Publication by Graduate Student in our MA Program

Below is an article by our recent M.A. graduate Mike Stephen, published in the Idaho Statesman on September 9, 2018, based on historical work he had done about a Chinese-American community in Silver City, Idaho. Congratulations to Mike for this great public history work!
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Photos above, left to right:

1. Photo: ChineseFuneralProcession (reproduced July 2018 by permission of Lawson’s Emu-Z-Um Museum, Grandview, Idaho)  Title under photo is:  Funeral Procession of Song Lee Chinese Merchant in Front of Chinese Masonic Hall Silver City George Sampson Driver.  On back is dated late 1890s.
2. Photo: FormerSiteChineseMasonicHallSilverCityIdaho (taken by author July 2018)  Photo taken relative to attached historic photo of Song Lee’s funeral procession taken approximately late 1890s.

 

As the descendant community of Silver City in Owyhee County decided to cancel this year’s Open House (held the third weekend of September since 1991), I feel compelled to kindly ask the owners of the historic buildings to reconsider.

I have been researching the former mining town for over a year now and have focused on the quality of on-site historic interpretation since the existing buildings were placed in 1972 on the National Register of Historic Places.  Quite frankly, there is much room for improvement not only with the history of the historic buildings but with the story of the Chinese who were also there in the 19th century.  The buildings on the National Register do not lend itself to providing an oral historical narrative for the public who visit.  The main purpose for the NRHP was historic preservation.

And in most respects, this step has been successful as the homeowners fought the BLM for outright ownership of home and the land underneath.  But this hard fought battle for clear title overshadowed historic interpretation and thus the story for citizen-tourists has been significantly halted.  This significance can best be described as a loss of collective memory for the previous and most immediate generation.  If the living memory of the descendant generation is not shared appropriately then that collective memory for subsequent generations is compromised, or worse, corrupted.

Since the 1930s, when Silver City was mostly, but not completely, abandoned after the county seat was moved to Murphy, benevolent “call-outs” that bemoaned the loss of history were made.  The existing buildings on the NRHP notwithstanding, these call outs continue to be ignored.  The Statesman’s own Dick d’Easum in 1934 wrote concerning the slow loss of religion not only with the decaying church but also with the Chinese temple.  James Murphy from Portland, Maine cried out to the Statesman in July 24, 1935 to save the temple’s remaining relics.  The building itself would soon be gone after Murphy came through.  The Boise Chamber of Commerce, taking advantage of the new fledgling automobile tourism, sponsored field trips to Silver City to bring attention to saving the town’s history (Sunday Statesman, September 29, 1935).

The Statesman was not the only agent of benevolence in saving history.  Paul Tracy lived as a child in Silver City while his father ran a tin shop just across from Song Lee’s shop and the Chinese Masonic Hall on Jordan Street (BSU Archives).  Tracy would later publish a poem in 1968 that asked rather grimly, “Will no lift his voice for Song Lee” (Owyhee Verses and Prose).

As contemporary challenges are not mitigated, such as a less adversarial relationship with the visiting public and an acknowledgement in responsibility of an appropriate remembrance as well, then it is highly unlikely that Song Lee’s voice will be heard.  Not having the Open House only provides more constraints within the possibility of lifting his voice, a voice that was shared with the descendants of the homeowners.

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Publications by our Undergraduate Students!

Two of our undergraduate Senior Thesis projects recently have been published in the Colorado Springs Undergraduate Research Journal!

The articles are

1. “A Cloud of Controversy: George Washington and Smallpox Inoculation During the American Revolution” by Madison Harris, and
2. “Self-Murder She Wrote: The Asceticism of St. Catherine of Siena as Seen in Her Letters” by Sydney Schneider.

   You may find both of these papers by clicking on the links above. Congratulations to Madison and Sydney!

Dear UCCS History Students,

Welcome to the 2018-19 school year. The faculty of the History Department look forward to meeting you or, for returning students, seeing you again in classes this semester. This letter has some important information about key contacts and new opportunities available in the History Department this year. We want you to explore, inquire, and collaborate with your faculty and peers. Please communicate to us your ideas and needs. Investigate other ways of personal growth, career development, and skill building. Try something new. Join a club. Complete an internship. Come to some of our department’s sponsored events. General information about the History major, minor, and Master’s program is available on our departmental website: www.uccs.edu/history.  You can find information about our faculty on the website and some brief highlights below as well, like the honor bestowed on Dr. Carole Woodall as the campus-wide winner of the Outstanding Teaching Award.  If you have questions or would like to have a conversation about some aspect of the department, here are your key contacts:

Dr. Christina M. Jiménez, Department Chair
cjimenez@uccs.edu, office: Columbine Hall 2059, phone: 719-255-4076

Dr. Carole Woodall, Director of Undergraduate Studies
cwoodall@uccs.edu   Office: Columbine Hall 2045, phone: 719-255-3768

Dr. Roger Martinez, Director of Graduate Studies
rmartin8@uccs.edu   Office: Columbine Hall 2053, phone: 719-255-4070

Mr. Ian Smith, Program Assistant, Department of History and Humanities Program
ismith2@uccs.edu  Office:  Columbine Hall 2048, phone: 719-255-4069

Other opportunities and announcements:

• Consider enrolling in a course we have developed to better prepare you for the rigors of research and writing in upper division courses and senior thesis, titled HIST 3001: The Historian’s Craft: Introduction to the Discipline of History. Unlike other history courses that focus on specific geographical areas or chronological themes, this course introduces students to the core methods used by historians to study and write about the past. Guidance in proper citation and conventions of historical writing are also covered. Prof. Headle is offering the course this year, fall and spring semesters.
• Internship in History courses are offered at both the graduate (HIST 6995) and undergraduate (HIST 3995) levels. Please see the department website for more information: www.uccs.edu/history. Last year we placed students in public history institutions throughout the Pikes Peak region, including the archives of the U.S. Olympic Committee in downtown Colorado Springs; the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum archives; the UCCS Archives; the Western Museum of Mining and Industry; and at the Museum of World War II Aviation. We strongly encourage you to consider doing a History internship if you would like to pursue a career in organization management, public history, or other types of outreach fields. It’s a great addition to your resume as well. The internship courses work like guided independent studies. Please contact Prof. Jimenez if you are interested: cjimenez@uccs.edu.
• Be a Pilgrim! Join our Travel Class to Boston, in early June 2019, HIST 3000: Special Topics: Pilgrims, Patriots, and Poets. Journey to Massachusetts with Sr. Instructors Barbara Headle and Jan Myers on the History Department’s maiden in-country travel course.  We will venture to Boston, Plymouth, Lexington, and Concord where we walk in the footsteps of the determined, but not always so pure, Puritans; of the rabble-rousing, tea-tossing, rebel Patriots; and of the literary giants who produced works ranging from the sublime to the downright eerie. Three-credit course. Approximately one week. Tuition and travel expenses to be announced. For info email: bheadle@uccs.edu.
• Get Spooked by Graveyards? Come learn about the cool connections between cemeteries, history, and public memory. You’re invited to join the Friends of Fountain Fairview Cemetery, UCCS Alumni, and current UCCS faculty and students for the 7th Annual Historic Cemetery Tour, September 22nd from 10:00-2:00. Tickets available at the door, 757 S. Santa Fe, Fountain, Colorado: $3 students/seniors/military, $5 general admission, children 12 & younger FREE. Visit our website for more information: http://www.fffcbs.wordpress.com.
• Later this semester, please look for information about our department’s endowed Wunderli scholarships – available only to undergraduate History majors and History MA students. This scholarship fund exists thanks to the generous gift bestowed on the department by our long-time Instructor of Asian History, Judith Price (1944-2012). Last year, we gave out several scholarships to undergraduate and graduate students, totaling nearly $10,000. You could be next! We will be giving out similar amounts each school year in perpetuity thanks to the generosity of Ms. Price. We also have the Florence Murphy Scholarships each year, awarded to a History major over the age of 27 years, endowed by alum Florence Murphy many years ago. Please watch for emails and fliers about these excellent scholarship opportunities.
• Our department has a blog where we post announcements and other articles of interest about and for our students and faculty. Check it out at: https://uccshistory.wordpress.com.  You can read previous posts about the adventures and accomplishments of History Department students and faculty.
• Seniors and Juniors! This year we will run four sections of HIST 4990: Senior Thesis – 2 in the fall (taught by Prof. Headle and Prof. Wei) and 2 in the spring (taught by Prof. Sartin and Prof. Sackett). Each course covers topics specific to the faculty member’s field, but there is a large variety of potential topics within each section. It’s always good to look ahead and try to plan to do your Senior Thesis with the professor who best matches your interest. Please check out the Senior Thesis page on the History Department website – under Undergraduate and BA Requirements– for more information.  You will find the schedule for HIST 4990 at http://www.uccs.edu/history/undergraduate/general-requirements/senior-thesis.html.
• Graduate Students! If you have not heard, we have a new Graduate Studies Director, Dr. Roger Martinez. Recently returning from a 3-year research fellowship in Madrid, Spain, Dr. Martinez brings new insights, opportunities, and energy to the MA History program. A newly updated long-term schedule of courses is available on the dept website under the Graduate tab.
• Phi Alpha Theta (Tau Chi) – UCCS’s local chapter of the national History Honors Society is accepting applications for new members—both graduate and undergraduate students are eligible. The Honor Society meets once a month along with the History Club to coordinate fun and exciting evets, as well as providing scholarship and networking opportunities. Please contact Prof. Christiansen, the faculty advisor, for more information, schrist3@uccs.edu, or the club President, Timmy Vilgiate at tvilgiat@uccs.edu. Watch your email for more information on the first meeting!
• The UCCS Bookstore has changed it system for course books. To avoid confusion, BEFORE you go to the bookstore, we suggest that you take/ look up/ print out a list of the required book titles and authors for your specific course section and specific instructors. Whereas in the past books were organized by department/subject, instructor/section, this is no longer the case.  Instead, textbooks are now organized alphabetically, by author’s last name. This system requires that students know which books are assigned for a particular course and section.  To this end, we recommend you go to the Bookstore’s website, click on “students,” and search for your courses; jot down the book titles, authors’ names, and the ISBN numbers before you head into the bookstore (or, if possible, pre-order your books through the Bookstore’s website).
• Undergrads: Do you want to publish a great paper that you wrote for a class last year? If so, please consider submitting it to the UCCS Undergraduate Research Journal. This peer-reviewed online publication is always looking for high-quality research papers from our history students. You will likely be asked to make revisions to your paper, but you will have a publication for your resume! Check it out at: http://ojs.uccs.edu/index.php/urj
• Our Evening of History this semester will be Wednesday, December 11, 5-9pm in the Daniels K-12 room in the Osbourne Science and Engineering building. Please mark your calendars and join us for graduate student presentations on European and American History research papers. Undergrads, family, and friends are welcome to attend. Food and drinks served.

Learn more about the History Department faculty on our website: www.uccs.edu/history.  Here are some faculty highlights from the past year. Samantha Christiansen was honored to be invited this summer to present at Stanford University on the anniversary of the 1968 global uprisings and her new textbook, The Global Sixties, is scheduled for publication in Spring 2019 with Bloomsbury academic. Brian Duvick  recently completed an article, “Tests of Faith, Rebirth out of Corruption or Eternal World Cycle: Inklings of the End in the Late Roman Empire,” for the Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature. He is currently writing a related article on Macrobius’ Saturnalia and has organized a session panel entitled, “Remaking the Ancients: The Art and Politics of Performing the Classics” for the PAMLA conference in November. To reinforce interdisciplinary and world-wide connectivity in teaching perspectives, Bernice Forrest participated in the National Geographic Genographic Project (www.genographic.com), a collaboration of anthropologists and geneticists who trace the origins of human migration(s) from 500,000- 200,000 to the present via DNA. Paul Harvey’s lectures delivered at Stetson University last February will be published in 2019 by the University of Georgia Press as Southern Religion in Global Contexts: Three Stories. Barbara Headle has been researching the historical relationship between the U.S. Census, congressional apportionment, gerrymandering, and the impact on power and services for peripheral populations, based on race, ethnicity, and gender, as such populations have been defined and redefined since 1790.  Christina Jiménez is pleased to announce that her book Making an Urban Public: Popular Claims to the City in Mexico, 1879-1932 will be published in Spring 2019 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Roger Martinez, Sam Christiansen, and an interdisciplinary team of scholars are launching “Augmented Reflections: Experiencing the Interchange of Plains Indians and Spaniards in Southern Colorado, 1500-1850 CE.” Our endeavor reshapes interpretation, understanding, and knowledge by generating virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality worlds (AR, interactive digital projections placed over the real world).  Akin to a three act drama, our project grants the public and researchers a chance to observe, evaluate, and reflect upon the cultural transformation of southern Colorado from the 16th-19th centuries. Jan Myers is looking forward to collaborating with Barbara Headle on a student trip to Boston in early June. This will be Mrs. Myers’ seventh trip with students, but her first in the U.S.; she just recently completed her sixth trip with students to England this past June. Robert Sackett has published an article on West German responses to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1906s; and he offers a variety of courses on European History. Ro Jo Sartin presented, with two recent graduates of the History Program, two panels at this summer’s Denver Comic Con: one on using Wonder Woman to teach history, and one on mapping the hero’s journey in modern TV and film. Yang Wei has given lectures this summer at Nanjing University and Fudan University in China, and currently working on a new textbook titled “Openness and Plurality, a New Chinese History” and he appeared in a documentary movie “Artes Liberales” on education philosophies.  Carole Woodall spent three weeks in Palestine/Israel, while participating in a two-week education tour and an additional week in the West Bank. She is in the process of designing a 1000-level survey course focusing on Palestine/Israel, which will be offered in Spring 2020.

Please consider taking advantage of some of these fabulous opportunities to enrich your educational experience here. For questions about your undergraduate work, or for general advising, please speak to our Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor Carole Woodall, at cwoodall@uccs.edu. Similarly, for questions about the MA Program, please contact Professor Roger Martinez at rmartin8@uccs.edu. For general questions or concerns, my office is Columbine 2059, and my phone is 255-4076; I’m happy to meet any of you at any time.

Again, welcome to the school year and wishing you a productive semester!

Christina M. Jiménez
Professor and Chair
Department of History
719 255 4076; cjimenez@uccs.edu

UCCS History Department Award Winners, Spring 2018 Ceremony

UCCS HISTORY DEPARTMENT AWARDS CEREMONY,  Spring 2018

OUTSTANDING UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS:
Stefan Huddleston

Carl Churchill

Sydney Schneider

OUTSTANDING GRADUATE STUDENT:  Colin McAllister, MA

OUTSTANDING UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT Across ALL HUMANITIES Depts:

Stefan Huddleston

Stefan impressed his faculty and chairs across the Humanities Departments. Stefan’s strength as a candidate for the Humanities Divisional Award is his ability to and achievement bridging different disciplines: History, Film Studies, Geography, Filmmaking, and Digital Studies. He has earned a 4.0 GPA in both his History major as well as a 4.0 GPA overall.

CU DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR:

Paul Harvey, Professor and CU President’s Teaching Scholar

SPECIAL RECOGNITION FOR CAMPUS-WIDE OUTSTANDING TEACHING AWARD

Carole Woodall, Associate Professor, History Department

WUNDERLI SCHOLARSHIP AWARD WINNERS: The Department gives out annual scholarships, named in honor of Rick Wunderli, long-time Professor of Medieval History at UCCS. The scholarship comes from an endowment established by Judith Price (1944-2012), a long-time Instructor in the Department.

Awardees: Aleah Cathriean Eddy,  Stefan Scott Huddleston,  Heather Leigh Bergh,

Kellen Job Hernandez DeAlba,  Jasmine Marchman,  Allison McDonald,  Edna Elizabeth Newey, Amy Edith Roberts,  April Marie Roof,  Elizabeth May Ross, and  Baylee Helen Schopp

FLORENCE MURPHY SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS: The scholarship is possible through the generosity of one of the most distinguished graduates of UCCS. The scholarship consists of two $750 awards for the school year for non-traditional undergraduate students (25 years or older) who are History majors.

Awardees: Kateri Pecetti  and Cyrus Youngs

 

HISTORY DEPARTMENT SPECIAL SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS: This scholarship acknowledges especially deserving history students.

Awardees: Andi Walker,  Mikayla R. Fontenot,  Victoria Kathryn Coyle,  Bailey Deelynn Ford, and Shawnee Vanness

UCCS GRADUATE SCHOOL FELLOWSHIP NOMINEES:  These standout graduate students were nominated by their department faculty for the very competitive, campus-wide graduate fellowship competition.

Nominees: Albert Welsh, Barry Binder and Kyle Newkirk

Winner: Barry Binder

GRADUATING M.A. STUDENTS

Fall 2017: Alex Archuleta, Barb Ely, Kyle Clark, Colin MacDonald, Thomas Christison, Joshua Tangye

Spring 2018:  Michael Stephen, Stephanie Fields, Madelyn Husted, Kayla Crosbie, Tim Lorenzen, Elijah Wallace, and Colin McAllister

INTERNSHIPS IN HISTORY, completed at a range of organizations, including the US Olympic Committee Archives, Western Museum of Mining and Industry, UCCS Archives, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, and Fourth Infantry Division Museum, among others.

Graduate Interns: Don Unger, Kellen De Alba, Barb Ely, Stephanie Fields, Elijah Wallace, and Kayla Crosbie

Undergraduate interns: Haley Hunsaker, Scott Rayl, and Allison McDonald

FOUNTAIN FAIRVIEW CEMETERY PROJECT: We would like to recognize the work of our UCCS student volunteers, including Emily Puffet, Chuck Phillips and Haley Hunsaker.  And, UCCS Alumni Volunteers: Amber Bradish, Travis Pollock, Kim Sweetwood, and Patrick Turner.  Special Thanks to Mary Rupp, UCCS Archivist

Volunteer of the Year Award: Haley Hunsaker

CSURF PRESENTERS, the Colorado Springs Undergraduate Research Forum, held at Colorado College this weekend. All are welcome. We have a handful of History majors presenting this year.  CSURF presenters, if you are here, please stand and be recognized.

PHI ALPHA THETA, the History National Honor Society, UCCS chapter, TAU CHI, will hold a PAT awards ceremony at 6pm on April 30^. Please join us. Faculty Advisor: Professor Samantha Christiansen

Inductees: Stefan S. Huddleston, Nathaniel E. Henderson, Madison S. Harris, Allison C. McDonald, Anneliese Lydia Schaff, Stacie Allen, Baylee H. Schopp, Shannon Ritchey, Haley C Hunsaker, Rachel M. Ruiz, Michelle L. Mason,  Lauren Marie Mouten.

Six UCCS students, graduate and undergrad, also presented their research at Phi Alpha Theta’s Regional Conference in April 2018 at CSU Pueblo:

• Elijah T. Wallace – University of Colorado-Colorado Springs “Louis II’s Art of War: Use of Vegetian Strategy in his third campaign against the Emirate of Bari, 867-871”
• Barry C. Binder – University of Colorado – Colorado Springs “Labor, Capital, and Violence: Historiography of the Cripple Creek Miners’ Strikes, 1894-1904”
• Timothy Vilgiate – University of Colorado-Colorado Springs “Botany, Forestry and Colonialism in Ghana, 1920-1940”
• Michael Stephen – University of Colorado-Colorado Springs “Korean Widow Legal Suits at the Choson High Court in Seoul (1908-1939): Colonial Modernity and the new Legal Space”
• Kellen DeAlba – University of Colorado-Colorado Springs “The Immigration Struggle of the Chinese in Mexico at the turn of the Twentieth Century”
• Madison Harris – University of Colorado – Colorado Springs “A Cloud of Controversy: George Washington and Smallpox Inoculation During the American Revolution”

OUTSTANDING SENIOR THESES BY SECTION, Fall 2017 and Spring 2018

Professor Headle’s section:

• Patrick Yarusso, “Childhood Poverty in the Progressive Era: The Work of Jacob Riis”
• Anneliese Schaaf, “Waist Not, Want Not: The Great Corset Controversy, Nineteenth-Century Science, and the Death of the Corset”
• Stefan Huddleston, “Massive Verbal Persuasion: J. Don Alexander and the Alexander Film Company” 

Professor Jimenez’s Section:

• Lauren Mouton “Responses to the Big Thompson Flood”

Professor Martoccio’s Section:

• Megan Coleman, “Two Women Trapped in the World of Amour Courtois: An Analysis of Heloise and Hildgard’s Works”
• Carl Churchill, “Scoundrels, Dogs and Heathens: Christian Mercenaries in the Almohad Caliphate (1121-1269)”
• Sydney Schneider, “Self-Murder She Wrote: The Asceticism of St. Catherine of Siena as Seen in Her Letters”
  

Professor Christiansen’s Section:

• Megan Murray, “Women of the Young Lords Party of New York”
• Shannon Ritchey, “Mickey Mouse Has Grown Up a Cow: David Bowie and the Society of the Spectacle”

GRADUATE TRAVEL FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENTS: Timmy Viligiate, Don Unger, Kellen DeAlba, Alex Archuleta

TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIPS FOR AY 2017-18 YEAR
*David Walker *Madelyn Husted *Timothy Vilgiate *Alexander Archuleta *Donald Unger *Kellen DeAlba *Stephanie Fields  *Ian Smith *Alicia Williams  *Kyle Clark

TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIPS FOR AY 2018-19 YEAR

*Chris Schreck *Kurt Blose  *Stefan Huddleston  *Don Unger  *Sydney Pearson  *Kellen DeAlba      *Andi Walker 

GRADUATE STUDENT PUBLICATIONS AND CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS: 

• Elijah Wallace, “IMPERIUM ET CREDO: Frankish-Byzantine Rivalry over Leadership of the Roman-Christian Credo-State in the Ninth Century,”
• Nick Ota Wang presented “Third Gender and Unknown Sexualities” at History Camp Colorado, Red Rocks Community College, 2017.
• Timmy Vilgiate presented at Southwestern Conference of Latin American Studies in San Antonio, TX, March 2018.
• Kellen De Alba presented at Rocky Mountain Conference of Latin American Studies in Reno, NV, April 2018.
• Timmy Vilgiate also presented at Rocky Mountain Conference of Latin American Studies in Reno, NV, April 2018.

UNDERGRADUTE RESEARCH JOURNAL and Upcoming “The Springs Online Graduate History Journal” 

Special Recognition: Timmy Vilgiate, Founding Editor 

SPECIAL RECOGNITION FOR OUTSTANDING DEPARTMENTAL ASSISTANCE
Kayla Crosbie and Sydney Pearson

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL AWARD WINNERS! We are very proud your many student accomplishments.

Wunderli Scholarships, 2018

Each spring, the History Department gives out over $10,000 of scholarships. The competition for the spring scholarships is open, and your application would be due by March 1. Go here for more information and the application form:

https://www.uccs.edu/~finaid/types-of-aid/scholarships/scholarship-search.html?940501011001/

Wunderli Scholarship

Description

The Wunderli Scholarship, named after the Department’s esteemed Professor Emeritus of Medieval History, provides support for undergraduate History majors and graduate students in our M.A. program. It is funded by a generous bequest from Judith Price (1944-2012), a long-time Instructor in Asian History in the Department. We seek especially to assist students whose financial burdens may interfere with the pursuit of a degree in History, as well as students with a record of extraordinary accomplishment. Awards may vary from $1,000 to $5,000 for the academic year. Student must demonstrate financial need by completing the FAFSA no later than March 1st.

Application Requirements

The following requirements must be submitted via the UCCS Scholarship Application in the portal.

• Special Essay

Award Status

Applicants will be notified of scholarship results in April.

Application Procedures

If you think you are eligible for this scholarship and would like to apply, log in to the UCCS Scholarship Application.

Deadline

03/01/2018

Publication by UCCS MA Alumnus Torrah Giles!

Torrah Giles, MA, UCCS MA Alumna, recently published an article drawn from her research paper written for Professor Jimenez’s City and Citizenship course.

San Francisco, 1906: The Law and Citizenship in Disaster

By Torrah Giles, MA

UCLA Historical Journal, December 2017

Abstract: Using the city of San Francisco and the earthquake and fire of 1906 as a case study, this paper examines the use of violence to impose public order, while seeking to show that disaster can affect the laws of a community. In San Francisco, the belief that martial law was in effect led to a power shift. The confusion created a unique situation in which city leaders contradicted the very law they were seeking to enforce, and obliterated the rights of citizens in the name of protection and public order.

In the scholarship of the 1906 disaster, most works that consider the military involvement in disaster tend to downplay the events, which so many memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and newspaper reports described from that year. This paper uses those primary sources to show how Mayor Schmitz and the military leaders directly affected the scale of the urban disaster that followed the earthquake by essentially seizing power through the military. The mayor’s illegal declaration and actions caused confusion in the city and altered the parameters of citizenship. Secondary research in both the field of history and the field of disaster studies will allow this paper to explicate the laws of the federal, state, and city government, which will explain the extralegal and illegal activities of the leaders of San Francisco and the effect those actions had on the catastrophe.

We asked Torrah to describe the process of submitting and revising for publication. Here are her reflections:

I published my first graduate thesis on something of a whim. I had discussed the idea of publishing the paper with Dr. Jimenez and my peer reader, but had heard so often about the brutal editing process that many experience when publishing a paper that I did not feel particularly motivated to put my work out there. But, the seed was planted and I was very curious and knew that it is a vital part of the career path I have chosen. I researched journals for a while. I looked at journals that accept work from American history, more broad journals that do not specify a field or era, and journals that accept graduate student submissions only. I finally chose the UCLA Historical Journal because it is a graduate student publication and has no particular field. I went that route because I wanted a journal that would consider my article even if it didn’t fit into a certain box.

In order to submit my paper, I had to pare it down quite a bit—by about 12 pages. The original paper was much longer so removing so much of the paper was honestly the most difficult part of the whole experience. I ended up breaking the paper down into sections within sections and rewriting some parts in order to make them make sense without all the other information that I needed to cut. I had to meet some formatting requirements as well. All of this took me about four hours on a Sunday. And then I waited. And waited. I heard back from the editor after about three months, explaining that they had just completed their journal for 2015 and were slating articles for the 2017 journal if I wished to wait, otherwise I could withdraw my article. I wasn’t sure that that meant they had accepted my submission, so I asked Dr. Harvey who explained to me that my article was going to be published!

Then I waited again. I didn’t get edits back until about nine months ago. The most difficult edits I needed to do were to rework some of my interpretation of my primary sources. When I wrote the paper for class, I had not yet developed a strong voice in my writing yet. Reading back over it, I could see where I needed to believe in my own argument. About three months after the first round of edits came the second, that time it was more clean up and formatting rather than any additional writing. Then about a month before publication I received a proof, which I was asked to review, and finally the notice that the journal edition was live.

I am not sure how typical my experience was, but the process was certainly very exciting. I learned a few things from the experience. Mostly that my voice should be the strongest in the paper, that I am the expert and have permission to make a strong argument. I wished that I had kept better electronic notes. I am a hands on person, so a lot of my notes were written and stuck into library books that I had long since returned. Revisiting a source after so much time away was challenging; if I had written some of my notes into a file I could have more easily remembered where my work was headed as I reviewed that source. The greatest takeaway that I have found, though, is that being published is extremely validating. I enjoy writing so much, and knowing that others enjoy reading what I’ve put out into the world makes me feel like I’m on the right path and I am so glad I gave it a try.

Reconstruction Remembered by National Park Service

A long-overdue but much welcome movement from the National Park Service to commemorate the period of Reconstruction in American history is gathering steam. Historians Greg Downs, Kate Masur, and others are working with NPS personnel to establish sites, monuments, and places for historic preservation, to help Americans better understand this crucial but often misremembered era. Departmental lecturer Amy Haines has devoted some of her specialized scholarly work to this era as well, and has worked with Professor Downs in a previous NEH seminar in this effort.

We will link here to an article detailing these efforts, a short excerpt of which is below:

——————————————————————————————–

WASHINGTON – On the anniversary of the ratification of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to former slaves freed after the Civil War, the National Park Service today published a theme study looking at nationally significant historic properties of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. The National Historic Landmarks theme study, “The Era of Reconstruction, 1861-1900,” identifies noteworthy resources related to the Era of Reconstruction that help tell the American story.

“Discovering the lesser known stories of the Reconstruction Era and identifying places and people who impacted our collective American story is the result of two years of dedicated work by historians, field practitioners, and subject matter experts,” said Dr. Joy Beasley, National Park Service Acting Associate Director for Cultural Resources, Partnerships and Science. “This theme study continues to build upon our shared narrative as Americans; knowing who we are, where we came from, and understanding the events, activities, and places that shape us citizens today is at the heart of the National Park Service mission.”

The theme study, which is the first comprehensive theme study of its kind, enhances public understanding of this complex and contested period in our nation’s history, and provides a basis for identifying and potentially nominating Reconstruction Era related properties as National Historic Landmarks. National Historic Landmarks are nationally significant historic places designated by the Secretary of the Interior because they possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States. Currently, nearly 2,600 historic places bear this national distinction.

Continue reading here.