Academic fair!

Here we are at Ross gym with professor Dameron and Tan Wai Hui. A freshman History student Mr. Tan stopped by our table to talk and get to know us. We are pleased to have a great new student join the ranks!



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Location:Ross gym

First day at Saint Mike's

Okay. Summer's officially over...... The first day of classes is Monday, the freshmen are on campus, and the rest of the students will move in this weekend just ahead of a hurricane. Hopefully everyone will be safe and the worst that happens is we get some much-needed rain here in the valley.

More importantly, the semester is about to launch and everyone is anticipating an exciting new experience. The faculty and administration are looking forward to the launch of the new curriculum model and the expansion of our scholarly and academic efforts. The students, while there maybe some apprehension among them, are looking forward to the changes that will hopefully smooth out some of the variable credit bumps they and others have experienced in the past.

In the History department we are excited about all of this, but we also have a few other developments that raise our spirits. We have a new faculty member to get to know, Kathryn Dungy, our newly appointed Latin Americanist. Kathryn's expertise will enhance the department's offerings and her presence will grace us. Another new faculty member will arrive in the fall of 2012, Katharina Ivanyi, who will teach courses on the Near East, Islam, and the Ottoman Empire. The history program will be enormously enhanced by these teachers and their scholarly interests.

So, here we go, but maybe we can still enjoy a few sunsets over the water.........



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Location:Somewhere on Lake Champlain

Our New Curriculum ..... and other stuff

Although I am still concentrating hard upon enjoying the remains of the summer, I have been thinking about the new curriculum and what it means for faculty as well as students. Most faculty are excited to have the opportunity to expand their courses within the new scheduling concepts and to think about creating greater academic rigor in those same courses. As they imagine it, students will have the ability to concentrate on four courses rather than a multitude of five, six or seven as often has been the case in the past.

On the other side of the desk, students have expressed various opinions to me as well; some fear the new curriculum could mean unreasonable expectations on the part of faculty in their course work while others see the revised schedules as a sort of "get out of jail free" card. I hope that as the new semester unfolds and we begin to explore the ways in which the new 4/4 scheduling works, we will find that there is time for more textured and nuanced learning both in the classroom as well as in outside preparation. At the same time, the new schedule will also mean less awkward maneuvering for athletic and other extra-curricular student pursuits. I hope the results will live up to our aspirations, but it will take a commitment from all of us to make it happen. I promise to do my part.

While the summer is still upon us, I contemplate this from a distance. I still have those summer commitments to finish. Maxx has learned to sit, stay, and lie down! He does not see the necessity of learning "Come!" I think he's just adopted the Champlain islands attitude: no worries, mate, the sun is shining!




Obedience school may be next, but in the meantime I am working on my tan......





Have a safe and happy rest of the summer!



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Location:Alburgh, Vermont, United States

Faculty Summer Research

This summer I will not be doing research in Italy, as I was doing in the fall semester of 2010 during my last sabbatical (the photograph of me on a bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice was taken in October of that year). Rather, like most of the my colleagues in the department, I will be writing at home this summer. In my last post I described the senior thesis presentations, awards, and festivities that come at the end of the academic calendar in May--these are the graduation events that mark the culmination of the year for the History major. After we faculty members congratulate and sadly say goodbye to our students (as we did on May 16), we begin to devote ourselves exclusively to research, writing, and to preparing for our classes in the coming fall semester. The three and half months between Commencement in May and the first day of classes in September are among the most productive periods for faculty scholarship. Dr. Susan Ouellette has already carefully outlined in her blog the nature of her work during her sabbatical on a new manuscript, and she will continue this writing project during the summer. All other faculty members in our department are equally engaged, exploring the variety of historical problems that intrigue them most. A few examples demonstrate this quite well. Dr. Purcell is currently in Britain doing research for her new book on an aspect of twentieth century British popular culture and gender (she will also be presenting at a conference). Dr. Slaybaugh, our twentieth century US historian, is beginning his sabbatical (second half of 2011) this summer, which he will devote to the research and writing of his next book. For the first part of the summer, however, he will be supervising a student, Mary Farnsworth, in her summer research project (funded by the Vice President for Academic Affairs). This is a survey and study of Ms. Farnsworth's family papers that go back to the time of the American Revolution. My main set of tasks this spring and summer is to complete three essays and deliver them to the editors who have requested them. One essay has to do with the history of the idea of Purgatory and is entitled "Purgatory and Modernity." Another essay outlines the history of the Church in the Florence (Italy) at the time of the early fourteenth century poet, Dante Alighieri. The third essay will interpret the development of church lordship in the European Middle Ages and is meant primarily for an audience of professional scholars and advanced students of medieval Christianity. So, as you can see, during the spring and summer months after Commencement and before classes begin on August 29, the members of the History Department are doing what they love to do: explore the past, write about it, and make their discoveries available to other historians and to the public by publishing their findings. And in the fall, they will bring and share what they have discovered and their enthusiasm for their research into the classroom with their students.

The end of my sabbatical!

My sabbatical projects are almost finished. I've got one more chapter to finish and a bit more polishing on my manuscript before I send it off to the readers. Then I will start thinking about the fall teaching.

It has been a productive sabbatical. I polished and sent out an article for publication in the Dublin Seminar Proceedings, wrote a review of a new book for Vermont History, and wrote six chapters for my book. The most interesting thing was my experience with filming a TV interview. I don't know how that came out, but we'll see this fall.

Finally, my major sabbatical project, Max, has been coming along nicely. He's house-broken and knows how to sit and lay down. He understands when I ask him if he wants to go for a walk; he gets excited and jumps around so much I now have to spell w-a-l-k if I want to make it to the door before him. Unfortunately he does not seem to want to learn what "Come, Max!" means, so he has to be restrained when outside, but we're working on that. I

I am getting excited about the fall. The new curriculum should be interesting and I have missed teaching this spring! But, I don't want to get ahead of myself, I still have a bit of summer to enjoy..............


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Location:somewhere on Lake Champlain.....

Senior Presentations and Graduation, 2011

Since Dr. Susan Ouellette is currently on sabbatical leave, completing the manuscript of a book, I have been filling in for her as interim Chair until the end of her term on July 1. After that date I am excited to start a fresh three-year term as Chair of the History Department. This is my first blog post, and it will be one of many in the coming months. We have a lot of news to report, but I want my first posting to focus on our senior thesis presentations on April 29 and the graduation festivities of the past week.

Graduation is always a very bittersweet time for both the History Department faculty and our graduating seniors. Thirty-two of our majors graduated on a very rainy Monday, May 16, and began (or "commenced") a new phase of their lives as Saint Michael's College graduates with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. It is bittersweet because while we faculty are happy to see our students complete their degree, we also fondly remember the many exciting moments of intellectual exchange and learning that we shared with them, both in the classroom or on academic study trips. I for one still recall precisely where many of our graduating History seniors sat in my classroom almost four years ago, shortly after they had first arrived on campus. And though they have left the campus physically as new graduates, many of them will remain in contact with us faculty as they develop their careers as lawyers, secondary or elementary school teachers, college and university professors, museum curators, businessmen or businesswomen (among many other professions).

The History Department celebrated the graduation of our seniors with our annual ice cream social on Baccalaureate Sunday, and one of the highlights of that event for me was the ability to meet and talk with the families of our students over vanilla ice cream and hot fudge. Another highlight of every annual ice cream social is the announcement of the winner of the Pfeifer Prize for the best quality senior thesis from the previous calendar year. This year's (2010) winner was Thomas E. Bradley, a double major in Political Science, whose thesis, "The Right Man in the Right Place: John Hay, the Open Door, and Sino-American Relations," was cited for its "skillful use of primary and secondary sources marshaled in the form of a systematic and convincing argument."

Tom Bradley was not the only History major to win an award at graduation. Our recipient of departmental honors at the Baccalaureate Honors Ceremony was Shelby Superneau, a double major in Secondary Education and member of our local Phi Beta Kappa chapter (Gamma of Vermont). The Father Prevel Memorial Award at Commencement, given to the male student who maintained a high academic level of achievement while making "numerous and exemplary contributions" to the college community, went to Matthew Seklecki. This is the most prestigious award, along with its equivalent (the Fairbanks Award) given to a female student, that a graduate can receive at Commencement. A member of the History Department faculty was also honored at the Senior Brunch. The Student Association of the College awarded Dr. George Dameron the Reverend Gerald E. Dupont Award for his dedication to the ideals of the college and "in recognition of his outstanding contributions" to the college community.

About two weeks before graduation the History Department hosted one of the principal and key events of every spring: the oral presentations by seniors of their senior thesis research projects. We always accompany these presentations with as much pizza and coffee as our seniors and faculty can consume. This spring eleven of our seniors took about fifteen minutes to tell us about what they had discovered in their research. Each faculty member works with up to four students as a thesis advisor, and I advised four students this semester. The topics chosen by my advisees, for example, included the origins of the Robin Hood legend, the role of the theme of "cunning" in Viking sagas, the socio-economic origins of medieval cities in Belgium, and possible ties between bandits in sixteenth century Italy and the emergence of the modern mafia. I can speak for all of my colleagues when I say that the quality of these presentations has been improving steadily over the past few years! This spring was certainly no exception. We congratulate these as well as all our seniors on their graduation, and we wish them the very best as they begin a new phase in their lives.

My sabbatical projects: an update.

Since the new semester has begun, I have been working away at my sabbatical projects, but I sure have been missing everyone at Saint Mike's!

I am currently working on several projects at once: my book project, project work for our teacher institutes through the Turning Points in American History grant, and training my new puppy Max!

My book project is going well and I am on schedule to complete my manuscript by the summer. I am looking forward to finishing this work because I am already thinking about the next research/writing project!

The grant project is also going well with two teacher institutes already under our belt. As the project historian I have been developing reading lists and consulting with the project managers on their web site.

But the most fun has been hanging out with Max!

Max is a cairn terrier, six months old, and, as you can see here, he loves the snow! I believe he thinks he's Nanook of the North! It's a good thing he likes the cold with all the snow storms we've been getting. I'm getting nostalgic for spring flowers myself......