Archive for the ‘Department of History’ Category

Daina Ramey Berry to Present Gilder-Jordan Lecture

Posted on: September 6th, 2022 by

On Tuesday, September 13th at 6 p.m. in Nutt Auditorium, Daina Ramey Berry will deliver the 2022 Gilder-Jordan Lecture in Southern Studies. The lecture is free and open to the public. Her lecture is “Teaching the Truth: Race and Slavery in the Modern Classroom.” This presentation draws upon case studies from contemporary educators and university faculty on what it means to teach the truth about slavery and the value of learning about race and slavery in the modern classroom.

Daina Ramey Berry (pronounced DIE-NAH like Dinah Washington) is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before joining U. C S. B. she was the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin. She also served as the associate dean of the Graduate School.

The Gilder-Jordan Lecture Series is organized by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the UM Department of History, African American Studies Program, and the Center for Civil War Research. The Gilder-Jordan Speaker Series is made possible through the generosity of the Gilder Foundation, Inc. The series honors the late Richard Gilder of New York and his family, as well as University of Mississippi alumni Dan and Lou Jordan of Virginia.

For more information, click here.

Dr. Ted Ownby Honored for Excellence in Teaching, Research

Posted on: September 1st, 2022 by

Faculty members honored during the spring faculty meeting for the College of Liberal Arts include (from left) Ted Ownby, winner of the college’s Award for Research, Scholarship and Creative Achievement; Eden Tanner, recipient of a campuswide Frist Student Service Award; Saumen Chakraborty, Edmonds New Scholar Award; Jared Delcamp, Melinda and Ben Yarbrough Senior Award for the Natural Sciences and Mathematics; Emily Bretherick Rowland, Outstanding Instructor of the Year Award; Jacqueline Frost DiBiasie-Sammons, Cora Lee Graham Award for Outstanding Teaching of Freshmen; Carrie Smith, Edmonds New Scholar Award; and Timothy Yenter, Howell Family Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. Photo by Kevin Bain/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services

Eight University of Mississippi professors have been honored by the College of Liberal Arts for their excellence in teaching and research, including History’s own Ted Ownby.

A nomination letter for Ownby states, “(He) has distinguished himself as one of the most productive and pioneering scholars in both the History Department and in the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. (His) impact on the lives of students at both the graduate and undergraduate level is broad and lasting.

“But more striking is the tone of deep affection and regard his former students use in describing their relationship, which in many cases extends far beyond the UM campus and into their professional lives.”

Read the full article here.

Dr. Jeffrey Watt Works to Make Theologian’s Historical Records Accessible

Posted on: September 1st, 2022 by

Professor Works to Make Theologian’s Historical Records Accessible

Jeffrey Watt to complete decades-long, high-profile Reformation period project with $365,000 grant

Jeffrey Watt

Jeffrey Watt, the university’s Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Professor of History, has been working to transcribe the records of Protestant reformer John Calvin concerning the Consistory of Geneva. He has received a grant to complete the massive project and plans to make printed copies and an online database available to researchers worldwide. Photo by Thomas Graning/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services

University of Mississippi historian Jeffrey R. Watt has been working for 35 years to transcribe records kept by 16th century theologian John Calvin concerning the Consistory of Geneva. And thanks to two major grants to fund the painstaking work, he is closing in on the project’s completion.

Read the full article here.

Dr. Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson Selected as Isom Center 2022-23 Fellow

Posted on: September 1st, 2022 by

Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson

The Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies has awarded fellowships to six University of Mississippi faculty members for their academic research related to gender and sexuality, including the History Department’s own Dr. Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson.

Lindgren-Gibson, assistant professor of history, said she’ll be exploring the history of friendship in the British Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries and is planning a research trip to archives in the United Kingdom this summer.

She hopes to find a few letter collections that can form the basis of an article and eventually a book proposal.

“My research is driven by two big questions: How did people live their lives in the past, and how have the stories of those lives been obscured for us in the present?” she said.

Lindgren-Gibson said she became interested in this research when she found a collection of papers in the British Library from an Afghan woman, Mermanjan, who married a British officer in the 1840s.

“The collection was totally fascinating – you could see her learning how to write in English, she made sketches of the new community she was a part of – so there are lots of images of women in massive petticoats and men in top hats; she and her husband would sketch together, and she kept scrapbooks.

“But I was also interested in how these papers came to the archive in the first place. They weren’t donated by Mermanjan’s family – which is the usual route – but they were donated by one of her friends to whom Mermanjan had left the papers when she died. And this friend made Mermanjan’s story part of her own family history – even though they weren’t related.

“I started to think about how friendship can shape histories and the way we remember and preserve the past. Friendships are powerful parts of almost everyone’s life, but our archives aren’t set up to preserve the histories of those ties.”

Read the full article here.