The Department of History is pleased to announce that Dr. Nianshen Song will join the department as an Assistant Professor in August 2016.   Dr. Song holds a BA in Chinese Language and Literature from the University of International Relations (China), a M.Sc. in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in Chinese History from the University of Chicago.  He is currently in his third year as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow (and in 2013-2014 also as an SSRC fellow) at Vassar College.  Dr. Song is an especially promising historian of Chinese History, Inter-Asian History, and Transnational History.  A native of China, he is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, with research knowledge of Japanese and Korean. His research is based on work in Chinese, Korean and Japanese archives.   

Prof. Susan McDonough was accepted into the prestigious 2015 NEH Summer Institute on “Negotiating Identities: Expression and Representation in the Christian-Jewish-Muslim Mediterranean," to be held in Barcelona, Spain, this summer.  In the seminar, scholars from around the country will rethink the history of the late medieval Mediterranean. Prof. McDonough also won a competitive Dean's Travel Award for her project, “Vile Sluts and Gassy Whores: Prostitutes in the Medieval Mediterranean.” Congratulations to Prof. McDonough!

Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory

On this installment of ST, an interesting conversation with Anne Sarah Rubin, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who is also the author of "Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March and American Memory." This book explores the stories as well as the myths about Sherman's infamous March to the Sea. In doing so, it draws from a diverse range of sources, among them the firsthand accounts of African Americans, women, Union soldiers, Confederates, and even Sherman himself -- as well as, of course, travel accounts, memoirs, literature, films, and newspapers of the time. Thus Rubin shows the ways in which our thinking about the Civil War -- and especially Sherman's role within it -- has changed over time. "Through the Heart of Dixie" was hailed by The Wall Street Journal as "an engrossing exploration of the ways in which the march has been recounted and understood over the years" -- and the Gettysburg Chronicle called it "one of the more innovative books which has been published this year on the Civil War and one of the more innovative books on the March to the Sea."