2023 News and Events
Spring 2023 Spring
On January 20, "The Boston Globe" published an article for which Prof. Shawn Driscoll was interviewed in: "A Night at the Resurrected ManRay, 18 Years after the Counterculture Club Closed". Prof. Driscoll was sought out because, after two years of research and conducting interviews about the club, he published an oral history on it called "We Are But Your Children".
On January 26, Prof. Shawn Driscoll participated in an episode of the "Archipiélago Histórico" podcast hosted by a former student of his, UMass Lowell History concentrator Ramón González-Arango López. They discussed the Caribbean during the 1960s and its relationship with the United States, specifically during the Kennedy years.
During the evening of Friday, February 3, Prof. Christopher Carlsmith and Prof. Jane Sancinito brought a group of thirty-two students taking History classes to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. They spent most of their time viewing the Greek and Roman exhibits.
On February 6, Prof. Abby Chandler was appointed as a review editor for H-Early America, an international scholarly online network on early American history and culture. In this role, she will be commissioning scholars to review books on the broader early American field; these reviews will be published on the network. She will serve in this role for two years.
The History Department co-sponsored "Woman, Life, Freedom: Talks and Discussion on the Women's Uprising and Contemporary Art in Iran" on Wednesday, March 15, from 3:30 - 5 p.m. in O'Leary 222. The guest speakers were Pamela Karimi (UMass Dartmouth) and Neda Moridpour (Tufts).
Prof. Jane Sancinito and Prof. Daniel Broyld, together with Gender Studies, the Center for Women and Work, and O'Leary library, led a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on Thursday, March 16, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the O'Leary Mezzanine. They and the more than twenty students who participated focused on the pages of historical women of color, adding new resources and information to their sites and linking pages to boost their visibility. The group edited more than forty pages, including those of Mary Ellen Pleasant (a nineteenth-century African American millionaire who helped to fund John Brown's Raid) and Sophonisba (a third-century BCE Numidian queen).
In honor of Black History Month, Prof. Daniel Broyld will give a lecture on “Afro-Futurism and the Underground Railroad” on March 21 at 6:30 p.m. in Coburn 275. Pizza and refreshments will be served. For any questions, please contact Prof. Broyld via email at Daniel_Broyld@uml.edu.
On Thursday, March 23, Elizabeth Meyer (University of Virginia) will visit UMass Lowell to give this year's Zamanakos Lecture. Her talk will be on "Slave Manumissions and Greek Sanctuaries". The lecture will begin at 6 p.m. at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. A reception will follow at 7 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Prof. Christopher Carlsmith via email at Christopher_Carlsmith@uml.edu.
Prof. Christopher Carlsmith is giving a series of book talks in California during the last week of March (March 26-31) about his Save Venice Inc. monograph. Stops will include Pasadena, San Diego, San Francisco, and Portola Valley.
Prof. Elizabeth Williams will deliver an invited lecture, "States of Cultivation: Imperial Transition and Scientific Agriculture in the Eastern Mediterranean," at Wake Forest University on Wednesday, March 29.
On Monday, April 3, Eric Dursteler (Brigham Young University) will visit UMass Lowell to give a talk: “Worse than a Public Brothel’: Sex & Diplomacy in Early Modern Istanbul”. It will take place from 2-3:15 p.m. in the Health & Social Sciences Building, room 120. The event is open to the public. For more information, please contact Prof. Christopher Carlsmith via email at Christopher_Carlsmith@uml.edu.
Phi Alpha Theta will host its annual induction ceremony on Tuesday, April 11, at 5 p.m. in O’Leary 222. Prof. Jane Sancinito will be the featured faculty speaker, while Deirdre Hutchison will be the student speaker. Prof. Abby Chandler is currently evaluating and contacting those who are eligible for membership in this History honor society.
Prof. Michael Pierson will publish a new book in April: The Wild Woman of Cincinnati: Gender and Politics on the Eve of the Civil War. On Wednesday, April 19, from 2-3 p.m. CDT, his publisher, Louisiana State University Press, will host a "Wild Woman of Cincinnati" Facebook Live event during which Prof. Pierson will speak about his book. This monograph examines what happened when a man arrived in Cincinnati with a young woman he claimed to have captured while she was living feral beyond the frontier of the United States. As men gazed at this woman, they imagined different stories and fantasies about her, all of which tell us about political and sectional divisions in antebellum America.
Prof. Jane Sancinito will be giving a talk at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 27: “Holding the (Money) Bag: Iconography, Merchants, and Coinage in Roman Gaul.” She will be speaking via Zoom for NUMISMA, the Australian Centre for Numismatic Studies.