THE NEWSLETTER
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
THE UNIVERSITY
«/NORTH CAROLINA
«Шн*
«(
CHAPEL HILL
Number 54
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Autumn 2005
GREETINGS FROM THE CHAIR
The UNC History Department had a very busy and
successful year in 2004-05. We made seven new faculty
appointments, completed a comprehensive external review of
all our programs and defined our aspirations for the future,
launched a new lecture series on African American History,
initiated a new commencement-day "recognition ceremony"
for graduating History majors, and produced a constantly
flowing stream of new books and articles. Although the slate
budget remains an issue of perennial concern and uncertainty,
we continue to strengthen the Department through the use of
generous gifts and the arrival of talented new colleagues; and
we look forward to further development and renewal in the
coming year.
Serving as Chair of this energetic, diverse Department, I
am constantly impressed by the quality of our students, the
imaginative teaching and scholarship of our faculty, the
achievements of our alumni, and the financial generosity of
our many loyal friends. Historians are better at describing the
past than at predicting the future, but I feel confident in saying
that we are laying the foundations for the next generation of
outstanding teachers, scholars and students at UNC-Chapel
Hill.
The summary of departmental achievements for this past
year must begin with a brief description of the seven new
people whom we have hired. Our appointments include the
new James G. Kenan Professor of European History, Karen
Hagemann, and the new Alan Stephenson Professor of Civil
War Era History, Joseph Glatthaar. In addition to these new
distinguished professorships, the Department was also very
pleased to appoint a new assistant professor of Medieval
European History, Brett Whalen, a new assistant professor of
Modern African History, Christopher Lee. a new professor
of Imperial Russian History, Louise McReynoIds, a new
assistant professor of nineteenth-century US history, Crystal
Feimster, and a new associate professor of nineteenth-century
Japanese history, Daniel Botsman.
Professor Lee (PhD, Stanford University) has received a
post-doctoral fellowship at Dalhousie University in Nova
Scotia and will therefore defer his arrival in Chapel Hill to
July 2006. Professor McReynoIds (PhD, University of
Chicago and until this year on the faculty at the University of
Hawai'i, Manoa) has a fellowship at the School of Historical
Studies , at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
which means that she, too, will not come to Chapel Hill until
the summer of 2006. Professors Feimster (PhD. Princeton
University) and Botsman (PhD, Princeton University) have
been on leave this year and will therefore be completing a
final year of obligations as faculty members at Boston
College (Feimster) and Harvard University (Botsman) before
joining us in 2006. Meanwhile, we are welcoming our other
new colleagues in the fall semester of 2005.
Professor Hagemann is coming to the Department from the
University of Glamorgan in Wales, but she is originally from
Germany. She received her Ph.D. at the University of
Hamburg in 1989 and completed her Habilitation at the
Technical University of Berlin in 2000. working particularly
in the fields of modern gender history, the history of
nineteenth-century nationalism, and modern European
military history. She has written major books on women in
Weimar Germany and on the influence of the Napoleonic
wars on national and gender identities in early nineteenth-
century Prussia. Professor Hagemann currently directs an
international collaborative project that is examining the ways
in which the Napoleonic wars were experienced and
remembered in all the major European nations, and we look
forward to the transatlantic programs that she plans to develop
in Chapel Hill.
Professor Glatthaar received his PhD at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison (1983). He has spent most of his career
at the University of Houston, where he has been a full
professor since 1992. His work has become well known as an
innovative example of the "new military history," with
particular attention to the social and ideological components
of Civil War armies and military leadership. He has written
notable books on the motivations of General Sherman's troops
during campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas, the
experiences of black soldiers in the Union Army, and the
interactions among commanders in the Union and
Confederate armies. Professor Glatthaar is currently writing a
book on the Confederacy’s "Army of Northern Virginia" and
using quantitative research to analyze the number of
slaveholders in the army, the wealth of Confederate troops,
and the casualty rates among different social classes — all of
which suggests that the defense of slavery was a key concern
for many Confederate soldiers.
Professor Whalen received his PhD this year from
Stanford University after completing a dissertation on the
relations between Latin and Greek Christians during the era
after the Great Schism. He analyzes the Latin Christian view
CAROLINA ALUMNI RECEPTION
Please join us for an Alumni Reception at the annual meeting
of the Southern Historical Association, which is being held in
Atlanta Georgia this year. The event is scheduled for Friday,
November 4, 2005, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. in the Roswell
Room. 8th floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza. We look
forward to seeing you there.
