Notes from the Chair

This past year has sometimes felt like a roller coaster ride for the members of the Ball State History Department.  We began the 2003-04 academic year still reeling from the unexpected death last spring of friend and colleague Larry Birken.  We also had to cope with the retirements of Bracken Chair Glenda Riley and Professor John Koumoulides, as well as the resignation of Department Chair Dan Goffman, who left to take a new position at DePaul University.

Those losses were offset by some exciting gains.  Along with welcoming a new dean to our College of Science and Humanities (Dr. Michael Maggiotto), we hired three new colleagues in tenure-track or one-year full-time contract positions:  Sergei Zhuk (Russian history), Elizabeth Littell-Lamb (Asian history), and Eli Nathans (European history).  The History Department was pleased to offer Rob Hall a full-time contract position for this year, and Tim Berg (U.S. history) joined us in a half-time contract position. 

In addition, the History Department was able to successfully complete three job searches.  In fall 2004, we will be joined by three new assistant professors: Ashley de Waal-Lucas (Elementary Social Studies Education); Ken Swope (East Asian History); and Slava Dmitriev (Ancient History).

If 2003-04 marked the beginning of Ball State careers for some junior faculty, it also signified the commencement of new lives for three veteran faculty members.  Dr. Sharon Seager, who started at Ball State in 1966, will be retiring at the conclusion of this academic year, as will former Provost and long-time history professor Dr. Warren Vander Hill, who came to Ball State in 1968.  This also is my last year at Ball State.  After 25 years, I have accepted a new position as dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of History and American Studies at Pennsylvania State University, the Behrend College.

The 2003-04 academic year provided many reasons for celebration.  History faculty members had a banner year publishing numerous books on a variety of topics, including Stephanie Beswick, Sudan's Blood Memory: War, Ethnicity and Slavery in Early South Sudan; Dean Cantu (and Wilson J. Warren), Teaching History in the Digital Classroom; Dean Cantu and Sandy Cantu, The Vietnam War: A National Dilemma; Tony Edmonds and Bruce Geelhoed, Eisenhower, Macmillan and Allied Unity 1957-1961; Carolyn Malone, Women's Bodies and Dangerous Trades in England, 1880-1914; Nina Mjagkij, Portraits of African American Life Since 1865; and Warren Vander Hill   and Tony Edmonds, Ball State Men's Basketball: 1918-2003.

Members of the History Department were honored in other ways.  Ken Hall received a Fulbright Fellowship that enabled him to spend the 2003-04 academic year conducting research in Indonesia.  Tony Edmonds won yet another teaching award.  He was one of two recipients nationwide to receive the Association of General and Liberal Studies' Outstanding Teaching Award.  And, Ron Morris was awarded a Virginia B. Ball Fellowship.

Despite the many changes, one thing remains the same:  the History Department continues to be dedicated to excellence in teaching, research, and service.  Though the 2003-04 academic year – like a roller-coaster – had its ups and downs, in the end the History Department finished on top.  And, the Department looks forward to an even more productive year in 2004-05.

Current Members of the Department of History

Tenured and tenure-track members: Abel Alves, Richard Aquila, Stephanie Beswick, Dean Cantu, Jim Connolly, Michael Doyle, Tony Edmonds, Bruce Geelhoed, John Glen, Ken Hall, Carolyn Malone, Nina Mjagkij, Ron Morris, Sharon Seager, Kevin Smith, Scott Stephan, Fred Suppe, Gail Terry, Chris Thompson, Warren Vander Hill, Sergei Zhuk, and Phyllis Zimmerman.

Full-time and part-time contract faculty: Tim Berg, Robert Hall, Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, Eli Nathans, Charles McDonald, Judith Morris, Richard Neel, Mary Neese Reck, 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 and Carol Blakney completed a book-length manuscript entitled The Biohistory of Feminism and are currently in search of a publisher.  Alves presented "The Alpha Factor and Religion: The Display of Power and Altruism in the Sixteenth-Century Conquest of Mexico" at the UCLA Center for Governance as part of the Awe-Inspiring Experiences Working Group.  He is a Fellow of the Center. The article-length presentation was requested for publication on the Templeton Foundation's website for the constructive dialogue of science and religion, www.metanexus.net. Alves also reviewed Magali M. Carrera's Imagining Identity: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings (University of Texas Press, 2003) for the Hispanic American Historical Review (currently in press). 

Richard Aquila is currently chair of the History Department.  He was recently named an "OAH Distinguished Lecturer" for the period 2004-2007.  The letter of appointment from the Organization of American Historians described the honor in this way:  "For the past twenty years OAH presidents have each appointed their most illustrious and dynamic colleagues to our program, making it one of the longest running and most successful efforts of its kind among scholarly associations." In this capacity, Aquila will give one lecture per academic year to audiences across the United States.  Aquila continues work on his book, Sh-Boom; Or, How Early Rock & Roll Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love America's Cold War Culture, which will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press.  Aquila served as a writer and historical consultant for My Generation: the 1970s, which will be published by Publications International, Ltd.  He also wrote two book reviews for Western Historical Quarterly and Journal of the West, and he refereed manuscripts for University of Illinois Press, William and Mary Quarterly, and Western Historical Quarterly.  In addition, Aquila did several interviews about American society and culture for CNN, MSNBC, The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Billboard, and New York's Newsday.    On July 1, Aquila will become the dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Penn State University, Erie, the Behrend College.

Stephanie Beswick has completed a book Sudan's Blood Memory: War, Ethnicity and Slavery in Early South Sudan (University of Rochester Press, 2004) and has begun a book on the seventeenth to nineteenth-century slave trade in Southern Sudan Slavery, the Slave Trade and Its Transformation in Southern Sudan (1650-2000). She is an on-line book editor for H-Net Africa and has just completed a co-edited volume, Women and Conflict in the Horn of Africa, (forthcoming 2004/5 special volume of Northeast African Studies). Her most recent articles include: "If you leave your country you have no life: Rape, Suicide and Murder; The Voices of Ethiopian, Somali and Sudanese Female Refugees in Kenyan Refugee Camps" forthcoming in Women and Conflict in the Horn of Africa; "Sudan" entry for The New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia (forthcoming); "The Dinka: A Northern Sudanese People Spearheading the Southern Sudanese Civil War," forthcoming in Northeast African Studies; "'We Are Bought Like Clothes:' The War Over Polygyny and Levirate Marriage in South Sudan," forthcoming volume on Women in Sudan, Northeast African Studies; "The Dinka as 'Northern Sudanese," the Nuer as 'Luo' and the Genesis of Intra-Southern Sudanese Conflict," in forthcoming volume on Sudan: Dilemmas and Prospects, edited by Mohamed Mahmoud, Northeast African Studies; and "The Ethnicity of Bondage in the Valley of the Upper Nile: Slavery and the Slave Trade through the Eyes of the Possessed," Race and Ethnicity in the Nile Valley, edited by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, forthcoming, Red Sea Press, 2004.

Dean Cantu published the following two books: [with Wilson J. Warren] Teaching History in the Digital Classroom (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe), and [with Sandy Cantu] The Vietnam War: A National Dilemma (Los Angeles: UCLA & National Center for History in the Schools).  In addition, he published an article, "Using Web-based Resources to Confront Pre-service Social Studies Teachers' Disinclination to Primary Source Document Integration," in The International Social Studies Forum 3, no. 1 (Fall 2003). Cantu also developed the following four lesson plans for The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition: "The Best Way to Guard Your Online Privacy" 12, no. 6 (February 2003); "Reigning in the Net" 12, no. 8 (April 2003); "Desert Quicksand: History Shows that Mideast Conquests Don't Usually Turn Out Well" 12, no. 9 (May 2003); and, "Adapt or Die: New Technology Tests the Survival Instincts of Some Powerful Businesses" 13, no. 2 (October 2003).  In addition, his encyclopedia entry, "Executive Orders," was published in Donald W. Wisenhunt, ed., Encyclopedia USA: The Encyclopedia of the United States of America, Past & Present(Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press).  Cantu also continued as editor of the International Journal of Social Education (IJSE).  The two issues of the IJSE published this year were:  The Forgotten Aspects of Play in Social Studies 18, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2003); and Critical Issues, Crucial Episodes: New Perspectives on the History of Social Studies 18, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2003-2004).  During the year, Cantu also presented a paper, "Using Graphic Organizers to Teach American History," at the NCSS Great Lakes Regional Social Studies Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Cantu serves as President of the Indiana Council for the Social Studies.  He is also a member of the Social Studies Core-40 End-of-Course Assessment Review Committee for the Indiana Department of Education.  In addition, he completed his term as Chair of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Publications Committee in 2003 and served as a delegate at the NCSS House of Delegates Meeting held in Chicago, Illinois.          

James Connolly continued working on a manuscript entitled "The Idea of the Machine: A Cultural History of Party Politics in Urban-Industrial America," which is under contract with Cornell University Press.  He presented a draft chapter, "From Ring to Machine: The Evolution of Urban Political Reform Language in Gilded Age America," at the Boston Seminar in Immigration and Urban History in October.  He also published two essays: "Progressivism and Pluralism," in Michael Grossberg, Wendy Gamber, and Hendrik Hartog eds., American Public Life and the Historical Imagination (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 49-67 and "Beyond the Machine: Martin Lomasney and Ethnic Politics," in Reed Ueda and Conrad Wright eds., Faces of Community: Immigrant Massachusetts, 1840-2000  (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003), pp. 189-218.  With Bruce Geelhoed he co-edited "The Small City Experience in the Midwest," Special Issue of the Indiana Magazine of History 99:4 (December, 2003).  His essay "Immigration and Ethnic Politics," was accepted for publication in Reed Ueda, ed., Companion to American Immigration (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers). Connolly served on the Council of the Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, as a member of the editorial board for the group's H-NET listserv, and as a manuscript reviewer for the journal Urban History.  He served on the Program Committee of the "Small Cities: Past, Present, and Future" Conference, held at Ball State in September 2003.  He also served as Director of the History M.A. program.

Michael Doylewas awarded a research leave during Fall Semester 2003 to begin research and writing on his next monographic book project whose working title is "Back to the Garden": The 1969 Woodstock Festival -- Site, Memory, Legacy.  His research was mentioned in the article, "Woodstock as an Historic Landmark?" by Dan Hust in the Sullivan County [NY] Democrat (February 14 2003), which discusses the efforts of a historic preservation group which Dr. Doyle advises (the Woodstock Preservation Alliance) to prevent construction of permanent structures on the site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival.  His edited volume Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and ‘70s (2002) was cited in another article, "Turning the Clock on Culture: Hip Consumerism Transforms Rebels into Emblems of Cool," that ran in the editorial section of the Dallas Morning Times (5 January 2003).  He served as chair and commentator for a session on "Diversity and Social Change in Twentieth-Century Indiana" at the 6th Annual BSU Student History Conference in February 2003.  He delivered two public presentations, one tracing the relationship between the 1947 Jimmy Stewart and Jane Wyatt film Magic Town and Robert and Helen Lynd's Middletown studies project for the Middletown Studies Advisory Board, and the other involving his PowerPoint program, "Who's Your Daddy?":  The Origin and Meaning of the Term ‘Hoosier,' which was the keynote address at the Delaware County Historical Society's annual meeting.  Ball State's Public Broadcasting System affiliate station WIPB-TV awarded him a $10,000 grant to create a 15-minute pilot program on the latter topic to be used in raising funds for the creation of an hour-long documentary film for regional syndication.  It will be the station's first program to be shot in an HDTV format and edited in their newly equipped studio.  Doyle participated in three conferences, serving as organizer and co-presenter of a session on "Magic Town and Middletown: Social Research and the Small City Ideal" at the 3rd Annual Small Cities Conference held at Ball State and the Minnetrista Cultural Center; commentator for a session on "The Conflicting Legacies of Countercultural Technology" at a joint meeting of the Society for the History of Technology and the Society for the Social Studies of Science in Atlanta; and co-presenter of a workshop on the topic of Muncie's built environment at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Central Region Conference, which was held at Ball State's College of Architecture and Planning and the Minnetrista Cultural Center. Doyle served as a special guest lecturer and consultant to Anthropology Professor Luke Eric Lassiter's Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry Course on "The Other Side of Middletown: Muncie's African-American Community and Collaborative Ethnography".  He served on two graduate thesis committees: for Ellen Thackery (M.S. candidate, Historic Preservation) whose creative project is entitled "Interpretive Plan for Workers' Rowhouse Museum in Corktown, Detroit"; and Dave Burns (M.A. candidate, History), whose thesis is entitled "The Soul of Socialism: American Citizenship and Christian Civilization in the Thought of Eugene Debs."  Doyle also supervised graduate assistant Jim Kulwicki in curriculum development work for core curriculum courses. Doyle continued serving as Departmental advisor for the Public History Internship Program through which he oriented twelve new option 2 majors and advised another four students already enrolled. He supervised and evaluated the portfolio projects of Jennifer Bain, who interned in the collections and education departments of the Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis; Andrea Riddle, who worked in the collections and museum education at the Minnetrista Cultural Center; Joe Fox, who served as an archival assistant in the Bracken Library Archives and Special Collections Department; Darren Mills, who created the first-ever archives for Paws, Inc., where Garfield, the most popular syndicated comic strip in the world, is produced; and Michael Dotson, who interned in Nashville, TN as a researcher for documentary films on environmental subjects produced for the Sierra Club.  Doyle helped place Courtney Sturgeon in an intern position involving curation and museum education at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis for Spring 2004. He served as secretary of the Department's Library and Information Technology Committee and Faculty Advisor to the History Club.  He was also elected to the Ball State Academic Resources Committee, representing the Humanities Division of the College of Sciences and Humanities for a three-year term in August.  Finally, he served on the Internal Grants Review Committee, Ball State Office of Academic Research and Sponsored Programs.

Anthony Edmonds and Bruce Geelhoed co-authored Eisenhower, Macmillan and Allied Unity 1957-1961 (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2003). Tony was honored as one of two recipients of The Association of General and Liberal Studies' Outstanding Teaching awards at the AGLS annual meeting in Charlotte in October 2003.  The AGLS is the leading national professional organization devoted to the liberal arts in colleges and universities.   Tony co-authored (with Yasmin Dalal, Emily Disher, Cole McGrath, and Joan Malje) "Conversations Across the Generations and Centuries" in the Fall 2003 AGLS News. The article is based on a presentation given by the five authors at the 2002 AGLS meeting, which was selected as one of the three most outstanding conference presentations.  Tony was chosen to give the annual Whitinger Lecture for the second time (the first occurrence was in 1981). The Whitinger Scholarship is Ball State's most prestigious academic scholarship. Each year graduating recipients choose a faculty member who best represents academic and pedagogical excellence to speak at their spring banquet.  He spoke on  "Why Nobody Ever Graduates from College."  With Joanne Edmonds and Cheri Bove of the Ball State English Department, Tony conducted a workshop on "Teaching the Novels of Anthony Powell to University Students" at the biennial conference of the Anthony Powell Society at Balliol College, Oxford, April 6-8, 2003. With Joanne Edmonds (English), Erin McMullen (English), and James Ruebel (Honors College), Tony edited a collection of essays and journal entries by students in their 2002 Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry seminar, Conversations Across Generations Carrying On.

  Bruce Geelhoedcompleted his twelfth year as the director of the Center for Middletown Studies while also teaching in the department and in the Honors College.  He collaborated with Anthony Edmonds on the publication of Eisenhower, Macmillan, and Allied Unity, 1957-1961   (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2003) and with James Connolly on the editing of a special issue of The Indiana Magazine of History   (December) entitled "The Small City in the Midwest."  He and Professor Edmonds are currently co-editing a volume dealing with the Macmillan-Eisenhower correspondence that will be published in 2004 by Palgrave Macmillan. His article, "March 1987: The Foreshadowing of a General Election," has been published in Stanislao Pugliese, ed., The Political Legacy of Margaret Thatcher (London: Politico's, 2003), 86-101.

John M. Glen continues to pursue his book-length projects on the War on Poverty in Appalachia and the history of Indiana since 1945. In addition, he also co-authored "Indiana Archives: Before Statehood," Indiana Magazine of History 99 (September 2003): 263-79, and reviewed John Alexander Williams, Appalachia: A History (2002), Ohio Valley History 3 (Fall 2003): 77-78; William L. O'Neill, The New Left: A History (2001), West Virginia History 59 (Fall 2003): 1196-97; and Chad Berry, Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles (2000), West Virginia History 59 (2001-2003): 153-55.  He served as a member of the Executive Committee and chair of the Public Advocacy Committee of the Indiana Association of Historians; general editor of the Indiana Archives Section, Indiana Magazine of History; consultant to The Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project; and Faculty Consultant and Teacher Training Workshop Consultant in U.S. History for Educational Testing Service.  He was interviewed for, and quoted in, a three-part Indianapolis Star series appearing in March 2003 on the contemporary state of Indiana's economy.  And as a member of the Task Force on Teacher Education Reform, College of Sciences and Humanities, he contributed to the development of a path breaking assessment vehicle for Social Studies Teaching Majors seeking licensure under new standards mandated by the Indiana Professional Standards Board.

Kenneth Hall presented a paper on "Local and International Traders in the Straits of Melaka Region:  Merchant Communities, Commercial Commodities, and Port-Hinterland Relationships 600-1500" as the keynote address in a symposium on "Medieval Merchant Networks in the East-West Maritime Trade" hosted by the University of Tokyo.  He received a $1,500 grant from the Toho Gakkai (Japanese Institute of Eastern Cultures) to subsidize his travel and presentation.   He received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship appointment for the 2003-2004 academic year, resident in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and based in Gajah Mada University's Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies, where he is studying "Liberating Theology in Contemporary Indonesia." He presented the keynote paper/address on "American Literature and Religion in the 18th and 19th Centuries" at a regional English Studies conference hosted by Universitas Sanata Dharma (Catholic University), Yogyakarta, Indonesia; a paper, "Who are the International Maritime Merchants doing Business in Southeast Asia, c. 1000-1500" delivered to a faculty seminar on early Asian trade hosted by the University of Tokyo at Kamakura, Japan; and a public lecture/paper on "Liberating Religion in Contemporary America" hosted by the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies at Gajah Mada University. He spent the Thanksgiving holidays (and the end of Ramadan) in Taiwan on a U.S. State Department sponsored lecture tour.  He presented two public lectures in Taiwan on "Liberation Theology in Contemporary Indonesia" at National Chi Nan University at Nantou (Puli) as part of a two-day session with graduate students in their Southeast Asian studies program; on "Islamic Legitimation in Contemporary Indonesia" at the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies, Academia Sinica in Taipei, where he remained in residence to conduct a review of their Southeast Asia program; he also presented a seminar on "Merchant Communities and the Asian Maritime Trade in Southeast Asian Perspective:  Revisionist Social Science-Based Historiographic Methodology" to research fellows at the Sun Yat-sen Institute for Social Science and Philosophy in Taipei. He presented twice under U.S. Department of State auspices: a keynote address, "United States Peace and Human Rights Agendas in Domestic and Global Perspective" at an Indonesian national convocation on "Peace and Human Rights in Religious Perspective" hosted by the Islamic Universities Consortium of Indonesia in Medan, Sumatra; and a presentation, "Traditions of Knowledge in Old Javanese Literature, c. 1000-1500" at an ASEAN international conference on "Traditions of Knowledge in Southeast Asia" in Yangon, Myanmar. His paper on "Ways of Knowing in Early Indonesia:  A Case Study of the Fifteenth-Century Javanese Pararaton" was published in Ways of Knowing in Southeast Asia, edited by the University Historical Research Center, Yangon, Myanmar, December 2003.

Robert Hall delivered a paper at Chartism Day 2003 in Great Dodford, Worcestershire; the title was "Voice of the People? Autodidacts and 'the People' in a Chartist Locality, 1838-1850." His essay "Chartism Remembered: William Aitken, Liberalism and the Politics of Memory" has been reprinted in Stephen Roberts, ed., The People's Charter: Democratic Agitation in Early Victorian Britain (London, 2003).

John KoumoulidesEmeritus Professor of History at Ball State University and Senior Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., 2003-05, has edited Cyprus 1900 - 2000: Footprints on the Sands of Time (New York: 2003), published "Olympia: Ancient and Modern -- A Journey" in the Greek-American Review (September 2003), pp. 25 – 27; received a $40,000 grant from the Jaharis Family Foundation, and served as a moderator for the discussion,  "Overcoming Religious Nationalism in the Balkans," at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He has two articles forthcoming: "Eastern Europe and the Balkans in Transition" in Greek-American Review, (February 2004), pp. 6 – 11; and "The Bread Industry of Rome: The Bakeries of Pompeii."

Carolyn Malone published Women's Bodies and Dangerous Trades in England, 1880-1914, with Boydell and Brewer as part of the Royal Historical Society's New Titles in History series.

Nina Mjagkij published Portraits of African American Life Since 1865 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003). The University Press of Kentucky published a paperback edition of her book Light in the Darkness: African Americans and the YMCA, 1852-1946. In August Mjagkij conducted two workshops for teachers at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Her presentations on "The Film Industry in the United States" and "Teaching American History Through Film" were sponsored by an $822,149 Teaching American History grant from the Department of Education. Mjagkij also wrote the texts for photo panels that were part of an exhibit commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the YMCA's work with African Americans. The exhibit opened in Washington, D.C. in October 2003. Meanwhile, Mjagkij continues to serve as co-editor of Scholarly Resources' African American History series, the only book series that provides supplemental readers for undergraduate students enrolled in courses specializing in Black History and Studies.

Ronald V. Morrisauthored three articles, "Acting out history: Students reach across time and Space" in The International Journal of Social Education, "Colonial America and service learning in the fifth grade" in Social Studies and the Young Learner, and "Sharing a cross cultural exchange in an Amish world" in Canadian Social Studies.  He co-authored two articles, "Writing plays for the middle school social studies classroom: A seventh grade case study" in the International Journal of Social Education and "Promoting social studies through demonstration activities" in The Social Studies.

Eli Nathanswrote a book review of Andreas Fahrmeir's Citizens and Aliens: Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States 1789-1870 (Berghahn Books, 2000) that appeared in June in H-Net at www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=38191059590170.

Sharon Seagerpublished an article "A Century of Change: Indiana's Women Lawyers" in the Indiana Historical Society's Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History   15 (Summer 2003): 14-19.

Kevin Smith continues as Assistant Chair of the Department of History. Cambridge University Press published a paperback edition of his book  Conflict Over Convoys: Anglo-American Logistics Diplomacy in the Second World War, originally published in 1996. 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. He published "Hoosier Statesmen and the Coming of the Second World War: Louis Ludlow, Claude Bowers, and The Impact of Jeffersonian Democracy on American Foreign Policy," in the Journal of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences, Volume VI, 42-55.  He presented a paper, "Democratic Idealism, the Constitution, and Congressional Declaration of War: The Failure of the Ludlow Amendment, 1938," at the 2003 Indiana Association of Historians meeting. He is currently a member of the Indiana Association of Historians conference program committee. He helped coordinate a program presented at Ball State under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State, "Iraq: Occupied or Liberated?" and spoke on International Law and Diplomacy to Biology Professor Ann Blakey's Honors Colloquium on Weapons of Mass Destruction. He continued his work as a member of the Task Force on Teacher Education Reform, College of Sciences and Humanities, collaborating with Dean Cantu and John Glen to develop and implement assessment for Social Studies Teaching Majors seeking licensure under new standards mandated by the Indiana Professional Standards Board. He is also taking part in "Bridging the American Experiment"—a collaborative effort with Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities faculty to improve the teaching of American history in Indiana schools via case studies in Indiana history as American history. This effort will result in a dozen broadcasts to selected groups of U.S. history teachers in Indiana schools. 

Scott Stephan received a Mellon Fellowship from the Virginia Historical Society (VHS) in Richmond, Virginia, to pursue research on his monograph, Faith and Family in the Old South. While there, Stephan delivered a paper, "Discovering Domestic Devotion in the Old South," to other research fellows and the VHS staff.  While revising his monograph, he completed an article that explores the intersection of domestic devotion and authority within a prominent North Carolina clergyman's household. 

Frederick Suppe was elected to the council of the Celtic Studies Association of North America.  He organized two sessions of papers sponsored by that association for the 38th International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan in May and presided over them.  He continued to serve as treasurer for the Charles Homer Haskins Society, an international organization of medieval historians.  He also continued service as a member of the Ball State University Senate. His article "Castle-Guard and the Castlery of Clun," which originally appeared in the Haskins Society Journal, was reprinted in Anglo-Norman Castles, ed. Robert Liddiard (Boydell Press, 2003).  The Introduction and first chapter of his book, Military Institutions on the Welsh Marches, were reprinted electronically on the website of De Re Militari at http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/suppe.htm.  Illness prevented him from attending the International Congress on Celtic Studies at the University of Wales in August, but Dr. Marged Haycock of the University of Wales presented his paper on "Marriage Patterns in Interpreter Families on the Welsh Marches during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries" in his stead.  He was on research leave during the Fall Semester of 2003.

Gail Terry is nearing completion of her monograph, Family Empires: History, Memory, and the Making of an Elite in Early America, and she currently is negotiating its publication.  She has begun work on a second book, Patrick Henry's Sister: An Eighteenth-Century Woman's Life in Documents and has had a paper titled "Defining Family, Defining Nation: A Nineteenth-Century Family Recalls Its Eighteenth-Century Past," accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in 2004.  Terry presented a paper on "Patrick Henry's Sister" for the Virginia Historical Society's Teachers' Institute in Richmond, Virginia, and attended the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic in Columbus, Ohio.  She also served as outside reader and examiner for Lee Furr's master's thesis, "Antebellum Virginia: The Land of Sodom or Land of Opportunity? The Lives & Impressions of Three Transplanted New Englanders ," at Virginia Commonwealth University and supervised the Honors Theses of Sara Norton, Jennifer Ro, and Amanda Brown at Ball State.  At the Sixth Annual BSU Student History Conference Terry served as chair and commentator for a session on "The American Republic in World Context." 

Christopher Thompson continued writing his book manuscript on the cultural history of the Tour de France bicycle race, to be published by the University of California Press.  He published two articles:  "The Tour in the Interwar Years:  Political Ideology, Athletic Excess and Industrial Modernity" in The International Journal of the History of Sport (vol. 20, no. 2, June 2003) and "Rene Vietto and the 1934 Tour de France:  A Heroic Sacrifice or a Hero Sacrificed?" in Histoire et Societes--Revue Europeenne d'Histoire Sociale (no. 7, July 2003).  He also published a lengthy review of Georges Vigarello's book, Du jeu ancien au show sportif, on H-France, the listserv for historians of France.

Warren Vander Hill completed with Tony Edmonds what he calls a "labor of love": Ball State Men's Basketball: 1918-2003 (Chicago: Arcadia, 2003), about the only BSU athletic endeavor which ever gained true national media attention. He is also continuing his work on what may become the second volume in the history of Muncie's Jewish community, research he began in the late 1970s with Dwight Hoover. After he retires in June, he plans to continue to work on the Ball State history project that Tony Edmonds and Bruce Geelhoed began in the early 1990s. He will focus on bringing up to date a series of interviews Tony and Bruce began with retired BSU faculty. He will also continue his work with several environmental groups both here and in Montana where he will plan to spend part of each year.

Sergei Zhuk came to Ball State in fall 2003 as our new historian of Soviet and Russian history. He was awared a Mellon Research Fellowship at the Library of Congress Kluge Center in Washington, D.C., which he will utilize from January 1 to August 31, 2004.  The American Council of Learned Societies awarded him a Library of Congress Fellowship in International Studies to finish his book, Russia's  Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917, which will be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press & Woodrow Wilson Center Press in 2004. His paper "The Radical Reformation in the Ukrainian Steppes: Mennonite-Shalaput Cultural Dialogue, the 1830s-1890s" was officially included in a panel of the International Scholarly Conference, "Molochna Mennonites and their Neighbours, 1804-2004" which will take place in Ukraine in 2004 (http://www.mennonitecentre.com/Bicentennial.html).