First-year doctoral student Alyssa McClanahan has been awarded the fifth annual Roger Daniels Summer Fellowship.  McClanahan will continue her research of anti-nuclear feminists in the 1980s, exploring an online archive from the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice (http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/). Featuring countless oral interviews, photographs, songs and stories, this source details how anti-nuclear feminists lived at this peace camp near Seneca Falls, New York, beginning in 1981. Protesting the deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles from the nearby Seneca Army Depot to Europe, the camp, set up a mile-and-a-half from the depot, organized numerous anti-missile rallies and acts of civil disobedience at its gates.  The Daniels Fellowship provides $1,500 to support McClanahan’s research over the summer.

The Department of History announced the Zane L. Miller prizes for this year’s best graduate papers at the spring awards ceremony.  First Prize, which comes with a $500 award, went to first-year doctoral student Alyssa McClanahan.  Her paper, “‘Take the Toys from the Boys!’ Anti-Nuclear Feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement,” offers a fascinating glimpse into the struggles among feminist groups.  Taking the anti-nuclear feminists as her lens, McClanahan concludes, “Movements like anti-nuclear feminism were the main heirs to women’s liberation of the late 1960s and 1970s.”  While her careful analysis lays bare how the diverse feminist presuppositions and agendas got in the way of a unified movement, her  insightful conclusion suggests that lack of homogeneity does not equal dysfunctionality, but rather connotes a vibrant, stimulating, and ongoing feminist discourse.

Second Prize, with a $250 award, went to first-year doctoral student Nathan McGee.  His “‘Renfro Valley Is Your Community Too’: A Modern Vision of the Past at Renfro Valley, 1937-1950” offers an intriguing examination of the rich material on the emerging radio culture and radio host John Lair.  McGee shows the powerful draw of Lair’s juxtaposition of the fleetingness of the city with the timelessness of the country. But McGee also demonstrates the tensions underlying Lair’s broadcast of “good, old, American values” associated with hardworking American farmers through a thoroughly modern medium, the radio.

Third Prize, and its $125 award, went to David Weyhe, who earned his Master’s degree this spring. His beautifully written paper, “‘Wasnatürlichist, kannnichtunmoralischsein’: Magnus Hirschfeld, Cosmopolitan Right, and the World League for Sexual Reform 1921-1935,” takes us into the world of the interwar period and its initiatives regarding sexual reforms.  Weyhe’s careful study of sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and the series of international congresses on sexual reform demonstrates the extent to which Hirschfeld’s scientific, cosmopolitan, pan-humanist ideas shaped the contents and conduct of the congresses. 

At the end of Spring semester 2013, the Department of History presented History PhD candidate Matthew Stanley with the inaugural John K. Alexander Graduate Teaching Award.  Stanley, who defended his dissertation in April, taught two courses for the department in 2012-2013: an undergraduate research seminar focused on race in America and a freshman seminar on the Civil War in American memory.  In nominating Stanley for the award, his doctoral adviser, Professor Christopher Phillips, praised Stanley as a wonderfully effective teacher, noting in particular his impressive talent for “asking thoughtful questions that evoke good responses.”

PhD Candidate Matthew Stanley

This new teaching award honors the distinguished career of John K. Alexander, who joined the Department of History in 1969 and taught UC students for 43 years before retiring as Professor Emeritus in 2012.  Over his long career, Dr. Alexander was an extraordinarily devoted and gifted teacher whose American history lectures inspired literally thousands of undergraduates, while also offering graduate seminars that guided dozens of Masters and PhD students toward their own successful teaching careers. 

The Graduate Studies Committee identified Stanley as an especially suitable recipient of the award because of his dedication to teaching and to the pedagogical mission of the department, which very much mirrors that showed by Dr. Alexander during his many years of teaching in our halls.  Going forward, the department plans to make this award on an annual basis.  Those interested in supporting this new award honoring Dr. Alexander’s commitment to excellence in history education can contact Chris Eden at the A&S Office of Development(513.556.0912 or Christopher.Eden@uc.edu).