History Commons^™

African Immersion: American College Students In Cameroon, Julius A. Amin

History Faculty Publications

Based on previously unused primary sources including extensive interviews in Cameroon, personal journals, diaries, responses to questionnaires, and a variety of secondary sources, this study is a critical analysis of US study abroad programs in Africa. Using the University of Dayton Cameroon Immersion program as a case study, the work examines different aspects of experiential learning including selection, orientation, activities of US college students in Cameroon, post-immersion meetings, and impact of program. The nation of Cameroon and University of Dayton are uniquely ideal for the study as Cameroon is considered “Africa in miniature” and serves as a window to understanding …

In The 'Lógos' Of Love: Promise And Predicament In Catholic Intellectual Life, Una M. Cadegan, James Heft

History Faculty Publications

In the 'Lógos' of Love: Promise and Predicament in Catholic Intellectual Life, the title of the September 2013 conference cosponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California and by the University of Dayton, was inspired by a somewhat unlikely pair: Walker Percy and Pope Benedict XVI. The lógos of love, according to Benedict in his 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, is where “[t]ruth opens and unites our minds ... the Christian proclamation and testimony of caritas”—that Latin word inadequately translated into English as “charity” but which refers to the fullness of love made possible …

Partition, Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

The Partition of India in 1947 is one of the most significant events in South Asian history. It refers to the political division of the Indian subcontinent that marked the end of British colonial rule in the region. There were three partitions in 1947—of British India and of the provinces of Bengal and Punjab—that created the new nation-states of India and a spatially fragmented West and East Pakistan. While the end of the Second World War, political outcomes of the provincial elections in 1946 and contingency were factors, long-term organizing efforts of communal organizations, both Hindu and Muslim, were also …

Review: 'States Of Obligation: Taxes And Citizenship In The Russian Empire And Early Soviet Republic', David W. Darrow

History Faculty Publications

Many have portrayed death and taxes as life’s only certainties. Yanni Kotsonis’ book masterfully disrupts many of our certainties about Russian history by examining taxation as a nexus of key categories (state, economy, and people), and the role taxation played in the mutually constitutive processes whereby the modern state, the modern economy, and the modern population came into existence. In Russia, perhaps even more than in other states, ‘new kinds of taxes helped define [create] these categories, introduced a fundamental duality to each of them, and put each in tension with the others’ (8). The modern imperial state thrived on …

Review : 'Rural Unrest During The First Russian Revolution: Kursk Province', David W. Darrow

History Faculty Publications

The provincial, particularly the rural and agrarian, aspects of Russian history have received renewed attention of late. In many ways, the book under review fits well with two other recent publications by Catherine Evtuhov and Tracy Dennison (Tracy Dennison, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom [Cambridge, 2011]; Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Province: Economy, Society and Civilization in Nizhnii Novgorod [Pittsburgh, 2011]), contributing greatly to our understanding of provincial life and peasant economy in imperial Russia. Miller’s thorough study puts Kursk province under a microscope in search of an explanation of the socio-economic causal factors that contributed to violent peasant …

Review: 'The Material Life Of Roman Slaves', Dorian Borbonus

History Faculty Publications

The Material Life of Roman Slaves complements and enriches a growing body of scholarship on the physical conditions and material remains of Roman slavery, but it also represents a logical continuation of the research agenda of both authors. It is clearly informed by Joshel’s book about occupational titles in funerary inscriptions (Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions [1992]) and Petersen’s study on the visual culture of freedmen and its perception (The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History [2006]).

Their collaboration on the present book represents a model of scholarly teamwork that …

How The Goodman Read His Bible, Bobbi Sutherland

History Faculty Publications

Though best known for its “cookbook” portion, the Menagier de Paris contains a wide miscellany of information. Written by a man for his fifteen-year-old wife, it teaches her to be a good wife in every sense of the word. It includes a treatise on the seven deadly sins and stories of good and bad women, many of which are drawn from the Bible. Recent scholarship has shown that contrary to long-standing assumptions, the Bible was widely known and read by the laity of the Middle Ages, especially in France and the Low Countries. The Menagier provides further support for these …

Home Front: Daily Life In The Civil War North (Book Review), Mary Niall Mitchell

History Faculty Publications

The article reviews the book "Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North," by Daniel Greene, Scott Manning Stevens, Diane Dillon, Peter John Brownlee, and Sarah Burns.

David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, And Judaism In The Middle Ages And Today (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2014), Erica Buchberger

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Growth Of Gothic Identity In Visigothic Spain: The Evidence Of Textual Sources, Erica Buchberger

History Faculty Publications

In recent years, scholars have made significant progress in understanding the transition from a Roman world to a medieval world in Spain. New archaeological excavations have added to our knowledge of the early medieval landscape, and increasingly analytical discussions of the labels used to describe people and objects have brought new depth to both historical and archaeological studies. In place of black and white visions of Goth vs. Roman and continuity vs. discontinuity, it has become more common to see Visigothic Spain as a complex mix of elements on their own terms. What it was like be a Roman in …

"Future City In The Heroic Past: Rome, Romans, And Roman Landscapes In Aeneid 6–8", Eric Kondratieff

History Faculty Publications

From the Intro: “Arms and the Man I sing…” So Vergil begins his epic tale of Aeneas, who overcomes tremendous obstacles to find and establish a new home for his wandering band of Trojan refugees. Were it metrically possible, Vergil could have begun with “Cities and the Man I sing,” for Aeneas’ quest for a new home involves encounters with cities of all types: ancient and new, great and small, real and unreal. These include Dido’s Carthaginian boomtown (1.419–494), Helenus’ humble neo-Troy (3.349–353) and Latinus’ lofty citadel (7.149–192). Of course, central to his quest is the destiny of Rome, whose …

Men And Masculinities In Contemporary China (Book Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review: 'More Desired Than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots Of Christian Zionism', William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

The degree of American “affinity with the State of Israel,” to use Robert O. Smith’s language in his enlightening book, is simply remarkable. As Smith documents, polling results over the last few decades make abundantly clear that American Christians — led by white evangelicals — consistently and overwhelmingly side with Israelis and against Palestinians. Regarding U.S. policies in the Middle East, while polls show that a majority of people throughout the rest of the world — including, as revealed in a 2003 poll, Israelis themselves — believe that American foreign policy is unfairly tilted toward Israel, Americans maintain that U.S. …

Heroes Of Berlin Wall Struggle, William D. Bowman

History Faculty Publications

When the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, on Nov. 9, 1989, symbolically signaling the end of the Cold War, it was no surprise that many credited President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for bringing it down.

But the true heroes behind the fall of the Berlin Wall are those Eastern Europeans whose protests and political pressure started chipping away at the wall years before. East German citizens from a variety of political backgrounds and occupations risked their freedom in protests against communist policies and one-party rule in what they called the "peaceful revolution." [excerpt]

Is Russia A Block Of Ice Floating Back Into The 16th Century, Marko Dumančić

History Faculty Publications

Editorial published in The Moscow Times and The Huffington Post

Put Your Feet On The Ground Of History, Julie Mujic

History Faculty Publications

History majors at Sacred Heart University personified the quest for active and engaged learning with their eagerness to “put their feet on the ground of history.”

The Everyday As Involved In War, Tammy M. Proctor

History Faculty Publications

This essay examines how the "everyday" functions in war, not only for those on the home fronts, but for those in combat roles and for those living between the lines. Five important qualities, among others, shape the everyday in World War I: Waiting, Staying Connected, Food and Shelter, Managing Fear, and Camaraderie. Each of these themes plays out at the homes of those left behind, in the camps of civilian and military prisoners, in occupied zones, and at the fronts.

Myth-Making And Myth-Breaking In The Historiography On John Dickinson, Jane E. Calvert

History Faculty Publications

John Dickinson cannot be understood by focusing narrowly on his actions at the time of independence. Neither can his thought be deduced from the few of his writings that have been reprinted in modern editions. But this fascinating, complex, and unique figure left an extensive written record.

Empire's Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, And The Decline Of The British World, 1869-1967 (Book Review), Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

Empire’s Children is far from the now well-worn tale of imperial decline. It locates the shifting fortunes of the child emigration movement at the heart of the reconfiguration of identities, political economies, and nationalisms in Britain, Canada, Australia, and Rhodesia. Though Britons eventually had to face the diminishing importance of Britishness as either a cultural or racial ideal in the eyes of even their settler colonies, on the whole the story of the child emigration movement’s shifting fortunes testifies to the malleability and resilience of Britishness.

New Uses Of Family History In China: Economic Development And Political Unification, Cecilia Chien

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Harness Maker’S Dream: Nathan Kallison And The Rise Of South Texas By Nick Kotz (Review), Anthony K. Knopp

History Faculty Publications

In an era when the relevance of the American Dream is in question, journalist Nick Kotz brings to life a classic example of the phenomenon from his own family. Appropriately, the origin of the Kallison family dream began with the patriarch, Nathan, in a shtetl in Imperial Russia. Jews were barely tolerated in Russia, and in the 1880s pogroms and Cossack raids made life tenuous. In 1890 seventeen year old Nathan emigrated, eventually joining an elder brother in Chicago. Here Nathan was able to utilize a skill he had developed in Russia—harness-making. He opened a harness shop in 1894, married …

'Fors Clavigera', The Young Women Of Whitelands College, And The Temptations Of Social History, Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

On the first of May each year from the 1880s onward the young women at Whitelands teacher training college in London celebrated by throwing to the wind the timetable that normally dictated how their every moment would be spent. Instead, they adorned the college in flowers, donned in white dresses, and spent the day dancing, singing, and reading poetry. The tradition of May Day helped to poke a hole in the rather dour institutional regimen of Whitelands, which opened the way for many smaller, everyday acts that gradually reworked the ethos of the college.

Review: 'One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth And Decline Of The Ku Klux Klan In The 1920s', William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

It is remarkable that, given the significance of the Klan, a good general history of it has not been written—until now. In One Hundred Percent American, the Loyola University Maryland professor Thomas R. Pegram draws upon his primary research as well as the plethora of books, articles, and dissertations that have been written on local and state organizations in the past few decades to provide a nicely readable account of the Klan’s rise and fall in the 1920s.

(Given the author’s assiduous research, it is unfortunate this book lacks a bibliography.)

In the process of telling the Klan’s story, Pegram …

The Snail Darter And The Dam: How Pork-Barrel Politics Endangered A Little Fish And Killed A River, Drew A. Swanson

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Contours Of A Very Special Border, Irving W. Levinson

History Faculty Publications

Perhaps the best place to begin is with two brief conversations that took place after one of my classes. In the first, a student told me that his family recently sold a part of their portion. Here in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and México, the term “portion” refers to a grant of land of at least 4,428 acres given to the Spanish settlers who first came to this Valley during the 1750s and 1760s. 1 So this student, barely into his twenties, formed part of a link extending back for more than a quarter of millennium and which …

French And Indian Cruelty? The Fate Of The Oswego Prisoners Of War, 1756-1758, Timothy J. Shannon

History Faculty Publications

This article examines what happened to approximately 1,200 prisoners of war taken by the French and their Indian allies at the British post Fort Oswego in August 1756. Their experiences illuminated the contrast between traditional methods of warfare in colonial America and the new rules of war being introduced by European armies fighting in the French and Indian War. Although European armies claimed to treat POWs more humanely than Native Americans, their supposedly civilized rules of warfare actually increased the suffering of the Oswego prisoners.

Review Of Eby, Clare Virginia, Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform In The Progressive Era, Brent Ruswick

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review: 'Harold Frederic’S Social Drama And The Crisis Of 1890s Evangelical Protestant Culture', William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) is a terrific novel. The title character is a young, naïve, poorly educated Methodist minister who — when the narrative begins — has been appointed to take the pastorate of a small-town church in upstate New York. It is within only a matter of weeks after moving to Octavius with his wife, Alice, that Theron makes the acquaintance of exotic and compelling individuals who challenge his heretofore unexamined evangelical faith. Abandoning his Methodism with impunity, Ware is soon hurtling toward his “damnation.”

Damned but not dead: At the end of the novel, …

Mexican Cuisine - From The Maya To Mcdonalds, Irving W. Levinson

History Faculty Publications

The food a people place on their tables tells us much about their history and their culture. In México, we have two very different traditions of cooking that came together gradually during the past hundred or so years. The traditions were those of the Spaniards on the one hand and of the Indians and mestizos who comprised the majority of Mexicans during the colonial era.

Cohen: Reconstructing The Campus: Higher Education And The American Civil War (Book Review), Julie Mujic

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Julie Mujic.

Cohen, Michael David. Reconstructing the Campus: Higher Education and the American Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780813933177