Lauren Wojnarowski, HA 2008-2009, wrote a successful grant application for the Christian County Historical Society, which has been awarded $500 from the Illinois Association of Museums. Lauren says the museum is well worth the trip, and even has a Lincoln portrait made out of chicken feathers and skin.
The Lincoln-Sargent Farm Foundation is holding its Lincoln Bicentennial Dinner on Feb. 28 in the Grand Ballroom of the student union. Funds raised through the dinner will go to support the educational programs at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site which, even though it is currently officially closed, is allowed to open for its scheduled school programs and other special events. Please visit the new Lincoln-Sargent Farm Foundation website www.lincolnlogcabin.org for more information about the Foundation and the dinner.
Newton Key has received copies of Robert Bucholz and Newton Key, Early Modern England, 1485-1714: a Narrative History, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell). The authors substantively revised and edited text, maps, genealogies, and bibliography over the past few years. The book will be published in the UK on 16 January and in the USA on 6 February 2009.
Graduate student, Erin Crawley, who presented “Eclectic Psychiatry: Robert S. Carroll and the Social Construction of Neurasthenia,” at the Mid-America Conference on History, has been approved for a Williams Travel Award by the Awards Committee of the Council on Graduate Studies.
On November 11th Charles Foy presented his paper “Coerced Maritime Labor: Dark-Skinned Mariners as Prize Negroes, 1739-1783″ at Columbia University’s Seminar on Early American History and Culture.
The Charleston Area Charitable Foundation awarded a grant of $5422.76 to the Lincoln-Sargent Farm Foundation thanks to the grant-writing skills of Anthony Bowman, HA 2009. The grant will fund a portion of the Historical Administration exhibit on weaving and textiles that will be opening at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site in April, 2009.
Newton Key will be speaking at IUPUI: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. The IUPUI British and Irish Studies Group hosts his public talk, “The Aristocrat in the Tavern; the Informant in the Townhouse: Remapping the Public Sphere in Early Modern London,” on 10 November 2008, 3:00-4:00, in Lecture Hall 105, IUPUI.
A reminder that there will be a colloquium at the Dudley House, 4:30-6:30, before the public lecture: “Vermeer’s World: the Dutch, the Chinese, and the birth of modernity,” by Timothy Brook, Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 7 p.m., at the Tarble Arts Center.
Prof. Brook has taught world history in Canada and the UK, and is the Director of the new University of Oxford China Centre launched in May. David Smith has agreed to launch the discussion with issues about teaching world history, but perhaps everyone attending might come prepared to weigh in this discussion. As it was reading Prof. Brook’s Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (2008) that suggested to me that his method there might be useful teaching approach, I have made a couple of copies of the chapter “Journeys” in case you want to discuss that and its relation to teaching (two available hard copy History Office, one online reserve for His 5250, you probably know how to figure out the password). The chapter begins with an analysis of Hendrik van der Burch, The Card Players (1660) (a useful review of the book).
Finally, if you are interested in attending this colloquium (we will be providing a dinner from Bangkok Thai) please leave a comment below with your name (first name is fine), and whether you’d like Tofu, Shrimp, Chicken, or Beef (we will do a variety of curries, pad thai, pad sew).
We would like to open this colloquium to members of the Art Department and Asian Studies.
Since 1998 Bailey K. Young has been excavating the site of Walhain Castle, in the province of Brabant Wallon, southeast of Brussels (Belgium), in partnership with the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL) and the Center for National Archaeological Research (CRAN) which is based there. The month-long excavation has been the centerpiece of EIU’s unique Summer Archaeology in Belgium Program, which allows American students the opportunity to earn credits in History or Earth Science while taking part in a full-scale medieval excavation. The program was originally designed for Honors students, at the instigation of Honors Dean Herbert Lasky (also Professor of History), and subsequently opened to non-Honors undergraduates and to graduate students as well. The state of the standing vestiges of the castle, which date between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, has given cause for concern, since they have been privately owned and their conservation demanded expertise and financial resources beyond the means of the owners. Although the site was classified and protected as an historical monument the Heritage Institute of Wallonia (IPW) lacked the funds needed to purchase it. At the request of the IPW, Professors Young and Lasky organized an American committee, Friends of the Walloon Heritage, to help raise the funds. In July 2008 the committee toured the castle site and other heritage sites in Belgium, and took part in conversations with the IPW, the Walhain township, the owners and others interested in finding a solution to preserve the site. On October 22 Professor Young received a letter from M. Freddy Joris, Director of the IPW, announcing that an agreement had been reached with the owners to sell the property to the IPW, which plans with the help of its American friends to begin measures of conservation soon. M. Joris expressed his thanks for the help given so far, and stressed that the IPW favors the continuation of the research and excavation program in the future, in co-ordination with the restoration of the site.
The history department is pleased to announce a public lecture: “Vermeer’s World: the Dutch, the Chinese, and the birth of modernity,” by Timothy Brook, Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 7 p.m., at the Tarble Arts Center.
Timothy Brook, the Shaw Professor of Chinese at the University of Oxford, and the Principal of St. John’s College and Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, is the author of many books, including Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Chinese Elites in Wartime China (2005) and the prize-winning The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (1998). His most recent book is Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (2008).
sponsored by the Art Department, Asian Studies, the English Department, the History Department, the College of Arts and Humanities, and the Tarble Arts Center
(A useful review of the book.)