University of Washington

Faculty News Jordanna Bailkin was awarded three prizes for her book The Afterlife of Empire (Berkeley, 2012): the Morris D. Forkosch Prize — awarded for the best book in English in the field of British, British imperial, or British Commonwealth history since 1485 — from the American Historical Association; the Stansky Book Prize — for the best book published by a North American scholar on any aspect of British studies since 1800 — from the North American Conference on British Studies; and the Biennial Book Prize from the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies. Professor Bailkin will serve as interim Director of Graduate Studies for 2014-15 while Professor Margaret O'Mara is on leave. Arbella Bet-Shlimon received the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq's award for the best U.S. dissertation in medieval or modern Iraqi studies for the biennium 2011-13. The award was for her 2012 Harvard University dissertation, "Kirkuk, 1918-68: Oil and the Politics of Identity in an Iraqi City." She has also been awarded a Royalty Research Fund award for her continued work on this project. Additionally, she published an op-ed about the fall of Kirkuk to Kurdish forces in the Seattle Times. Elena Campbell was awarded a research scholarship for the summer of 2014 from the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Gerda Henkel Stiftung) for her new book project: "Creating the North: Modernization, Empire, and Environment in Late Imperial-Early Soviet Russia." Patricia Ebrey received the highly prestigious Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association (AHA) for her career contributions to the field of early Chinese history. The award is presented annually to exceptional senior historians based in the United States. In presenting the award, the AHA offered the fol - lowing commendation: "Various topics that were once 'unteach- able' for lack of either sources or scholarship in English are now routinely covered because she helped fill those gaps. The past is a bigger and a less foreign country thanks to Pat Ebrey." Susan Glenn presented the annual David Belin Memorial Lecture in Jewish Public Affairs at the University of Michigan in March, where she spoke about "The Jewish Cold War: Anxiety and Identity in the Aftermath of the Holocaust." In July she presented a paper on "Coming to Terms with Postwar Antisemitism: the 1960 'Swastika Epidemic' and the Politics of Interpretation" at the European Association for Jewish Studies Congress, which was held at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. James Gregory was elected vice-president of the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) — an international association of historians and labor scholars with more than 900 members — to be followed by a term as president. Margaret O'Mara was selected by the American Council of Learned Societies to be a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellow in 2014-15. She will spend the year in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where she will work on her project, "Silicon Age: High Technology and the Reinvention of the United States, 1970-2000." She also recently shared her expertise on the technology industry's impact on politics, culture, and place in an interview featured on the tech radio show GeekWire. Vicente Rafael was featured in a story in The Wall Street Journal discussing the rich and complex history of the Philippine city of Tacloban before Typhoon Haiyan. In September 2013 Professor Rafael was honored by the Rizal Library of the Loyola Schools Ateneo de Manila University with a celebration to mark the 25th year in print of his Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule. Ateneo de Manila University Press also published a Philippine edition of the book, originally published by Cornell University Press in 1988. Benjamin Schmidt began the first year of a five-year "Partnership Grant" from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which is funding a major, cross-disciplinary project on "Early Modern Conversion." He also received a grant from the Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschland to conduct research in Munich, where he presented a talk in autumn 2013. Laurie Sears contributed to a Critical Asian Studies journal roundtable discussion dealing with debates surrounding the Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing. Professor Sears' contribution, "Heroes as Killers or Killers as Heroes?" appeared in the January 2014 issue. Robin Stacey was appointed to the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization for September 2014 through August 2016. Quintard Taylor and his Blackpast.org website were featured in a USA Today article in February 2013. Dan Waugh presented on "Central Asia Viewed from the North: a Russian Chapter in the Later History of the 'Silk Roads'" at a conference on "Chinese and Asian Geographical Views on Central Asia and its Adjacent Regions" at the University of Bonn. He will present at a conference in Istanbul on Islamic World-China exchanges across the Indian Ocean and a sympo - sium at the University of Cambridge (UK) on "Technologies of Communication" in pre-Modern Russia. Professor Waugh contin- ues to edit and publish The Silk Road website and has contributed a piece to the blog of The International Dunhuang Project (IDP) at the British Library in London. Glennys Young was awarded a Royalty Research Fund award for her project "Refugee Worlds: The Spanish Civil War, Soviet Socialism, Franco's Spain, and Memory Politics." Department of History PAGE 9 history matters history matters

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