This story is part of her forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, For Work and Family: A Real Feminist History of “Having it All”
Comments Off on Kirsten Swinth Discusses Mothers and American Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s
Filed under Faculty News, Faculty Profiles
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428055/paving-way-reagan
Congratulations to Laurence Jurdem, who received his PhD in History at Fordham, for publishing an article in the National Review.
Comments Off on Recent Fordham PhD Laurence Jurdem published in the National Review
Filed under Alumni News, Grad Student News, Publications
Recently, we posted about our Graduate Colloquium conference, wrapping up the semester’s hard work by graduate students. As part of the process of the colloquium, students meet to make presentations about their progress, discuss problems in their research, and exchange papers to work collaboratively on writing. In this year’s colloquium, Jason McDonald made this excellent video about his project. As well as highlighting his abilities as an historian and videographer, the video gives an excellent sense of the process through which students work through their final research papers.
Jason’s research on image, war, and propaganda ultimately resulted in his final research paper: “Japanese Teeth and Skulls in American Newspapers, 1884-2012”. You can read more about Jason’s work on World War II images in general here. Great work, Jason!
Comments Off on Work in Progress: Jason McDonald Talks Through Images, War and Propaganda for the History Graduate Colloquium
Filed under Courses, Grad Student News
O’Connell Award winner Grace Healy with her mentor Professor Steven Stoll
This year, in conjunction with the department’s O’Connell Initiative, the History Department awarded a $250 O’Connell Research Award for the most original graduate student research on the history of global capitalism. This year’s winner was MA student Grace Healy, who won for her final research paper entitled “Swamp or Climax Region? Congressional Perceptions of the Everglades, 1947-1989” We asked Grace for details of her research, and she reports:
My project focused on the Everglades in South Florida, specifically the way in which members of Congress have thought about that landscape over the course of the second half of the twentieth century. As the people who mark the boundaries of land that will be preserved, I believe that congressmen’s perceptions of land, ecosystems, and the environment in general are an important aspect of conservation history.
I became interested in the Everglades because I enjoy analyzing the contradictory (or balanced, based on your perspective) way that Americans have managed land. For example, large portions of the Everglades are being protected because of its distinct environment. At the same time, however, vast tracts of the Everglades have been altered and manipulated for commercial reasons. I think that attempting to understand why certain types of landscapes are managed in these divergent forms is not only important to a historical understanding of the United States but also relevant to the environmental movement going forward.Professor Stoll was an excellent mentor throughout this project. At times he pushed me to think more critically about certain aspects, at other times he knew exactly what text I should read to gain more insight. I think he was most helpful when I was I was still developing my ideas. It can be really difficult to find the right project that can be completed in about a semester and half. Professor Stoll really helped me tailor my ideas so I could deeply investigate this one important aspect of the Everglades.
Comments Off on Grace Healy Wins 2016 O’Connell Research Prize
Filed under Grad Student News, O'Connell Initiative, Student Awards
Last Saturday, May 21, saw the making of many new bachelors, masters, and doctorates in History. While we will miss our graduates, and the many adventures we shared with them exploring the past, we wish them the best of luck in the future.
(l-r) Drs. Clifton Watson, Brandon Gauthier, Alessandro Saluppo, and Louie Valencia Garcia
New Fordham PhD in History Clifton Watson with his mentor Professor Irma Watkins-Owens
(l-r) Professors Silvana Patriarca and Rosemary Wakeman congratulating Dr. Alessandro Saluppo
Three medievalists. History MAs who specialized in the Middle Ages Nicole Scotto and Tatum Tullis (l and r, respectively) flanking Medieval Studies MA Anna Lukyanova
Faculty selfie: (l-r) Professors Nicholas Paul, Christopher Dietrich, Sal Acosta, and Silvana Patriarca
Comments Off on Congratulations to our 2016 graduates (a photo gallery)!
Filed under Alumni News, Department Events, Events, Grad Student News
One of the greatest advantages to working as a historian in New York City is the vast archive that is the city itself: the people, the architecture, the social and cultural footprints that they leave behind. We recently reached out to Fordham History MA student Scott Brevda to learn about his oral history project concerning the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. This is what he told us:
As part of my graduate work with the Fordham University History Department, I developed the Jackson Heights Oral History Project. As a third generation and lifelong resident of Jackson Heights, I had spent my life immersed in the residents’ stories of this area its history, and the history of its preservation. I set out on this project to memorialize, in their words, their stories and the history of this neighborhood.
The project had two primary focuses. The first centered on the historic character and associated preservation of Jackson Heights. Mainly built between the Two World Wars, the planned community of Jackson Heights had been constructed as a city within a city intended for those commuting to work in Manhattan. Designed and built under the tenets of the Garden Movement, Jackson Heights’s commercial and residential buildings where structured to emphasize light, air, and space – things often lacking in a city. The sunrooms, terraces, and interior & exterior gardens found in the historic residential area were included providing its residents a place to escape the sounds and smells of the city. Containing some of the first and most preserved examples of garden apartments in the United States, Jackson Heights– at the behest of its residents – was granted the status of Historic District by the City of New York in 1993. This status creates common standards for residential and commercial structures and prevents developments or alterations which deviate from those criteria.
The interviewees are comprised, generally, of two different groups: the first being community leaders known to be involved in preservation; the second, an eclectic mix of current and former neighborhood residents. What quickly became apparent, after the first few interviews, was that most residents belonging to the second group were not familiar with their neighborhood’s exceptional history. Those of the first group, like Gloria Daini and Daniel Karatzas, are those who were and are actively involved in the preservation of Jackson Heights and understood its history. However, based on the interviews, the average Jackson Heights resident does not understand the historic character of Jackson Heights in preservationist terms and concepts. Never the less, the interviewees not familiar with the aforesaid preservationist terms posses an instinctual or intuitive understanding of the area’s “character.” They denote the area as different, special, something worthy of protection even though they cannot precisely identify what that something is.
This project’s second focus was a more general one: to record the resident’s personal stories of and within Jackson Height. These detailed recollections of the neighborhood proved truly enchanting. Their vivid retrospectives and narratives from decades past quickly came to dominate the interviews. They were engaging and enthralling to the point of distraction; I found myself mesmerized more times than I would care to admit. One of the more memorable interviews was conducted jointly with Fred Anderes and Ann Agranoff, who have lived together in Jackson Heights for decades. Having raised their daughter in one of the Historic District’s garden apartment – which they still inhabit – they recounted the trouble mixing children with many of the building’s residents. This conflict reached its zenith in the use of the building’s private interior garden when the other residents would only allow children to be in the garden as long as they did not run on the grass (the garden is nearly all grass), yell, play sports, or other activities which hallmark childhood. Such disputes are as old as Jackson Heights itself; as the New York Times just recently highlighted in the article “Co-op Wars: Do You Dare Walk on the Grass?”
Another was conducted with Daniel Dromm, Councilman for the 25th District comprising Jackson Heights and surrounding neighborhoods. His first-hand insights into the politics and legal mechanisms of city government which enforces landmarks protections were insightful. Councilman Dromm was delightfully candid about the political realities of historic preservation in his district and the City at large. Furthermore, his experiences in finding both acceptance and a home in Jackson Heights and in its LGBT community underscores both the neighborhood’s exceptional diversity and the continuing debate over LGBT issues that has only become relevant in the past few decades and recently.
With over 20 interviews comprising native, non-native, and previous Jackson Heights residents, the interviews provide an intimate look at the historic preservation and individual histories of one of the most diverse and historic communities in New York. Each interview contains a different facet of life in the neighborhood from the recent arrivals to the long term residents. I am happy to announce that the Project is now viewable online. For those who are interested in listening to the interviews, they may be found at www.jacksonheightsoralhistory.org I hope, time permitting, to expand the project.
Comments Off on Listening to the History of Jackson Heights, America’s First Garden City
Filed under Uncategorized
On May 4, 2016 the Fordham University chapter of Phi Alpha Theta inducted sixteen new members: Alexander B. Simeone,Christina M. Storino, Caitlin Hufnagle, Matthew McCormack,Sarah Homer, Ahmad Awad, Mary Ryan, Ariana Bottalico, Andrew O. Kayaian, Allison Burns, Patrick Nolan, Joseph O’Brien, Amy Palen, Alison Blitz, Kyle Stelzer, and Olivia Balsamo.
This year Phi Alpha Theta sponsored, a lecture by Fordham faculty member Alex Novikoff, “Medievalism in the Modern World” and planned a panel discussion–in conjunction with the Urban Studies Department and the Dorothy Day Center– called “Robert Moses: Master Builder or Great Destroyer”, featuring Fordham faculty members Rober, Panetta, Rosemary Wakeman, Chris Rhomber, and Steven Stoll.
Congratulations to all the new inductees, and to out-going Phi Alpha Theta President, History major Priscilla Consolo, who will be attending NYU law school next year on a full scholarship!
Comments Off on 2016 Phi Alpha Theta Inductions
Filed under Uncategorized
“Created by the Department of History to identify particularly impressive history majors and offer them an intensive introduction to research and writing history papers,” the History Department’s Mannion Society invites students to join in their sophomore or junior year. By their senior year, therefore, Mannion Society members have had extensive training and supervision assisting them with their final projects. We reached out to graduating members of the Society to ask them about their projects. Here’s what they said:
James Berrigan
James Berrigan
My project explored the ramifications of the introduction of the Stinger missile by the United States government to the mujahidin during the Soviet-Afghan War. During the war, the United States ran the largest covert operation in history, supplying the mujahidin with weapons with which to fight the Soviets. I argue that the introduction of the Stinger missile was the turning point in the war, as it had a great impact militarily, psychologically, and diplomatically. The Stinger allowed the mujahidin to effectively counter Soviet aerial attacks, punctured the Soviet aura of invincibility, and, most importantly, ended American plausible deniability. The Stinger proved American involvement in the war, which could have provoked an extreme Soviet response. The Stinger missile changed the course of the war, and marked a departure from conventional Cold War tactics regarding plausible deniability.
Melanie Sheehan
Melanie Sheehan
My research seeks to understand how the AFL-CIO’s power in Congress diminished during the Nixon administration. I explore this question by examining the differences between the union’s successful lobbying campaign against the Supreme Court nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell Court in 1969 and 1970 and the organization’s failure to block the nomination of William Rehnquist in 1971. I contend that the Rehnquist proceedings reflect larger social changes that split the AFL-CIO from its allies and discredited the organization’s testimony against Rehnquist. While the AFL-CIO criticized the conservative stances of Haynsworth, Carswell, and Rehnquist on civil rights, its opposition to the Philadelphia Plan and its failure to address affiliates’ discriminatory practices undermined the AFL-CIO’s relationship with the NAACP. Further, the apparent contradiction between the organization’s avowed stances and its own pervasive discrimination opened the organization’s testimony to criticisms, which the union could not deflect without NAACP support. In addition, the law and order issue, largely absent in the Haynsworth and Carswell hearings, predominated the Rehnquist proceedings. The AFL-CIO condemned Rehnquist’s conservative stances on such civil liberties issues as wiretapping and the right to protest. However, the union’s arguments seemed to contradict the average worker’s growing concerns about crime, particularly as Nixon deliberately tied the issue with the rise of the New Left to divide the working class from the Democrats. Meanwhile, as radical antiwar elements gained influence in the Democratic Party, the AFL-CIO chose to abandon the party rather than promote compromise reforms. AFL-CIO leaders thus became more closely tied to the Nixon administration and offered their full-fledged support for the president’s decision to invade Cambodia. During the Rehnquist proceedings, then, former allies such as Americans for Democratic Action lost credibility by adopting unpopular stances regarding civil liberties issues, while the AFL-CIO’s condemnation of Rehnquist’s law and order views and his support for expanded executive power were, like its civil rights testimony, dismissed as illegitimate.
Cristina Iannarino
Cristina Iannarino
“The Golden Apple: Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s Influence on the Usage of the Tomato in Renaissance Italy,” tells the story of the Sienese herbalist and physician, Pietro Andrea Mattioli. In 1544, Mattoli published his seminal work, I discorsi. This groundbreaking herbal included the first description of the tomato in European literature. Its subsequent editions (the 1554 updated edition in particular) included the first European name for the tomato, pomi d’oro, and a detailed illustration of the plant, which reflected its increased cultivated in the Italian peninsula in the decade between the initial publication and the updated edition. Mistakenly believed to be a relation of the controversial mandrake, the tomato was generally condemned or ignored by Europeans. An extended research project for the Mannion Society, this research demonstrates the mutability of culture and the invaluableness of Mattioli’s writing; it was this audacious herbalist who, against convention, encouraged the usage of the tomato as a culinary ingredient. As a result of Mattioli’s influence, European herbalists, botanists, and physicians from John Gerard to Rembert Dodoens echoed Mattioli’s observations that would dominate herbal literature in almost every major European language for centuries. As a result, the tomato’s association with Italians overshadowed the tomato’s true colonial origins, cementing the tomato’s exalted position in the Mediterranean diet and Italian cuisine.
Comments Off on The Mannion Society: Seniors and their Final Projects
Filed under Mannion Society, Undergrad News, Undergraduate Research
The participants in the Jesuit Pedagogy Seminar will be giving 10-12 minute talks this Thursday, May 5th, in the Walsh Library Special Collections Room from 10:00 am until 2:15pm. Lunch will be served at 11:00am. At 11:15, Alisa Beer, Senior Teaching Fellow in the History Department, will be giving a talk about teaching history with physical object. Alisa is already well-respected among students and colleagues for the way she weaves material culture into her classes. Earlier this year we managed to get some video of Alisa in action, talking with students about medieval manuscripts in the Fordham University Library collection:
So if you are interested in learning about how to teach history tangibly, please come along on Thursday May 5 at 11:10 for Alisa Beer’s presentation at 11:15.*
Alisa says about her talk:
As a medievalist and a rare book librarian, I believe strongly that a physical experience of the past can create a visceral connection to the study of history that is not available through the use of a textbook alone. Allowing students to interact directly with primary source objects deepens their understanding of the tangibility of the past and engages them in a way that interaction with a textbook cannot rival. As a participant in the Jesuit Pedagogy Seminar this past semester, I was able to incorporate the Ignatian ideals we learned about into my teaching by developing a hands-on exercise on textile production in which students learned about making cloth in the middle ages by actually using spindles and a small loom.
*Alisa adds that it is perfectly OK if you want to show up only for one presentation and you need not stay for the entire day.
Comments Off on Touching the Past: Teaching History with Tactile Engagement
Filed under Events, Grad Student News, Teaching
Professor Steven Stoll
Steven Stoll became a member of the Fordham History Department in 2008. His classes and research focus on the history of capitalism and environmental history and more specifically how these two topics intersect. Stoll’s work is extremely relevant today as politicians and scientists debate climate change; activists and industry clash over fracking; California struggles through drought; and farmers raise ethical concerns about GMOs. But what is environmental history? For Stoll, environmental history is the story of how humans have changed the planet, how societies have lived well (or not so well) with the environment, and how different societies at different points in time have thought about ‘nature’. He explained that people’s ideas about the Earth and the environment have changed drastically over the last 400 years. Stoll said, “Students, and a lot of other people, look at New York City and how we live today—the kinds of houses we live in, the kinds of energies and conveniences we have—and though they know it hasn’t always been this way, they assume that all of this is normal, that things are supposed to be this way.. I try to show them that our way of life has existed for an astonishingly short period of time. To me, the most exciting use of history is to take ideas that people think are universal or derived from ‘nature’ and reveal their recent origins.”
Steven Stoll giving a lecture at Yale University entitled “The Captured Garden: Substance Under Capitalism” in 2013. The lecture is available as a video on the Yale University Website.
Professor Stoll questions the notion of progress, his views are in direct opposition to what most of his students and readers learned growing-up in Western society. Walt Disney World’s Carousel of Progress celebrates progress without any critical examination and perpetuates the idea that each new technological advancement is an inevitable improvement to society. However, Stoll argues that there is no “spirit of progress embedded in human history” driving technological change. He explains that technological progress “occurs for very specific reasons, but always because someone invents something that fulfills a social goal.” What constitutes progress depends on who benefits from technological change, he says. Stoll encourages his students and readers to step outside of their lives and experiences to critically examine the world.
He laughed good naturedly while saying, “My courses are about how everything we know comes out of the past, just like any other historian.” His course on North American environmental history is not just abstract topics (like the nature of progress) but covers people, inventions, and events like the Erie Canal, the construction of American railroads, the fate of the passenger pigeon, the Ice-Age migration of American-Indians, and the history of industrialization. He explores the interaction between capitalism and the environment in his two books The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California and Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth- Century America.
Larding the Lean Earth by Steven Stoll published in 2002
Stoll is currently working on his fifth book, which focuses geographically on the Appalachian Mountains. “At first, I didn’t really know what I wanted to say about it, honestly. It’s a big and complicated place. But I knew I wanted write about how the people who lived in the mountains lost their land, how mountain people who lived in log cabins became coal miners, not necessarily by choice, but how the industry and the state transformed their environment and forced them into wage work as the only way to make a living.” In his book on Appalachia, Stoll examines how ‘mountain people’ lived independently with their own system and means of survival and the factors led to the destruction of this way of life. He also explores aspects of mountain society itself, like population growth and environmental erosion, and also how society changed when “capital came into the mountains.” The book covers Appalachia between the Whiskey Rebellion and the Great Depression.
Long after speaking with Dr. Stoll my brain was stuck on the slice of avocado I had with my lunch. Who grew this avocado? Who owned the land it was grown on? Who, if anyone, owned the genetic code in the seeds? Who picked and packaged this fruit? What are the conditions under which they work? If it was a California avocado, how much water did it take to grow this fruit? Who has the ‘right’ to water during a shortage,? It was just an avocado, which I had eaten so many times before but now it was so much more than that.
If you’re interested in Steven Stoll’s work you can read his article “No Man’s Land” published online in the Orion Magazine, as well as his two books The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Country Side in California and Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. And, of course, be on the look-out for his upcoming monograph on Appalachia.
Comments Off on Challenging Assumptions: A Conversation with Steven Stoll
Filed under Faculty News, Faculty Profiles, O'Connell Initiative
