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2017-2018 History Department Highlights
The 2017-2018 has been a busy and exciting year for History Department faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates both inside and outside of the classroom! From conducting research and publishing papers or books to presenting at conferences and working in the field, staff and students can take pride in their remarkable range of achievements.
We congratulate all students and faculty for their amazing work this year and extend special felicitations to those graduate students and undergraduate seniors moving on to the next phase in their journey! Additionally, we commend the numerous History Department members who presented at and facilitated sessions for conferences across the country, including the Newberry Library Graduate Student Conference, the American Historical Association, the National Council on Public History, the American Association for State and Local History, and more. Please join us in celebrating the following achievements and awards for History Department undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty in the 2017-2018 academic year.
Undergraduate Students
This year's Paul S. Lietz Award for Outstanding Historical Scholarship, the History Department's highest honor, was awarded to graduating senior major Thomas George.
Recipients of the 2017-2018 History Department Undergraduate Essay Contest included
- Olivia Raymond, winning first prize for her paper "Casting Censor: Cinematic Responses to Lynching in the Twentieth Century," written for HIST 397 History Honors Tutorial (Fall 2017) with Professor Alice Weinreb
- Maxim Belovol, taking second prize for his work "How the Lavender Scare Made 'Gay' White," also written for HIST 397 History Honors Tutorial (Fall 2017) with Professor Alice Weinreb
- Garrett Gutierrez, third prize, for his exploration of "The Lords of Lincoln Park: The Puerto Rican Struggle in Postwar Chicago, 1950-1970," written for HIST 385 Chicago in America (Fall 2017) with Professor Timothy Gilfoyle
Garrett Gutierrez was also this year's winner of the Susan Ramonat Award for Scholarly Excellence for his paper "Mission Memory: Analyzing the Public Memory of Mission San Juan Capistrano." This fall, he has accepted a spot in the History PhD program at NYU.
Graduating senior and 2017 Ramonat Scholar Amanda Malmstrom has been awarded the prestigious Cole fellowship, a one-year, residential fellowship at the Thomas Cole National Historic site.
Fellow 2017 Ramonat Scholar Matthew Petersen has been accepted into the Meddeas program to teach English as a second language in Spain after graduation.
This year's Weekend of Excellence featured lots of participants from the History Department! The event profiled History Major Matthew Henderson and History minor Jessica Talwar was awarded second place in the Loyola University Libraries Undergraduate Research Paper Award. History major Robert Baurley was also a Loyola Experience Engagement Key Recipient.
In April, Phi Alpha Theta inducted a new class of incoming officers, including:
- Norman Frazier, President
- Matthew Lewis, Vice President
- Amela Kalezic, Secretary
- Meghan Olson, Treasurer
History major and graduating senior Hunter Hayes was accepted into the University of Iowa medical school. Of his time with the Loyola History Department, Hunter says: "Studying history at Loyola has challenged me to become better at researching, composing, and analyzing complex arguments about various cultural groups and events throughout time. I plan on using my education in the humanities to better understand and subsequently serve diverse communities as a physician.”
Graduate Students
PhD student Janette (Jenny) Clay was the recipient of the 2018 McCluggage Award for her research paper "Peace Bodies: Women at the Seneca Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice," written for HIST 561 Women's and Gender History (Fall 2017) under the direction of Professor Alice Weinreb. The McCluggage Award recognizes the best research paper by a graduate student in each calendar year.
PhD candidate Hope Shannon co-edited the Winter 2018 edition of AASLH's History News and was a recipient of the NCPH Graduate Student Travel Award. She has also been awarded a Career Diversity Fellowship to assist the department in creating and implementing professional development initiatives to prepare students for success in multiple career paths inside and beyond the academy.
PhD student Ina Cox has been named the inaugural Home Grown Curatorial Fellow for the DuSable Museum for African American History! Funded by the Ford and Walton Family Foundations, the fellowship is designed to diversify the leadership of museums. She'll be partnering with a fellow at the National Museum of Mexican American Art to create a series of workshops for young people in addition to working with DuSable collections.
Michael Lamble (former MA in Medieval History) has accepted a scholarship at the Museology Graduate Program, University of Washington, Seattle.
Graduate Amelia Serafine has accepted the job at San Antonio College. She has an appointment as a tenure track professor starting this Fall 2018.
Public History masters student Becky Ramsey has been named the new Collections Manager at Kenilworth Historical Society, where she previously worked as a Collections Intern and Collections Assistant.
Nathan Jeremie-Brink (who recently defended his dissertation!) is the recipient of the 2017-2018 Louisville Institute Fellowship.
Graduate students Ina Cox, Nathan Ellstrand, Kristin Jacobsen, Stephen Petrie, and Ella Wagner received a grant from Loyola's Student Innovation Fund for their Immigration Advocacy History Project.
Public History masters student Lisa Hartman received the Loyola Research Experience for Master’s Programs Fellowship for her work on “Race: Are We So Different?” exhibition at Chicago History Museum (Spring, 2018).
The Chrysler Village History Project, a collaborative effort involving graduate students Chelsea Denault and Kelly Schmidt, as well as alumnae Maggie McCalin and Rachel Boyle, was awarded the
AASLH Award of Merit and received an honorable mention for the MHA Alice Smith Prize in Public History.
PhD candidate Ruby Oram submitted a successful application to National Register of Historic Places for Lucy Flower Technical High School.
Graduating this month, Karen Sieber has accepted a position as Curator and Director of Education and Outreach for the Galena Jo-Daviess County Historical Society and Museum.
Also graduating this spring with a masters in Public History, Stephen Petrie has accepted a position as Education Coordinator for the Fort Wayne History Center.
Faculty
Professor Alice Weinreb was selected as one of the two recipients of the 2018 Sujack Family Award for Excellence in Faculty Research. This award recognizes Dr. Weinreb's "distinctive contributions made to research during 2017." She was also awarded the
Ernst Fraenkel Prize by the Winer Library, London UK for her book Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany(Oxford University Press, 2017)
Professor Aidan Forth, as one of the four finalists for the 2018 Sujack Family Award, has been designated a Master Researcher. This designation recognizes Aidan's research contributions in 2017, including most especially the publication of his monograph Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain's Empire of Camps, 1876-1903 (California 2017).
Dr. Ben Johnson was a recipient of the Autry Public History Prize from the Western History Association for his project “Refusing to Forget.” The prize recognizes the most significant public history project for work that contributes to a broader public reflection and appreciation of the past or serves as a model of professional public history practice in the history of the North American West. Dr. Johnson was also awarded a Lloyd Lewis Fellowship at the Newberry Library and was given an honorable mention in the competition for the Presidents' Book Prize from the Society for the History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era for his recently published book Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation (Yale, 2017).
Dr. John Donoghue received the Michael J. Connell Foundation Fellowship at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, as well as the The Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.
Professors Patricia Mooney-Melvin and Kyle Roberts participated in the 2017-2018 Career Diversity for Historians Faculty Institute, hosted by the American Historical Association. They also submitted a successful application for the AHA's 2018-2020 Career Diversity Implementation Grant.
Dr. Roberts was also awarded the 2018 Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York History by the New York Academy of History for his book Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860 (Chicago, 2016) and named as a Fellow of the New York Academy of History.
Dr. Elena Valussi received a prestigious 2017-2020 Grant from the Taiwanese Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange for her work “Mapping Religious Diversity in Modern Sichuan," as well as a 2017-2018 Research Fellowship from the University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany 2017. She was also elected a Board Member for the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions.
Professor Elizabeth Tandy Shermer was named a Visiting Research, Faculty of History at Cambridge and a Visiting College Research Associate at Wolfson College, Cambridge. She also received an Academic Writing Residency from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center as well as the Italy Travel Assistance Award from the Rockefeller Foundation & the Institute of International Education.
