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.