Dear Alumni and Friends,
Greetings from Chapel Hill and from the UNC History Department! Though UNC made a quick pivot to all-online operations this fall, we continue to pursue our linked missions of scholarship, teaching, and public outreach. Indeed, as our communities large and small face devastating challenges, it is more important than ever to understand the histories that have brought us to our present and to hone the ability to gather, evaluate, and interpret evidence. It is therefore gratifying to share the Fall issue of The Department Historian, which details some of the efforts our faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates have been making in these extraordinary times. I heartily thank our faculty editor, Dr. Eren Tasar, as well as graduate student writers Fred Cochran and Luke Jeske, for this important work of public communication.
This issue of the departmental newsletter chronicles recent events and accomplishments of the History Department, including the major effort of transforming all of our courses to a remote format and the challenges of pursing scholarship in COVID times. We welcomed a new faculty member, the Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of global human rights history, Dr. Dirk Moses, who arrived this fall from Sydney, Australia. We mourned the passing of Dr. Beverly Washington Jones, the first African American woman to earn a PhD in our department. As you will read in a future newsletter edition, our department also participated with the other inhabitants of our campus building in an initiative to urge the administration to replace the name Hamilton Hall with a new name, Pauli Murray Hall. For more on this effort as well as additional news of the History Department, please do keep an eye on our website, https://history.unc.edu/.
As we continue to maintain our mission through unprecedented challenges—from health and safety to the financial exigencies that affect public institutions like ours—we depend more than ever on the generous backing of our friends and alumni. Private contributions enable us to fund research opportunities for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty; participate in and coordinate national and international conferences; and maintain our commitment to engaging the general public. Thank you for your continued interest and support.
I hope you will consider making a gift today and help us continue our tradition of excellence that is History at UNC.
With appreciation,
