Letter from the Chair
Dear Friends,
Greetings from Smith Hall, which is surrounded by trees whose colors this year are especially majestic. It is such a good feeling to be back on campus, even if the new “normal” is different from life on campus prior to the launch of the pandemic in March 2020. There is much to celebrate. We have a near-record number of students taking history courses, and the number of majors in 2021 increased 13 percent from 2020. And we are delighted to welcome two new colleagues to the Department of History this fall: Dianne S. Harris, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Bianca Dang, Donald W. Logan Endowed Chair of American History, who recently defended her dissertation at Yale University. But it is also a time for mourning. The department has suffered a great loss. Our hearts are heavy as we grieve the passing of Linda Nash, a distinguished historian of U.S. environmental history. Linda passed away on October 17, 2021, of lymphoma, and our thoughts are with her husband, Jim Hanford, and their children, Peter and Helen.
We would like to thank our faculty, staff, and students for the tremendous effort they’ve put into their work over the last two years. I would also like to thank our alumni and donors, whose generous support helped us carry on with our mission through the pandemic, provide much-needed resources for remote teaching, and distribute over $25,000 in emergency funding to history students who were facing dire financial stress due to COVID-19. As we approach the end of 2021, please consider including the Department of History in your year-end donations. Gifts made to the Friends of History will go directly toward supporting faculty research and course development, planning public events like the ongoing Sports History Lecture Series, and running the History Writing Center, an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate students.
With best wishes,
Glennys Young
Professor and Chair, Department of History
Professor of International Studies
