Faculty News (Spring 2003)

Timothy D. Berg
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Purdue University (1999)

Dr. Berg’s research focus is U.S. urban history in the twentieth century. He explores issues in urban planning and urban cultural and social history. He has given presentations at the Hagley Museum and Library and at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. He is currently completing a book examining the history of urban planning in New York City since 1960 and has contributed articles on a variety of topics to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.

Robert Berkhofer
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Harvard University (1997)

Dr. Berkhofer joined the faculty in the Fall of 2001. He specializes in Medieval Europe, especially France and social history. While teaching a variety of courses concentrating on Medieval Europe from 900 to 1200, he is currently developing courses on the early European family and the uses of literacy. In addition, Dr. Berkhofer is leading a team of three scholars in developing a web-based “virtual cathedral,” as part of a WMU Teaching and Learning with Technology grant. His most recent publication, ”Marriage, Lordship and the ‘Greater Unfree’ in Twelfth-Century France,” appeared in the November 2001 issue of Past and Present. He is currently preparing a manuscript for publication entitled “Day of Reckoning: Power and Accountability in Medieval France.”

Amos J. Beyan
Associate Professor, Ph.D. West Virginia University (1985)

Dr. Beyan joined the teaching faculty in the Fall of 2001 and is jointly appointed in History and Africana Studies. He specializes in African and African American history. While teaching a range of courses devoted to African history, he has developed specialized courses dealing with the history and historiography of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Dr. Beyan has dedicated a majority of his research to the study of pre-Liberian societies, transatlantic slave trade, and the establishment of Liberia by African Americans in the nineteenth century. He co-edited The Liberian Historical Dictionary in 2001 and served as an editor of the Liberian Studies Journal from 1998 to 2001. His manuscript, entitled John Brown Russwurm and the Establishment of Liberia and New Maryland in West Africa, 1799-1851, is under consideration by Indiana University Press. He has nine short essays in Robert Jenkins and Mfanya Tryman, eds., Encyclopedia of Malcolm X (Greenwood Press, 2002).

Linda J. Borish
Associate Professor, Ph.D. in American Studies, University of Maryland College Park (1990)

Dr. Borish specializes in nineteenth-century American Social and Cultural History; American Sport History; Women’s History; American Studies; and Material Culture. She focuses on American sport and health history with an emphasis on gender and ethnicity, and rural and urban contexts. Her current book, forthcoming from the Ohio State University Press, is entitled “A Good Country Buxom Lass”: Perceptions and Reform of Women’s Well-Being in Antebellum Rural New England. Other publications include articles on American Jewish women, sports, and social change in The Journal of Sport History, American Jewish History, and a chapter in Major Problems in American Sport History. Dr. Borish is an editorial board member of the international journal Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, the Advisory Board of the Central Region Humanities Center, and past President of the Great Lakes American Studies Association. She has also worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Awards include the Faculty Achievement in Professional and Community Service, College of Arts and Sciences, WMU, 2002.

José António Brandão
Associate Professor, Ph.D. York University (1994)

Dr. Brandão specializes in North American First Nations; Canada; and Comparative Colonial America. His current area of research focuses on Native-European relations in general, and on the history, culture, and interaction of the Iroquois Indians with their Native and European neighbors. Dr. Brandão recently served the department as the Director of Undergraduate Studies. He is co-editor of The Iroquoians and Their World, an on-going series of publications related to the history and culture of the Iroquoian linguistic group published by the University of Nebraska Press. Dr. Brandão is also co-director of the French Michilimackinac Research and Translation Project.

Michael J. Chiarappa
Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania (1992)

Dr. Chiarappa specializes in American Cultural/Environmental; Maritime; Folklife; Upper Midwest/Great Lakes; and Public History. In both his teaching and in his research, Dr. Chiarappa considers the intersection of American cultural and environmental histories. He focuses on how water and natural resources have been used to shape the regional dynamics of maritime communities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Dr. Chiarappa recently completed a two-year documentation and museum project entitled “Fish for All: Perspectives on the History of Lake Michigan Fisheries Management and Policy.” The oral histories that were collected for this project have been published by Michigan State University Press under the title of Fish for All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment on Lake Michigan (co-author, Kristin M. Szylvian). Dr. Chiarappa is following this work with a monograph entitled Harvesting an Inland Sea: Folk History and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Lake Michigan’s Commercial Fishery, which explores the vernacular aesthetics and functions of Great Lakes fish tugs, local knowledge of fish ecology, Great Lakes commercial fishing landscapes, and the occupation’s folk art (models, paintings).

Janet L. Coryell
Professor, Ph.D. College of William and Mary (1986)

Dr. Coryell specializes in Antebellum U.S. and the Civil War, and publishes primarily in Women’s History and Biography. She teaches a variety of courses in these fields and trains students in documentary editing. Her current research concerns women and their concepts of individuality, particularly nineteenth-century women, as she tries to discover if nineteenth-century individualism was truly a “male-only” affair (she has her doubts). One area of continuing focus is her study of “women politicos” involved in partisan politics but not necessarily interested in pursuing the right to vote. Her most recent publication grew out of this work: “Superseding Gender: The Role of the Woman Politico in Antebellum Partisan Politics,” which appeared in Women and the Unstable State in Nineteenth-Century America (Texas A&M Press, 2000). Currently, Dr. Coryell is editing two sets of letters by women. The first, written between 1834 and 1880, is the correspondence of the women of the Howe/Dupuy family of New England and Virginia. The second, “Letters from the Heartland,” is a collection of letters between a mother and daughter written between 1928 and 1960. She has just signed a contract with her colleague, Dr. Nora Faires, for a survey-level textbook called Women in America: An Integrated History.

Fred Dobney
Professor, Ph.D. Rice University (1970)

Dr. Dobney specializes in twentieth-century U.S. History, American diplomatic history, and history of American technology. His scholarship includes books on the Truman period and the Army Corps of Engineers, and he teaches survey and advanced courses in American History.

E. Rozanne Elder
Professor, Ph.D. University of Toronto (1973)

Dr. Elder specializes in medieval intellectual history and monastic studies, and is also the Director of the Institute of Cistercian Studies and Editorial Director for Cistercian Publications, Inc. She teaches a wide range of courses that explore the writers and ideas operative in cathedral schools, universities, and monasteries; saints’ lives as a medium for articulating and circulating popular, liturgical, and theological models; and the doctrinal and institutional development of medieval Christianity, East and West. Her current research focuses on the theology, spirituality, and institutions of Benedictine and Cistercian monks. She has just returned from a sabbatical leave in France where she continued her on-going research on twenty-one reformed minded abbots; some results of this research have been published in French and will form part of a forthcoming article, “Communities of Reform in the Province of Rheims: The Benedictine ‘Chapter General’ of 1131.”

Nora Faires
Associate Professor, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh (1981)

Dr. Faires is a social and cultural historian of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, whose major fields are migration and gender. In addition to graduate courses in her specialties and undergraduate survey courses, she also teaches a seminar on the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras and a Women’s Studies course on paid and unpaid labor. Currently she is working with other faculty to expand course offerings and research initiatives in Canadian Studies. Dr. Faires produces scholarship in diverse venues. Her most recent publication examines gendered migration in the Great Lakes basin: “Poor Women, Proximate Border: Migrants from Ontario to Detroit in the Late Nineteenth Century”, in the Journal of American Ethnic History (Spring 2001). Last year the university awarded her a grant to support the writing of a co-authored manuscript, Jewish Life in Autotown, based on a museum exhibition she curated. In collaboration with her colleague Dr. Janet L. Coryell, she is venturing into the realm of textbook publishing, signing a contract to write Women in America: An Integrated History.

Richard E. Frankel
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1999)

Dr. Frankel specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century Germany, with a focus on political culture. He is interested in the cultural parameters, such as symbols or language, which limit or empower individuals or groups in the political arena. His revised dissertation, “Bismarck’s Shadow: The Cult of Leadership and the Transformation of the German Right, 1898-1945,” is currently under consideration for publication at the University of Michigan Press. His article, “From the Beer Halls to the Halls of Power: The Cult of Bismarck and the Legitimization of a New German Right, 1898-1945,” is forthcoming in German Studies Review.

Marion W. (Buddy) Gray
Professor and Chair, Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison (1971)

Dr. Gray joined the faculty as Chair of the Department in 2001. While the greatest component of his time is devoted to administrative duties, he offers courses in European history, including Western Civilization and advanced courses focusing on modern European social and environmental history. His research is centered in German-speaking Europe between 1750 and 1850. This period of the Enlightenment and of the French Revolution brought profound changes in the fabric of society for German-speaking Europe. Dr. Gray’s scholarship analyzes these changes from the perspectives of government, law, agriculture, environment, and gender. He is author of Productive Men, Reproductive Women: The Agrarian Household and the Emergence of Separate Spheres during the German Enlightenment (Berghahn Books, 2000). He is currently researching the environmental history of a village, Schlalach, in the German state of Brandenburg.

Ross Gregory
Professor, Ph.D. Indiana University (1964)

Dr. Gregory specializes in twentieth-century American History and foreign policy and has a supplementary interest in the history of modern East Asia. While he teaches a wide range of courses, from the survey to advanced graduate, his primary field of interest remains twentieth-century American history, particularly the United States in world affairs. His publication record includes numerous reviews and articles and five books, including the award-winning Walter Hines Page: Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s (U. Press of Kentucky, 1970) and his most recent title, Almanacs of American Life: Cold War America, 1946-1990 (Facts on File, 2003).

Bruce M. Haight
Professor, Ph.D. Northwestern University

Dr. Haight specializes in West African history, with a research focus on Islam and the artistic traditions of that region. In recent years, he has been actively and closely involved with the work of Lamidi Fakeye, a Nigerian traditional wood sculptor. This work has ranged from the production of Fakeye’s autobiography to exhibitions of his work and joint lectures. Dr. Haight has also been elected as Faculty Representative to the Executive Board of CAMP (Cooperative Africana Microfilm Project) of the Center for Research Libraries (2001-2003).

Barbara Havira
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Michigan State University (1986)

Dr. Havira specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century United States history with emphasis on economic and labor history, Michigan history, women’s history, and the history of education. She has published articles in Michigan History, Michigan Academician and Michigan Historical Review. In 2003, in recognition of her devotion to the life of the university, Dr. Havira was awarded the University Distinguished Service Award, the highest honor of this type conferred by Western Michigan University.

Catherine Julien
Associate Professor, Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley (1978)

Dr. Julien specializes in the history and archaeology of South America, especially the sixteenth century. She offers courses ranging from general surveys of Latin America to seminars on the Andes, the Amazon, colonial Mexico, and early modern Spain. Her own research focuses on the transition between the autonomous native rule in the Americas and Spanish colonial administration. Dr. Julien has done archaeological fieldwork in the Lake Titicaca Basin (Peru), Chala (Peru), and Tarija (Bolivia). Her book, (Iowa 2000), was recently awarded the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize (Modern Languages Association) and the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize (American Society for Ethnohistory). She is currently working at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island, on an article titled “Writing in the wake of the Cabeza de Vaca expedition to the Pantanal (1543-45).” In Fall 2003 she will teach at the Catholic University Arequipa, Peru, with a Fulbright Lecturing and Research Award. She has been awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship which will enable her in 2005 to continue her study of indigenous culture in the early years of contact between Spaniards and Andeans.

Lynne Heasley
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison (2000)

Dr. Heasley, jointly appointed in Environmental Studies and History, teaches courses in environmental history and contemporary environmental problems. She studies people’s interactions with their landscapes, along with changing ideas about nature. She focuses primarily on the Midwest and the Great Lakes region during the twentieth century, although she has also done work on post-colonial West Africa. She is completing a book manuscript on property regimes and ecological change in the rural Midwest, which traces the historical roots of contemporary property debates, both cultural and environmental. Dr. Heasley recently published “Shifting Boundaries on a Wisconsin Landscape: Can GIs Help Historians Tell a Complicated Story?” in the journal Human Ecology.

Mitch Kachun
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Cornell University (1997)

Dr. Kachun specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century African American history. He joined the teaching faculty in the Fall of 2001 and has since offered a variety of courses related to African American and general United States history. Dr. Kachun is planning a series of upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in African American History, Historical Memory, and Public Commemoration. His current research concentrates on how African Americans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have used historical knowledge and public commemorations in their efforts to work for equal rights, construct a sense of identity as a people, and claim control over their status and destiny in American society. His book manuscript on nineteenth-century African American Emancipation celebrations will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press in August 2003.

Cheryl Lyon-Jenness
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Western Michigan University (1998)

Dr. Lyon-Jenness teaches courses in U.S. history, especially American women’s history. Her research concentrates on nineteenth-century American agricultural, horticultural and environmental history, and includes an emphasis on the historical experience of rural American women. Her forthcoming book, For Shade and For Comfort: Democratizing Horticulture in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest is scheduled to be published by Purdue University Press in summer 2003. Dr. Lyon-Jenness has recently accepted the position of Faculty Specialist and is the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the History Department.

Paul L. Maier
Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History, Ph.D. University of Basel (1957)

Dr. Maier specializes in ancient history, Christianity and the Roman Empire, the Reformation, and is an authority on the first-century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus. As an award winning author, Dr. Maier travels and lectures widely, appearing frequently on national radio, television, and newspaper interviews. He has published more than two hundred articles and reviews, as well as fifteen books. When not on the road, Dr. Maier can be found teaching courses ranging from the Ancient Near East to Imperial Rome.

John O. Norman
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Indiana University (1990)

Dr. Norman is a cultural historian specializing in late Imperial Russia. His primary research foci are imperial, aristocratic, and merchant patronage of the arts. Analyzing the nexus of economic, professional, institutional and political interchanges between patron and artist, Dr. Norman’s extensive publications in this field demonstrate the ongoing vitality of state patronage as well as the evolving aspirations of artists and private patrons as they sought professional recognition and acceptance by the intelligentsia in an emerging civil society with a rapidly expanding art market. Sustained annual research in Russian archives has prepared Dr. Norman to undertake a biography and cultural history of Alexander III and his reign (1881-94). A second more discrete project also under way is a reading of the Cathedral of the Fedorovskaya Mother of God in Pushkin/Tsarskoe Selo as an expression of the religious and political views of Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. Norman’s course offerings include classes devoted to Russian history and culture at undergraduate and graduate levels, the popular Art and Ideas in the Modern Era, and graduate seminars in the Fin-de-Siecle, Russian and European Arts Patronage, Europe in the Age of Empire, and Historical Theory and Methods.

James R. Palmitessa
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. New York University (1995)

Dr. Palmitessa specializes in the history of Europe from ca. 1400-1800, especially society and religion, urban history, material culture, and Central Europe. One of his main interests is the history of the Holy Roman Empire as an important area of encounter between different languages, religions, cultures, and societies. His most recent research has focused on the city of Prague during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dr. Palmitessa teaches undergraduate survey courses in World History and European History; upper-level undergraduate courses in Renaissance culture; Reformation; Marriage, Family, and Sexuality; the European Witchhunt; Revolts & Uprisings; and graduate courses in society and religion and the history of everyday life. He has also taught a two-semester readings course in the history of Central Europe, a methodology course in Material Culture approaches, and the department’s required course in Historiography. Dr. Palmitessa was promoted to Associate Professor beginning in Fall 2003.

Carolyn Podruchny
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of Toronto (1999)

Dr. Podruchny joined the teaching faculty in the Fall of 2001. Her general fields of specializations are North American First Nations, Ethnohistory, and Canada, while her primary research has focused on French Canadian voyageurs in the fur trade, Algonquian peoples (Ojibwe and Cree) in the Northwestern Plains and woodlands, and oral tradition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Podruchny is cross-appointed with the American Studies Program, and teaches a range of courses on multidisciplinary approaches to the study of America, from individual, regional, national, and global perspectives. Look for her forthcoming article in Ethnohistory, “Werewolves and Windigos: Narratives of Cannibal Monsters in French-Canadian Voyageur Oral Tradition.”

Patricia L. Rogers
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Michigan State University (2001)

Dr. Rogers’ teaching and scholarship span both sides of the Atlantic. Her research concentrates on the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Anglo-American Atlantic. Focusing on merchants and commerce, she explores issues of cultural identity formation within the new United States, Great Britain and its Atlantic colonies. She is author of “The Loyalist Experience in an Anglo-American Atlantic World,” published in Planter Links: Cultural Orientations: Community Building in Colonial Nova Scotia, ed. Margaret Conrad and Barry Moody (Acadiensis Press, 2001).

John Daniel Saillant
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Brown University (1989)

Dr. Saillant, jointly appointed in English and History, is a specialist in Early American History and Culture, with emphases on intellectual history and the African American experience. As moderator of H-OIEAHC, he is affiliated with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and has published widely both in print and in electronic form. Dr. Saillant is author of Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753-1833 (Oxford University Press, 2002). He teaches courses in Colonial America, the American Revolution, and the Constitution. Dr. Saillant has been promoted to the rank of Professor beginning in the fall.

Peter J. Schmitt
Professor, Ph.D. in American Studies, University of Minnesota (1966)

Dr. Schmitt specializes in nineteenth-century American popular culture. He has been active in regional historic preservation efforts, including the Shoreline Humanities Project. Dr. Schmitt brings his experience into the classroom in his undergraduate course: “Popular Art and Architecture in America,” and also in his graduate-level seminar in College Teaching. In 2003 he was awarded the College Arts and Sciences Faculty Achievement Award in Teaching.

Larry J. Simon
Associate Professor, Ph.D. UCLA (1989)

Dr. Simon, who recently completed a term as Director of Graduate Studies, focuses broadly on Medieval Islamic and Jewish history, especially in Spain, Italy, and the Mediterranean. In particular, he specializes in the history of the Western Mediterranean, especially Italy and Spain, including the Muslim and Jewish minorities of Christian Spain. He has completed a translation and commentary on the Lay Christian-Jewish Disputation of Majorca (1286), and is completing a monograph entitled The Muslims and Jews of Crusader Majorca: A Comparative Study. Dr. Simon also edited the 1995 Robert Burns festschrift, and Friars and Jews, which will appear soon. In addition, Dr. Simon is the Executive Editor of Medieval Encounters: A Journal of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue; the “Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World” book series published by Brill Academic Publishers. He is also one of the editors of Brill’s book series “The Medieval Mediterranean.” These interests clearly carry over to the classroom. His graduate course rotation includes readings courses on Medieval Women; the Crusades; and Heresy, Inquisition, and Dissent 1100-1700; research seminars on Muslim-Christian-Jewish Relations; Mediterranean Spain and the Catalan Grand Chronicles; the Mendicants and Their World 1200-1500; a sources and bibliography course entitled Research Techniques in Medieval History; and occasional tutorials on Jews in Medieval Spain and on Documentary Latin Paleography 1100-1500.

Judith F. Stone
Mary U. Meader Professor of Modern European History, Ph.D. State University of New York-Stony Brook (1979)

Dr. Stone specializes broadly in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European cultural and political history, gender history, social policy, and literature and film as cultural artifacts. In her current research, she is focusing on the political culture of the French Third Republic (1870-1940), analyzing one of the major conflicts of that era—clericalism and anti-clericalism. In particular, Dr. Stone examines the gender dimension of this conflict, reevaluating the significance of “feminized” Catholicism, and reassessing the clerical anti-republicans. Most recently in the classroom, Dr. Stone has team-taught a course on History and French Films, and she continues to offer a variety of other courses related to gender, religion, and social and cultural developments in Modern Europe, especially France. She has published Sons of the Revolution: Radical Democrats in France, 1862-1914 (1996) and The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France 1890-1914 (1985). Her most recent articles are “L’Application de la Loi dans l’Averyon: les soeurs de Saint-Joseph”, in Les Congregation hors de la Loi, edited by Jacqueline Lalouette (2002); and “Anticlericals and Bonnes Soeurs” in French Historical Studies (2002). Dr. Stone is Director of Graduate Studies for the History Department.

Kristin M. Szylvian
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University (1988)

Dr. Szylvian specializes broadly in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States History, with special emphasis on Public History. Since the publication of Fish for All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment on Lake Michigan with Dr. Michael J. Chiarappa by Michigan State University Press, in January 2003, Dr. Szylvian’s attention has been directed to the completion of two projects. These include an article called “Fish City: The Urban Orientation of Lake Michigan Fisheries,” and The Camden Plan: Mutual Home Ownership for America’s Middle-Income Families, an analysis of the Mutual Home Ownership Plan developed and implemented in 1940-1942 by Lawrence Westbrook of the U.S. Federal Works Agency. Dr. Szylvian also teaches a wide range of courses on Public History, including Museum Studies, Local History Research Techniques, and Urban History.

Gray H. Whaley
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. University of Oregon, (2002)

Dr. Whaley’s research and teaching concentrate on Native American history and the American west. He is interested in the roles of race and citizenship in shaping settler-colonialism in the United States. Dr. Whaley is revising a book-length manuscript on colonization and Native responses in Lower Oregon Country from the 1790s through the 1850s. He is author of “Indians Twice Removed: Historical Representations of the Native Peoples of Southwestern Oregon,” in Changing Landscapes: Telling Our Stories, Proceedings of the 4th Annual Cultural Preservation Conference, 2000, (North Bend, Oregon).

Victor C. Xiong
Professor, Ph.D. Australian National University (1989)

Dr. Xiong specializes in Sui-Tang History and teaches courses related to China and East Asia. He has given research presentations at Stanford, the University of Michigan, University of Hawaii, University of Washington, University of Pittsburgh, Yale, Harvard, Peking University, Princeton, and the Association for Asian Studies, among others. Dr. Xiong also participated in excavations of the Tang Palace site at Luoyang under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He has published more than twenty research papers in English and Chinese. His most recent monograph, Sui-Tang Chang’an (583-904): A Study in the Urban History of Medieval China, was published in 2000 by the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.