Congratulations to our Graduates!

Group portrait of graduating students with Dr. Allyson Poska

 

The Department of History & American Studies is delighted to congratulate our graduating majors. We were happy to toast them at our reception on May 5th. We also shared news of this year’s awards:

Almont Lindsey Award for Excellence in History: Katrina Smith
Glen R. Thomas Award for Highest GPA in American Studies: Tyler Carnohan
Joseph Carroll Vance Award for Excellence in Historical Research: Madeleine Gulbransen and Elizabeth Rybarczyk
Phi Alpha Theta Award for Highest GPA in History: Lyndsey Clark
Willie Lee Rose Award for Outstanding Service and Leadership: Delaney Dunnigan

Departmental Honors were also awarded to:
Laura Baldwin, Lyndsey Clark, Helen Dhue, Madeleine Gulbransen, Cegan Hinson (Class of ’24), Andrew Hudgins, and Elizabeth Rybarczyk

Cheers to all awardees and to all Class of ’23 graduates!

Notes and Updates – Paige Hildebrand (’19) Receives Outstanding Leader Award

A celebratory note from last spring, as we look ahead to another graduation season. History major Paige Hildebrand received the 2019 Prince Woodard Outstanding Leader Award. This award is given to a graduating senior who has made a substantial impact on campus and beyond, while exemplifying honor, leadership, and service.

A critical member of the Students Helping Honduras Executive Board, Hildebrand served as treasurer for the organization. She was noted for reorganizing all the club’s funds and also planning the For the Kids 5K event.

Hildebrand also completed her senior thesis, “The Empress Matilda: Sex, Gender, and Leadership in Twelfth Century England,” in fall 2019 with Dr. Bruce O’Brien.

Original award image and story from UMW News (4/19/2019).

Vance Award and Phi Alpha Theta Inductees

The Department of History and American Studies was very happy to celebrate the University of Mary Washington’s 2018 Commencement with seniors this past weekenDrew Mesa and Dr. Nabil Al-Tikriti at Commencement, sharing Vance Awardd, both at our departmental reception on Friday and at the grand event on Saturday. Congratulations to all!

We also were happy to announce this year’s Joseph Carroll Vance Award for Excellence in Historical Research, which was presented to Drew Mesa for composing the best senior thesis this past 2017-2018 academic year.

Our Department also recently celebrated the 2018 induction of new members to the History Honors Society, Phi Alpha Theta, including Marianne Brokaw, Jessie Cavolt, Lauren Frey, Claire Goode, Paige Hildebrand, Sarah Jones, Maggie Lewandowski, Andrew Snead, and Joshua Hunt. Officers Nicole Spreeman and Madeline Coughlin presided at the initiation at our April Department banquet.

UMW Phi Alpha Theta 2018 Initiates

Images:

Vance Award-Winner Drew Mesa and Dr. Nabil Al-Tikriti (above)

Phi Alpha Theta 2018 Initiates (right)

click photos for larger images

 

Dr. Will Mackintosh Named to Bright Institute Cohort

wmackint@umw.edu faculty photographDr. Will Mackintosh has been named to the inaugural class of scholars at the Bright Institute of Knox College. He will join fourteen liberal arts professors in receiving a $9,000 award of research support over three years. This honor will support his research on the Loomis Gang.

For more, see this link.

Book Reception: Remember Little Rock – Dr. Erin Krutko Devlin (2/21)

rlrPlease join the Department of History and American Studies to celebrate Dr. Devlin’s new book!

Reception with Refreshments

Wednesday, February 21

4:00 pm

Monroe 210

All are welcome!

Remember Little Rock explores public memories surrounding the iconic Arkansas school desegregation crisis of 1957 and shows how these memories were vigorously contested and sometimes deployed against the cause. Delving into a wide variety of sources, Erin Krutko Devlin reveals how many white moderates proclaimed Little Rock a victory for civil rights and educational equality even as segregation persisted. At the same time, African American activists, students, and their families asserted their own stories in the ongoing fight for racial justice.

Book Reception: Dr. Allyson Poska (Wed, 11/1)

bookcoverap Please join the Department of History and American Studies to celebrate Dr. Poska’s newest book! We will host a reception with refreshments on Wednesday, November 1, at 4 pm in Monroe 213.

The event celebrates the publication of Dr. Poska’s award-winning book, Gendered Crossings: Women and Migration in the Spanish Empire.

Between 1778 and 1784 the Spanish Crown transported more than 1,900 peasants, including 875 women and girls, from northern Spain to South America in an ill-fated scheme to colonize Patagonia. The story begins as the colonists trudge across northern Spain to volunteer for the project and follows them across the Atlantic to Montevideo. However, before the last ships reached the Americas, harsh weather, disease, and the prospect of mutiny on the Patagonian coast forced the Crown to abandon the project. Eventually, the peasant colonists were resettled in towns outside of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, where they raised families, bought slaves, and gradually integrated into colonial society. Gendered Crossings brings to life the diverse settings of the Iberian Atlantic and the transformations in the peasants’ gendered experiences as they moved around the Spanish Empire.

Allyson Poska Awarded Book Prize

bookcoverap Dr. Allyson Poska has been awarded the prize for best book of 2016 from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women for her work Gendered Crossings: Women and Migration in the Spanish Empire (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2016).

In its recognition of the work’s achievement, the award committee noted their appreciation for how this book “complicates our understandings of masculinity, femininity, honor and sexual norms in showing how Spain tried to use families and migration to advance its imperial goals.” At the same time, they praised Gendered Crossings as it also presents “a careful study of many different historical subjects — women as well as men, poor and rich, and enslaved and free — that offers a powerful example of how histories of the early modern Atlantic world are enriched by weaving gender together with class, race, and European and Colonial politics.”

For more information on this study, see the link above. The Department of History and American Studies is delighted to extend its congratulations to Dr. Allyson Poska on her award.