News & FEATURES

Recognition for Wanda Wallace, Retiring History Department Undergraduate Coordinator

Wanda Wallace is one of this year’s winners of an Employee Forum Peer Recognition Award for exceptional service to the University. She was nominated by people who have worked with her over the years, and is being honored in the category of “Back Office Activities,” which may suggest less visibility than she has actually had in our department! Wanda is retiring this month after 13 years of outstanding service in managing the department’s undergraduate program, relations with the registrar’s office, course scheduling, graduation events, and history honor society (Phi Alpha Theta), as well as the University’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and much else.

Wanda will be honored at the Peer Recognition Awards Ceremony on Thursday, May 30, 3:00-5:00 p.m., in the Hyde Hall University Room. All are welcome to attend this event, which will take place on the day before Wanda’s last day of work.

Five History Majors Win SURFS Fellowships to Pursue Summer Research

Congratulations to Aislinn Klos, Grace Tatter, Elizabeth Tolleson, Eric Walston, and Michael Welker, who will spend will spend the summer engaged in research, thanks to 2013 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURFs) awarded by the Office for Undergraduate Research. SURF award recipients receive at least $3,000. Funding for the SURF program comes from many sources including Honors Carolina, the Cancer Center, Carolina First campaign, and the Carolina Parents Council. Successful applicants are also expected to present their research at UNC’s annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research held in April.

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Selected for Mary Turner Lane Award

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, the Julia Cherry Spruill Professor of History and founding director of Carolina’s Southern Oral History Program, has won the 2013 Mary Turner Lane Award. The award citation noted that, “By her scholarship, Hall changed the very concept of history, developing the methodology and best practices of a new kind of history that incorporates the experiences of women and workers and minorities into understanding the past.” Read more . . . 

Molly Worthen Shares Insights about American Perspectives on Immigrants

Molly Worthen‘s “Love Thy Stranger as Thyself” appeared in the Sunday New York Times (5/12/2013). Her essay situates the current attitudes and debates about immigration reform in their historical and religious context.

Fitz Brundage and History Students Create Digital “Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina”

A new UNC digital collection, Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina (CommLand), is creating a portrait of the state’s history through monuments, shrines and public art. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, pictured at left in front of the Thomas Wolfe Monument on the Carolina campus, is featured in the College of Arts & Sciences web site piece by Kim Weaver Spurr. Read it here: “Mapping Historical Memory: New digital collection documents the state’s history through monuments, shrines, public art” 

Hillary Hollowood Named Gilder Lehrman History Scholar

History major Hillary Hollowood is one of fifteen students in the nation selected this year for the prestigious Gilder Lehrman History Scholars Award. She will travel to New York City in June for special programs and tours with her fellow Scholars. She was advised by Joseph Glatthaar. 

In her own words, Hillary explained her path to this exceptional honor: “I became interested in what I refer to broadly as Confederate civilian history when I took Dr. Glatthaar’s 390 seminar on the American Civil War. I stumbled upon Rowan County because it was one of the few areas with a consistent newspaper publication before, during, and after the Civil War and turned up wonderfully interesting information. Dr. Glatthaar urged me to continue my work by writing an honors thesis and helped me find grants that allowed me to travel to the National Archives in D.C. twice for research. There I found fascinating primary sources that both significantly contributed to my project and left me with even more questions. Eventually this resulted in completing my thesis entitled ‘A Blessing and a Curse: The North Carolina Railroad and the American Civil War in Rowan County, North Carolina, 1850–1870.’

“Dr. Glatthaar encouraged me to apply for the Gilder Lehrman History Scholar Award, for which I submitted a sample from my thesis and a personal statement about my internship at Historic Stagville in Durham, working as a bartender at Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill, and the way that the National Archives and my thesis made me realize I want to be a historian. After graduating in May I am going to Europe for a month and will participate in the scholar’s weekend in New York City in June. As of right now, the plan is to take a year off and do further research on topics I did not get to fully explore as I was writing my thesis. I hope to begin a history Ph.D. program in the fall of 2014.”

Announcement of Graduate Student Honors and Achievements, 2012–2013

Announcements of honors, achievements, and position placements for our graduate students are still coming in! Find the latest list here.

*See the Latest Faculty Books HERE

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Upcoming Conferences and Collaborations

War, Demobilization and Memory: The Legacy of War in the Era of Atlantic Revolutions
London, May 30–June 1, 2013