Western Oregon University History Department 
Faculty News Spring 2014

Professor John Rector is the author of The History of Chile in the Palgrave Essential History Series, 2005. His current research is on Chile's privatization of social security.  This occurred in 1981 under the military government when the country's economy was restructured by neoliberal economists. This private system has been in existence for over 30 years. Many people are now retiring and testing whether the private system fulfilled the promises of its designers. Since many other Latin American nations are adopting the privatized model, it is important to analyze the positive and negative aspects of the Chilean model. During the summer of 2013 he collected documents and interviewed retirees in Santiago and Southern Chile. He also maintains a professional relationship with Puerto Ricans historians, reviewing their works and incorporating their materials in his courses. 

In spring term 2014 Professor Rector will be teaching a graduate history seminar titled "The Cost of Empire." This course will look at the social and economic costs and benefits for both the colonizer and the colonized. 

Professor Kimberly Jensen teaches courses in United States history and the history of women and gender and this spring 2014 will be offering the course Women in Oregon History for the first time. She is the author of Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (University of Illinois Press, 2008) and Oregon’s Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (University of Washington Press, 2012). With Erika Kuhlman she is the editor of Women and Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective (Republic of Letters, 2010). 

Professor Jensen is engaged in a new research project on women, citizenship and civil liberties in Oregon from the achievement of the vote in 1912 through the aftermath of the First World War 

Professor Hsieh Bao Hua is the author of Concubinage and Servitude in Late Imperial China, forthcoming from Lexington Books later in 2014. The book builds on a number of articles including “Market in Concubines in Jiangnan during Ming-Qing China” published in the Journal of Family History in 2008. Her current research project investigates gender in Chinese cinema as a way to understand marriage, family systems, workplaces and globalization in China.  

Professor David Doellinger's teaching and research focuses on social movements in East Central Europe during the Cold War. In November 2013, his book Turning Prayers into Protests was published by Central European University Press. It presents a comparative analysis of grass-roots opposition to the governments of Slovakia and East Germany prior to the collapse of communism in East Germany.

Professor Doellinger is currently writing a book on conscientious objectors and the independent peace movement in East Germany.  In fall 2014, he will lead a graduate readings course that explores how scholars have written about the history of East Central Europe with the new sources that became available after the revolutions of 1989.

Professor Patricia Goldsworthy’s research explores the intersection of visual culture and imperialism in the Maghreb. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Colonial Negatives that traces the history of the making and circulation of images in Sharifian and French Morocco and analyzes the ways in which photography both supported and hindered the ideologies of the French colonial empire. Colonial Negatives examines the ways in which Moroccans transformed a symbol of European power, the camera, and formulated a specifically Moroccan visual culture that challenged many of the existing stereotypes about the colonies. Her work on Moroccan Sultan Abd al-Aziz’s photography is forthcoming in the Journal of North African Studies and the edited volume Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News.

In 2014-15, Professor Goldsworthy will offer a graduate seminar on Colonial Modernities and a graduate/undergraduate course on Gender and Colonialism. "Colonial Modernities" will consider the way European modernity was constructed through colonies and examine the ways in which the concept of modernity was transformed in the empire. “Gender and Colonialism” focuses on the ways in which gendered ideologies shaped colonial interactions, as well as the ways in which the colonial context influenced the development of gender norms in both colonized and colonizing societies. She will also offer courses in summer 2014 that are open to graduate students: “European Imperialisms” and “World War II in Film."

Professor Elizabeth Swedo joined the WOU History Department in 2013. She completed her MA (2006) and PhD (2012) in History at the University of Minnesota. She studies medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on cultural and religious history of the Late Middle Ages and a regional interest in Scandinavia, particularly Iceland. Her current book manuscript project, “Faith Forged in Fire and Ice: Icelandic Church and Society, 1300-1550,” addresses how religious doctrine and practice were transmitted and adapted within and among medieval European societies, concentrating on the negotiated roles of the laity and the clergy in this process. Her broader research interests also include the intersection of religious beliefs, social practices, and gender roles; environmental adaptation; literary and cultural production; and intercultural contacts in late medieval Europe. In February 2014, she presented research at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) on Icelanders’ devotional responses to natural disasters in the fourteenth century. In 2014-2015, Professor Swedo will offer a comparative graduate course on Medieval Religions and a course on Medieval England.

Academic Showcase

Congratulations to WOU History undergraduate seniors and graduate students for your presentations at Academic Showcase on May 31.

Western Oregon University Senior History Thesis Students, May 31, 2012. Gregory Garcia is not present.

Western Oregon University History MA Seminar Students, May 31, 2012.

Deadline extended for History Department Research Grant

Students enrolled in HST 499W Senior Thesis in Spring 2012 are eligible to apply for the History Department Research Grant. Guidelines for application are located on the departmental website and the deadline has been extended until Friday of the 3rd week of class for this term only. Please contact the department chair with any questions. Completed applications should be submitted to the department chair, Dr. Max Geier

Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society Conference

Current and former undergraduate history students, Greg Garcia and Sarah Berry, and graduate students William "Duke" Morton, joined Dr. John Rector in representing the WOU chapter of the History Honor Society Phi Alpha Theta at the Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference in Spokane April 12-14, 2012, where they were hosted by Whitworth University. Students who traveled to this event received travel support from the Western Oregon University Foundation and the Associated Students of Western Oregon University for this activity.

Collaborative arrangements with cooperating partners

The following cooperating partners in the historic resources community provided opportunities for history undergraduates to apply their skills in public venues:

Oregon State Archives

A blended group of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in Dr. Max Geier's HST 406/506 Archival Science course in Winter 2012 completed practicum work individually and collaboratively under the direction of Layne Sawyer, assessing, arranging, and describing State Department of Education records dating from the mid-20^th century at the Oregon State Archives. Also advising and conducting workshops with students in this collaborative effort with Layne Sawyer at the Oregon State Archives were Erin Passehl, who directs the Straub Archives at WOU's Hamersly Library, and Willamette University Archivist Mary McRobinson, and Oregon State Archivist Mary Beth Herkert.

Willamette Heritage Center, Salem, Oregon

Jennifer Ross, a senior in history, secured a competitive, paid internship with the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem for Winter 2012. As a research intern serving under the direction of Curator and Museum Director Keni Sturgeon, Ross researched  the Lives of Willamette Valley Women  from the 1870s-1890s. The WHC is in the process of reinterpreting its three Historic Houses, and information gathered through this research will be used to develop two new hands-on history galleries in these houses.

Graduate Students William "Duke" Morton, Hannah Marshall, and Jeffrey Sawyer worked with Dr. Max Geier, arranging and completing internships at Willamette Heritage Center under the direction of Curator and Museum Director Keni Sturgeon to plan and edit the first edition of Willamette Voices, a new, serial publication focusing on the history of the mid-Willamette Valley. This ongoing project is currently in the production phase, with the first volume due to be published in Spring 2012, including approximately 10 different articles and authors of regional interest, centering on the theme of Public Spaces, and a second volume is already in the works for release  later this Fall. The history department and the WHC expect this partnership to provide ongoing and long-term opportunities for editorial internships for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Undergraduate history major, Zachary Jones and other undergraduate history students worked with Dr. Jensen preparing materials for the  Documents Project on the Century of Action website, featuring materials on the history of the 1912 campaign woman suffrage campaign in Oregon, and they presented their work at the Willamette Heritage Center in February in a panel presentation that was part of the speakers series at the WHC scheduled to coincide with the special winter exhibit, Willamette Women: Our History is Our Strength, featured at the Willamette Heritage Center in Salem, January 20 - March 10, 2012 http://www.willametteheritage.org/events_and_programs.html

Two recent History M.A. graduates Samantha Reining and Austin Schulz and three current History M.A. students Toni Rush, Jeffrey Sawyer and Diane Huddleston presented material this past October (2011) that they had developed for their Spring 2011 projects in Dr. Max Geier's HST 620 Seminar: Constructing Murder. Their presentations were part of the Willamette Heritage Center’s 2011 Fall Speaker Series in Salem. Samantha Reining (M.A. 2011) presented "1844 Oregon Territory: Murder and Race Relations"; Austin Schulz (M.A. 2011) presented "Interpreting Guilt: The Oregon Supreme Court Case of Foot You"; Diane Huddleston (current M.A. student) presented "The Case of Emma Hannah: From Prison to Asylum"; Jeffrey Sawyer (current M.A. student) presented "Society's Reaction to the Harry Tracy Murder Spree"; and Toni Rush (current M.A student) presented "Interpreting Horror: Oregon News and Lynchings Between 1900-1910." We congratulate these students on their fine work and presentations to our regional heritage community through the speaker series.

 

Century of Action: Oregon Women Vote, 1912-2012

Zachary Jones, an honors student majoring in History with a minor in Gender Studies, joined Dr. Kimberly Jensen and others who testified at a legislative hearing at the State Capitol in Salem. The hearing was for Senate Concurrent Resolution 204 supporting the commemoration of the centennial of woman suffrage in Oregon.  Zachary Jones' testimony built on his work in the junior honors seminar that Dr. Jensen offered last year, in collaboration with community partner Century of Action: Oregon Women Vote, 1912-2012. Jones' work in that seminar also included a contribution to the documents projects posted at www.centuryofaction.org -- writing on Everybody's Equal Suffrage League http://centuryofaction.org/index.php/main_site/document_project/uniquely_oregonian_everybodys_equal_suffrage_league_in_1912.

Jones was also part of a student team in Dr. Jensen's History 405C Gender Issues in History that interviewed Secretary of State Kate Brown as part of the Century of Action project

New Courses and Program Changes

With the addition of Dr. Patricia Goldsworthy-Bishop to the faculty last Fall, the History Department made major changes to its course offerings and program requirements during the 2011-12 academic year, integrating Dr. Goldsworthy-Bishop's specialty courses on North Africa and European Colonialism in North Africa into the new course catalogue for 2012-13.

These changes included an adjustment to the introductory survey offerings which may affect some program plans. HST 101, 102, and 103 Western Civilization will no longer be offered as an LACC sequence. All history majors should plan to complete the HST 104, 105, 106 sequence. For those who have already begun the Western Civ sequence, either at WOU or elsewhere, the following substitutions will apply:  HST 104 may be substituted for HST 101, HST 105 may be substituted for HST 102, and HST 106 may be substituted for HST 103 to satisfy the introductory sequence requirement.

2012 Senior Thesis projects and presentations

Senior Thesis projects are underway in Dr. Bao Hua Hsieh's HST 499 Senior Seminar for Spring 2012. Graduating seniors participating in this process will showcase their work with initial public presentations at the campus-wide Academic Excellence event in late May, and more comprehensively at the department's end-of-year gathering in early June.