Department of History |
|
Grinnell College Grinnell, IA 50112 |
Volume XII No. 2 |
Contents
J. Pablo Silva Accepts Tenure-Track
Position
Paul Ortiz to Teach Short Course, Deliver Convocation
Faculty News
Alumni News
Internship Opportunity at Hoover Presidential
Library
Events for History Majors
"I'm ecstatic to have the job," says Professor J.
Pablo Silva with a smile, when asked about his recent appointment
to a tenure track position in Latin American history. Mr. Silva
began teaching in the fall at Grinnell in a one year Latin American
position, and he was the department's first choice when the funding
finally became available for a permanent Latin Americanist. Mr.
Silva emphasizes how lucky he feels, because his case is certainly
not the typical way an historian receives such a post, for which
one would normally expect to endure an involved job search and
application process. Talking more with Mr. Silva, one gets the
impression that much in his career path so far has been similarly
unconventional.
As an undergraduate at Harvard University, Mr. Silva studied
European History, specializing in Early Modern Spain. Although
he was born in Chile, Mr. Silva was not really drawn to a formal
study of Latin America until his senior year. After graduation,
he traveled through Chile for a year, visiting relatives and
honing his Spanish language skills. It was this trip that sparked
Mr. Silva's interest in studying Latin and South America formally
in his graduate work.
Although Mr. Silva admits that switching his focus from Europe
to Latin America extended the time it took for him to complete
his degree, he also notes that it's not impossible. At the University
of Chicago, he began work on his dissertation, which focused
on the Chilean middle class in the 1920's and 1930's. Mr. Silva
says he was drawn to this period in particular because the era
between the two World Wars was a special time for Latin America,
in which the region was relatively free of external influences
and in which the modern political ideologies of the region were
able to develop.
The one year Latin American appointment at Grinnell was Mr. Silva's
first job after graduate school. He notes that the teaching experience
here is vastly different from what he encountered at Chicago
as a TA for required history courses. One reason for the difference,
Mr. Silva explains, is Grinnell's smaller class size, though
he also says that requiring students to take courses changes
the expectations one has of those students. He appreciates the
fact that Grinnellians are vocal about his strengths and weaknesses
in the classroom.
Mr. Silva's wife and two small daughters are equally surprised
and pleased to be staying in Grinnell. Mrs. Silva, who worked
in advertising while they lived in Chicago, is currently looking
for a job in the Grinnell area. Mr. Silva reflects that raising
children here will be to some extent easier than it would be
in a city such as Chicago.
The History Department is greatly pleased that Mr. Silva and
his family chose to remain in Grinnell to allow him to fill the
new position. He will certainly make a great contribution to
the department and the campus community as a whole.
Paul Ortiz is teaching a mini-course at Grinnell College Spring
Semester 1999 in conjunction with the Department of History and
the Minority Scholar in Residence Program. He is a doctoral candidate
at Duke University and has taught courses there in the history
of agricultural labor, African American history, and oral history.
His dissertation is titled: "Like Water Covered the Sea:
African American Freedom Struggles in Jim Crow Florida."
Paul also serves as Research Coordinator for "Behind the
Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South,"
at Duke University.
Paul was born in Norfolk, Virginia and raised in Bremerton, Washington,
where his father recently retired with over thirty years combined
service in the military and the federal shipyard in Bremerton.
After graduating from high school in 1982, Paul served in the
United States Army for four years as a paratrooper and a radio
operator stateside and in Central America. He achieved the rank
of sergeant and received an honorable discharge in 1986.
Upon returning to school, Paul enrolled at Olympic Community
College in Bremerton and went on to receive his B.A. at Evergreen
State College in Olympia, Washington.
Paul met his wife, Sheila Payne on a picket line during the 1990
Greyhound Strike and has been active in the labor movement ever
since.
Currently, he is co-editing a book of oral history and primary
documents on African American lives and experiences in the era
of legal segregation which will be published by the New Press
in January, 2002.
A portion of Paul's current research is featured in: "American
Dream3DEFERRED" a historical documentary series on African
American struggles against the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction
and during the 1920s. This documentary series will be airing
on public radio stations across the country this year and is
being produced by Reality Works, a non-profit organization based
in Tampa, Florida.
Paul Ortiz currently serves on the boards of the North Carolina
Farm Workers' Project as well as Student Action with Farmworkers,
a grass-roots educational initiative that brings college students
and agricultural workers in the Carolinas together to learn from
each other. He is an associate member of the United Farm Workers
of America, AFL-CIO and is currently working with the UFW as
well as the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to build farm worker
unionization efforts in California and North Carolina.
Ortiz's convocation, "Visions of Democracy: African American
Freedom Struggles From the Age of Revolution to the Era of Jim
Crow," is February 18.
Marci Sortor: Professor Sortor's "The Ieperleet Affair: The Struggle for Market Position in Late Medieval Flanders" appeared in the October issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies.
William Patch: Professor Patch has recently received a major fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to finance a year of archival research in Germany during his sabbatical leave in 1999-2000. His project has the working title of "Tory Workers in Rhineland-Westphalia, 1890-1960" and is an effort to shed light on the causes of the rise and fall of class conflict in industrial society by studying the identity and changing motivations of the minority of the working class that rejected socialism in the name of religious and/or patriotic values. Rhineland-Westphalia is an interesting region because it contains Germany's largest centers of heavy industry as well as many traditional centers of handicraft production, and it experienced the most intense competition for working-class support between socialist and church-affiliated organizations. The study's time frame spans the interval from the upsurge of class conflict (as measured by the number of work days lost each year due to strikes and lockouts) to all-time highs in the 1920s and subsequent reduction to surprisingly low levels in the 1950s.
Victoria Brown: Professor Brown's new edition of Jane Addams's autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull House will be out from Bedford Books in mid-March. She will be giving a paper on Addams and her father at the University of Iowa on February 18 in conjunction with the University of Iowa's History Department's Honors Program. She will give the talk and, over the course of the subsequent two weeks, will meet with their Honors students to help them prepare for writing their Honors papers. Third, she will give the same talk here at Grinnell on March 10 as part of the department's colloquium series.
Daniel Kaiser: From February 12 to 14, Professor Kaiser attended a workshop on "Orthodoxy in the Russian Historical Experience, 1988-1999" at the University of Michigan. His contribution was entitled "Quotidian Orthodoxy in Muscovite Family Life," emphasizing the ways in which Russian Orthodoxy influenced the rituals and daily experience of Russians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later this month he will spend a few days at Oberlin College as an outside evaluator for their program in Russian and East European Studies. Finally, for the last six months or so he has been collaborating with several teachers at Grinnell High School to mount an application to the National Endowment for the Humanities to obtain a planning grant for a proposed new interdisciplinary, team-taught course. The application comes under the Endowment's support for "Schools for a New Millennium," and will emphasize new technologies and the exploitation of local sources (such as oral history and items of material culture) to study the Depression Era in the United States.
Philip Kintner: Mr. Kintner had an article published about the temporary partitioning of land to guild members at Memmingen published in April ("Die Spielaecker: Schon vor 400 Jahren," Memminger Geschichtsblaetter 1993-6.) He was able to document the "lending", so to speak, of plots of land to persons chosen by lot, with the owners changing about every 7 to 9 years, between 1570 and 1694; and to show the connection between this system and the new style of government introduced by Charles V in 1552, as well as the economic needs of the town in a period of frequent dearths and (from 1618 to 1648) warfare. In late October he presented a paper at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Toronto on "Bankruptcy and Blame at Memmingen, 1594-1604," which argued that the treatment of bankrupts at Memmingen, while still stringent by modern standards, was far milder than conditions in other German towns and other countries, especially Italy. Mr. Kintner wishes again to offer help to any students with the reading of early modern German, whether printed or manuscript. Though retired formally, he remains active in research.
Scott Wittstruck '93 entered an MA program in Social Studies at the University of Iowa College of Education. He intends to get certification to teach secondary school social studies. For the last several years he has been working construction in the Iowa City area.
The American Historical Association's convention this January in DC included a paper by Ted Bromund '91. Part of a panel devoted to "Reconstructing National Identities in Post-World War II Europe: West Germany, France, and Great Britain Compared," Ted read a paper on "Glorious Past, Uncertain Future: The Federation of British Industries and British 'Decline,' 1956-63."
The latest issue of Slavic Review (vol. 57, no. 3, Fall, 1998) includes a contribution by Marshall Poe '84: "What Did Russians Mean When They Called Themselves 'Slaves of the Tsar'?" As the note on contributors points out, Marshall is spending this year as a member of the School for Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. He has also recently founded, and moderates, a new on-line listserv, the "Early Slavic Studies List," which carries notice of interest to historians and others who study the medieval and early modern Slavic world.
Susan Rupp '83 currently teaches at Wake Forest University. She has just published "The Struggle in the East: Opposition Politics in Siberia, 1918" in The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1304 (August 1998).
Eric Hartmann '93 has completed an Archivist program at the University of Michigan, is now "Processing Archivist" at the library of the University of Texas, San Antonio.
Kristen Stromberg '91 is currently Lecturer in History at the University of Pennsylvania and completing her Ph.D. degree there: "Engendering the Welfare State: Paternal Citizenship in France, 1914-1945."
Hugh Lane '85 defended his dissertation in December, and interviewed at the AHA conference for positions in modern European history.
Seth Meisel '84 continues to teach Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and lives in Madison.
Merry Wiesner-Hanks '73, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was the commentator for a panel on "Women and Authority in Early Modern Europe." She has recently published a new volume of collected essays.
The newsletter from the University of Chicago Department of History notes that of the 19 PhDs in history granted in 1997-98, two went to Grinnell graduates: Cate Giustino '83, "Late Imperial Czech Prague: Politics and Culture"; and David Tanenhaus '90, "Policing the Child: Juvenile Justicd in Chicago, 1870-1925." Cate now teaches on the faculty (History) of Auburn University and David is a member of the dept of history of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Study with a veteran archivist in one of the finest archival
programs in the country. Our researchers consistently rank the
Hoover Library's services and programs as one of the nation's
best. Work under the personal supervision of the Certified Archivist
who has been our archival projects supervisor for more than 25
years. Training will include arrangement, preservation, and description.
This is an all-summer, 40 hour per week program. Starting and
ending dates are negotiable. Stipends and other forms of compensation
are not provided.
A personal interview is required. If you subsequently decide
to apply for admission to the program, we will need: a brief
letter indicating why you are interested in a career in archival
management, a letter of recommendation from a faculty member
who is familiar with your qualifications, and a resume.
| For an appointment, contact: |
Dale Mayer, Archivist (319) 643-5301 Dale.Mayer@hoover.nara.gov |
Information on additional internships is available on the bulletin boards on Carnegie 4th.
Send questions and comments to the Department
Chair, Marci Sortor, at sortor@grinnell.edu.
Web pages maintained by pricel@grinnell.edu
Last modified: August 23, 1999
|
Grinnell College Grinnell, IA 50112 |
Volume XII No. 2 |
Contents
J. Pablo Silva Accepts Tenure-Track
Position
Paul Ortiz to Teach Short Course, Deliver Convocation
Faculty News
Alumni News
Internship Opportunity at Hoover Presidential
Library
Events for History Majors
"I'm ecstatic to have the job," says Professor J.
Pablo Silva with a smile, when asked about his recent appointment
to a tenure track position in Latin American history. Mr. Silva
began teaching in the fall at Grinnell in a one year Latin American
position, and he was the department's first choice when the funding
finally became available for a permanent Latin Americanist. Mr.
Silva emphasizes how lucky he feels, because his case is certainly
not the typical way an historian receives such a post, for which
one would normally expect to endure an involved job search and
application process. Talking more with Mr. Silva, one gets the
impression that much in his career path so far has been similarly
unconventional.
As an undergraduate at Harvard University, Mr. Silva studied European
History, specializing in Early Modern Spain. Although he was born
in Chile, Mr. Silva was not really drawn to a formal study of
Latin America until his senior year. After graduation, he traveled
through Chile for a year, visiting relatives and honing his Spanish
language skills. It was this trip that sparked Mr. Silva's interest
in studying Latin and South America formally in his graduate work.
Although Mr. Silva admits that switching his focus from Europe
to Latin America extended the time it took for him to complete
his degree, he also notes that it's not impossible. At the University
of Chicago, he began work on his dissertation, which focused on
the Chilean middle class in the 1920's and 1930's. Mr. Silva says
he was drawn to this period in particular because the era between
the two World Wars was a special time for Latin America, in which
the region was relatively free of external influences and in which
the modern political ideologies of the region were able to develop.
The one year Latin American appointment at Grinnell was Mr. Silva's
first job after graduate school. He notes that the teaching experience
here is vastly different from what he encountered at Chicago as
a TA for required history courses. One reason for the difference,
Mr. Silva explains, is Grinnell's smaller class size, though he
also says that requiring students to take courses changes the
expectations one has of those students. He appreciates the fact
that Grinnellians are vocal about his strengths and weaknesses
in the classroom.
Mr. Silva's wife and two small daughters are equally surprised
and pleased to be staying in Grinnell. Mrs. Silva, who worked
in advertising while they lived in Chicago, is currently looking
for a job in the Grinnell area. Mr. Silva reflects that raising
children here will be to some extent easier than it would be in
a city such as Chicago.
The History Department is greatly pleased that Mr. Silva and his
family chose to remain in Grinnell to allow him to fill the new
position. He will certainly make a great contribution to the department
and the campus community as a whole.
Paul Ortiz is teaching a mini-course at Grinnell College Spring
Semester 1999 in conjunction with the Department of History and
the Minority Scholar in Residence Program. He is a doctoral candidate
at Duke University and has taught courses there in the history
of agricultural labor, African American history, and oral history.
His dissertation is titled: "Like Water Covered the Sea:
African American Freedom Struggles in Jim Crow Florida."
Paul also serves as Research Coordinator for "Behind the
Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South,"
at Duke University.
Paul was born in Norfolk, Virginia and raised in Bremerton, Washington,
where his father recently retired with over thirty years combined
service in the military and the federal shipyard in Bremerton.
After graduating from high school in 1982, Paul served in the
United States Army for four years as a paratrooper and a radio
operator stateside and in Central America. He achieved the rank
of sergeant and received an honorable discharge in 1986.
Upon returning to school, Paul enrolled at Olympic Community College
in Bremerton and went on to receive his B.A. at Evergreen State
College in Olympia, Washington.
Paul met his wife, Sheila Payne on a picket line during the 1990
Greyhound Strike and has been active in the labor movement ever
since.
Currently, he is co-editing a book of oral history and primary
documents on African American lives and experiences in the era
of legal segregation which will be published by the New Press
in January, 2002.
A portion of Paul's current research is featured in: "American
Dream3DEFERRED" a historical documentary series on African
American struggles against the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction
and during the 1920s. This documentary series will be airing on
public radio stations across the country this year and is being
produced by Reality Works, a non-profit organization based in
Tampa, Florida.
Paul Ortiz currently serves on the boards of the North Carolina
Farm Workers' Project as well as Student Action with Farmworkers,
a grass-roots educational initiative that brings college students
and agricultural workers in the Carolinas together to learn from
each other. He is an associate member of the United Farm Workers
of America, AFL-CIO and is currently working with the UFW as well
as the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to build farm worker unionization
efforts in California and North Carolina.
Ortiz's convocation, "Visions of Democracy: African American
Freedom Struggles From the Age of Revolution to the Era of Jim
Crow," is February 18.
Marci Sortor: Professor Sortor's "The Ieperleet Affair: The Struggle for Market Position in Late Medieval Flanders" appeared in the October issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies.
William Patch: Professor Patch has recently received a major fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to finance a year of archival research in Germany during his sabbatical leave in 1999-2000. His project has the working title of "Tory Workers in Rhineland-Westphalia, 1890-1960" and is an effort to shed light on the causes of the rise and fall of class conflict in industrial society by studying the identity and changing motivations of the minority of the working class that rejected socialism in the name of religious and/or patriotic values. Rhineland-Westphalia is an interesting region because it contains Germany's largest centers of heavy industry as well as many traditional centers of handicraft production, and it experienced the most intense competition for working-class support between socialist and church-affiliated organizations. The study's time frame spans the interval from the upsurge of class conflict (as measured by the number of work days lost each year due to strikes and lockouts) to all-time highs in the 1920s and subsequent reduction to surprisingly low levels in the 1950s.
Victoria Brown: Professor Brown's new edition of Jane Addams's autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull House will be out from Bedford Books in mid-March. She will be giving a paper on Addams and her father at the University of Iowa on February 18 in conjunction with the University of Iowa's History Department's Honors Program. She will give the talk and, over the course of the subsequent two weeks, will meet with their Honors students to help them prepare for writing their Honors papers. Third, she will give the same talk here at Grinnell on March 10 as part of the department's colloquium series.
Daniel Kaiser: From February 12 to 14, Professor Kaiser attended a workshop on "Orthodoxy in the Russian Historical Experience, 1988-1999" at the University of Michigan. His contribution was entitled "Quotidian Orthodoxy in Muscovite Family Life," emphasizing the ways in which Russian Orthodoxy influenced the rituals and daily experience of Russians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later this month he will spend a few days at Oberlin College as an outside evaluator for their program in Russian and East European Studies. Finally, for the last six months or so he has been collaborating with several teachers at Grinnell High School to mount an application to the National Endowment for the Humanities to obtain a planning grant for a proposed new interdisciplinary, team-taught course. The application comes under the Endowment's support for "Schools for a New Millennium," and will emphasize new technologies and the exploitation of local sources (such as oral history and items of material culture) to study the Depression Era in the United States.
Philip Kintner: Mr. Kintner had an article published about the temporary partitioning of land to guild members at Memmingen published in April ("Die Spielaecker: Schon vor 400 Jahren," Memminger Geschichtsblaetter 1993-6.) He was able to document the "lending", so to speak, of plots of land to persons chosen by lot, with the owners changing about every 7 to 9 years, between 1570 and 1694; and to show the connection between this system and the new style of government introduced by Charles V in 1552, as well as the economic needs of the town in a period of frequent dearths and (from 1618 to 1648) warfare. In late October he presented a paper at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Toronto on "Bankruptcy and Blame at Memmingen, 1594-1604," which argued that the treatment of bankrupts at Memmingen, while still stringent by modern standards, was far milder than conditions in other German towns and other countries, especially Italy. Mr. Kintner wishes again to offer help to any students with the reading of early modern German, whether printed or manuscript. Though retired formally, he remains active in research.
Scott Wittstruck '93 entered an MA program in Social Studies at the University of Iowa College of Education. He intends to get certification to teach secondary school social studies. For the last several years he has been working construction in the Iowa City area.
The American Historical Association's convention this January in DC included a paper by Ted Bromund '91. Part of a panel devoted to "Reconstructing National Identities in Post-World War II Europe: West Germany, France, and Great Britain Compared," Ted read a paper on "Glorious Past, Uncertain Future: The Federation of British Industries and British 'Decline,' 1956-63."
The latest issue of Slavic Review (vol. 57, no. 3, Fall, 1998) includes a contribution by Marshall Poe '84: "What Did Russians Mean When They Called Themselves 'Slaves of the Tsar'?" As the note on contributors points out, Marshall is spending this year as a member of the School for Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. He has also recently founded, and moderates, a new on-line listserv, the "Early Slavic Studies List," which carries notice of interest to historians and others who study the medieval and early modern Slavic world.
Susan Rupp '83 currently teaches at Wake Forest University. She has just published "The Struggle in the East: Opposition Politics in Siberia, 1918" in The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1304 (August 1998).
Eric Hartmann '93 has completed an Archivist program at the University of Michigan, is now "Processing Archivist" at the library of the University of Texas, San Antonio.
Kristen Stromberg '91 is currently Lecturer in History at the University of Pennsylvania and completing her Ph.D. degree there: "Engendering the Welfare State: Paternal Citizenship in France, 1914-1945."
Hugh Lane '85 defended his dissertation in December, and interviewed at the AHA conference for positions in modern European history.
Seth Meisel '84 continues to teach Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and lives in Madison.
Merry Wiesner-Hanks '73, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was the commentator for a panel on "Women and Authority in Early Modern Europe." She has recently published a new volume of collected essays.
The newsletter from the University of Chicago Department of History notes that of the 19 PhDs in history granted in 1997-98, two went to Grinnell graduates: Cate Giustino '83, "Late Imperial Czech Prague: Politics and Culture"; and David Tanenhaus '90, "Policing the Child: Juvenile Justicd in Chicago, 1870-1925." Cate now teaches on the faculty (History) of Auburn University and David is a member of the dept of history of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Study with a veteran archivist in one of the finest archival
programs in the country. Our researchers consistently rank the
Hoover Library's services and programs as one of the nation's
best. Work under the personal supervision of the Certified Archivist
who has been our archival projects supervisor for more than 25
years. Training will include arrangement, preservation, and description.
This is an all-summer, 40 hour per week program. Starting and
ending dates are negotiable. Stipends and other forms of compensation
are not provided.
A personal interview is required. If you subsequently decide to
apply for admission to the program, we will need: a brief letter
indicating why you are interested in a career in archival management,
a letter of recommendation from a faculty member who is familiar
with your qualifications, and a resume.
| For an appointment, contact: |
Dale Mayer, Archivist (319) 643-5301 Dale.Mayer@hoover.nara.gov |
Information on additional internships is available on the bulletin boards on Carnegie 4th.
|
||||||||||||||||
Send questions and comments to the Department
Chair, Marci Sortor, at sortor@grinnell.edu.
Web pages maintained by pricel@grinnell.edu
Last modified: August 23, 1999