The 2020 Aetna Graduate Critical Writing Award recognized the work of two newly minted History Ph.D.s. Danielle Dumaine received 2nd place and Nathan Braccio received an honorable mention. The award is sponsored by the Aetna Chair of Writing and recognizes excellent critical nonfiction composed by a graduate student. Winners are awarded cash prizes and publicly recognized at the annual Aetna Celebration of Student Writing.
Congratulations to Ph.D Candidate Nicole Breault who was named the Robert L. Middlekauff Fellow at The Huntington Library for two months in 2020-2021. This short-term award will further Nicole’s research for her dissertation titled “The Night Watch of Boston: Law and Governance in Eighteenth-Century British America”.
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Kathryn Angelica who has received a competitive Short-Term Research Fellowship from the New York Public Library (NYPL). Kathryn was awarded the maximum short-term fellowship for a total of 4 weeks between August 2020 and Fall 2021 (shifted due to Covid-19). At the NYPL, she will look at the United States Sanitary Commission records, specifically all the women led branches, including the Women’s Central Relief Association.
In an article titled “UConn Historian: South Vietnam Archives Provide New Insights into War,” UConn Today interviews Associate Professor and UConn Humanities Institute Fellow Nu-Ahn Tran regarding the opening of South Vietnamese archives and it’s impact on her research. By utilizing official documents from the National Archives Center II in Ho Chi Minh City (previously Saigon), as well as newspapers, periodicals and other Vietnamese-language publications, Tran seeks to adjust our understanding of Vietnamese elite politics by introducing what she calls the development of “anticommunist nationalism.” Her forthcoming book, with the working title of “Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam, 1954-1963,” will explore the tenure of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and the debates surrounding how to govern the nation.
To read the spotlight on Professor Tran’s excellent research, please click here.
Among the list of 2020 award recipients of the Brigham Young University (BYU) Charles Redd Center for Western Studies is UConn’s Erik Freeman. With a project titled, “The Mormon International: Communitarian Politics and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1830–1890,” Freeman received the Charles Redd Fellowship Award in Western American History. He is one of five recipients, and competed against other doctoral students from departments of history, english, political science, and languages and literature.
The award will enable Freeman to spend up to one month researching in the Center’s Special Collections. The Special Collections has 14 full-time curators and more than 9,000 manuscripts. Additionally, the collection houses almost 1 million photographic images, more than 300,000 rare books, and extensive manuscript materials documenting 19th and 20th century Western American history.
Congratulations, Erik!
Our Department is pleased to see Caesar Valentín featured in a recent article of UConn Today. Caesar has been a wonderful addition to the Wood Hall family – serving as an impressive undergraduate student worker and graphic designer. Caesar will be graduating UConn with two majors in political science and philosophy, as well as a minor in human rights. We are happy to learn that Caesar intends to return to UConn by pursuing a joint Master’s degree in Latino Studies and Public Administration.
To read the UConn Today spotlight, please click here.
The Department is pleased to share that history major, Christopher Choi ’20, has received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (NSF-GRFP). Choi will be graduating this spring with dual bachelor’s degrees in history, and materials science and engineering. After UConn, he will be headed to sunny California to begin his doctoral studies in biomaterials research at Stanford. Congratulations on these outstanding academic accomplishments, Christopher!
UConn Today’s feature on Christopher is listed below. For the full article, click here.
Christopher Choi ’20 (ENG), of Storrs, is graduating with dual bachelor’s degrees in history and materials science and engineering. He has been involved in a range of research activities and labs at UConn, focusing on topics from thermoelectrics to archaeological materials. In addition to receiving the NSF-GRFP, Choi is a member of the honors program, a recipient of a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund award, and was one of the student speakers at the 2018 School of Engineering Scholarship Award Ceremony. Choi has been a member of UConn Model UN for four years, serving as a committee director from fall 2017 to fall 2019, and was involved in the Engineering Ambassadors for four years, serving as the group’s president from spring 2018 to spring 2019. In the fall of 2020, he will begin his doctoral studies at Stanford, where he hopes to contribute to biomaterials research.
The Department is thrilled to announce that our grant application to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to develop a new joint undergraduate minor with Digital Media & Design in Digital Public History has been funded. This is a planning grant for $35,000, with the aim of applying for a larger implementation grant down the road. For NEH’s announcement, please click here.
Congratulations to co-Pis Fiona Vernal and Tom Scheinfeldt for all their hard work in bringing this together. Alongside the DMD Department Head Heather Elliot-Famularo, our Department is looking forward to the wonderful courses and undergraduate projects we can build together!
The History Department is proud to announce that five members of Wood Hall will take part in the UConn Humanities Institute‘s (UCHI) 2020-21 cohort of fellows. Professors Melanie Newport, Helen Rozwadowski, and Sara Silverstein will serve as UCHI Faculty Fellows. Doctoral students Nicole Breault and Shaine Scarminach will join the cohort of UCHI Graduate Dissertation Fellows. Congratulations to you all!
Department of History – Avery Point
Project Title: Science as Frontier: History Hidden in Plain Sight
Sara SilversteinDepartment of History & Human Rights Institute
Project Title: Toward Global Health: A History of International Collaboration
Nicole BreaultHistory Department – Draper Dissertation Fellow
Project Title: The Night Watch of Boston: Law and Governance in Eighteenth-Century British America
