The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project 2008 field season is now underway. Follow the developments in the excavation and survey of this Late Roman town near Larnaka, Cyprus. Dr. Pettegrew and several history students will be contributing to staff and student blogs.
Joseph Huffman to return to History Department
After six years as the founding dean of the School of Humanities, Joseph Huffman will be returning to the History Department in the 2008-2009 academic year. After a brief sabbatical rest (Fall 2008), Joseph will rejoin the department and teach Latin and classes in Medieval history. Welcome back Joseph!
John Fea's Way of Improvement Leads Home has been published
Professor Fea discusses the life of Philip Vickers Fithian at a book signing on April 19.
Dr. John Fea's book, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, has now been published by University of Pennsylvania Press (2008).
The book explores the life of Philip Vickers Fithian, the late 18th century agriculturalist, diarist, and Revolutionary War chaplain. Fea examines the place of Fithian within a transatlantic intellectual community that was created by the exchange of letters, oriented toward the Englightenment values of self-improvement, and often at conflict with Fithian's love for homeland.
History Professors John Fea and David Pettegrew have now begun blogging careers! Dr. Pettegrew is contributing to a staff blog related to current archaeological work in Cyprus.
Dr. Fea is a regular contributing editor to the group blog, Religion and American History which provides a medium for the exchange of ideas about religion in American history and American religious history. The blog received the Cliopatra Award for the "Best New History Blog" of 2007.
Faculty Highlights
John Fea
John's book, The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers and the Enlightenment in America, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
John's
article, "Presbyterians in Love," has been published in the January 2008 issue of *Common-Place*
John presented a lecture entitled "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation" at the David Library of the American Revolution, Washington Crossing, PA, April 2007.
John's edited collection, Confessing History: Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation (with Jay Green and Eric Miller) will be published in 2008 by University of Notre Dame Press.
John has recently published book reviews in The William and Mary Quarterly, The Journal of the Early Republic, and H-Net Reviews.
Joseph Huffman
Joseph will be returning to the history department in January 2009.
Joseph published "Freud's Impact on American Culture," in Encyclopedia of Jewish Popular Culture, ed. Jack Fischel (Greenwood Publishing, in process)
Joseph published
"Travel and Mobility" and "Cologne," in The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages ed. Robert E. Bjork, Oxford 2008: Oxford University Press.
Joseph published "Die sozialen Aspekte der Außenpolitik: Diplomatische Beziehungen zwischen englischen und deutschen Herrschern im 12. Jahrhundert," in Der Weg in eine weitere Welt: Kommunikation und "politisches Handeln" im 12. Jahrhundert ed. Hanna Vollrath,
Münster 2008: LIT Verlag.
Joseph has recently published book reviews in Choice and
Francia: Studies in Western European History.
Jim gave a presentation on the history of the American West to a group of international faculty as part of the State Department's Summer Institute for University Teachers in 2007.
Jim led a two-day seminar for local history teachers on how to teach themes in recent U.S. history in 2007.
Jim was asked by the Western Historical Quarterly and the University of Illinois Press to evaluate manuscripts during 2007.
Jim will have an article entitled "Indian Work and Indian Neighborhoods: Adjusting to Life in a Midwestern Metropolis during the 1950s," in A People In-Between: Native Americans in the Midwest, to be published by the University of Illinois Press (2008).
Jim has recently published reviews in Ethnohistory, The Journal of American History, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and American Studies.
Bernardo Michael
Bernardo will be on sabbatical in the 2008-2009 school year.
Since Fall 2006, Bernardo has been the Director of the Center for Public Humanities at Messiah College, and has held a Scholar Chair (2007-2009) which has allowed him to prepare for publication a manuscript on social histories of cartography.
Bernardo published “Making Territory Visible: The Revenue Surveys of Colonial South Asia,” in Imago Mundi: Journal for the International History of Cartography, Volume 59, no. 1 (2007), pp. 78-95.
Bernardo presented “Nepali History as World History,” at the 19th Social Science Baha Lecture, Social Science Baha, Kathmandu, Nepal, June 2007.
Bernardo led a cross-cultural trip to Nepal in May of 2007.
Bernardo presented "Cultures of Governance and the Production of Space Along the Anglo-Gorka Frontier, 1780-1814" as part of a panel on "Historical Geographies and Embodied Practice," at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, San Francisco, April 2007.
Bernardo published "Tarai: Mughalko Bagh va Gorkhako [in Nepali]," in Basant Thapa & Mohan Mainali, eds., Madesh: Samsya ra Sambhavana, Social Science Baha: Kathmandu 2006, pp. 8-27.
David Pettegrew
David gave a lecture, “Corinthian Suburbia: Patterning Settlement at the Crossroads of Roman Greece,” for the Mediterranean Archaeology Lectures Series at the University of Pennsylvania, April 2008.
David published (with W. Caraher, R.S. Moore, and J.S. Noller) “The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project: Second Preliminary Report (2005-2006 Seasons),” in Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, 2007.
David published "The Busy Countryside of Late Roman Corinth: Interpreting Ceramic Data Produced by Regional Archaeological Surveys," in Hesperia 76.4 (2007), pp. 743-784.
David presented "Surveying the Isthmus: Patterns of Settlement in the Roman-Late Roman Corinthia," at the Conference 'Half a Century at the Isthmus,' American School of Classical Studies, Athens, Greece, June 2007.
Anne Marie Stoner-Eby
Anne Marie published "African Clergy, Bishop Lucas, and the Christianizing of Local Initiation Rites:
Revisiting ‘The Masasi Case’," in Journal of Religion in Africa, June 2008.
Norman J. Wilson
In 2005,
the 2nd edition of Norm's book History in Crisis? Recent Directions in Historiography was published by Prentice Hall.
In April 2005, Norm presented a paper entitled "Bürgerschaft and Bürgerrecht in the Free Imperial City of Regensburg" at the Frühe Neuzeit Interdisziplinär (The Conference Group for Early Modern German Studies) Fourth International Interdisciplinary Conference on Orthodoxies and Diversities in Early Modern German-Speaking Europe. Durham, NC: Duke University.
Student News
Congratulations to:
Lucy Barnhouse and Mary Lee Shade, the recipients of the Clio Award for the 2008 year.
Lucy Barnhouse, who was admitted into doctoral programs at Fordham University, Oxford University, and the Ohio State University. Lucy will be attending Fordham University where she will pursue a PhD in Medieval History and enjoy the benefits of a Loyola Fellowship (full tuition, stipend, health benefits). Lucy was one of seven graduate students across the entire university to receive this highest of institutional graduate fellowships, which carries through the entirety of doctoral studies.
Marty Zimmerman, who has received a significant scholarship to support his involvement in the Gettysburg Semester in the fall 2008.
Mary Lee Shade, Dillon Keeks, Jennifer Howell, and Daniel Richards, who presented talks in February 2008, at The School of Humanities Symposium ( "Eyes Wide Open: Engaging Technology with our Humanity") on the topics of archaeology, technology, and public history.
The nine students who were inducted into Alpha-Kappa Sigma on March 29, 2007, the Messiah College Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta. They were: Michelle Bomboy (Towanda, PA), Dillon Keeks (Staten Island, NY), Kelly McElligott (Vienna, VA), Jennifer O'Connor (Harleysville, PA), Daniel Richards (West Chester, OH), Matthew Smith (Camp Hill, PA), Bethany Stine (Carrolton, OH), Brian Swayne (Basking Ridge NJ), Chad Watkins (Windsor, CT). Congratulations!
Mary Lee Shade and Chad Watkins both presented papers (2007) at "God, Socrates, and Stuff," an undergraduate conference at St. Francis University in western Pennsylvania. Mary Lee presented a paper on colonial New England schoolmaster Ezekiel Cheever and Chad offered a paper on 18th century evangelical revivalist Gilbert Tennent.
