atwitty, Author at Department of History

Author Archive

Jessica Flach awarded Franklin L. Riley Prize

Posted on: June 1st, 2020 by

The 2020 Franklin L. Riley Prize for the best undergraduate paper has been awarded to Jessica Flach for “A Fate Worse than Death: The Threat of Rape During the Civil War and the Southern White Woman’s Response.”

In her paper, which was produced in a history capstone seminar taught by Professor April Holm, Flach explains how the threat of rape was employed both by Union and Confederate soldiers in an attempt to control the behavior of white southern women during the Civil War. Using personal diaries, Flach demonstrates that these threats did not always have their intended effect. Some women responded by defying orders from both northern and southern men.

Matthew Powell wins John W. Odom Prize

Posted on: June 1st, 2020 by

The 2020 John W. Odom Memorial Prize in Southern History has been awarded to Matthew Powell for “How the Mighty Fell: The Decline of Generational Wealth among the Planter Elite Families of Desoto County, Mississippi, 1836-1870.” The Odom Prize is given to the best undergraduate or graduate paper on southern history.

Powell’s paper, which was written in a capstone seminar taught by Professor Anne Twitty, examines the decline of intergenerational wealth among DeSoto County’s planter elite as a result of Confederate defeat and emancipation. Specifically, he selected four DeSoto County slaveholding families—each of whom had sent at least one son to be educated at the University of Mississippi during the 1850s and then serve the Confederacy during the 1860s—and traced their financial fortunes from the county’s founding in 1836 to the midst of Reconstruction in 1870. In the end, using census, military, and University records, Powell was able to show, in a particularly concrete fashion, just how economically devastating the decision to secede was for some of the South’s wealthiest residents.

Powell, an Olive Branch native, graduated with his B.A. in history in May 2020. During his undergraduate career, he spent summers working as a park ranger at Shiloh National Military Park and Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in Fort Smith, Montana. He has earned a full scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in history at Northern Arizona University.

Ashleen Williams awarded Tennin-Alexander Prize

Posted on: June 1st, 2020 by

The 2020 Tennin-Alexander Prize for the best graduate paper has been awarded to Ashleen Williams for “Oh Men of Justice! 20th Century Political Petitions in Bahrain and a Negotiated Nation.” Williams is currently a history PhD student as well as the Barksdale Senior Fellow at the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College

“Oh Men of Justice! 20th Century Political Petitions in Bahrain and a Negotiated Nation,” which was written under the direction of Professor Vivian Ibrahim, examines the crucial role of colonial petitioning in 20th Century Bahrain. Uncovering newly discovered Arabic and English archival material, Williams incisively argues that indigenous communities used a global language of rights and justice to advocate for local reforms.

PhD Candidate Monica Campbell wins Fellowship from Truman Library

Posted on: February 26th, 2020 by

Arch Dalrymple III Department of History PhD Candidate Monica Campbell has recently been awarded a Dissertation Year Fellowship for the 2020-21 academic year from the Truman Library Institute in Independence, Missouri. This fellowship will allow her to focus solely on completing her dissertation.

Campbell’s dissertation, “Slums Are Our Most Expensive Luxuries”: Little Rock’s MetroPlan and the Making of the Neoliberal City, 1939-1980,” uses a case study of urban renewal efforts in Little Rock to show how neoliberal urban planning policies began to challenge the reigning Keynesian liberal model as early as the 1950s, not in the 1970s, as scholars currently contend. While other scholars have focused on well-studied, large cities like New York, where urban planners oversaw massive projects with explicit social purposes, her research uses a rich but neglected set of archival sources in Little Rock to show how smaller cities in the South and West experimented at the same time with business-centric plans that jettisoned moral concerns for market considerations. Although these market-based policies echoed contemporary critics like Milton Friedman and Martin Anderson, they reflected a reinterpretation of liberalism, not a wholesale rejection of it. In a period characterized by white flight and suburbanization, by the making of “ghettos” and divestment from the inner city, this reinterpretation sought to harness business and pro-growth politics to revitalize city centers together with state anti-labor policies that would inform the emergence of third-way liberalism in the 1970s. Campbell’s dissertation argues that, although on the national periphery in the 1950s, Little Rock’s urban renewal policies helped redefine the center ground of American political economy twenty years later.

Campbell has also recently received a travel grant from the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries and will be presenting a paper at the 2020 Policy History Conference.

Gender and Print in the English Revolution

Posted on: February 6th, 2020 by

Black Power at Ole Miss

Posted on: February 4th, 2020 by

Black Power at Ole Miss: Remembrance, Reckoning, and Repair at Fifty Years will commemorate the mass arrest of nearly ninety Black students – and expulsion of eight – on February 25, 1970 at Fulton Chapel. The event will remember the activism and sacrifice of students, reckon with the harm and trauma caused by the actions of the university and law enforcement, and seek reparative solutions grounded in truth-telling and justice.

On Monday, February 24, 2020, a brief documentary film screening will be followed by a staged reading of the hearings of eight students who were expelled and a panel discussion moderated by professor Ralph Eubanks (’78). February 25 will feature a luncheon with current and former students, sponsored by the BSU, Black Alumni Association, African American Studies Department and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. We will then gather for a ceremony at the site of the chapel arrest at 3pm.

This event is organized and coordinated by the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement with support from the Office of the Provost, The Division of Outreach: the Office of Pre-College Programs, the UM Internship Experience, the Office of Professional Development and Lifelong Learning, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.