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R.J.Q. Adams authors, Balfour: The Last Grandee

In a recent review, Philip Ziegler, the dean of British biographers, calls Professor Adams: ‘One of those disconcerting Americans who know as much about British history as any Briton does. He writes with grace, intelligence and concision.’ The latest example of Adams’s long study of British political culture tells the story of Arthur James Balfour, Britain’s last prime minister, 1902-05. Brilliant, handsome, possessed of legendary charm and wit–a philosopher, social lion and fashion icon, as well as world statesman. His brief prime ministry was dogged with failure, yet he seamlessly passed into another career as foreign minister and eventually as elder statesman. He crafted the 1917 Balfour Declaration laying the groundwork for the modern Middle east, guided the 1921-22 Washington Naval Conference and wrote the 1926 Balfour Definition which laid down the guidelines for the contemporary British Commonwealth. His life was long and full of events and mysteries, and man and career are woven together in this highly praised new book.

Baum authors, Counterfeit Justice (2009)

Counterfeit Justice breaks new ground by placing the life of Azeline Hearne, an illiterate freedwoman, in the context of the era of Reconstruction as it was experienced in Robertson County, Texas, where her trials and tribulations unfolded at the hands of unscrupulous white men and an unfair legal system. By combing through, quite likely, almost every extant record dealing with Azeline's legal problems, Baum meticulously recovers the story of an anonymous, voiceless, and marginalized victim of an oppressive past."

 

Bickham authors, Making Headlines

Making Headlines leads the reader on an exploration into the varied national debates that raged throughout Britain during the American Revolution, one of Britain’s historically most unpopular wars. Due to the inexpensive and easily accessible printed news, the average British citizen was often as well informed as a cabinet minister. The open editorial nature of the press also allowed someone as socially low as a blacksmith's wife, under the cloak of anonymity, to scrutinize and offer commentary on every political decision and military maneuver, all in front of a national audience.

Bickham appointed a College of Liberal Arts Ray A. Rothrock Fellow

The Rothrock Faculty Research Fellowships recognize a select number of newly promoted associate professors with three-year awards. The faculty will use these awards to support research and teaching projects that will aid in their promotion to full professors.  To read the full story, click on the following link:  http://clla.tamu.edu/spotlights/bickham-and-de-ruiter-appointed-2009-rothrock-fellows

Broussard award CLLA Fellowship for 2009

Albert Broussard was awarded a Cornerstone Faculty Fellowship from the College of Liberal Arts for 2009.  To read the full story, click on the following link, http://clla.tamu.edu/news/5-6-09-liberal-arts-names-four-cornerstone-fellows

History Faculty awarded Fulbright Fellowship

Coopersmith lectured at the history of technology in the United States and conduct a comparative study of the decline of faxing in Japan and the U.S. at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan for the 2008-09 academic year.

Devun authors, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time (2009)

Leah DeVun's new book, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time, published by Columbia University Press, focuses on the life of the fourteenth-century alchemist and apocalyptic preacher, John of Rupescissa. Religious figures who preached the end times were hardly rare in the late Middle Ages, but Rupescissa's teachings were unique. He claimed that knowledge of the natural world, and alchemy in particular, could act as a defense against the plagues and wars of the last days. His melding of apocalyptic prophecy and quasi-scientific inquiry gave rise to a new genre of alchemical writing and a novel cosmology of heaven and earth. Most important, the friar's research represented a remarkable convergence between science and religion. In order to understand scientific knowledge today, DeVun asks that we revisit Rupescissa's life and the critical events of his age—the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Avignon Papacy—through his eyes. Rupescissa treated alchemy as medicine (his work was the conceptual forerunner of pharmacology) and represented the emerging technologies and views that sought to combat famine, plague, religious persecution, and war. The advances he pioneered, along with the exciting strides made by his contemporaries, shed critical light on later developments in medicine, pharmacology, and chemistry.

Engel authors, Religion and Profit:  Moravians in Early America (2009) and receives fellowship.

The Moravians, a Protestant sect founded in 1727 by Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf and based in Germany, were key players in the rise of international evangelicalism. In 1741, after planting communities on the frontiers of empires throughout the Atlantic World, the Moravians settled the communitarian enclave of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in order to spread the Gospel to thousands of nearby colonists and Native Americans. In time, they became some of early America’s most successful missionaries.

Such vast projects demanded vast sums. Bethlehem’s Moravians supported their work through financial savvy and an efficient brand of communalism. Moravian commercial networks, stretching from the Pennsylvania backcountry to Europe’s financial capitals, also facilitated their work. Missionary outreach and commerce went hand in hand for this group, making it impossible to understand the Moravians’ religious work without appreciating their sophisticated economic practices as well. Of course, making money in a manner that befitted a Christian organization required considerable effort, but it was a balancing act that Moravian leaders embraced with vigor. 

Religion and Profit traces the Moravians’ evolving mission projects, their strategies for supporting those missions, and their gradual integration into the society of eighteenth-century North America. Engel demonstrates the complex influence Moravian religious life had on the group’s economic practices, and argues that the imperial conflict between Euro-Americans and Native Americans, and not the growth of capitalism or a process of secularization, ultimately reconfigured the circumstances of missionary work for the Moravians, altering their religious lives and their economic practices.

Engel Awarded Franklin Fellowship For New Project On The American Revolution

Kate Engel was honored with an American Philosophical Society Franklin Fellowship, which will allow her to conduct research in the United Kingdom in summer 2009. The Franklin Fellowship will support Engel’s work on her new project "Breaking Ties: The Protestant International and the American Revolution," focusing on the interplay of religion and society. Full story: http://clla.tamu.edu/news/3-26-09-kate-carte-engel-awarded-franklin-fellowship-for-new-project-on-the-american-revolution-and-protestantism

Kim  received Faculty Research Grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Hoi-eun Kim will conduct research at Heidelberg University in Germany on the connections between Germany and Japan in the field of modern medical science. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled, “Physicians on the Move: Medical and Cultural Encounters between Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan.”

History Faculty awarded Fulbright Fellowship

Professor Brian Linn will lecture on American history at the National University of Singapore, Spring 2009.

Linn authors, The Echo of Battle

Discussing commanders as diverse and Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Colin Powell, and technologies from coastal artillery to the Abrams tank, Linn shows how leadership and weaponry have continually altered the army's approach to conflict.  And he demonstrates the army's habit of preparing for wars that seldom occur, while ignoring those it must actually fight.  Based on exhaustive research and interviews, The Echo of Battle provides an unprecedented reinterpretation of how the U.S. Army has waged war in the past and how it is meeting the new challenges of tomorrow.

Obadele-Starks authors, Freebooters and Smugglers

Freebooters and Smugglers examines the tactics and strategies that the adherents of the foreign slave trade used to challenge the law.  It reassesses the role that Americans played in the continuation of foreign slave transshipments into the country right up to the Civil War, shedding light on an important topic that has been largely overlooked in the historiography of the slave trade.  Obadele-Starks holds a joint appointment at Texas A&M University-College Station and Texas A&M University at Qatar.

Parker awarded Choice Book Award and 2009 Bernath Book Award

Vaught wins Baseball Writing Award

David Vaught is an expert on baseball and its origins, and has been selected as one of this year's winners of the McFarland-Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Award for an essage he wrote in a 2008 book, "Baseball in America and America in Baseball," published by TAMU Press.  To read more, click here.

Vaught receives University Professorship for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence (UPUTE) award, click here

Vaught chosen as distinguished faculty lecturer

David Vaught, associate professor of history, has been selected as one of two faculty lecturers for the 2008-2009 University Distinguished Lecture Series. Vaught will present his lecture entitled “Abner Doubleday Revisited: Baseball in Rural America,”  on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 at 7:30 pm at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center.  Free tickets required for admittance, call MSC Box Office, 845-1234.