Top Young Historians
Edited by Bonnie K. Goodman
Ms. Goodman is the Editor / Features Editor at HNN. She has a Masters in Library and Information Studies from McGill University, and has done graduate work in history at Concordia University. Her website is historymusings.com
This page features profiles of interesting historians who are making their mark on the profession. All historians are nominated and undergo a review process before they are chosen. Each historian on this list has made outstanding contributions to the discipline in their area of research through their commitment and achievement to scholarship and teaching. They are also highly regarded outside academia for their expertise, and many are consulted by the popular media.
We are trying to represent all fields within history. We are currently looking for new nominations, and appreciate any suggestions; they can be submitted to Bonnie Goodman for consideration. Click here to send your nominations. (All nominations and suggestions will be given serious consideration.)
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Matthew Avery Sutton, 33
Basic FactsTeaching Position:
Assistant Professor of History at College of Liberal Arts, Washington State University, 2008-
Personal AnecdoteI remember as an undergraduate watching teachers ruffle through their notes in the middle of a lecture, looking totally perplexed as they hunted for the one page that was eluding them. And I remember others who would check every pocket-pants, shirt, coat, and bag-looking for that lost piece of chalk, or the one white-board marker that still had some ink left. I vowed then and there that I would never become one of them-I would never be an absent minded professor. Well, I have become one. At no time was this clearer than one day last semester. Although I did not teach that day, I had a series of meetings with students. I thought everything had gone fine-until I got home that night and discovered that my polo shirt had been on inside-out the entire day. Yep, the tag was sticking out from the back of my neck, my buttons were on the inside, and the seams ran along the outside of the shirt. I hoped that students might think that I was a trend-setter, but I know what they really thought. There is Sutton-the absent-minded professor. Unfortunately, I suspect my absent-mindedness is only going to get worse. Fight it as I may, I guess I am going to have to embrace the label. I suppose I am in good company. My research explores the intersections among religion, politics, and American culture. Despite the fact that "religion and politics" are the two things that you are not supposed to discuss at the dinner table, I can't help myself. I grew up in Southern California's evangelical subculture and I had a lot of family connections to the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel (the denomination founded by Aimee Semple McPherson). I was vaguely aware of who McPherson was, and as I began studying American religion during my undergraduate years I became increasingly curious about her role in shaping modern American evangelicalism. When I started applying to graduate schools, I needed a good dissertation topic and I realized that McPherson was a perfect vehicle through which to explore gender, mass media, popular culture, and politics in the interwar years. The result was my first book Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Harvard University Press, 2007). My current research explores the connections among evangelicals' social/political activism and their belief in the nearness of the Apocalypse-especially in the context of national crises and war. I find few things more fun than thinking about people who predict the end of the world; my only fear is that one of these days, one of them might be right! QuotesBy Matthew Avery Sutton 
During the years between the two world wars, McPherson was the most flamboyant and controversial minister in the
United States. She built an enormously successful and innovative megachurch, established a mass media empire,
and produced spellbinding theatrical sermons that rivaled Tinseltown's spectacular shows. As McPherson's power
grew, she moved beyond religion into the realm of politics, launching a national crusade to fight the teaching
of evolution in the schools, defend Prohibition, and resurrect what she believed was the United States' Christian
heritage. Convinced that the antichrist was working to destroy the nation's Protestant foundations, she and her
allies saw themselves as a besieged minority called by God to join the "old time religion" to American patriotism.....
On one level this is the story of the rise, fall and redemption of one of the most fascinating characters in American history, Aimee Semple McPherson. But it is much more than that. It is also the story of how Americans came to embrace a thoroughly modern form of evangelicalism that had its roots in McPherson's innovations and concerns, one that flourished to this day. Indeed, the tensions and controversies that characterized McPherson's world have come to define faith and politics in the twentieth-first-century United States. -- Matthew Sutton in "Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America" About Matthew Avery Sutton He's a very good teacher. He knows a lot about what he's teaching.... LOVED this professor...he is really passionate about what he teaches especially his topic of choice, Mcpherson... He's amazing. I absolutely loved his class. He made a subject that I care very little about, into something so intersting. I was always excited to got to his class.... One of the best profs in any department at OU. Funny, interesting, fair, smart, caring--not too many profs have ALL of those qualities!.... Professor Sutton is by far the most devoted teacher I have had thus far.... I loved prof. Sutton. He's a good guy who knows his stuff.... Professor Sutton is incredibly passionate about the subject he teaches!.... excellent professor. Clearly, his forte is history as he has abounding knowledge and passion for this subject area; as a history major, I enjoyed the lectures and multimedia aspects and found his method of visual and auditory stimulators to be the perfect method of teaching to all different types of people, which cannot be said for many profs!.... Professor Sutton is young and energetic. His class is very interesting. He made me enjoy history.... I enjoyed this class and this professor. History is definitely his thing and he is very passionate and enthusiastic about the subject!.... I never liked history before this class. He made learning American history fun and interesting he breaks up the class with documentaries, films, class discussion, reading, and lectures.... Yeah, he is a great teacher, He is young, fun, and very multimedia, makes the new deal exciting, I would definitely reccomend him to anyone, really aprreciates students, very down to earth. -- Anonymous Students |
awarded annually to the best book in any discipline by a first-time author. The book also served as the
basis for the Public Broadcasting Service documentary Sister Aimee, part of PBS's American Experience series.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Eugenia Y. Lean, 40
Basic Facts
Teaching Position:
Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, July 2002-present.
Area of Research:
Late imperial and modern Chinese history with a particular focus on the
history of emotions and gender, law and media, as well as consumer culture, science, and urban society,
issues of historiography and critical theory in the study of East Asia
Education:
Ph.D., Chinese History, University of California, Los Angeles, December 2001.
Major Publications:
Lean is the author of Public Passions: the Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of Popular Sympathy in
Republican China, (University of California Press, April 2007), which is a study of how a
high-profile crime of female passion helped give rise to the moral and political
authority of "public sympathy" in Republican-era China. The book was awarded the American Historical
Association's 2007 John K. Fairbank prize for an outstanding book in modern East Asian history.
She is currently working on Global Soap, Local Desires: Transnational Circuits of Science and Commerce
in Modern China, which is a study of the global circuits of science and commerce that
introduced modern soap to China.
Lean is the author of scholarly journal articles and book chapters in both English and Chinese including:
"Daode xunjie yu meiti xiaoying: Shi Jianqiao'an yu sanshi niandai Zhongguo dushi dazhong wenhua"
[Moral Exhortation and Media Sensation: the Case of Shi Jianqiao and Urban Mass Culture in 1930s China].
In Wenhua qimeng yu zhishi shengchan [Cultural Enlightenment and Knowledge Production].
Ed. Chia-ling Mei, 213-232. Taipei: Maitian Publishing, 2006;
"Shenpan zhong de ganqing yinsu: ji 1935-36 nian xiju xing de shenpan - Shi Jianqiao qi'an"
[Emotions on Trial: Courtroom Drama and Urban Spectacle in the 1935-36 Case of Shi Jianqiao]."
Zhongguo Xueshu (China Scholarship) 6.2 (2005): 206-231;
"Liu Jinggui Qingsha'an: sanshi niandai Beiping de dazhong wenhua yu meiti chaozuo" [Love with a Vengeance:
Media Sensation in Republican Era Beiping]. Beijing: Urban Culture and Historical Memory. Eds. Chen
Pingyuan and David Wang, 269-84. Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2005;
"The Making of a Public: Emotions and Media Sensation in 1930s China." Twentieth Century China 29.2
(April 2004): 39-61;
Gongde huo sichou? Yijiu sanshi niandai Zhongguo "qing" de guozu zhengzhi [Public Virtue or Private Revenge?
Female Qing and the Chinese Nation]. Public and Private: Individual and Collective Bodies in Modern Chinese
History. Eds. Huang Kewu and Chang Che-chia, 223-53. Taibei: Institute of Modern History, 2000;
"Reflections on Theory, Gender and the Psyche in the Study of Chinese History." Funü lishi yanjiu fukan
[Research on Women in Modern Chinese History] 6 (August 1998): 141-173;
"The Modern Elixir: Medicine as a Consumer Item in the Early Twentieth-Century Press."
UCLA Historical Journal 15 (1995): 65-92.
Awards:
Lean is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including among others:
2007 John K. Fairbank Book Prize (awarded by the American Historical Association) for Public Passions:
the Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of Popular Sympathy in Republican China (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, April 2007).
ACLS/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Junior Faculty, 2004-2005;
An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University,
2004-2005;
School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Mellow Fellowship in East Asian Studies,
Fall 2004 (Declined);
University of California, Berkeley's Center for Chinese Studies Post-doctoral Fellowship,
2004-2005 (Alternate);
UCLA History Department Dissertation Writing Fellowship, 2000-2001;
Paula Stone Dissertation Fellowship (Center for Study ofWomen, UCLA), 2000-2001;
Herma and Celia Wise Fellowship (UCLA), 2000-2001;
ICFOG Pre-Dissertation Fellowship (UCLA), 1999-2000;
American Council for Learned Societies-Committee on Scholarly Communication with China (ACLS-CSCC),
Dissertation Research Grant, 2/1999-12/1999;
Fulbright IIE, Dissertation Research Grant, 9/1998-2/1999;
Eugene Cota-Robles Four-year Fellowship, University of California, Office of the President,
1992-1994, 1995-1997.
Additional Info:
Formerly Assistant Professor, History Department, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
July 2001-June 2002.
Personal Anecdote
My first book, Public Passions, historicizes the political uses of emotions. It explores a 1935-36 cause célèbre, the trial of Shi Jianqiao (a woman who assassinated a warlord to avenge her father's death), to show how "public sympathy" (tongqing) for the female assassin gained unprecedented moral and political authority in early twentieth century China. The affair generated sensation and stirred passions precisely because it effectively mediated much larger social anxieties, including debate over proper gender norms, questions of legal reform versus vigilante justice, and concerns with attempts by the Nationalist (Guomindang) government to expand its authoritarian rule. In its ability to skewer politicians, cast doubt on official narratives, and enable serious exploration of social and gender issues, the sentiment-based public that arose in the case came, I argue, to exhibit qualities that much of the critical theory on political participation conventionally associates with "rational" publics.
In the course of writing this history of emotions, I found myself reflecting upon my own passions. There is no doubt that in writing Public Passions, I was informed by a range of sentiments. I had an unmistakable admiration for the "heroine" at the center of story; I was driven by a desire to recoup her "agency," as well as the agency of China itself, too often depicted in historiography as a passive agent in the face of modernization wrought by the West. My penchant for cultural history was pivotal, and to be sure, I am easily smitten by romantic, even exotic, stories and narratives that shape the lives of humans in the past. Yet, a large part of being a historian lies precisely in reining in such passions so as to engage in rigorous analysis. As historians, we are taught to establish a critical distance with our object of study by faithfully interpreting our texts and materials, by carefully considering context, and by inquiring into the conditions that shaped historical agency and events in the past. Dispassionate analysis is the goal.
Thus, by definition, my passionate commitment to unraveling and probing this event in the Chinese past had now become a methodological challenge of the present. Indeed, if you think about the relationship between passions and history writing, things become quite complicated. The tension between subjective passions and critical objectivity was implicitly at the heart of some of the thorny theoretical and methodological debates that consumed academia in the 1990s during my graduate student days. Post-structuralism levied a serious critique of objectivity and empiricism. For many historians, this critique led to a reconsideration of some of the fundamentals of our discipline, which rest on the assumption that we are able to retrieve through empirical fact the objective truth regarding the past. Many were forced to think seriously about how our subjectivity and passions come into play when writing history. Questions swirled about how best to handle the need for dispassionate analysis in historical inquiry while recognizing our subjective perspectives as historically-situated subjects.
I do not profess that the writing of a history of passions has resolved this vexing issue for me. Yet, what has been made clear to me is that passions inevitably inform the endeavor of history writing and thus, matter in writing history. Passionate curiosities, for example, can help animate stories of yesteryear. Emotional investment in one's historical topic can sustain what is a long, often grueling, process in writing and researching about that past. Thus, while unbridled passions certainly risk obfuscating the "objectivity" we historians should constantly strive to achieve, I want to take seriously something that I suggest in my book, namely, that passions are not necessarily mutually exclusive from critical inquiry, and under certain conditions, might even enable it. In other words, historians should add to their disciplinary tool kit the ability to acknowledge their passions and interests, and reflect seriously on how they shape our ways of knowing events of an earlier age. Only by doing so are we better equipped to take a step back, when necessary, and create the needed critical distance crucial for good history writing, all without sacrificing the affective element of the endeavor that often makes it all possible and indeed, worthwhile.
Quotes
By Eugenia Lean
for the making of a critical public. It was precisely the sensationalism in Shi Jianqiao's case that enabled
accounts of her affair to fly undetected under the radar of state censorship, and thus provide a forum for the
public airing of pressing social and political issues. Not subjected to the kind of control exercised over
conventional venues of "serious" journalism, serialized fiction based on the case allowed the reading public
to explore radically new gender norms during a period when calls for constraints on female morality were
increasingly strident among Nationalist ideologues. Dramas inspired by the killing were also not strictly policed.
By celebrating Shi Jianqiao as the female knight-errant antihero and a superior bearer of national justice,
theatrical productions could articulate alternative forms of public justice that lay outside the official
court system. [p. 75]. -- Eugenia Lean in "Public Passions: the Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of
Popular Sympathy in Republican China"
About Eugenia Lean
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Randall J. Stephens, 35
Basic Facts
Teaching Position:
Associate Professor, Eastern Nazarene College
Area of Research:
American Religious History, United States South, American Popular Music, Historical Theology, Cultural History, Conservative Evangelicalism
Education:
Ph.D., American History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 2003
Major Publications:
Stephens is the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the
American South, (Harvard University Press, 2008).
Stephens is working on The Anointed: American Evangelical Experts, with Karl Giberson
(under contract, Harvard University Press);
He is the editor of Recent Trends in American Religious History, part of the
Historians in Conversation Series (under contract, University of South Carolina Press), and is the
Bibliographic editor for The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History, edited by
Paul Harvey and Edward Blum (under contract, Columbia University Press).
Stephens is also working on these projects, editing A Primary Source Reader in American Religious History, and
a new manuscript I Hate Rock and Roll: Anti-Rock and American Christianity, 1955-1975.
Stephens is also the author of the following peer-reviewed articles and book chapters;
"The Holiness/Pentecostal/Charismatic Extension of the Wesleyan Tradition," in
The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley (under contract, Cambridge University Press);
Sam Jones' Own Book, 1886. With a New Introduction by Randall J. Stephens.
Southern Classics Series (forthcoming, University of South Carolina Press);
"'Ohio villains' and 'pretenders to new revelations': Wesleyan Abolitionists in North Carolina
and Virginia, 1847-1857," in Festschrift for Bertram Wyatt-Brown (forthcoming, University Press of Florida);
"'There is Magic in Print': The Holiness Pentecostal Press and the Origins of Southern
Pentecostalism," in Southern Crossroads: Perspectives on Southern Religion and Culture,
(University of Kentucky Press, 2008) and the Journal of Southern Religion 5 (2002);
"Interpreting American Pentecostal Origins: Retrospect and Prospect" in
Interpreting Denominational History: Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future
(University of Alabama Press, 2008), and
"The Convergence of Populism, Religion, and the Holiness-Pentecostal Movements: A Review of the
Historical Literature," Fides et Historia 32, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2000): 51-64.
Stephens has also authored numerous articles and interviews for The Journal of Southern Religion,
Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society, and Books & Culture, Christianity Today.
Awards:
Stephens is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including among others:
John Templeton Foundation grant for The Anointed: American Evangelical Experts, co-authored
with Karl Giberson, 2008;
The Fire Spreads nominated by Harvard University Press for the Francis Parkman Prize and the Grawemeyer
Award in Religion, 2008;
Young Scholars in American Religion Fellowship, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture,
Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis, 2007-2009, 2007;
Professional Achievement Award, Eastern Nazarene College, 2007;
Religion in American History, Cliopatria's best new blog, 2007;
One of fifteen semifinalists for the Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in American history,
Society of American Historians, 2004;
The St. George Tucker Society's M. E. Bradford Prize for best dissertation in southern studies, 2004;
Richard J. Milbauer Dissertation Prize for best dissertation in history, University of Florida, 2004;
Journal of Southern Religion's Sam Hill Award, 2003;
History Department Nominee for University-Wide Graduate Teaching Award, University of Florida, 2003;
Dissertation Fellowship, Louisville Institute for the Study of Protestantism and American Culture
(Funded by the Lilly Endowment), 2002-03;
Finalist, Newcombe Dissertation fellowship, Princeton University, 2001;
Participant in the Pew Younger Scholars Seminar on the Civil War and Reconstruction, University of Notre Dame, 2001;
Jack and Celia Proctor Award for best essay on Southern History, University of Florida, 2001;
Hanger Research Fellowship, University of Florida, 2001;
Graduate Student Travel Award, University of Florida, 2001;
Laurence C. Boylan Outstanding Masters Thesis Award, Emporia State University, 1998;
Art Student of the Year, Olivet Nazarene University, 1994-1995;
Elected to Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities, 1994.
Additional Info:
Formerly Adjunct Professor University of Florida, (Fall 2003-Summer 2004).
Stephens has designed and maintained the following websites
Eastern Nazarene College, Journal of Southern Religion, The Historical Society,
History Department, Eastern Nazarene College, The Polkinghorne Society
Open Theology and Science, British Abolitionism, Moral Progress, &
Big Questions in History, A conference jointly funded by the John Templeton Foundation
and the Historical Society, 26-28 April 2007, Crowne Plaza St. James, London,
David Brion Davis, "Slavery, Emancipation and Human Progress," a free public lecture, 26 April 2007,
Central Hall Westminster, London, and Tidal Wave Magazine.
Stephens is an editor of the
Journal of Southern Religion and an associate editor of the review of the
Historical Society, Historically Speaking.
From 2001-2004 Stephens was the editor for Tidal Wave Magazine
(a music, film, and indie-culture publication);
and from 1998-2002 he was a music writer for Skyscraper Magazine (NY), Harp Magazine (MD),
Satellite Magazine (FL), Tidal Wave Magazine (FL), and Ink19 (FL).
Since 1996 Stephens has been a member of indie rock outfit Jetenderpaul, which released three full length cds,
one e.p., and two 7" records on Velvet Blue Music (Huntington Beach, CA), Burnt Toast Vinyl
(Philadelphia, PA), and Hype City Records (Norway).
Personal Anecdote
The Past as a Foreign Country or another Planet
I grew up in Olathe, Kansas. It's a pretty typical, sprawling bedroom community outside of Kansas City. Thomas Frank summed up our county pretty well in What's the Matter with Kansas?. He called it cupcake land, where McMansions come in beige, darker beige, and gray, and where the Republican Party has a lock on the citizenry.
Olathe and its environs also have very little of what easterners, southerners, or Europeans would count as "history." No Colonial Williamsburg or ancient Boston is this. Minus the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm there's little in Olathe worth a historic marker. Sure, we had an Old Settler's Day parade, but no Jebediah Springfield, and no sense of what was "old" about it.
My English brother-in-law likes to joke with his mates who come over from the west country about this fact, which must seem so very odd to people who live a few miles from Stonehenge. "I can show you a strip mall that dates back to the early 1980s," he tells them. I do recall a Baskin Robbins on the main drag that was built in the mid-1970s.
My family did make the occasional trip to the coasts. I peered over the glass in D.C. to look at a yellowing constitution, took in the ambience of ghost towns in the West, and walked the cobblestone streets of Boston's north end. But that was like going to Universal Studios. These places seemed like sets to me. Back home in Olathe—watching television or movies—history was almost indistinguishable from science fiction or fantasy. Ewoks or cowboys, Revolutionary War soldiers or Cylons, it was all Greek to me.
Whenever I did encounter the gritty, dusty, frightening realities of the past, it drew me like a moth to a flame. One summer, while I was still a teenager, I decided to investigate an overgrown cemetery where settlers buried their dead along the Santa Fe Trail. The crumbling mid-19th century graves, victims of the elements and indifference, fascinated me. Later, in some strange adolescent macabre twist (I think I was listening to too much Love and Rockets, Smiths, and Cure), I made clay impressions of the tombstone engravings. I worked these into hand built ceramic boxes, which I gave to friends. "Our Beloved Infant Son. Died August 6, 1855." Inspiring.
In college, the South—with its ironies, conflicts, and tragedies—captivated me. In what other region has history seemed to come alive in all its grotesque and beautiful glory? Faulkner's oft-quoted line about south'rin history bears repeating: "The past is never dead," Gavin Stevens remarks in Requiem for a Nun (1951). "It's not even past." So I went full throttle into that never-forgotten, thick history by studying with Bert Wyatt-Brown, a student of C. Vann Woodward, and carrier of W. J. Cash's torch into the 21st century. I did not focus on duels, eye-gougings, suicides, nose tweaking, and the like. Yet Bert's work had a significant impact on my own.
My book, The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2008), helped me to recapture some of the foreignness and complexity of two eye-popping religious movements. I grew up in the holiness tradition. My grandpa was a fiery Wesleyan minister, who, like Robert Duvall in The Apostle, could thunder with the best of them. Yet the plush, carpeted, and extravagant mega-church of my youth was miles away from the sawdust trail and the moldy tents that shouting preachers once carted from one small town to another. Our domesticated Nazarene sanctuary was a sharp contrast to the "glory barns" and storefront tabernacles of one hundred years ago. That was a perfect problem for a historian to work with. As I made my way through the research and writing stages I wondered, How can I chart such changes over time? How do I recover and make sense of what's been lost or altered? These and other questions have stayed with me on subsequent projects.
My research took me into what Greil Marcus called the Old Weird America. White dirt farmers and small town merchants as well as black railroad porters and domestic servants came together in this new, rowdy religious movement. They brought with them their upcountry folkways, sacred harp songs, and Delta ballads. I poured over diaries, hymnals, and deteriorating newspapers that recounted wild and woolly scenes. In the holiness and pentecostal revivals of over 100 years ago initiates rolled on the floor, spoke in tongues, cast out demons, and banged away on upright pianos. That didn't set well with many a southerner.
I was most intrigued by the conflicts that enthusiasts rushed headlong into. Self-anointed street preachers squared off with their Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian cultured despisers. Pentecostals called attention to the boring meetings of the South's frozen chosen. By contrast, pentecostal services were intense and emotional. Mill owners tried to shut down loud tent revivals that carried on into the night. And, occasionally, believers thumbed their noses at the local establishment by holding integrated services. Thanks to Harvard's Widener Library and Proquest's digitized newspaper collections, I stumbled onto some real gems. When the faithful held a mixed-race service in 1912 in the West End of Atlanta, the Atlanta Constitution headlined, "'Rollers' Have No Color Line." It was scandalous: "white women mingled nightly until midnight with negroes in 'Holy Roller' meetings" and "joined the negroes in their wild demonstrations of 'religious intoxication.'" Stalwarts retaliated to these and other challenges in their own way. They proclaimed that God was on their side whenever enemies fell dead in the middle of church services or were run over by freight trains. It's enough to make even Flannery O'Connor blush.
Sometimes I think it's odd that I entered an area of history that is, in many ways, so incredibly removed from the manicured lawns and suburban calm of Olathe, KS. But like so much else in life, we're often attracted to the things that are foreign/alien to our own experience.
Quotes
By Randall J. Stephens
the Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ, and the
Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee). These groups, and
born-again Christians in general, have experienced phenomenal
growth since the 1970s. Their numbers soared as liberal
Protestantism in the South and elsewhere waned. Some observers
have even called this upsurge in religious enthusiasm the
Fourth Great Awakening. Moreover, the recent politicization
of conservative evangelicals, of whom southern pentecostals
make up a significant proportion, deserves special scrutiny.6
Believers are now more visible than ever before. Devout southern
pentecostals and those with roots in the tradition—including
former attorney general John Ashcroft, conservative religious
spokesmen Jim Bakker and John Hagee, country singers
Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash, and rock and roll innovators
Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley—are
known throughout the world.
-- Randall J. Stephens in "The Fire Spreads Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South"
About Randall Stephens
This young man is a very accomplished instructor, who has very much impressed his colleagues and administration authorities with his abilities. I believe as a result has a lower teaching load at ENC so that he can pursue his research interests. When in graduate school at Florida, he wisely turned down an opportunity to teach at the Associate level, an honor in itself, in order to speed his progress toward the dissertation’s completion. He was awarded a Lilly Foundation Fellowship which of course precluded this instructional opportunity and was a most significant honor and acknowledgment of the importance and quality of his project. At that time his student evaluations had matched and overmatched those of other TAs, with high ratings on "Enthusiasm for the Subject" (4.59), "Respect and Concern for Students" (4.71), and "Stimulation of Interest in Course" (4.71). Some of the students wrote out their assessments in this fashion, "Seems very interested in the topic, which helps. He cares about if we are learning (if the class isn't participating he'll prompt us with questions). Accepts everyone's opinion, whether he agrees" with it or not.... In fact, he evaluations ere an incredible 4.90, a positive reading that few of us in the profession reach.
There is no question that in the Southern history field and the realm of American Religious History, he is fast becoming one of the leading authorities. He easily deserves this recognition of his talents and his continuing promise. -- Berthram Wyatt Brown, Chaired Stephens' Dissertation committee at the University of Florida
Monday, June 16, 2008
Marina Rustow, 39
Basic Facts
Teaching Position:
2003-present Assistant Professor, Department of History, Emory University. Joint appointment in the Institute for
Jewish Studies; Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies; member of
the Program in Medieval Studies
Area of Research:
Medieval Near Eastern history; Jewish history; heresy and methods of exclusion; religious conversion; power,
persuasion, hegemony, and political culture among medieval Jews and Muslims; medieval documentary sources in
Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, and Hebrew, especially letters, petitions and decrees; archives, genizot, and the afterlife
of documents.
Education:
Ph.D. in History, Columbia University, 2004
Major Publications:
Rustow is the author of Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate,
(Cornell University Press, June 2008) and Scripture and Schism: Samaritan and Karaite Treasures
from the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Exhibition catalogue, with the participation of
Elka Deitsch and Sharon Lieberman Mintz (Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2000)
Rustow is currently working on the following book projects:
Patronage and Politics: Islamic Empire and the Medieval Jewish Community A study of Near Eastern empire and political culture in the tenth and eleventh centuries via documents preserved
in the Cairo Geniza and literary works composed by Fatimid and Abbasid courtiers;
Iberian Conversos in Mamluk Cairo: Religion and Heresy in the Medieval Mediterranean (with Tamer Elleithy),
The politics of conversion and heresy in late medieval Egypt and the Iberian peninsula via the story of two dozen
Spanish Jewish converts to Christianity who arrive in Cairo in 1465.
She is also working on the following edited volume, Tradition, Authority, Diaspora: Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of History and Anthropology,
with Ra'anan Boustan and Oren Kosansky. (University of Pennsylvania Press; forthcoming).
Rustow is also the author of numerous scholarly journal articles, book chapters and reviews including among others:
"Literacy, Orality, and Book Culture among Medieval Jews." Jewish Quarterly Review,
Forthcoming 2008; "Karaites Real and Imagined: Three Cases of Jewish Heresy." Past and Present 197: 35-74,
2007; "Karaites at the Rabbinical Court: A Legal Deed from Mahdiyya Dated 1073." With Benjamin Hary. Ginzei Qedem:
Geniza Research Annual 2 (2006), 9-36; "Laity vs. Leadership in Eleventh-Century Jerusalem: Karaites, Rabbanites,
and the Affair of the Ban on the Mount of Olives." In Daniel Frank and Matt Goldish, eds., Rabbinic Culture and
Its Critics: Jewish Authority and Dissent in Medieval and Early Modern Times, (Wayne State University Press, 2006)
Awards:
Rustow is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including among others:
Book subvention, Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia University (for Toward a History of
Jewish Heresy), 2007-2008;
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Rome Prize in Medieval Studies, American Academy in Rome, 2006-2007;
Short-term visiting fellowship, research group on Charity and Piety in the Middle East in Late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages, Institute for Advanced Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2006-2007;
Fellowship, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Humanities, 2005-2006;
Center SIAS Summer Institute "Hierarchy, Marginality, and Ethnicity in Muslim Societies (7th Century to Second World
War)," Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2005-2006;
Institute for Comparative and International Studies Travel Grant, Emory University, 2004-2005;
Institute for Comparative and International Studies Research Grant, Emory University 2004-2005;
Languages Across the Curriculum Grant, Emory University Language Center, Summer-Fall 2004;
Course Development Grant, Emory Center for Teaching and Curriculum, Summer 2004;
Michael R. Steinhardt Fellowship, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania
(fall semester), 2003-2004;
Maurice Amado Research Grant in Sephardic Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
2002-2003;
Hazel D. Cole Fellowship, Jewish Studies Program, University of Washington, 2002-2003;
Research Fellowship and Honorary Membership, The Manuscript Society, 2001-2002;
Summer Research Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University, 2001-2002;
Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship in Graduate Studies, 1999-2002;
President's Fellowship, Columbia University, 1999-2000;
Graduate Fellowship, Center for Israel and Jewish Studies, Columbia University, 1997-2003;
Irene C. Fromer Fellowship in Jewish Studies, Columbia University. 1996-1997;
Wexner Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies, 1994-1998.
Additional Info:
Rustow was an Instructor, Department of History, University of Washington, Seattle, Winter 2003.
She was a member, Advisory Board, The Princeton Geniza Project (Princeton, NJ), 2007; and a member, Editorial Board,
The Cambridge History of Judaism, volumes 5 and 6 (The Middle Ages), general editor Robert Chazan, 2006.
Personal Anecdote
History was my worst high school subject. By a longshot. My father and brother are probably to blame, since they subjected me to interminable Sunday afternoon games of Risk and Diplomacy. You have not suffered until you have been a nine-year-old girl attempting to conquer Irkutsk and Kamchatka.
Somehow, as my brain matured, the long view became interesting to me, not just as a subject but as a way of viewing the world. Still, my early trouble with history has had a lasting impact on the work I do. On the negative side, I studiously avoided any undergraduate history courses, thereby missing out on the outstanding lectures of some of the famous historians of the twentieth century. As a result I have no idea, really, of what it is supposed to mean to give a history lecture, and it has taken me some time not to feel that when I stand before a hall full of undergraduates I am the greatest impostor the world has ever known.
On the positive side, coming late to the field has given me a keen empathy for students in my class for whom my history course is their first. To encourage their fear to lift and stop clouding their minds, I have told some of them how I used to feel about history courses. I have told some that there are two kinds of historians: those who possess a nearly uncanny ability to memorize events and dates; and those who can't remember a thing unless they manage to attach it to a concept, to some broader notion of its importance and consequences (I belong to the second group). And I have warned still others that what students are asked to do in history courses-digest narratives and causality schemes wholesale and accept them on authority-is precisely the converse of what historians actually do when they make history, which is to begin with disparate and seemingly insignificant glimpses of a period and work outward toward a wider view while questioning everything in sight.
Being a latecomer has also meant that some of the nuts and bolts of historical inquiry remained opaque to me until I found my own use for them. For instance: what is power and how is exercised (and why should we care)? Why are states important? Early on, I found myself drawn instead to remote and arcane questions about early Jewish scholastic texts, like what it meant to compose and edit them, and who was doing the dirty work and why. One of my graduate school mentors, Richard Bulliet, is a medieval Near Eastern historian who asks very strange questions (for instance: why did wheeled transport arrive so late to the Near East? would an Iranian contemplating conversion to Islam in the ninth century have assumed, wrongly, that giving up his religion also meant giving up his customary boots for sandals?). When I heard questions like this, I thought that I might be able to pull off this history thing.
The search for the worm's eye view of historical change has continued to animate my work. I am also happiest when I am thinking in terms of paradoxes, or seeming ones. Why did the largest cache of medieval Arabic documents from government chanceries survive not in state archives but in the lumber room of a Jewish synagogue in Cairo? Why did the rabbinic academies of Baghdad succeed in exerting a hold on Jews across the Mediterranean basin beginning not with the Islamic conquest of the seventh century but with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate in the tenth? Why did the Jews of medieval Sicily continue to speak Arabic for two and a half centuries after the last Muslims were expelled from the island, becoming the sole speakers of Arabic on the island and the only people capable of translating Norman privileges into Latin? All of these questions, in the end, have to do with power and with states. But I found them interesting only once I had entered the field through a side door.
Quotes
By Marina Rustow
I began writing this book to investigate whether the use of the term sect is justified in the case of Qaraism. Did the marginalization of Qaraite ideas and practices in the writings of certain rabbinic authorities entail their marginalization in politics, administration, economy, and physical space? ... The process of writing this book has convinced me that the shape of the Jewish community in medieval Egypt and Syria cannot be understood without accounting for the Qaraite role in it, a conclusion that may be suggestive for other historical periods and religious configurations as well. The question with which I began my research, then, whether the Qaraites were a sect, has led me to the wider problem on which this work focuses: What would the history of the Jewish community look like if viewed without the presumption that Qaraites were a sociologically separate group? -- Marina Rustow in "Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate"
About Marina Rustow
Monday, May 26, 2008
Kevin Mattson, 41
Basic FactsTeaching Position:
Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History, Ohio University
Personal AnecdoteI'll admit it: I didn't always want to be a historian. In fact, I'm not sure when the idea of becoming one crossed my mind. Neither of my parents were historians or academics. I hated high school so much I thought I'd never go to college and didn't go immediately. And still to this day when college students tell me that they want to become historians, I get suspicious and uneasy (OK, part of that's because I know the realities of the job market). In fact, I started life as a "citizen," or more accurately, as a political activist, and I still think that's a part of who I am. In high school, I helped form a student organization called the Student Union to Promote Awareness (which had the clumsy acronym, SUPA). That's where I got most of my education on a variety of political issues (we organized after-school forums) and where I learned how to write (newsletters, flyers, the usual stuff an activist writes). I continued with that work after high school, forming a city-based youth organization that worked on a variety of political issues and that eventually had other chapters across the nation. Pretty soon, though, I realized that I didn't know that much about American politics or how we became the country that we did. Still, when I eventually attended college, I didn't major in history but in social and political thought with a minor in historical studies. But I was trending towards history. And when I had to decide on graduate school, I thought history was the freest and most open of the academic disciplines. For what is not history? When I finally got out of college, I was still teetering between activism and graduate studies in history. I threw in my applications and got accepted at the University of Rochester. But before packing my bags, I took a job as a community organizer. Here's where things turned really strange. The first day I worked for this organization, I was taken out for training by a young woman who seemed wired with energy. She took me into one of the worst housing projects in Brooklyn. There she proceeded to walk me through her rounds, carrying with her a clipboard and literature. At one point, she kicked in a door to the stairway of a particularly nasty building. "Gotta do that," she said to me, "because sometimes there's a drug deal going on and you don't want to be shot so you have to give warning." People wouldn't open doors for her, so she had to shout into their apartments. And when we got to the highlight of the evening - a meeting organized to discuss what needed to be done to improve the elevators in the building - I looked around a big room with only four people there, including myself and this young activist, plus two residents who weren't sure why they were there. Afterwards, she told me that she thought it would be good if an act of violence was taken against her so that she could learn the realities of what it meant to be poor and a victim. I was stunned. The weirdest part was this: This young activist had just dropped out of the same history program I had just applied to. This too: her advisor would become my advisor. I knew at that moment my mind was made up: I was going to graduate school and study to become a historian. But I was still animated by the world of activism and politics that I left behind and that I still remained engaged in. And I think that my writing still revolves around the questions I learned to ask as an activist. I'm reminded of George Orwell's classic essay on "Why I Write." He included in his list of reasons "political purpose - using the world 'political' in the widest possible sense." I think that way too, as I think all of my work centers around broad political questions about democracy, citizenship, political philosophy, and how these themes intersect with American history. QuotesBy Kevin Mattson These words rolled off the lips of a man who calls himself a "gut player." A man who when asked by the 
conservative journalist Tucker Carlson back in 1999 to name a weakness said, "Sitting down and reading a
500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something." A man who later shocked people and made headline
news by reading a book by French existentialist Albert Camus. A man who toned down his prep school roots and
campaigned as a Texas populist and who, in the words of one journalist, "has been quick about cracks about
intellectuals and criticisms of institutions like his own alma mater, Yale University." A man whose own
speechwriter called him "uncurious and as a result ill-informed." A man famous for mispronouncing words
and looking flummoxed when off-script at press conferences. This president - a man who many describe as
the most anti-intellectual president in postwar America - said he led a party of ideas.Odd? Not necessarily. The book goes on to describe why this is not so strange as it might seem - why conservative ideas are charged with a certain anti-intellectual tinge. -- Kevin Mattson in "Rebels All!: A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America" About Kevin Mattson |
(Rutgers University Press, forthcoming, 2008); Upton Sinclair and the Other American Century,
(Wiley, 2006); When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Liberalism in Post-War
America, (Routledge, 2004; reissued as 2nd edition paperback with new preface in 2006);
Engaging Youth: Combating the Apathy of Young Americans toward Politics, (Century Foundation, 2003);
Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-70,
(Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002);
Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era,
(Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
Monday, May 12, 2008
Micki McElya, 36
Basic FactsTeaching Position:
Assistant Professor of History, University of Connecticut, August 2008 - Personal AnecdoteI was a pretty awful student in college. I skipped a bunch of classes and toured through several majors, eventually declaring in History because I had taken more courses in the subject than any other and I wanted to graduate on time. In the fall of my senior year, I took the required, but dreaded, methodologies course that had a reputation for being both difficult and boring. Yet at midterm, with the jolting suddenness and impact of a body blow, I realized that I had to become a historian when we read Said's Orientalism and then the first volume of Foucault's History of Sexuality. I can recall that class and those few weeks with great clarity, for it was the moment everything— everything—changed for me. It was no longer possible to see the world in the same way, to take school and my privilege for granted, or to understand the archives, history, and history-making as anything less than deeply political. With this new understanding of power and the transformative possibilities of engaged scholarship, I was drawn not only to graduate but on to graduate school and to work on identity, political culture, and memory.
My first book began as a dissertation on the attempt by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to erect a memorial to "the faithful colored mammies of the South" in Washington, D.C., in 1923 and the furious controversy that ultimately (and thankfully) stopped it. This history is included in the book, which is a wider examination of the incredible hold the idea of the mammy has had on American culture, politics, and imaginations across the twentieth century to the present day. It explores why this particular story about slavery, the South, gender, race, and sexuality has been so durable and what this has meant for women in the U.S. and for national and local politics, what it says about historical memory and its effects, and the scope of resistance to these images within black freedom struggles. My continued interest in the way the U.S. has, or has not, reckoned with the history of slavery and its impacts upon contemporary experience and political economies threads through my current research. My next book is a study of the rhetorics of slavery and abolition in American anti-prostitution campaigns from the antebellum period to the dawn of the twenty-first century. With a focus on politics and popular culture and organized around three historical moments—antebellum reform and abolitionism, the Progressive-Era "white slavery" panic, and current activism to end global sex trafficking—I hope this book will make important contributions to the histories of feminism, prostitution, capitalism, and racial formation. A required course changed my life. As a teacher now, my primary aim is to disrupt tendencies toward passive learning, jar students' assumptions about their environments and historical knowledge, and to ignite their critical vision and sense of the moral urgency of studying U.S. history and culture. I believe the ability to historicize— meaning not only to contextualize and assess development over time, but also to recognize dominant narratives and the workings of power—is a necessary skill for leading a thoughtful and engaged life, in and out of the classroom. QuotesBy Micki McElya 
W.E.B Du Bois famously predicted in 1903 that the twentieth century would be defined by "the problem of
the color line." This book examines how that line was drawn and violently maintained through stories of
interracial affection and faithful slavery, and how it was given shape in fantasies about black women who
crossed it. It also explores the diversity of black activisms that have challenged, and at times, strategically
affirmed this version of black womanhood and history, and to what ends. The problem of the color line, with its
animating faithful slave narratives, has persisted into the twenty-first century. If we are to reckon honestly
with the history and continued legacies of slavery in the United States, we must confront the terrible depths
of desire for the black mammy and the way it still drags at struggles for real democracy and social justice.
--
Micki McElya in "Clinging to Mammy The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America "
About Micki McElya |
Prostitution, and Anti-Slavery Politics, 1820 to the Present."Thursday, April 24, 2008
Michael S. Neiberg, 38
Basic FactsTeaching Position:
Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of War and Society, the University of
Southern Mississippi, 2005-present
Personal Anecdote"Mike, any idiot can get a Ph.D." Such was the advice I got shortly after I had begun graduate school. I was visiting with a high school friend of mine whose mother had been a dean of a college of social work. She had asked me about my first reactions to entering a doctoral program. I told her that I was concerned that most of the people in my cohort seemed a good deal smarter than I was. At first I was taken aback by her response, but she soon explained what she meant. Being smart was, in her opinion, no guarantee of success in graduate school. The key, she told me, was to work hard and be creative. Of course, I didn't fully understand what she was trying to tell me any more than I understood the advice of one of my undergraduate mentors that "Professors aren't what you think they are." Nevertheless, both comments stuck in my head and wouldn't leave me alone. But as I completed course work and prepared a dissertation topic, I began to understand at least the first comment. What I needed to do was take a subject that seemed banal or prosaic and make people see its importance. Better still, I might take a subject people thought they understood and make them see it in an entirely new light. Along the way I realized another aspect of the historian's mind. We all have a time and place that interests us and draws our attention, such as Antebellum America or Third Republic France. But we also have a set of questions that we seek answers to, even if, in my case, it took me years to figure out what those questions were. I finally concluded that my core interests revolved around warfare and the impacts it has on both societies and individuals. Eventually that path has led me to an intensive study of the First World War. I think I have been drawn to the 1914-1918 period because the causes of the war have always struck me as so disproportionate to its effects. Currently, I am examining the process by which the lives of millions of Europeans were forever altered by a chain of events begun by the assassination of little-known and less-admired Austrian Archduke. I am interested less in understanding how the war began than in understanding how the war that followed was possible. This project is informed by recent trends in transnational history, an exciting and potentially fruitful method for answering the questions I am posing. For the past 15 years, I have kept the sage words of my friend's mother at heart. I am still not sure if she meant them literally or facetiously, although I have always hoped it was the latter. It has taken me a long time to figure out what those words mean, but now I think I have it. They have turned out to be the best words of wisdom I ever received. QuotesBy Michael Neiberg  military prowess and the evolution of an administrative,
economic, and social support system that drove battlefield success.
Both nations had come far from August 1914, when British General
Henry Wilson observed the meeting at which Britain’s senior
leadership had decided upon war. He described it as a “historic
meeting of men mostly entirely ignorant of their subject.”6 By
1917–1918 his description no longer fit the senior civilian and military
leaders of the Allied powers. They oversaw massive military
machines with the infrastructure to support them. Because of the
allied creation of a joint civil-military system, French Marshal
Ferdinand Foch directed representatives of the new German government
to a forest clearing near Compiègne in November 1918.
In a railway car in that clearing, the German government surrendered,
thereby ending the war that they had played such a large
role in beginning. --
Michael Neiberg in "Fighting the Great War
A Global History"
About Michael Neiberg |
(Barcelona: Libros Paidós, 2006), and was the Winner of Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, 2006;
Warfare and Society in Europe, 1898 to the Present, (London: Routledge Press, 2004);
Foch: Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War, (Dulles, Va.: Brassey's Press, 2003);
Warfare in World History, (London: Routledge Press, 2001);
Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), finalist for the Thomas J. Wilson Prize, named as an Association
of American University Presses "Book for Understanding our Times."