From The Chair
Things are always on the move here in Fiske Hall. Familiar faces graduate and move to new opportunities. Others stop in and visit or come back to start a new phase of their journey. Some connections are decades in the making, as when we had the alumni of the department’s 1969-1970 National Defense Education Act program in a reunion after 50 years (check it out here). Sometimes, we make new connections when we bring in speakers such as Martin Nekola to talk about the Cold War in Czechoslovakia. Some head out for a time, such as Robin Henry, who currently serves as interim chair of the WISE program, or Jeff Hayton, who is on a year-long sabbatical to study the history of mountaineering in Germany. These changes force us to adapt and shift, but through it all, the energy at Fiske Hall goes on! We are all students here…not just those who take classes, but those who teach and those who join in our events. So together let’s continue to pursue the study and teaching of History, Religion, Geography, and International Studies.
Local and Community History
Program News
Local and Community history program students and alums keep doing amazing things! The Society of Public Historians has been continuing its tradition of interviewing alums to talk about all the great things they are doing. Check out the SPH Facebook page to keep up to date. We have had folks from Kyle Palmer, who is now a preservationist for Eureka Springs and window restorer guru! There is Josh Mackey, now the curator at Oklahoma Baptist University who has found that his work is as much about community engagement as records. There is Dr. Ben Hruska, whose work at Block Island includes everything from World War II history to how transportation links have shaped life on the island. There is Sarah Lavallee, whose work at Cornell ranges from German memorialization in World War II to handling the photographic negatives of women astronomers. There is Jason Herbert, whose “Historians at the movies” has brought together scholars and history enthusiasts across the globe (check out https://www.historiansatthemovies.com/about-7).
The work of our students and alums is striking. 2022 saw Seth Bate release his book, Winfield’s Walnut Valley Festival. For a review see, https://bluegrasstoday.com/winfields-walnut-valley-festival-book-by-seth-bale/. Barb Myers is hard at work documenting and preserving African American burial areas in North Carolina. Logan Daugherty is curator for the Kansas Aviation Museum. Theresa St Romains has made a name for herself writing historical romance novels (https://theresaromain.com/)! Keith Wondra, who has been with the Royal Gorge Regional Museum, has just announced a new position to become the curator for the Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City! So many of our students have gone on to work at WSU in various offices across campus that we are starting to set up regular meetings! Ken Spurgeon’s docudrama “The Contested Plains” debuted at the Orpheum this fall. Spurgeon is developing the next generation of filmmakers as well, with his work with Suzanne Walenta on their “Kansas Crossroads” television series. Spurgeon has also encouraged the work of Derek Landwehr, a budding filmmaker in his own right, having been the cinematographer for a short film, “Las Nuevas Adelitas,” about the GI Forum Queen Candidates who advocated for Latinx Civil Rights in Wichita.
Current students continue to research and present their work. Rhenee Swink presented “Williamina Parrish: Artist, Photographer, Mentor” at the Missouri Conference on History and the story of African American funeral home director Xavier Hightower Kansas Association of Historians virtual conference.
Society of Public Historians students continued to give walking tours with a blustery tour down east Douglas in the spring and an exploration of Riverside Park and Back Bay Boulevard in the fall. As I write this, the group is putting together a centerpiece that will be part of the fundraising auction of the Kansas Museums Association. In fact, there is so much going on with our students that it can be a challenge to keep up with everyone. However, do check out our Facebook page to keep up to date on some of our latest news!
From Rowfant to Fiske Hall: The Story of Rowfant Press and why its books are now for sale at WSU
In the summer of 2022, The History Department at Wichita State University acquired the titles and inventory from Rowfant Press, a publisher of local history books. Founded by Wichita State University alum Patrick O’Connor, Rowfant’s titles have included Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains, Tales from a Blackout, and Goat Glands to Ranch Hands: The KFDI story. In 2019, WSU student Barb Myers purchased the press and expanded it to include works such as Honky Tonkers and Country Music in Wichita and Munger House - Cowtown.
Myers has now relocated to North Carolina but to keep the work of Rowfant alive and thriving here in Kansas, the Department of History at Wichita State University will make sure these titles continue to be available.
Speaker Series
The Department of History’s Speaker Series returned to in-person in Spring 2022! Our spring lecturer was Dr. Martin Nekola, a Fulbright scholar from the Czech Republic, whose talk, “For the Freedom of Captive European Nations: Eastern European Exiles in Postwar America,” was given on Monday, April 4th.
The Fairmount Folio: The First 25 Years
Fairmount Folio: Volume 20, 1996-2021
Fairmount Folio: Kansas in the Fairmount Folio, 1996-2021
The Department of History’s publication for student writing, The Fairmount Folio, published two anniversary volumes in 2022. Since 1996, both undergraduate and graduate students have submitted their papers to be published. A committee of faculty then chose the papers to be published. In the nineteen volumes published between 1996 and 2021 more than 117 articles were published.
My original intent was to create one volume showcasing the thematic and chronological range of papers published. The first perusal of volumes disabused me of that idea. Thus, there are two anniversary volumes, one focusing on topics from world history, chronologically ranging from ancient to medieval to colonial American to current history. The second volume presents only some of the articles on Kansas history. Whether written in the late 1990s or more recently, these articles reflect current concerns and interests. As the use of primary sources had been an important consideration in choice of papers published, some of these articles provide unique interviews no longer possible.
A celebration of their publication was held in Fiske Hall on April 12. Students, faculty, the Dean of Ablah Library Kathy Downes and Dr. Hippisley the Dean of the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences attended.
In addition to the hard copies, the journal is available electronically through the library and through the department web site. All of the articles, from volume 1 in 1996 to volume 19 are available.
HOW TO FIND: Beginning at the main page of Ablah Library, click on SOAR and other Local Collections, go to OJS-Hosted WSU Journals. The Fairmount Folio is available here. You may search for the work of an individual author, topic, or volume. The site is easily accessible.
Dr. Helen Hundley, Editor, Fairmount Folio
Faculty News
Professor LAILA BALLOUT had a busy year taking advantage of archive re-openings and the resumption of in-person conferences. She presented at the Society of Historians of Foreign Relations annual meeting in June 2022 and has been accepted to present a paper at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting in December. She conducted two research trips to Washington, D.C. this year to investigate documents held by the Arab American Institute and the George Washington University Special Collections. For this coming year, she received the William Appleman Williams Emerging Faculty Grant which will help finance additional trips to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. These trips will allow her to finalize the research for her book manuscript, “Saving Lebanon: Human Rights, Ethnic Politics, and Religion in the Reagan Era.” Beyond her book project she is working on and articlee and a chapter about the U.S. relationship with the Middle East for a Routledge Handbook on Religion and U.S. politics.
In the classroom, she’s looking forward to teaching a new First Year Seminar course on Human Rights in Spring 2023.
It’s been busy year for GEORGE DEHNER as we continue to (hopefully) emerge from the pandemic. He organized and had accepted a panel for the 2023 American Historical Association Conference in Philadelphia on the topic of “Public Health and the Public.” His paper is titled “Unreal Expectations: The CDC and the Legionnaires’ Disease Outbreak.” He has also been solicited to submit a chapter for a proposed manuscript on pandemics and state formation. His tentatively titled chapter is “Swine flu, Legionnaires’ Disease and the CDC: Public Health Challenges in 1976.” In addition to the usual slate of courses and students, George taught a Lifelong Learning Course on Humans and Epidemics in the Fall of 2021. He has also temporarily assumed undergraduate advisor duties as Dr. Hayton pursues his yodeling career on sabbatical. This past summer George and family (wife Jodi, sons Brendan [a spring WSU graduate], Patrick, and Sean) took a ten-day trip to Berlin, Munich, and Paris. A marvelous time was had by all, including Trooper who received an extra allotment of Scooby Snacks while the family was out of the country. George continues his work on his Legionnaires’ manuscript and looks forward to another delightful calendar year working with students.
DR. JEFF HAYTON is enjoying his sabbatical in Germany working on a new research project examining mountaineering.
During the 2021-2022 academic year, DR. ROBIN HENRY remained busy in her research, teaching, and academic and public presentations. Though delayed a bit by COVID-19, she had two chapters and an article published in 2022. Like many scholars, she had to find creative ways to conduct research without in-person access to archival materials. Luckily, she has found great librarians and historians willing to help scan materials from the special collections at UCLA. The UCLA special collections reopened in June 2022, and she looks forward to visiting for a research trip soon. She has also participated in several research and writing workshops and delivered the annual Rothbaum Lecture in Constitutional History at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.
In addition to her research, Dr. Henry continued her work with the Law and Public Policy consortium in the Bill and Dorothy Cohen Honors College and enjoyed teaching the first LGBTQ+ in US history course in Spring 2022. In late 2020, she also became chair of the college committee tasked with redesigning the Department of Women’s Studies and Center for Women’s Studies. She successfully shepherded the department into a new name, the Department of Women’s, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Studies and major/minor of the same name. Both changes were unanimously approved by the Kansas Board of Regents. She has also worked to revive the lecture series, Words By Women, and begin planning for a 25th Anniversary party for the Plaza of Heroines and a 50th anniversary event for the department. Because of her leadership, she was selected to serve as interim chair of the Department of Women’s, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Studies for the 2022-2023 academic year. She also continues to organize the Department of History’s speaker series. Dr. Henry continues to write and deliver historical commentary for the series “Past and Present” on KMUW and has been a frequent guest interview on podcasts focused on gender, sexuality, and civil rights issues. Finally, she serves as a board member for Chamber Music-ICT and the Wichita Sedgwick County Historical Museum.
ROBERT M. OWENS spent the spring semester of 2022 on sabbatical. He undertook three short research trips – to the Filson Historical Society Library in Louisville, KY, the Archives of Kentucky in Frankfort, and the Ohio History Connection’s archives in Columbus. While in Columbus, he was invited to deliver the lecture, “William Henry Harrison’s War of 1812,” to the Franklinton Historical Society. He also took a three-week research trip, with the support of a University Research/Creative Projects Award, for a future project concerning how early Americans treated their friends and enemies after death.
For his main research trip, he drove to the Archives of Georgia in Morrow, the South Carolina Historical Society Archives in Charleston, and the Georgia Historical Society Library in Savannah, as well as historical sites such as Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, Horseshoe Bend National Military Park and the Fort Mims battle site, both in Alabama, the National Cemetery in St. Augustine, Florida, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, and the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. He recently submitted a book-length manuscript, “Death and Diplomacy on the Frontier: Indians, Imperialists, and the Negotiation of Homicide in Early America,” to a university press. In September, he provided commentary for the panel “Friendship, Violence, Diplomacy and Memory in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Native South,” at the American Society for Ethnohistory conference at the University of Kansas in September.
He will serve as the interim History Graduate Program Coordinator for Fall 2022 and Spring 2023.
KEITH PICKUS remains focused on teaching and he continues to experiment with new courses and formats. He team-taught a section of his History Beyond the Headlines with Dr. Kevin Harrison, the Cohen Honors College Director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and the course focused on contemporary social justice issues. During the semester the students examined how Critical Race Theory was being deployed in debates about public school curricula, approaches to immigration and the legal status of abortion in the United States before the recent Supreme Court Decision. Professor Pickus also taught his History of Genocide for the first time and realized part way into the semester his plans for teaching the material were not working as students were being overwhelmed by the topic’s scope. It was both a lesson in humility and an opportunity to put into practice the ability to transition quickly when something is not working well. He looks forward to teaching the course a second time in spring. This fall Keith resumed teaching Holocaust History, a course he taught regularly before becoming a full-time administrator.
In addition to his teaching, Keith chaired the successful search for a new director of the Ulrich Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, an institution he has worked closely with for close to two decades. He also wrote an article on the Arc of a University Career that is being considered for publication.
2022 for JAY PRICE saw a number of his projects come together. Significantly, the spring saw the release of Mexican Americans of Wichita’s North End, his latest co-authored photo history from Arcadia Publishing. Written with local historian Anita Mendoza and Dr. Jose Enrique Navarro from MCLL, the book received a gold medal for best history book for the 2022 International Latino Book Awards. This book is part of his larger Somos de Wichita Latino history collecting project that is still seeking photos and interviews from families in the Wichita community. This work takes place alongside related project such as the work he does with Dr. Robert Weems and Dr. Sue Abdinnour from the Barton School of Business regarding ethnic entrepreneurship. These projects include publishing the results of a survey of ethnic entrepreneurs and “Wichita’s Nonwhite Business Owners Tell Their Stories,” an oral history project that captures the memories of minority business owners in Wichita as part of the Stories for All collaborative. For more information, check out https://storiesforall.org/story/wichita-nonwhite-business-owners-tell-their-stories/. He was able to present on both these endeavors at this year’s Tilford Conference in Topeka. His work with the Latino Community, especially in the North End, has extended to several other projects, such as assisting his student Derek Landwehr in the “Las Nuevas Adelitas” documentary video project, among others. He continues to take Spanish classes at WSU and as he writes this, he is working on his student project in Dr. Rachel Showstack’s class on Spanish in the United States: an event in the community to assist students in filling out their FAFSA forms. Visitors to Fiske Hall may sometimes hear him working on Spanish readings with a fellow student, Dr. Doug Wooley, and with Julie Henderson, his Spanish instructor from the spring!
As he looks to a new set of scholarship that returns more to a focus on architecture and the built environment, he has had way too much fun putting together an adult education class on architectural styles. He is also setting up a new, larger project that continues his exploration of religious architecture to look at the history of chapel design in the United States. The return of in person conferences has also meant plans for travel again, most recently to the Western History Association conference in San Antonio. He also remains active with organizations such as the Kansas Association of Historians, the Kansas Museums Association and the Kansas State Historical Society.
While he finishes up this fourth term as chair, Price has been working on several departmental efforts from a new set of promotional materials to assisting alum Dan Fullerton in creating a set of military history courses to meet the needs of ROTC programs. Another effort has been to make sure the little sandwich boards outside of Fiske are updated regularly to highlight all the efforts going on inside!
RANNFRID I. LASINE THELLE directs the Religion Program, housed here in the History Department. In the academic year 2020–2021 all classes met back in the classroom. Last fall, students in Archaeology and the Bible capped off the semester with a poster display in the Ablah Library. A new First Year Seminar called “Creation, the Earth, and the Future” allowed incoming Freshmen to explore the relationship between humans and the natural world, ecology, storytelling, identity, creative forms of expression such as poetry, visual arts, and music, and the many approaches to knowledge, though religion and myth, scientific knowledge, and art. In the spring students were offered a new class, “Religion and Society,” co-taught with Jodie Simon in the Sociology Department. Lifelong Learners flocked to a four-week course, “Discovering Babylon,” in April.
Rannfrid continues her work on the book Babel and Bible, analyzing the many ways in which the “discovery” of Mesopotamian cultures in the nineteenth century impacted the field of biblical studies. Her chapter contribution to the volume Oxford Handbook on Deuteronomy was published. In addition, her 2018 book Discovering Babylon was published last year in a German translation as Babylon entdecken. In the past year, conference travel was happening once again.
In the Spring of 2022, the Religion Program inaugurated an annual speaker series. Dr. Molly Zahn, Professor of Religion at KU, came and spoke about “The Dead Sea Scrolls: Why They Matter.” The following day, Molly participated in a roundtable/panel discussion hosted by the Religion Program on the topic: “Race in Religious Studies.” Several faculty members from across campus participated in an engaging discussion.
In May, Rannfrid was surprised and honored to be awarded the History Department’s Ard Faculty Award.
CRAIG TORBENSON published a supplement to Tornado Magic: A History of Anoka High School Sports covering eight years, from 2014-21. After thirty-four years of teaching geography and family history, he will be retiring at the end of this school year.
PROFESSOR ROBERT WEEMS recently published article, “African American Entrepreneurship in Wichita, Kansas: Past and Present,” which appeared in the Summer-Fall 2021 issue of Great Plains Quarterly, includes information derived from past Wichita-related research activity. Professor Weems’ 2012-2014 oral history project, the “Wichita African American Business History Project” provided important context to the Great Plains Quarterly article. Similarly, a 2017-2019 survey of Wichita African American, Asian and Hispanic entrepreneurs, conducted by Weems and WSU colleagues Jay Price (History) and Sue Abdinnour (Business Management), provided additional primary source material for Professor Weems’ 2021 publication. Dubbed the “Wichita Ethnic Entrepreneurship Project,” Weems’ Great Plains Quarterly article includes information generated from the African American participants in the survey.
Beginning in Fall 2021, Professors Weems, Abdinnour, and Price began working on another collaborative effort. The team received a $20,000 grant from the Hall Center for the Humanities (University of Kansas); the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities (University of Kansas); and the Andrew Mellon Foundation for the project “Wichita Nonwhite Business Owners Tell Their Stories.” This is part of a larger initiative entitled Stories For All: A Digital Storytelling Project for the Twenty-First Century. Weems, Abdinnour, and Price will be conducting interviews with local African American, Asian American, and Hispanic entrepreneurs. Besides being displayed on their project website, the video-recorded interviews and transcripts, long-term, will be housed in Ablah Library’s Special Collections unit. Dr. Weems is the designated principal investigator (PI) for this project; Professors Abdinnour and Price are the designated co- principal investigators.
During the 2021-2022 academic year there was a nice synergy between Professor Weems’ research and teaching. During spring semester (2022), he taught for the first time HIST 327 (cross-listed as ENTR 327) “Ethnic Entrepreneurship.” This course represents one of the few in the country that surveys the historical and contemporary dynamics of nonwhite entrepreneurship in the United States. HIST 327/ ENTR 327 focuses on the activities of African American, Asian American, and Hispanic businesspeople. Besides having students read pertinent books, the course featured guest lectures from a variety of local nonwhite entrepreneurs, as well as a guest presentation by Professors Abdinnour and Price related to nonwhite entrepreneurship in Wichita.
Another course Weems taught for the first time during spring 2022 was a First-Year Seminar with the theme: “We Shall Overcome” to “Black Lives Matter”: The Modern Black Freedom Movement.
After settling into his position, DR. ALBERTO WILSON began revamping the History of Mexico course while adding new courses on history of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands on Latinx immigration and settlement across the United States. His involvement with different Latinx initiatives on campus also led to the creation of the Wichita-area Hispanic Serving Institution Consortium that looks to prepare Wichita State, Friends, and Newman Universities to attain the HSI designation from the Department of Education.
On the research front, Professor Wilson prepared and submitted a manuscript (in Spanish!) to Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos titled “The National Dwelling Institute, Cordova Island and the Dispute for Ciudad Juárez, 1954 – 1959,” that looked at efforts to convert a portion of Ciudad Juárez into a working-class district based on a reading of Mexico’s 27th Constitutional Article of communal ownership. In addition, he participated in the quadrennial International Meeting of Mexican Historians where he participated on a table focused on Mexican urban history.
Student Awards
Thanks to the generosity of the department’s benefactors, the History department awarded over $18,000 worth of scholarships, awards, and research grants to our outstanding undergraduate and graduate students this past year. In the undergraduate paper award categories, PRESTON PEER received the Douglas Bendell Award in Research and Writing for the best paper in History 300 course for his submission “The Eagle that Swallowed the Lion.” ALEX GARLOW’s paper “The Gendered History of the Chicano Movement” was selected for the John Rydjord Jr. Award for the best paper in an upper-division undergraduate course. In the graduate column, JUSTIN GORDON swept both the Fiske Hall Non-Seminar Paper and the Fiske Hall Seminar Paper awards with his non-seminar paper “‘Devoted to their Race’” and seminar paper “‘Comparatively Easy Work.’”
The following undergraduate students were recognized for their superior work with the following scholarships. NIKLAS ERWIN’s continued excellent work was commended with the re-award of the Donna and Bill Ard Endowed Scholarship and WILLIAM CUMMINGS garnered the Lee and Helen Kamen Scholarship given to the superior Sophomore History major. CLAIRE KELLY’s performance netted the John Edward “Jed” Hurley Jr. Award and William Taylor was tapped for the Suellentrop Family Prize. PRESTON PEER was chosen for the Decker-Kansas Society of DAR Award and PHONG NGUYEN was selected for the Russell “Jiggs” Nelson Scholarship. ANDRUW HOOPES collected the Marie Graham Memorial Scholarship and the Gardner Award was given to TARA HERRINGTON in the Spring of 2022 and SCHYLER TAYLOR for the Fall 2022 semester.
In the graduate student department, MELISSA MARINELLI was re-awarded the Anthony and Dana Gythiel Endowed Scholarship/Fellowship and MCKENNA PAINTIN’s stellar graduate performance was honored with the John Rydjord Award. In the realm of research and presentation, RHENEE CLARK SWINK was given the Miner/Unrau Graduate Research Award in the Fall of 2021 and the William and Ruth Heaston PAT Gamma Rho Research Award in the Spring of 2022 to foster research for her thesis. JUSTIN GORDON was granted the Miner/Unrau for the Fall 2022 semester. The department is pleased to be able to give these awards again as Covid restrictions loosen and archives and conferences open up for in-person attendence.
Speaking on behalf of the department, congratulations to all our student winners and many thanks to the department’s supporters who make all these awards possible.
Alumni Updates
CARL LUND, M.A., 2010: Completed Ph.D. in Leadership with a Math concentration in August 2021 and an M.A. in Religious Studies in April 2022. I am beginning my second year as an Associate Professor of Professional Education at Bemidji State University in northern Minnesota.
SCOTT FOENS, BA 1994: Presented a paper on Iowa Nativism during World War I at the Northern Great Plains Historical Conference in Fargo, September 22, 2022.
SCOTT STUCKY, BA 1970: Chief Judge, Court of Appeals of the Armed Forces, Received the WSU Alumni Achievement Award.