The UNC History Graduate Program continues to support our graduate students as they become professional historians. Recognizing that the skills they will need are much more varied than when much of the current faculty went to graduate school, we have been working to incorporate new opportunities for them. Lars Stiglich has served as Career Diversity Fellow this year, sharing information about the varied kinds of grants and fellowships and career opportunities available to historians both inside and outside the academy.
We continue to offer summer funding to graduate students seeking internships as professional historians outside the classroom. This year, Clein Summer Internship Fellows include Alexandra Odom, who will conduct much of the research for a documentary film about the history of segregation in the Chapel Hill Schools; Ian Gutgold, who will help the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis catalogue and describe photographic collections while also developing new exhibits; and Sarah Miles, whose internship with UNC Press will not only assist their efforts, but give her an inside look at publishing as she continues her own research on the history of the industry.
With the growing importance of Digital Humanities, the department has created a Digital History lab next to the graduate lounge, where our students can develop new skills to enhance their research and its presentation.
Graduate Student History Society Development Coordinators Sarah Miles and Emma Rothberg organized a spring Graduate Student Colloquium. In coordination with prospective student weekend, Mira Markham and Craig Gill presented portions of their MA research. Mira discussed the resistance network “Svetlana,” wartime partisans and anti-Communist resistance in the Bohemian Czech lands after WWII, and Craig discussed “The Black Caddie in the White Mind,” about the role of southern golf resorts as tourist fantasylands for wealthy white northerners. Dr. W. Fitzhugh Brundage offered insightful commentary. They also arranged a January “Alt-Ac Internships and Careers” which featured an array of speakers including Amy Blackburn (UNC Career Development), Dr. Max Owre (Carolina Public Humanities and UNC History), and Lucas Kelley (UNC History Graduate Student). Finally, in March, we held an event on Early Career Development for first and second year history graduate students. We had commentary from Drs. Ben Waterhouse and Karen Auerbach as well as from our own Lars Stiglich.
The annual conference that connects UNC graduate students with students from King’s College, London continues this year, organized by our own Robin Buller and Chad Bryant.
We were delighted to admit 18 new students for our incoming class. This is a remarkably diverse and international cohort, representing five countries (US, UK, Thailand, the Czech Republic, and Chile) and focusing on topics as varied as abortion under the Third Reich, political ramifications of the history of Chile’s environment, inequality and identity among American workers in the 20th century, and the history of a Czech-Polish border town in the 1930s.
I hope to update the web site news more frequently in the future, so please check often to see what your friends and colleagues have been doing. I would love to add your publications, awards, accomplishments, blog addresses, podcasts, etc., so please send them any time during the year.
For a complete listing of our terrific graduate students’ awards, please see the department’s Annual Review, coming your way this summer.
-Sarah Shields, DGS