning American Women: Godey’s Lady’s Book, Female Consumers, and Periodical Publishing in the Nineteenth Century,” wonderfully explored the production, dissemination, content, and reception of an exceptionally popular antebellum American periodical called Godey’s Lady’s Book.
On this Juneteenth Day, a quote from Professor Manisha Sinha‘s book, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, begins an important New York Times op-ed (written by Jamelle Bouie) on “Why Juneteenth Matters.” Professor Sinha’s argument that slave resistance was crucial for the abolition movement nicely introduces Bouie’s argument that it was enslaved people “who turned a narrow conflict over union into a revolutionary war for freedom” and who continued to fight for their freedom and citizenship.
