History Faculty News

​Anne M. Boylan, professor emerita of history, is serving as Delaware editor and coordinator for the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, the first installment of which has just been published.  The dictionary is freely accessible online.  With the help of volunteer students and local scholars who research and write entries, the Delaware portion of the dictionary will eventually include around 60 short biographies of suffrage leaders.

Prof. Boylan conducted four Educator Workshops on "Race and Religion in the Women's Rights Movement, 1865-1965," on July 15-16, 2019, at the University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center. The workshops, attended by 30 Utah teachers, were coordinated by BetterDays2020.org -- a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing school curricula on women's history and to commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the 150th anniversary of Utah women's right to vote.

​Rudi Matthee, John and Dorothy Munroe Distinguished Professor of History, presented “The Idea of Iran in the Safavid Period: Dynastic Preeminence and Urban Pride” at the Middle East Institute, Columbia University, March 29, 2019.

Jaipreet Virdi received the 2019 John C. Burnham Early Career Award for her paper, “Measuring and Conserving Hearing: Early Audiology & the Fitting of Hearing Aids.” The paper documents an important beginning to a new direction in disability studies and the history of science.

Dr. Virdi has received an IHRC grant with co-principal investigators Barret Michalec (College of Health Sciences, CIDER, Sociology) and Ian Sampson (Art & Design) to develop a series of Workshops in Graphic Medicine and explore the feasibility of a formal 600-level interdisciplinary course “The History and Application of Graphic Medicine” for undergraduate and graduate students, primarily aimed at health profession students. Art-based narratives have been shown to be therapeutic. Medical graphic narratives, especially comics, have been shown to provide an effective vehicle for communication between patients and professionals in the health profession. They are also useful for how students can reflect on and give voice to varied experiences and powerful tools for teaching empathy, promote observational skills, and cultivate awareness on issues in health and healthcare. The proposed workshops will explore the how visual culture and medical humanities can inform and reflect on each other, offering a venue for healthcare professionals, UD faculty/staff, and students to learn about the exciting medium of graphic medicine.

​Ramnarayan S. Rawat, associate professor of history, has received a Visiting Fellowship at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge for 2019-20. He will be completing his book manuscript, titled The Dalit Public Sphere: A Subaltern History of Liberalism and Democratic Practice. The study highlights the critical role of the segregated spaces of Dalit neighborhoods and the contribution of Dalit literary and political activism to the emergence of democratic liberalism in India in the course of the 20th century. In addition, he is currently a Regional Faculty Fellow at the Penn Humanities Forum for 2018-19.

​Richards Professor of American History Emerita Susie Strasser author of Never Done: A History of American Housework, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market, and Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash  recently wrote an article for The Guardian series United States of Plastic detailng the American love affair with plastic. Read the full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/21/history-of-america-love-affair-with-plastic