This fall, faculty in the History department began the process of reviewing, preparing, and submitting key courses for approval as part of the new IDEAs curriculum.
While the professors carried out this crucial administrative task, our undergraduate majors were thankfully doing their own important work of research. Drawing upon various resources, including departmental Cazel funds and the Abbey funds provided to the department by the Abbey Fellows Program, History was pleased to offer financial support to students including Claude Wilson, for his senior honors thesis “Labor Organizing in 1980s: Gastonia at the Firestone Fibers and Textiles Mill” (adviser, Ben Waterhouse); to Linda Cheng for her senior thesis, “Imperial Posturing and ‘Yellowbirds’: the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests” (Michelle King); and to Joseph Loughran, for his thesis examining the relationship between race, economics, and sports in the city of Atlanta between 1966-2016 (Matt Andrews).
The department also gave Boyatt awards (provided by Michael L. Boyatt) to two of our majors to defray the cost of studying abroad in the spring 2020: Whitney Sprinkle, who will be studying at IES Rome; and Baekhanna Lee, for study at UNC Florence.
Last but not least, History offered additional financial support to students attending professional conferences, including Phoebe Flaherty, who attended the “North American Conference on British Studies” in Vancouver, Canada, and to Alexa Augone, who will attend the 2020 Phi Alpha Theta Biennial Convention in San Antonio, TX, to present her paper “Hell Hath No Fury: Antebellum Plantation Mistresses’ Treatment of Bondswomen Sexually Abused by their Husbands.”
As always, the department remains immensely proud of our majors and their accomplishments. The students, though, weren’t having all the fun. In November, Michelle King became the first History professor to participate in a new lecture series during University Research Week that allows faculty to share their current research projects with undergraduate students. Professor King spoke on her new book, Chop-Fry-Learn: How Fu Pei-mei Reinvented Chinese Cooking for the Television Generation.