As this academic year comes to a close, join us in celebrating the accomplishments of our faculty and alumni in the History Department! To see some student good news, check out our blog post congratulating our scholarship and award recipients. History Good News: Spring 2021

Faculty

Dr. Nicole Etcheson

Sergei Zhuk 

  • Published “KGB Special Operations, Cultural Consumption, and the Youth Culture in Soviet Ukraine, 1968–1985,” in Russian Active Measures: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Edited by Olga Bertelsen (New York: ibidem Press and Columbia University Press, 2021), 63-92.
  • Served as a moderator in a Conversation with Serhii Plokhy “The Rise and Fall of the Grand Alliance” for the opening of the Second Taras Shevchenko Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, March 19, 2021.
  • In March 2021, Sergei Zhuk’s Fulbright Teaching Grant was officially relocated for the Spring of 2022 to the University of Tartu, Estonia.

Ken Hall is the guest editor of the soon-to-be in-press prestigious international Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (published in Leiden, The Netherlands).

  • The spring issue of the journal is celebrating the 500th anniversary of the strategic Melaka port-of-trade in the Straits of Melaka passage between the South China Sea (to and from China) and the Eastern and Western Indian Oceans (the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Western Indian Ocean voyages to the Middle East Red Sea and the Persian Gulf northwest to Mediterranean Sea). This was the beginning of global maritime exchanges that were initially entered by European vessels at the end of the 15th century. Initially the Portuguese sailed to the Indian Ocean via the west coast of Africa and then rounding the Cape of Good Hope (on the southern tip of southern Africa) to India and then subsequently seized the Melaka port-of-trade and urban center in 1511 as their intermediary base (inclusive of their then superior gun weaponry and patronizing Catholicism against Melaka’s prior Straits of Melaka Islamic prominence). The passageway from the Melaka Straits to eastern Asia connected to the South China Sea and China in the north (ceramics, silk, and tea) or onward via the eastern Java Sea to the then profitable Spice Islands and other variable jungle productivity on the Pacific Ocean periphery.
  • International Journal chapter authors are from India, Singapore, and the United States (University of Michigan and Northern Arizona University faculty), as Ken Hall wrote the collective Introductory chapter.

Ron V. Morris published two new articles. Articles: “Eighth grade community engagement with historic preservation” in the Oregon Journal of the Social Studies, 8(2), 84-93, and “The Underground Railroad and Madison’s Georgetown District” in The Social Studies Review, 57(1), 1-7.

Max Felker-Kantor is giving a talk as part of the “Social Unrest, Racial Disparities, and Ways to Move Forward,” Diversity and Inclusion Speaker Series at Emmanuel College, April 14, 2021.

On April 6, Carolyn Malone received the Accessible Teacher Award from Disability Services. This award is given annually to a faculty member who has been especially helpful in promoting disability access.

Wendy Soltz gave a work-in-progress presentation of the Indiana Synagogue Mapping Project (ISMP) at the National Council for Public History’s annual conference in March and to the Northeast Indiana Jewish Genealogical Society in April. Soltz also published her article “A Simultaneous Protest of Jewish Exceptionalism and Jim Crow” in the Spring 2021 Protest issue of AJS Perspectives: the magazine of the Association for Jewish Studies. 

Alumni

Thank you to alumni, current students, staff and faculty who contributed to History’s scholarship and travel funds on One Ball State Day (April 6, 2021). We raised over $2,800.00, which will benefit students directly through scholarships and travel funding.

Social Studies Teaching alumni, Michelle Elsheikh (Fishers Junior High School, IN) and Justin Crews (Troy Junior High School, OH and James Madison Fellow) visited SST classes this year to share their experiences with teachers in training.

In 2020-2021 Dr. Emily Johnson has held six online trivia events in partnership with the History Department and the Muncie Public Library. Among other topics, these events have explored Black History Month, Famous Couples, and Religious Holidays. In October, Team Crews Crew made up of father-daughter team Justin (alum) and McKenna Crews (current student) won, while in January, Team History Silver composed of the Gorrell Family (alumni) won. Congratulations to all participants!