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Edwin Martini Wins Research and Teaching Grants

Assistant Professor Edwin Martini prepared the grant proposal that earned the history department a substantial grant from the Distributed Computing Program to construct a mobile computer lab and  a digital media center. The DCP program is funded by student fees, and grants from the program are intended to improve student-centered technologies within departments. The mobile computer lab consists of a cart containing twenty Apple iBooks, which can be brought directly into the classroom for student use. The cart also serves a recharging device for the computers. The digital media center, which will be  housed in Dunbar Hall, is made up of three new iMac desktop computers with twenty-inch displays, a digital color scanner, and two new software programs (Final Cut Pro, for editing and producing digital films; and Past Perfect Museum, a program used for training public history students to manage archival collections). The department hopes to purchase another laptop cart and add to the digital media center in the future. For now, the department anticipates that these technologies will enhance classroom instruction and professional training for students in all history programs, as well as allowing 
students to produce a range of projects, including films, posters, podcasts, and websites.

Assistant Professor Ed Martini has also been awarded a FRACSF grant to do archival research for his new book project, "Agent Orange: An International and Interdisciplinary History." Tracing the history of Agent Orange as a material artifact, this project will contribute to scholarship in a number of fields, including environmental studies, military history, the history of science and technology, and the history of United States foreign relations.  Funds from the grant will allow Professor Martini to travel to largely untapped 
collections housed at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland; the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland; and the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University. In addition, this summer Professor Martini will travel to Vietnam to study the ongoing effects and legacies of the chemical war. The end result of the project, according to Martini, will be the first comprehensive, accessible scholarly monograph about Agent Orange and the international legacies of the chemical agents employed by the United 
States in Vietnam.