University of Washington

Faculty News Jordanna Bailkin was awarded an NEH Fellowship for 2015-16 for her new book project "Unsettled: Refugee Camps and the Making of Multiculturalism in Britain." Elena Campbell was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Campbell is an expert in empire, nationalism, and religion in Imperial Russia. Christoph Giebel published an April 2015 editorial in the Seattle Times, reflecting on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. He also produced an important review of the Oscar-nominated documentary Last Days in Vietnam (USA, 2014, dir. Rory Kennedy), which was picked up by a variety of media outlets. James Gregory received a Simpson Center Summer Digital Humanities Commons Fellowship to support his project "Mapping American Social Movements Through the Twentieth Century." Alexandra "Sasha" Harmon was appointed to the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program, serving concurrently with department honorees Professors Susan Glenn, James Gregory, and Margaret O'Mara. The OAH Distinguished Lectureship Program is a speakers bureau dedicated to increasing public interest and engagement in American history. Raymond Jonas was awarded a Royalty Research Fund award for his project "King Leopold's Sister: A Global History of the Mexican Second Empire." Sandra Joshel earned two 2015 PROSE Awards, for Excellence in the Humanities and for Classics and Ancient History, for The Material Life of Roman Slaves, co-authored with Lauren Petersen. Devin Naar won praise for his work preserving the Ladino language and the culture of Seattle's Sephardic Jewish community. In July 2014, these efforts were highlighted in a story in Tablet magazine and a radio interview airing on KUOW. Margaret O'Mara was quoted in a February 2015 article in the Washington Post on Hilary Clinton's ties to Silicon Valley. Ileana Rodríguez-Silva was awarded the 2014 Frank Bonilla Book Award for her book Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico. Benjamin Schmidt was awarded a Senior Visiting Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin for 2015. He was also appointed Lead Research Leader for 2014-15 for the Early Modern Conversions project, a multimillion dollar Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded Partnership Grant. Laurie Sears received a Simpson Center Collaboration Studio Grant, in conjunction with Ileana Rodriguez-Silva, for their project "The Politics of Storytelling in Island Imperial Formations." Stephanie Smallwood received a Royalty Research Fund award to support work on her book project "Africa in the Atlantic World: A Geopolitical History." Robin Stacey was named to the governing board of the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. She was also featured in the March 2015 A&S Perspectives for her new course "Reacting to the Past." Phillip Thurtle received a Simpson Center Summer Digital Humanities Commons Research Fellowship to support his work on "Losing My Wings: Interactive Gothic Fables of Development." Charity Urbanski was promoted to Senior Lecturer. Urbanski specializes in the political and cultural history of medieval England and France. The department congratulates Professor James Gregory, chosen as the inaugural recipient of the Barclay Simpson Prize for Scholarship in Public. This prize, awarded by the University of Washington's Simpson Center for the Humanities, honors one of Barclay Simpson's key convictions: to foster scholarship in the humanities as a public good. Gregory received the award in recognition of his tremendous work establishing and developing the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project and the Labor Archives of Washington. The department is pleased to announce that Professor Quintard Taylor received two major honors this year. Taylor was chosen as grand winner among the five Washington State Jefferson Award recipients for 2015. The Jefferson Award is one of the most prestigious prizes awarded for public service in the U.S., recognizing acts of volunteerism and public spirit that make our communities, our nation, and our world better places to live. Taylor was celebrated for his work establishing and developing the leading African American and African history site, http://www.blackpast.org. BlackPast.org and Professor Taylor were also recognized with the National Education Association's 2015 Carter G. Woodson Memorial Award. The Woodson award is presented to an individual, group, or institution whose activities in Black affairs advance education and the achievement of equal opportunity. FACULT Y RECOGNIZED FOR PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP D E P A R T M E N T O F H I S T O R Y   9 history matters

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