News & Features
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traces: The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History
Volume I, Spring 2012 is hot off the presses and features the work of graduate and undergraduate students. Lawson Kuehnert served as undergraduate editor, Mark W. Hornburg as graduate editor, and W. Miles Fletcher was the faculty adviser. Questions? Want one? hornburg@unc.edu
Sarah Ransohoff Wins Elie Wiesel Prize
Senior History major Sarah Ransohoff has won the Elie Wiesel Prize for Ethics for her essay on oil and slavery. The prize includes a trip to New York to meet Elie Wiesel, an award, and $5,000. Her thesis adviser was Joseph Glatthaar.
Susan Dabney Pennybacker Selected for Fulbright-Nehru Award
Susan Pennybacker has received a nine-month Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Award. During the 2012–2013 academic year she will be a visiting professor at the University of Delhi in New Delhi, do archival work in India, and conduct interviews for her next book. Read about Professor Pennybacker's research project.
Gugenheim Fellowship to Support Lisa Lindsay's Work on Trans-Atlantic History
Lisa Lindsay's research on the illuminating life of James Vaughan, a South Carolina native who moved to Nigeria in the 1850s, is the focus of a recent feature in the Daily Tar Heel. Lindsay's work, supported next year by a Guggenheim fellowship, will provide an insider's perspective on a transformative period in trans-Atlantic history, when new identities were being formed and "old" identities were being forged anew.
Jacquelyn Hall in Civil Rights Video
Jacquelyn Hall recently recorded the segment "What Are the Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement?" as part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute's "History by Era" video series, created for K–12 educators and college professors.
Heather Williams Receives Mellon New Directions Fellowship
Professor Heather Williams has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, which supports humanities and arts faculty who have earned a Ph.D. in the past five to fifteen years and wish to pursue training outside their disciplines. The awards also “benefit humanistic scholarship more generally by encouraging the highest standards in cross-disciplinary research,” according to the Foundation’s website. Malinda Maynor Lowery received a New Directions Fellowship last year. Read an interview with Professor Williams about her plans for the fellowship!
Students Vote Joseph Caddell 2012 Chiron Award Winner
Professor Joseph Caddell delivered the annual Chiron Award lecture on Thursday, March 15, at 7:00 p.m. in Gerrard Hall. Richard Kohn introduced him. A former intelligence officer for the Air Force, Caddell has made a career out of his devotion to country and parlayed it into one of education. His enthusiasm for learning, his love of students, and his great sense of humor have made him a magnet for young people.
Research and the Public Historian
“Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina” brings together photographs, maps, news articles, oral histories and essays documenting the development and construction of the parkway’s North Carolina segment. The site invites users to explore parkway history chronologically, geographically or by dozens of topics from access roads and automobiles to wildlife and workmen. Its interactive maps feature layers historical maps atop current road maps and satellite images. The comparisons provide insight into the parkway’s development and its impact on pre-parkway towns, farms, roads and topography. This online project is a direct outgrowth of Anne Mitchell Whisnant’s dissertation about the Blue Ridge Parkway, completed here in the Department of History in 1997.
Read about how Anne Whisnant created a career in public history.