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 By David Lagomarsino
Charles Hansen Professor
History hasn’t stood still since our last newsletter, and neither has the
History Department.
Several outstanding visitors have enriched our lives. Montgomery
Fellow Romila Thapar (Jawaharlal Nehru University) came to us during
the Fall of 2006 to teach a course on Perceptions of the Past in Early
India. We also hosted two scholars from German universities under the
generous auspices of the Harris German-Dartmouth Distinguished Visiting
Professorship. Hartmut Lehman (Göttingen University) visited with us in the
Summer of 2006 to teach Modern Germany, 1800-1945. In the Spring of
2007, Suraiya
Faroqhi (Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich) taught a course on
The Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean: The Sultans and their European
Neighbors, 1400-1774. Our distinguished guests presented seminars to
the department about their research and provided advice and inspiration to our
students over the course of their stay.
A feature of the Honors Seminar each year is the Allabough Lecture, which
invites a historian of national or international renown to deliver a public
lecture and meet over dinner for intensive discussion with our Honors students.
Recent Allabough lecturers include: Benjamin Elman (2007) and Felipe
Fernández-Armesto (2006). For a list of what some of our best students have
been working on, see
Honors Theses, 2006-07.
It has been a special pleasure to welcome back to campus two of our alumni
as visiting faculty. Rob
Karl ’03, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard, visited in Spring 2007 to teach
courses on Latin America, filling in for Professors Navarro and Padillla, who
were on leave. Christopher Schmidt ‘96 crowned his Harvard Ph.D. in History
(2004) with a J.D. from Harvard Law School (2007). He visited during the Summer
terms of 2006 and 2007 to offer his course on the Constitutional History of
the United States. Readers of this newsletter may recall that in prior
summers he taught his very popular Baseball in American Society.
The department has begun to prepare for an External Review, which will take
place in the Spring of 2008—our first since 1993. Through the preparation of
our own Self-Study Report and the recommendations of the outside committee,
this review will offer the department an opportunity to examine its operations
and consider ways of strengthening and enriching our curriculum. One of the
things we looked at in preparing our Self-Study were the career outcomes of our
majors. See the summary of our findings at
"What Can I Do With My History Major?"
A generous gift from the family of our much-missed late colleague, Professor
Charles Wood, has established the Charles T. Wood Prize for the best
thesis in inter-regional or comparative history. The first Wood Prize was
awarded to Jeremy Schneider ’07 for his outstanding thesis on “Discourses in
Capitalism: Ovaltine Advertisements in the British Empire During the Interwar
Period.” It also went on to win the Peter J. Reichard 1966 Memorial Research
Award as the best History thesis in the Class of 2007. For a list of all the
deserving prize recipients, see
Student Prizes, 2006-07.
Our thesis prizes—whether newly established, like the gift from the Wood
Family, or relatively ancient, like the one created by the Class of 1859
recognizing the best thesis in European history—represent one of the ways in
which our alumni and friends enrich the possibilities of what we are able to
do. Besides prizes, departmental endowments enhance and sustain the History
Department’s curricular and co-curricular activities. Thanks to their
existence, members of the department can invite guest speakers into their
classes, arrange field trips, and support student research in archives and
libraries. For instance, Professor Faroqhi was able to take the students in her
Ottoman history course to New York to visit the Cloisters and the Metropolitan
Museum—an unforgettable opportunity to see these collections in the company of
one of the world’s leading Ottoman scholars. Endowments also helped offset some
of the high out-of-pocket expenses borne by students on our London FSP and made
the program even more successful. See what our students were working on at London
FSP Independent Study Projects.
In the bittersweet news department, I would like to recognize three
departing colleagues. After sixteen years in our department, Judith
Byfield ’80 has left to explore new opportunities at Cornell, where we
wish her all the best. And we also bid a fond farewell to Leo Spitzer,
who retired after forty years at Dartmouth. A special conference entitled Histories
in Between was held at the College in Professor Spitzer's honor in
June 2007 to celebrate his many contributions to the growth of
interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching at Dartmouth. It brought to campus
not only senior scholars in the fields of Latin American and African History,
but also a group of his former students who are beginning to make names for
themselves as historians—Kim Porteus ’86, Lillian Guerra ’92, Ben Vinson ’92,
and Natasha Zaretsky ’97. Searches are currently under way to fill the
positions vacated by Professors Byfield and Spitzer. Finally, after twenty-four
years of teaching his History through Film course in our London FSP,
Nigel Mace is retiring to spend time between his homes in Scotland and Italy.
We will miss him as a film scholar, friend, bon vivant, and excellent Churchill
impersonator. On behalf of their colleagues and students I thank Professors
Mace, Spitzer and Byfield for all they have contributed to the History
Department and the College.
Please stay in touch, and drop by to see us the next time you are in the
neighborhood.
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