What an exciting year it has been for the faculty and students within the Department of History. From prestigious awards to book launches to even a film, our faculty and students continue to shine and be recognized for their brilliance. Here are some of the highlights.
Melinda Whalen, a graduating senior and dual major in history and Russian language, literature, and culture, has been named a 2022 Beinecke Scholar. The Beinecke Scholarship is a national program that offers 20 scholarships to undergraduates across the United States who intend to pursue a master’s or doctorate degree in the arts, humanities, or social sciences. Applicants must be nominated by their universities to compete in this national program, and the University of Washington is able to nominate one student in their junior year each year. Selected students receive $30,000 to be used for graduate study and $4,000 in their senior year.
Wendi Zhou, a graduating senior and double major in history and philosophy, was selected for the Husky 100. Each year, the Husky 100 recognizes 100 undergraduate and graduate students from the UW Bothell, Seattle and Tacoma campuses in all areas of study who are making the most of their time at the UW. Zhou is one of the founding editors of the UW student journal, The Historical Review at the UW. Zhou is also featured in a recent article "The Rise of Generation Z," published in the University of Washington Magazine.
History graduate student Alika Bourgette has been awarded an International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. The SSRC-IDRF is one of the most prestigious graduate awards in the humanities and social sciences. Bourgette will use the fellowship to conduct research for his dissertation project, titled “Refuge and Abundance: Puʻuhonua o Kakaʻako and Native Hawaiian Community Resilience in the Early Twentieth Century.”
Graduate student Madison Heslop was awarded the Washington State Historical Society's Charles Gates Award for her journal article “Linking Violence across the Pacific: The B-29 Superfortress in Seattle’s and Tokyo’s Urban Landscapes,” published in Pacific Northwest Quarterly Winter 2019-20. This award recognizes the most significant achievement among all articles published in the University of Washington’s Pacific Northwest Quarterly during the previous year.
Frances O’Shaughnessy, a doctoral candidate within the department, has been awarded a McNeil Center Dissertation Fellowship from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Three graduate students received tenure-track positions:
- Jorge Bayona Matsuda, Southeast Asian studies at El Colegio de Mexico
- Madison Heslop, Canadian history at Western Washington University
- Taylor Soja, European history at Illinois State University
Professor Jordanna Bailkin received a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship for her book project, "Friends and Neighbors." Bailkin will use her time as a Guggenheim Fellow to advance a new project on friendship and loneliness in Britain, which more broadly discusses emotions and the welfare state. She is among 180 experts in the arts, humanities, law, and the sciences chosen as 2022 Guggenheim Fellows.
The University of Wales has conferred the Hywel Dda Prize to Professor Robin Chapman Stacey for her career contributions to the field of Welsh Literary Studies.
Professor Dianne Harris, Dean of the College of Arts and Science and member of the Department of History, has been recognized as a class of 2022 Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians. Receiving one of the society’s highest honors, SAH Fellows are individuals who have distinguished themselves by a lifetime of significant contributions to the field, which may include scholarship, service to the society, teaching, and stewardship of the built environment
Three faculty have had books published.
- Moon-Ho Jung’s book Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the U.S. Security State (University of California Press, 2022) is a history of race and empire that traces both the colonial violence and the anticolonial rage that the United States spread across the Pacific between the Philippine-American War and World War II.
- In The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (Duke University Press, 2022), Vicente Rafael examines the age of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Framing Duterte as a trickster figure who boasts, jokes, terrorizes, plays the victim, and instills terror, this book provides a complex account of Duterte’s regime and the social conditions that allow him to enjoy continued support.
- Laurie Marhoefer, Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love (University of Toronto Press, 2022) provides a vivid portrait of queer lives in the 1930s and an often-forgotten first chapter of gay rights. This book details how sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld laid the groundwork for modern gay rights, and how he did so by borrowing from a disturbing set of racist, imperial, and eugenic ideas, while traveling the world with his assistant, Li Shui Tong.
Professor Lynn Thomas, along with colleagues Daniel Hoffman and Michael Sanderson, produced a documentary, The Maple Cutter, that tells the story of a man accused of starting a wildfire while illegally removing trees from the Olympic National Forest. NPR recently ran a segment that discussed the film.