With the semester nearing its end, it’s time to celebrate the good news that #bsuhistory has to share!
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Faculty
On September 25, 2021, Dr. Dorshele Stewart gave the keynote speech at the College of Sciences and Humanities celebration of Dean’s List students.
Dr. Emily Suzanne Johnson
- She reviewed The Eyes of Tammy Faye movie for the Los Angeles Review of Books: https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-beautiful-mess-on-the-eyes-of-tammy-faye/.
- She presented at Muncie Public Library’s Banned Books week panel on September 25, with Dr. Ben Bascom of the English Department.
- She spoke to the Hoosier History podcast about her research on the 1970s boycott against anti-gay-rights spokeswoman Anita Bryant.
- Big things are happening for the Muncie LGBTQ+ Oral History Project! Dr. Johnson and BSU History graduate Emma Cieslik presented on their work twice this semester; they gave a public talk with Sarah Allison of Ball State’s Special Collections and Archives on September 22 and spoke at the annual meeting of the Oral History Association on October 13. The project has also been the subject of recent articles published by the College of Sciences and Humanities and the Ball State Daily News. To see the interviews that the project has collected so far, you can visit the library’s Digital Media Repository. If you’d like to get involved with the Muncie LGBTQ+ History Project, Dr. Johnson will be teaching an immersive learning class (HIST303) in Fall 2022!
Dr. Max Felker-Kantor has been appointed a fellow at the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). As a fellow he will discuss ideological trends and participate in the lecture series “Why Cities?”
Congratulations to Dr. Wendy Soltz! The Indiana Synagogue Mapping Project has received a $20,000 grant to identify, document, research, and map historic synagogues like Ahavath Sholom in Ligonier. This project has been funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Parks Service Historic Preservation Fund administered by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Department of Historic Preservation and Archaeology. You can see an excerpt of the Indiana Synagogue Mapping Project here: https://tinyurl.com/3xrt6st7
Dr. Tom Arnold, who teaches History at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities in Muncie, has won the Robert P. Bell Creative Teaching Award from The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County, Inc.
Drs. Jennifer DeSilva and Sarah Drake Brown collaborated with SOST alumna Alyssa Muhvic to create lesson plans for the Town On Fire 2020 and 2021 exhibits. Explore migration, urbanization and growing social movements through the lives of Muncie’s Gilded Age and Progressive Era women.
Dr. Sergei I. Zhuk’s new book, “KGB Operations against the USA and Canada in Soviet Ukraine, 1953-1991,” will be published in April 2022. Oriented for a general reading audience, this book gives a unique and rare perspective on the KGB “special operations,” in Soviet Ukraine, which targeted especially the USA and Canada, using the issues related to Soviet Ukrainian identity and cultural diplomacy of Soviet Ukraine after Stalin’s death in 1953 until the perestroika of the 1980s.
Alumni
Maren Orchard, BSU PH 2018, was appointed Program Manager at the DC History Center, in Washington, DC: https://dchistory.org/meet-our-new-program-manager/
Kevin Banich, BSU SOST 2013, was appointed interim principal for the 2021-2022 year at Roncalli High School in Indianapolis.
Michelle Elsheikh, BSU SOST 2012, an 8th-grade Social Studies teacher at Fishers Junior High School, has just been appointed to National Council for History Education’s Teacher Advisory Group: https://ncheteach.org/Teacher-Advisory-Group
Gina Iacobucci, BSU SOST 2016, teaches US History at New Palestine High School and leads its We the People Team. This Fall the team progressed to the Indiana state championship. Good luck at state!
Congratulations to all our graduates who have new teaching positions starting in Fall 2021:
- Baylee Burcham is an Instructional Assistant and Resource Teacher at Lebanon High School, in Lebanon, IN
- McKenna Crews is teaching Social Studies at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, VA
- Alyssa Fleckenstein is teaching 6th-grade World History at Eastwood Middle School in Indianapolis
- Mario Hernandez is teaching Social Studies at Lincoln Junior High School in Plymouth, IN
- Katie Knight is teaching Social Studies at Providence Cristo Rey High School in Indianapolis
- Gunnar Large is teaching Social Studies at Roncalli High School in Indianapolis, IN
- Emma Maddelein is teaching at Oswego East High School, in Oswego, IN
- Alyana Marusiodis Williams is teaching 8th-grade US History at Neely’s Bend Middle School in Madison, TN
- Alyssa Muhvic is teaching Social Studies at Noblesville High School, in Noblesville, IN
- Caitlin Smith is teaching Government and Economics at Washington High School in Washington, IN
- Tori Treash is teaching Social Studies at Westfield Washington High School in Westfield, IN
Current Students
Congratulations to Ethan Hartsfield, who will hold an Honors Undergraduate Fellowship in Spring 2022. Ethan will work with Dr. Reuther on an ArcGIS project that maps early modern and nineteenth-century travelers’ observations about West African religious practices.
Congratulations to Cathy Kerton-Johnson and Brandon Whitsit, MA students in Dr. DeSilva’s HIST 633 Red-light Districts before 1900 class. Their StoryMaps Project has won the Digital Sciences & Humanities Division for BSU’s GIS Day 2021 Student StoryMaps Competition. Check it out here: tinyurl.com/8s2zwwc
Emily McGuire and Dr. Jennifer DeSilva published “Revising Mary Queen of Scots: from Protestant Persecution to Patriarchal Struggle” in the Journal of Religion and Film (Vol. 25, No. 1, 2021).
For more information about the Department of History, visit our website, contact our office or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.