♦ We are pleased to announce that Dr. Michael Seth was selected as the 2008-2009 Madison Scholar in the College of Arts and Letters.

♦ Congratulations to Dr. Ann Crabb for the publication of her article “If I could write”: Margherita Datini and Letter Writing, 1385-1410” in the Renaissance Quarterly, winter 2007 (vol. LX, no.4).

♦ We congratulate Dr. Steve Guerrier on his selection for this year's Distinguished Service Award in the College of Letters and Sciences.

♦ Dr. H. Gelfand has received an Edna T. Shaeffer Humanist Award to further his study: "The Culture and Globalization of Board Sports."

♦ We are pleased to congratulate Dr. Jennifer Connerley on the publication of her article: “Quaker Bonnets and the Erotic Feminine in American Popular Culture” in the July 2006 issue of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief.

♦ Join the Department of History in extending congratulations to professor Dr. Lamont King. His book, Africa and the Nation- State: State Formation and Identity in Ancient Egypt, Hausaland, and Southern Africa was published by The Edwin Mellen Press this summer.

♦ We are pleased to announce the publication of Dr. Michael Seth’s A Concise History of Korea from the Neolithic Period through the Nineteenth Century by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

♦ The Department of History is delighted to announce that Dr. Jessica Davidson has been selected as the Faculty Member in Residence for the Semester in Salamanca, Fall 2006. Dr. Chris Arndt will be Faculty Member in Residence in Antwerp, Spring 2007.

♦ The JMU College of Arts and Letters has named Dr. John J. Butt, Professor of History, as the 2006-07 recipient of the Carl Harter Distinguished Teacher Award which recognizes exemplary commitment to teaching. Dr. Butt recently published The Greenwood Dictionary of World History, Greenwood Press, 2005.

♦ Dr. Kevin Hardwick’s article, "Narratives of Villainy and Virtue: Governor Francis Nicholson and the Character of the Good Ruler in Early Virginia," recently was published in The Journal of Southern History: LXXII:1, February 2006. Also, Hackett Press has announced that Classics of American Political and Constitutional Thought, Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Scott J. Hammond, Kevin R. Hardwick, & Howard L. Lubert will be released November 2006.

♦ Dr. Ann M. Crabb and Jane Couchman, eds., have recently published "Women’s Letters Across Europe, 1400-1700: Form and Persusasion”, Ashgate, 2005.

♦ Dr. William Van Norman, visiting Assistant Professor of History, has recently published “The Process of Cultural Change Among Cuban Bozales During the Nineteenth Century” in The Americas, vol. 62 no. 2 (October, 2005), 177-207.

♦ History professor Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi was honored with the Gutenberg-e Prize for 2004. Each year between 1999 and 2004, the AHA awarded Gutenberg-e prizes to high quality dissertations from many different fields and topics in history. A distinguished panel of scholars judged the dissertations, selecting the award recipients primarily on the scholarly mertis of the dissertations. Each prize consisted of a $20,000 fellowship to be used by the author to convert the dissertation into an electronic monograph of the highest quality to be published by Columbia University Press. Information about the prize, and the list of winners can be found here.

Dr. Hanifi has agreed to serve as the Principal Investigator and Project Director for The Afghan Diaspora Remittance Project. The project is being funded by the Asian Development Bank in conjunction with the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies. The study’s dual aims are to estimate the amount and forms of human and material capital infusions from the Afghan diaspora to Afghanistan, and propose mechanisms to more efficiently and effectively attach that capital to development opportunities in Afghanistan. For further information, please check out the following websites:

Asian Development Bank - http://www.adb.org/Afghanistan/default.asp

Institute of Afghanistan Studies - http://www.jhfc.duke.edu/aias/mission.html

♦ Dr. Gabrielle Lanier, history professor and director of the Center for Valley and Regional Studies, received a commission of appointment to the Board of Trustees of the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia from Governor Mark Warner. She will be serving a four year term starting July 1, 2004 and ending June 30, 2008. Dr. Lanier has made presentations at the museum on subjects that include interpretation issues and has served as a consultant on the Bowman House, which will be relocated from Rockingham County to the museum grounds. The museum features historic buildings, artifacts and living history interpretations to increase the public’s knowledge of the formation of American folk culture, a synthesis of European, African and indigenous peoples, according to the museum website (www.frontiermuseum.org). The museum depicts how the immigrants who settled in frontier America lived in their homelands.

♦ Dr. Kristen McCleary, assistant professor of history, was accepted by the University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies as an Obermann Fellow and participated in the Summer 2005 Research Seminar, “The Arts and Cultural Politics of Carnival” under the direction of Professors Loyce Arthur and Michaeline Crichlow. She has also received an Edna Shaeffer grant to continue her research on the culture of Buenos Aires.

♦ Dr. Michael Gubser, assistant professor of history, announces the publication of his book, Time's Visible Surface: Alois Riegl and the Discourse on History and Temporality in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. "In Time's Visible Surface, Michael Gubser presents Riegl's work as a sustained examination of the categories of temporality and history in art. Supported by a rich exploration of Riegl's writings, Gubser argues that Riegl viewed artworks as registering historical time visibly in artistic forms." The book, published by Wayne State University Press, was published in January, 2006.