Notes from the Chair

My first years at Ball State, in the early 1970s, were a time of intense questioning about what and how we should teach. The circumstances deeply affected my work, altering the way I taught and what I planned to publish. I thought seriously about writing my first post-doctoral book on post-secondary pedagogy and decided on a title--Teaching for the Help of It. Although I had doubts about the title, I liked the double entendre and how it conveyed my message that, above all, caring attitudes toward students should shape the work of a college teacher.

My plan for the unwritten book now has an altered theme that emphasizes the way students and colleagues helped me teach. Student assistance took many forms, from a simple but great idea about how to distribute material in class to countless unpaid hours many students devoted to leading discussion groups. Professional associates provided even more help. Dean Victor Lawhead opened the way to, and supported me constantly through, a fascinating sixteen-year career teaching a course on violence and peacemaking. Other administrators, especially Provost Warren Vander Hill, similarly contributed to my endeavors.

More than anyone else in my academic universe, though, the faculty members scattered around the country and at Ball State (especially those concentrated in this Department) enhanced a career that really has seemed more rewarding each year. The list of colleagues who have so enriched me is too long to include here, but if I wrote a list in reverse alphabetical order it would begin with Phyllis Zimmerman.

Although so many made my career before mid-1999 different and better, after I became chair I found myself for the first time in a job I could not do at all without help. I could mention again some of the same individuals or groups of people noted above, but I want to close by adding this list of associates whose support has been indispensable the past three years: Larry Ottinger and many other academic advisors, Dean Johnstone and his staff, Assistant Chairs Bill Eidson and Kevin Smith, and the history office staff--Susan Blair, Stephanie Lantz, and Denise Hile.

When my mother-in-law talks about her grandchildren she shows her exceptional pride in them by saying, "there's not a dud in the bunch." No duds either in the bunch that has done so much for the Department during my term. No one but me knows just how much they have helped. I am deeply grateful. On July 1 Daniel Goffman will become chair and I will become an emeritus professor. His talents and the people here to help him will ensure a bright future for the Department of History.

John Barber, Chairperson

Current Members of the Department of History

Tenured and tenure-track members: Abel Alves, Richard Aquila, John Barber, Stephanie Beswick, Larry Birken, Blaine Brownell, Dean Cantu, Jim Connolly, Michael Doyle, Tony Edmonds, Bruce Geelhoed, John Glen, Dan Goffman, Ken Hall, John Koumoulides, Carolyn Malone, Rene Marion, Nina Mjagkij, Glenda Riley, Joan Schreiber, Sharon Seager, Kevin Smith, Fred Suppe, Gail Terry, Chris Thompson, Warren Vander Hill, and Phyllis Zimmerman

Full-time and part-time contract faculty: Martha Gooden, Robert Hall, Charles McDonald, Judith Morris, Richard Neel, Mary Neese Reck, Scott Parkinson, Ike Rice, and Lorna Van Meter.

Office Staff members: Denise Hile, Administrative Coordinator; Stephanie Lantz, Secretary; and Juneyeta Gates, Service Center Secretary

Professional News

  Abel Alves used the Helms Visiting Fellowship to conduct research in the food and drink collection at Indiana University's Lilly Library. He was co-organizer and presented a paper, "A Sense of Place: Anne Conway, Verbal Leks, and Home Ranges" at Biopolitics II at UCLA March 29-31. He holds a fellowship from Ball State's Center for Energy Research, Education, and Service for 2001–02 and contributed a book review to the American Historical Review.

Richard Aquila continues to direct Ball State's American Studies Program. He published a new edition of That Old Time Rock & Roll (University of Illinois Press) and continues work on Sh-Boom; Or, How Early Rock & Roll Taught Us To Stop Worrying And Love America's Cold War Culture (forthcoming from Johns Hopkins). National Public Radio invited him to write and record "For the Record," a pilot program for a possible new NPR daily mid-day program. He also evaluated several manuscripts for publishers and journals.

Stephanie Beswick presented "Slave Raids, Migrations, and the Era of the Great Wars on the White Nile" at the Sudan Studies Association and "'We Are Bought Like Clothes:' The War Over Polygyny and Levirate Marriage in South Sudan" at the African Studies Association. She will publish the second paper in the Northeast African Studies special issue "Women in Sudan" and is editing another issue of that journal, "Women in the Horn of Africa." She is an online book editor for H-Net Africa and the Africanist Program Chair for the Indiana Association of Historians. She reviewed a book for the MESA Bulletin; completed a book manuscript Bloodmemory: An Early History of Southern Sudan (1200-1821) and began a second book on slavery in Southern Sudan.

Lawrence Birken published two book reviews in Shofar. His fall 2001 sabbatical was devoted to researching his book on the history of individualism and to revising his world history text.

Dean Cantu published An Investigation of the Relationship Between Social Studies Teachers' Beliefs and Practices (Mellen Press); he co-authored Early Education in the Arkansas Delta (Arcadia Press). Another book, Take Five Minutes: Reflective and Critical Thinking American History Class Openers (Teacher Created Materials), is forthcoming. He developed a test bank and online study guide for Houghton Mifflin's U.S. history survey text, The American Experiment. He published "A Web-Based Left and Right Brain 4MAT Approach to Teaching Middle and High School History" in the Journal of the Association for History & Computing and "'Happy Days are Here Again': A Left and Right Brain 4MAT Approach to Teaching Depression-Era Presidential Elections" in the OAH Magazine of History. He developed two lesson plans for The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition, and presented papers on teaching with technology at three conferences on teaching. He continues to edit the International Journal of Social Education. He is Past President of the American Association for History and Computing, serving as program chair for its Annual Meeting. He is President-Elect of the Indiana Council for the Social Studies, program chair for the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Great Lakes Regional Conference, Assistant Chair of the NCSS Publications Committee, a literature survey reviewer of PC Magazine for History Computer Review, and serves on the History Discipline Team for the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching Project, California State University Center for Distributed Learning. He served on the State Advisory Committee for Academic Standards in Social Studies and chaired the K-8 History Standards Writing Team for the Indiana Department of Education, producing standards that received the state's highest rating ever from reviewers: 'A.' (The 1996 version received a 'C').

James Connolly published "Machines and Bosses" in Scribner's Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century and "Revisiting Boss Cox's Cincinnati" in Ohio Valley History. Three other essays were accepted for publication in 2002. He published reviews in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History and the American Historical Review; another is forthcoming in the Journal of American History. He presented a paper on "Mugwumps, Machines, and Immigrants," at the Organization of American Historians Meeting and received a John W. Fisher Research Grant. He served on the Council of the Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and as a member of its H-NET listserv's editorial board. He headed the Program Committee of the "Small Cities: Past, Present, and Future" Conference and commented on two panels. He is Director of the History M.A. program.

Michael Doyleco-edited Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s (Routledge), for which he wrote "Staging the Revolution: Guerrilla Theater as a Countercultural Practice." He published an article, "Debating the Counterculture: Ecstasy and Anxiety over the Hip Alternative" in The Columbia Guide to America in the Sixties. He chaired and commented on papers at the Great Lakes American Studies Association Annual Meeting, and presented at the conference as well. He was hired to prepare a historical and cultural significance statement and compile a bibliography in support of a project to list the site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the New York State and National Register of Historic Places. He presented his findings at a History Department faculty colloquium and to the Ball State History Club. He served as a guest lecturer and consultant to two Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry courses, and as a guest lecturer on the intentional community movement and theories of utopia and counterculture in an English Department senior seminar. He served as a consultant for a PBS documentary film on Laura Ingalls Wilder, assisting in preparing an National Endowment for the Humanities grant. He also served as a consultant to the Minnetrista Cultural Center in developing its exhibit, "Our Land, Our Souls, Our Freedom: The History of East Central Indiana's African-American Pioneers." He is an outside peer reviewer of Indiana, a fourth grade-level social studies textbook manuscript, for Harcourt School Publishers.

Anthony Edmonds published historiographical essays on "Vo Nguyen Giap" and "The Vietnam War, 1968-1975" in Charles Messenger (ed.), Readers Guide to Military History (Fitzroy Dearborn). He published, with Bruce Geelhoed, Ball State University: An Interpretive History (Indiana University Press). He published, with Joel Shrock, "Fighting the War in the Heart of the Country: Anti-War Protest at Ball State University" in The Vietnam War on Campus: Other Voices, More Distant Drums (Praeger). His article, "On Going to Vietnam: May 1994," appeared in The Vietnam War Generation Journal. As a Fellow of the Virginia Ball Center for Creative Inquiry, he is teaching a course on "Conversations Across the Generations and Centuries" in spring 2002. He was Visiting Professor of American Studies and Fellow of the David Bruce Center at Keele University, U.K., during fall semester. While at Keele, he conducted a seminar on "The British Anti-Vietnam War Movement." He served as president of the Mideast Honors Association and Vice-president and Program Chair of the Great Lakes American Studies Association.

Bruce Geelhoedcompleted his tenth year as the director of the Center for Middletown Studies and continued to teach courses in the Honors College. In collaboration with Anthony Edmonds, he was a co-author of Ball State University: An Interpretive History, published by the Indiana University Press. He also coordinated Muncie's first Small Cities Conference, in cooperation with the Minnetrista Cultural Center, on September 14-15, 2001.

John M. Glen remained at work on two book projects: The War on Poverty in Appalachia, to be published by the University of Tennessee Press, and The Nationalization of Indiana: Since 1945, to be published by the Indiana Historical Society. He was co-author of "Indiana Archives: Oral History Collections," in the Indiana Magazine of History, and he reviewed Otis R. Bowen's memoirs for H-Indiana and another book for the Journal of American History. After completing his term as president of the Indiana Association of Historians, he continued as a member of its 2001-2002 Executive Council and Program Committee. He is the general editor of the Indiana Archives section of the Indiana Magazine of History and serves as director of Special Academic Projects for the Department of History.

  Dan Goffman'sThe Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe will appear in 2002 with Cambridge University Press. He has contracted with Cambridge to co-edit a volume entitled The Early Modern Ottoman Empire: A Reinterpretation. On November 19, 2001 at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) meetings in San Francisco, he was recognized before an audience of some 1200 for his outstanding service as editor of the MESA Bulletin. He has initiated its simultaneous publication online (available at www.mesa.arizona.edu). He helped conduct a workshop at MESA on publishing reviews, articles, and books for more than 60 graduate students and young professors in Middle East Studies. In the wake of September 11, 2001, Professor Goffman participated in seven workshops and presentations held for the university and wider community.

Kenneth Hall published Structure and Society in Early South India (Oxford). He has received two National Endowment for the Humanities grants. An NEH Focus Grant on behalf of Ball State University and the Blackford County School System will involve several Ball State faculty as consultants in developing a more globally conscious curriculum. He was co-recipient of an award supporting a NEH Summer 2002 Institute at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, "Societal Transformation and the Legitimation of Power in the Early Islamic States: Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa." His article "Unification of the Upstream and Downstream in Southeast Asia's First Islamic Polity: The Changing Sense of Community in the Fifteenth Century Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai Court Chronicle" appeared in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. He presented this paper at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan. After doing field research at several archaeological sites in Jordan and Syria, he presented his findings to the Michigan Archeological Society meeting at Western Michigan University, "Societal Transformation in the Early Middle East and Southeast Asia: Religious Change in the Pre-Islamic Societies of Jordan and Indonesia." He contributed a book review to the Journal of Asian Studies. He presented "The Early Historical Texts, Breaking into them and Breaking out of them: A Case Study of the Old Javanese Pararaton" at a conference on "Non-Western Historical Texts in Contemporary Research" at Yangan University, Myanmar (formerly Rangoon, Burma).

Robert Hall was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He presented "The Myth of the People: Leaders and Followers in Chartism," at the North American Conference on British Studies in Toronto.

  John Koumoulidespublished "Christianity in the Third Millennium: Its Survival and Influence in the 'Modern World'" and "Mr. Amos Pampaloni and Captain Corelli's Mandolin" in The Greek-American Review, a book review in the American Historical Review, and a booklet, "One Day in the Life of Thomas Pavlides, 5 June 1911" with the Pella Press. He received a Public-Policy-Scholar Award from The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. John Brademas nominated him to the American Academy for Arts and Sciences, and for the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, presented by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations to "outstanding American citizens...who have distinguished themselves among their specific ethnic groups." He received a grant from the Jaharis Family Foundation in support of the Greek Studies Lecture Series and a $20,000 grant from the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation. He was invited to serve on the Paris-based Union de l'Europe Occidental Institut d' Etudes de Sécurité / Western European Union Institute for Security Studies and contribute to their publication, The Chaillot Papers.

Carolyn Malone completed revisions for Dangerous Work for Women? Gender and the Making of Protective Labour Legislation in England, 1880-1914 for publication in the Royal Historical Society's Studies in History New Series published by Boydell Press. She has revised an article, "Campaigning Journalism: the Clarion, Daily Citizen, and the Protection of Women Workers, 1890s-1914," for publication in Labour History Review. She contributed a review to Albion. She wrote an article on Elizabeth Leigh Hutchins for the New Dictionary of National Biography (forthcoming). She presented "Between Dignity and Despair: The Lives of Jewish Women in Nazi Germany" as part of the Women's Studies Program's Brown Bag Luncheon Series.

Rene Marion is completing The Dames de la Halle: Community and Authority in Early Modern Paris (contracted to Macmillan, UK) and anticipating her next project--a cultural history of the lottery in France. She published a book review on H-France, co-organized the Western Society for French History Conference, and is the hotel negotiator for that organization's executive committee.

Nina Mjagkij published "The Negro Service Committee and African-American Soldiers" in Politics and Progress: American Society and the State since 1865 (Praeger) and Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations (Garland), an 800-page volume that is the first comprehensive reference book on the subject. This book was selected as a Booklist (Journal of the American Library Association) Editors' Choice Selection for 2001. The citation reads: "Associations played a crucial role in African American communities, especially during a time when racism excluded blacks from other opportunities for development and leadership. Unparalleled in scope, this encyclopedia makes an important contribution to African American Studies by pulling together information on a variety of voluntary organizations." She was elected secretary of Ball State's Graduate Education Committee for the academic year of 2001-2002. She appeared in a documentary on the history of the American YMCA that recently aired on the History Channel. She is editing The Human Tradition: In Slavery and The Human Tradition: In Freedom, volumes of African American biographies that Scholarly Resources will publish. She presented "Black Soldiers in World War I" for the convocation lecture series at Austin College, Texas.

Glenda Rileycontributed "Barbara Stanwyck: Feminizing the Western" to The Hollywood West (Fulcrum), which she co-edited. Another volume she co-edited, Wild Women in the Old West, includes three essays by Riley, "What Makes a Woman Wild?"; "Sadie Orchard: A Hard-Working Woman"; and "Baby Doe Tabor: The Culture of Beauty." She published "Victorian Ladies Outdoors: Women in the Early Conservation Movement, 1870-1920," in the Journal of Southern California History. She served on the board of editors for Scribner's Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, in which she has two entries: "Divorce and Desertion" and "Interpretations of Gender." She spoke as part of Ball State's Women's Seminar Series; she was the keynote speaker for the Des Moines Area Community College's Women's History Week; she participated in a ceremony in Greenville, Ohio, celebrating the establishment of a historical marker for Annie Oakley; she was a member of Ball State's Green II committee. In June, Riley attended the Ph.D. graduation at the University of New Mexico of her first graduate assistant at Ball State, N. Jill Howard. She is completing Women Colonizing the American and Kenyan Frontiers, 1840-1940, researching Apache Chief Victorio for her next volume in the Notable Westerners Series Chiefs and Generals of the Old West; and is serving as a member of an NEH Grant team producing a television documentary on Willa Cather.

Joan Schreiber continued to participate in training sessions for portfolio assessment of beginning social studies teachers. She is a team participant working with the Indiana Professional Standards Board to align Professional Teaching Standards and the Assessment Portfolio for Beginning Teachers. This involves planning the sessions, developing handbook materials, providing guidance with the Induction Portfolio, and taking part in the IPSB-provided Support Seminars, in which beginning teachers participate during the support/assessment phase of their induction period. She served as a member of the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana Education Steering Committee. She continued to develop interpretive educational materials for her two Iowa public history/historic preservation sites, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Kevin Smith assumed the duties of Assistant Chair of the Department of History in June. He continued developing his class Web pages (see in process at http://www.bsu.edu/classes/smith7/history/) and taking part in the revision of the Social Studies Teaching Major. He has been interviewed in various media about international relations issues arising from September 11, 2001. He has begun research on his second book, Hoosier Statesmen, which will explore the role residents of Indiana have played in shaping American foreign relations in the twentieth century despite stereotypes of Hoosier insularity.

Frederick Suppe's article "The Persistence of Castle-Guard in the Welsh Marches and Wales: Suggestions for a Research Agenda and Methodology" appeared in The Normans and Their Adversaries at War (Boydell & Brewer). His book reviews appeared in The Historian and Scotia. He organized two sessions of papers on behalf of the Celtic Studies Association of North America for the 36th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan in May 2001. He served on the organizing committee for the 32nd annual interdisciplinary Conference for the Advancement of Early Studies. He continued to serve as the treasurer for the Charles Homer Haskins Society (an international scholarly organization of medieval historians.)

Gail Terry held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Huntington Library. She presented some of the new research from her book manuscript Family Empires for students at the College of William and Mary.

Christopher Thompson's article, "Controlling the Working-Class Sports Hero in order to Control the Masses?: The Social Philosophy of Sport of Henri Desgrange," was published by a German journal of international sports history, Stadion--International Journal of the History of Sport, in a special issue devoted to sport in France from 1870-1940. A book chapter, "Bicycling, Class, and the Politics of Leisure in Belle Epoque France," will soon be published. He spoke on "The Tour de France Bicycle Race: A Window into Twentieth-Century French History and Culture," to the Association of Lifelong Learners. He lectured in May on "The Tour de France and Twentieth Century France" at a seminar at the U.S. State Department for diplomats preparing to serve in France. He will be presenting "The Changing Frontiers of Twentieth-Century France: The Tour de France Bicycle Race and the Construction of French National Identity" at the Annual AHA Conference in San Francisco. He is completing a book, 'La Grande Boucle': A Cultural History of the Tour de France Bicycle Race, to be published by the University of California Press.

Phyllis Zimmerman published "Military Missionary: The Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma that was Evans F. Carlson" in New Interpretations in Naval History, selected papers from the Fourteenth Naval History Symposium, with The Naval Institute Press.

Electronic Newsletter?

Thank you for reading the electronic version of this newsletter. If this option generates enough interest, we will consider either e-mailing the annual CLIO newsletter or continuing to place it on our departmental website as it is here. If you're interested in either of these possibilities, please take a moment to e-mail your preference to the department at history@bsu.edu

Also, if you would like to see this newsletter revised to include different types of features, we would welcome your input. Thank you!

Kevin Smith, Editor