NEWS & EVENTS

History Department Faculty Involved in Research and Professional Activities (November 2010). Members of the History Department faculty have been busy this fall! Here is a quick glimpse of what has been going on in the research lives of our professors:

On August 28, Dr. Peng Deng attended a conference in LA on Deng Peng ed., Wusheng de Qunluo [Silent Tribe] (Chongqing Press, 2009) and delivered the keynote speech titled “For the Dignity of Life.” (For images of the conference follow the link http://bbs.wybstv.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=50098&extra=page%3D7.)

On Oct. 8, Dr. Deng presented his paper titled “China Rises: Nationalist Discourse in Post-Cold War China” at the 2010 annual meeting of the Association of Third World Studies in Savannah GA.

Also, on Oct. 16, Dr. Deng presented his paper “Impact of the Cultural Revolution on the Relocation of Urban Youth to the Countryside” at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Association for China Studies at Wake Forrest University, Winston-Salem, NC.

Dr. Frederick C. Schneid submitted a book on the Napoleonic Wars book to the publisher at the beginning of November and continues to work on his book on Italian unification.

Dr. George L. Simpson, Jr., professor of History and chair of the History Department at High Point University, was one of a select group of twenty professors who recently participated in the seventh annual Summer Institute for Israel Studies, sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. The institute prepares university faculty from across the United States and the world to teach courses in Israel studies. Dr. Simpson, who teaches Middle Eastern and African history, participated in a two-week seminar-in-residence at Brandeis as well as a weeklong study tour in Israel.

Some of the top Israel scholars in the world led academic seminars at Brandeis. Among them were Dr. Yedidia Stern, Vice President for Research on the Jewish State at Israel Democracy Institute, Dr. Uri Bialer, professor of International Relations at Hebrew University and Ilan Troen, professor of Israeli History at Brandeis University. The program also included tours and briefings by a member of the Israeli Knesset, a former Supreme Court judge, a Biblical archeologist, a Palestinian non-governmental organization leader, a Bedouin human rights activist, and many others. Dr. Simpson comments that, "Although I've studied Israel and the Middle East for more than three decades, I found my experience uniquely rewarding and enriching. I cannot wait to share some of what I learned through this special opportunity with my students in the classroom."

Dr. Simpson attended the third annual conference of the Association of Scholars of the Middle East and Africa at the beginning of November in Washington, DC. He moderated a panel that focused on Africa and presented the paper, “Spanning the River Kwai: Obama’s Iran Policy.”

Also presenting a paper at the conference was Ms. Tamara Koontz, who received her MA last May. Her paper came from her thesis and was very well received.

Dr. James W. Stitt attended the Big South Fall Meetings and the Basketball Media Day in Charlotte in the middle of October, submitted a proposal for the Canadian Embassy Research Grant Program in late October, and represented the department at the Norcross Graduate School’s Open House on 9 November.

Dr. Renzo Honores presented a paper, "El precio de la justicia: Hacia una historia de los costos de la litigación en los Andes coloniales, 150-1700" [The Price of the Justice: Towards a History of the Judicial Costs in the Colonial Andes, 1550-1700"], at the "17th International Congress of the History of the Law of the Indies," in Puebla, Mexico, September 27-October 1st, 2010.

Dr. Honores also presented a paper, "Colonial Legal Polyphony: Caciques and the Construction of Legal Arguments in the Andes, 1550-1640," at MALAS (Midwest Association for Latin American Studies), St. Louis, Missouri, November 5-7, 2010.

Additionally, Dr. Honores conducted a brief presentation about his most recent studies on Latin American legal history at the Catholic University of Peru, in Lima, on October 20, 2010. And is working in a new article on Polo Ondegardo (a prominent and influential jurist in the sixteenth-century Andes) to be submitted for publication at the end of November. The presentation about the judicial costs in the Andes will be published in the proceedings of the congress.

Dr. Michael Bennett has written a chapter called “Hell Spots: The Black Flag and Confederate Atrocities in the Civil War” from his forthcoming book The American Soul in Battle: Restraints and Reprisals in the Civil War, which will be published in Michael Smith and Andrew Slay, eds. New Perspectives of the North during the Civil War Era (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012)

Dr. Bennett will also have biographies of Jim Brown, Roy Campanella, and Frank Robinson published in Great Lives from History: African Americans (Pasadena: Salem Press, 2011); and his review of Stephen Taaffe, Commanding Lincoln’s Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009) will appear in the inaugural issue of The Journal of the Civil War Era 1 (December 2010)

The United States Navy has asked Dr. Bennett to deliver a lecture on Union and Confederate sailors in the Civil War at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum’s “Life at Sea Lecture Series” (March 2011).