NIU History Faculty & Staff Directory

Retired Faculty Members
Please email or call the History Department @ 815-753-0131 for contact information.

Valerie L. Garver (University of Virginia, 2003 Ph.D.) – My research interests center upon the early Middle Ages, particularly the social, cultural, and religious history of the Carolingian Empire. Currently I am working on a book entitled Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World . My essay, “The Influence of Monastic Ideals Upon Carolingian Conceptions of Childhood,” recently appeared in Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: the Results of a paradigm shift in the history of mentality , edited by Albrecht Classen (2005), and I have an essay, “Learned Women? Liutberga and the Instruction of Carolingian Women,” forthcoming in the volume Learned Laity in the Carolingian Era , ed. Patrick Wormald ( Cambridge , 2006). My teaching interests encompass the European Middle Ages and late antiquity, the history of the Middle East to c. 1500, and the history of gender and the family from antiquity to the modern era. vgarver@niu.edu

Jason Hawke (University of Washington, 2000 Ph.D.) - My teaching interests encompass the history of the ancient west, broadly understood to include the Ancient Near East as well as Egypt, Greece, and Rome. My recent and current research focuses on the relationship between aristocratic power and the appearance of written law in early Greece, as well as the role of elite-commoner relations in the definition of the early Athenian polis. More broadly, I also pursue issues of justice, literacy, orality, and culture from ancient to modern times. jhawke@niu.edu

David Wagner (University of Michigan, 1960 Ph.D.) - My research and teaching interests lie in European intellectual history. I view this field broadly, and my interests are not limited to any particular era or century. Thus, having edited The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages (1983), I am now working on a book on the Seven Liberal Arts in the Renaissance. The courses I generally teach, seventeenth and eighteenth century intellectual history, emphasize the transition to the modern world. history@niu.edu

Stephen Haliczer, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus - See entry under "Other Faculty."

Samuel Kinser, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus - See entry under "Other Faculty."

Vera Lind (University of Kiel/Germany, 1997 Ph.D.) - My specialty is the cultural and intellectual history of Early Modern Europe. A revised version of my doctoral dissertation Selbstmord in der Frühen Neuzeit (Suicide in the Early Modern Period: Discourse, Experience and Cultural Change) was published in 1999, and the English translation is scheduled to appear 2005. I have written a number of articles on topics like death, crime, mental illness, enlightenment philosophy, race, and gender and a second book-length study on Africans in Germany is in progress. Also, I am co-editing a collection of essays on the history of emotions in the early modern Atlantic world. vlind@niu.edu

Brian Sandberg (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001 Ph.D.) - My research and teaching interests focus on intersections of religion, violence, and political culture in early modern history, especially during the European wars of religion. I recently served as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Medici Archive Project, and held a Jean Monnet Fellowship at the European University Institute. I previously held teaching positions at Simpson College and Millikin University. I have published several articles on religious violence, gender, and noble culture during the French Wars of Religion, and am currently revising a monograph entitled, Heroic Souls: French Nobles and Religious Conflict after the Edict of Nantes, 1598-1635. I teach a range of courses on European history, early modern Mediterranean history, and the comparative history of violence. bsandberg@niu.edu; Vitae

Sean Farrell (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996 Ph.D.) - My primary research and teaching interests center on Modern British and Irish History. More specifically, I'm interested in the links between violence and the formation of communal identities in modern Ulster. My first book, Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784-1886, examined the relationships between Catholic/Protestant rioting and the emergence of a divided political culture in the north of Ireland. I am currently working on two projects: a collection of essays on violence and the Irish experience tentatively entitled In the Shadow of the Gunmen? (co-edited with Danine Farquharson); and a book-length study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish emigration and the formation of sectarian identities in eighteenth-century Ulster. sfarrel1@niu.edu; Vitae

Heide Fehrenbach (Rutgers University, 1990 Ph.D.) - My specialty is modern European cultural and social history, with particular focus on Germany . Publications include essays on film, gender, race, and identity, as well as three books: Race After Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America (Princeton, 2005); Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill, 1995), which was co-winner of the 1996 Biennial Book Prize of the Conference Group for Central European History; and Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan (New York, 2000), which I edited with Uta G. Poiger. Before coming to NIU in 2001, I held positions at Emory and Colgate Universities . My research has been supported by the ACLS , NEH, and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. Currently I am working on two projects: a collaborative book project with Rita Chin, Geoff Eley, and Atina Grossmann tentatively titled After the Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Postwar Germany, and a single-authored study of child rescue initiatives, international adoptions, and the emergence of children's rights in wartime and post-World War II Europe. hfehrenbach@niu.edu

J. Harvey Smith (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1972 Ph.D.) - My research and teaching interests are in French history since 1789 and European social and economic history, 1500-1914. A book on society and politics in the rural Languedoc wine country, 1830-1910, is in progress. My articles on rural society and the peasantry have appeared in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Family History, Past and Present, Annales Du Midi, Histoire Sociale/Social History, and most recently in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. I am currently the Director of the Social Science Research Institute at Northern Illinois University, as well as a member of the History Department. hsmith@niu.edu

Elaine G. Spencer (University of California, Berkeley, 1969 Ph.D.) - My specialty is the social history of nineteenth and twentieth century Germany, with emphasis on the consequences of urbanization and industrialization. I am currently investigating pre-Lenten carnival celebrations in Rhenish cities from 1815 to 1914. Publications: Management and Labor in Imperial Germany (1984) and Police and the Social Order in German Cities (1992). espencer@niu.edu; Vitae

Nancy M. Wingfield (Columbia University, 1987 Ph.D.) -My area of research is the cultural, gender, and political history of Habsburg Central Europe. My publications include articles on film, memory, and national culture/identity in Habsburg Central Europe, as well as five books: Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (2006), co-editor with Maria Bucur, Creating the Other: Nationalism and Ethnic Enmity in Habsburg Central Europe (2003; paperback, 2004), editor; Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (2001), co-editor with Maria Bucur; Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II , 3rd ed (1999), co-author with Joseph Rothschild; and Minority Politics in a Multinational State: The German Social Democrats in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938 (1989). My monograph, Pitched Battles in Public Places: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech, 1880-1948, is under contract with Harvard University Press. I teach courses on the Habsburg Monarchy and Habsburg Central Europe. nmw@niu.edu; Professor Wingfield's Website; Vitae

Christine D. Worobec (University of Toronto, 1984 Ph.D.) - As a social and cultural historian of Imperial Russia and modern Ukraine, my scholarship has focused on the Russian and Ukrainian peasantries, the history of women, and popular religion. My publications include Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia(2001); Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period(1991, 1995 pbk.), and a co-edited volume (with Barbara Evans Clements and Barbara Alpern Engel), Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (1991). More recently, I have authored "Celebration of the Summer Solstice Among the East Slavic Peasants of the Nineteenth-Century Russian Empire," in Rossiiskaia istoricheskaia mozaika: Sbornik nauchnykh statei/Russian Historical Mosaic: Collection of Scientific Articles, ed. by A. L. Litvin (Kazan: Kazanskoe matematicheskoe obshchestvo, 2003), 91-103; "Conceptual Observations on the Russian and Ukrainian Peasantries," in Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945), ed. by Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut, Frank E. Sysyn, and Mark von Hagen (Edmonton, Alta.: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2003): 256-76; and "Miraculous Healings," in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russian Culture, ed. by Mark Steinberg and Heather Coleman (forthcoming from Indiana University Press). Current research projects include a bibliography (with Mary Zirin and June Pachuta Farris) of published works on women and gender in Russia, the successor States of the former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe; a biography of St. Seraphim of Sarov; and a study of Orthodox pilgrimages in the Russian Empire and from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to Orthodox sites abroad since1700.
worobec@niu.edu; Vitae

Anita M. Andrew (University of Minnesota, 1991 Ph.D.) - The wide sweep of Chinese and Japanese history from ancient to modern times is the main area of my teaching. The focus of my research is the social, institutional, and legal history of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) of China. I am particularly interested in the efforts of the dynastic founder, Zhu Yuanzhang (r.1368-1398) to mold Chinese society according to an autocratic vision shaped in large part by his background as a rural commoner and rebel leader. I recently co-authored a study comparing the autocratic ruling styles of two of China's "rebel founding emperors," Zhu Yuanzhang and Mao Zedong. I also served as the guest editor of a forthcoming issue of the journal Chinese Studies in History entitled "Despotism Examined: Chinese Studies of Zhu Yuanzhang and the Early Ming Dynasty, 1981-1991." aandrew@niu.edu

E. Taylor Atkins (University of Illinois, 1997 Ph.D.) - In addition to serving the History Department as Director of Undergraduate Studies, I regularly teach Asian and world history, three courses on Japanese history, and oral history, and have also taught graduate seminars on modern colonialism and Japanese history. My main research interests have been the cultural history of modern Japan and Korea and the global transmission of popular culture. Much of my published work could be characterized as historical ethnomusicology, and is also informed by oral history, art history, and cultural anthropology. I have strong interests in colonialism, public memory and commemoration, comparative religion, aesthetics, nationalism, and
popular culture. I am author of Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Duke UP, 2001) and editor of Jazz Planet (University Press of
Mississippi, 2003). I am currently preparing a book on the Japanese colonial "gaze" on Korean performing arts and folk culture (1910-45),
and planning a study of Bahá'í responses to colonialism. etatkins@niu.edu; Prof. Atkins' webpage; Vitae

Eric Jones (University of California, Berkeley, 2003 Ph.D.) – My field is Southeast Asia, specializing in the history of early modern Indonesia. I teach World, Asia, and Southeast Asia surveys in addition to country specific Southeast Asia courses and topical seminars. My research interests are in the social history of the colonial encounter, law and criminality, and in narrative microhistory. Currently, I am working on a book entitled Wives, Slaves and Concubines: A History of the Female Underclass in Dutch Asia. More broadly, I have also worked on topics in African, European and Caribbean history, including a publication on apartheid South Africa’s chemical and biological weapons program (with Robert Schecter), The State vs. Wouter Basson (2000). eajones@niu.edu

George W. Spencer (University of California, Berkeley, 1967 Ph.D.) - My specialty is South Asian history (primarily India), although I also teach other courses. I have a particular interest in the study of state development in medieval south India and in connections between political and religious institutions. Publications: The Politics of Expansion: The Chola Conquest of Sri Lanka and Sri Vijaya (1983); an edited collection of articles entitled Temples, Kings and Peasants (1987); and numerous journal articles. gspencer@niu.edu Vitae

Bradley G. Bond (Louisiana State University, 1993) – My primary teaching and research interests reside in the American south, particularly, though not exclusively, in the nineteenth-century. My current research focuses on the philosophical and aesthetic ideals of southern novelists, poets, scientists, theologians, and polemicists in the Age of the Civil War. My first book, Political Culture in the Nineteenth-Century South (1995), examined the ideas that underpinned politics, economic behavior, and the social structure of Mississippi . Subsequently, I have published two edited volumes: one is a documentary history of that most southern state, Mississippi ; the other is a collection of essays about eighteenth-century French colonial Louisiana . In addition to being a member of the faculty in the Department of History, I serve as the Associate Dean of the Graduate School . bbond@niu.edu

J.D. Bowers (Indiana University, 2003 Ph.D.)– My research and teaching interests are tied together by theme—representational history, the uses of history in American society, and the depiction of the past—rather than subject. I am the author of Joseph Priestley and English Unitarianism in America, 1765-1900 (Penn State University Press, forthcoming) which explores the transatlantic influence on the denominational development of American Unitarianism. I am currently researching the more recent history of Unitarianism's internal conflicts, theological disputes, and the impact of the 1961 association (some say merger) with Universalism. A third project explores the interplay of religion and the efforts to promote World War I among the American people. I have also published and done research on human rights and genocide, especially the (mis)understandings of Hawaiian history from the overthrow in the 1890s to the present, focusing on the sovereignty movement, in a chapter entitled “Hawaii,” in Benjamin Shearer, ed., The Uniting States , vol. 1, (Greenwood Press, 2004), pp. 295-324. Stemming from this interest, I am the founder and director of the Summer Institute on Genocide and Human Rights, and have led seminars on genocides in Armenia, Rwanda, the human rights issues stemming from the division of Cyprus, and how to teach human rights and genocides to students at all levels. I also work with local and national museums in order to put my scholarly ideas into practice in public forums. I teach courses in the history of American religion, the history of the Pacific Islands (Oceania) and public history. Finally, I am the Coordinator for the Secondary Teacher Certification program stemming from my secondary teaching experience in Hawaii and Virginia and teach many classes in that area. jbowersi@niu.edu Vitae

Rachel Hope Cleves (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2005) - My teaching and research interests are in early America/the United States, 1750 through 1850. I am especially interested in the subjects of violence, war, slavery and antislavery, childhood, religion and politics in the early American republic. I am presently at work preparing my dissertation, entitled “Mortal Eloquence: Violence, Slavery, and Anti-Jacobinism in the Early American Republic,” for publication. I also have a new project on early American sexuality. rcleves@niu.edu

Kenton Clymer (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1970) - I teach courses in the history of American foreign relations and have a particular interest in American relations with Southeast Asia. My two volume history of U.S. relations with Cambodia (published by Routledge in 2004) won the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize for 2005 from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Other books include John Hay, Protestant Missionaries in the Philippines, 1898-1916, and Quest for Freedom: The United States and India’’s Independence, as well as an edited volume on The History, Literature, and Music of the Vietnam War. During the 2003-2004 academic year I was "Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer" at Renmin (Peoples) University in Beijing, China. kclymer@niu.edu

Rosemary Feurer (Washington University, St. Louis, 1997 Ph.D.) - My research and teaching interests focus on understanding labor issues and conflict within the context of U.S. capitalist development during the late nineteenth and twentieth century. I am also interested in the U.S. radicalism and social protest movements and the repression of these movements. My book, entitled "Human Rights over Property Rights": Radical Unionism in the Midwest 1900-1950 is forthcoming in the Working Class in American History Series, University of Illinois Press. I have experience in connecting the academic study of workers to public history projects, employing a variety of sources and presentation, including tours, electronic media, oral history and video production. I am currently working on a documentary and monograph about the mine conflict in 1898 in Illinois, current title "Remember Virden 1898". rfeurer@niu.edu Vitae Websites: http://www3.niu.edu/~td0raf1/index.htm www.laborhistorylinks.niu.edu www.remembervirden.niu.edu (on the documentary)

Aaron Fogleman (University of Michigan, 1991 Ph.D.) - My teaching and research specialties are in early American history and the Atlantic World (ca. 1492-1860). I am especially interested in issues involving gender, religion, migration, and servitude and have published numerous essays on these topics, many with a focus on the German population in the British North American colonies. My first book was entitled "Hopeful Journeys" German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (1996), and I am currently completing a book entitled Radical Religion in the Protestant Atlantic World: A Story of Marriage, Sex, Violence, and How Jesus Became Female in the Eighteenth Century, which will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The courses I teach include graduate and undergraduate research seminars, graduate readings seminars on early America and the Atlantic World, upper-level courses on Colonial America, The American Revolution, and The Atlantic World, and both U.S. surveys. aaronfogleman@niu.edu

Beatrix Hoffman (Rutgers University, 1996 Ph.D.) - My fields are U.S. political history, with particular emphasis on the Progressive Era and the origins of the welfare state, and the history of medicine. My book-length study of these subjects is The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America (2001), and I have received both a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a multi-year Robert Wood Johnson grant for my next project, a history of the right to health care in the Twentieth-Century United States. beatrix@niu.edu

David E. Kyvig, Distinguished Research Professor (Northwestern University, 1971 Ph.D.) - I have a wide range of interests in the evolving nature of American society, popular expectations regarding government, and the resulting conduct of government. My attention has focused on the manner in which these matters have been reflected in United States constitutional arrangements, particularly in the twentieth century. As a resident fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC during 2004-2005 academic year I will pursue my current project on the political/constitutional culture of impeachment. My published work focuses on post-World War I constitutional change and includes Repealing National Prohibition (1979; 2nd ed., 2000), Law, Alcohol, and Order (1985; Japanese ed., 1999), Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995(1996), which received the Bancroft and other prizes, and Unintended Consequences of Constitutional Amendment (2000). A paperback edition of my most recent work, Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940 appeared in September 2004. I have also written and edited, with my long-time collaborator Myron Marty of Drake University, a series of guides to local history research, most notably Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (1982; 2nd ed., 2000). kyvig@niu.edu Vitae

Eric W. Mogren (University of Michigan, 1995 Ph.D; University of Colorado School of Law, 1985 J.D.) - For the past several years, my research has focused on the relationship between the environment, public policy, and the law. Warm Sand: Uranium Mill Tailings Policy in the Atomic West (2002) examines the hazardous waste pollution associated with uranium processing in the western U.S and the state and federal responses to that problem. In keeping with my interest in local and regional history, my current research explores the development of private farm organizations during the twentieth century, especially the farm bureau. In particular, I am interested in the influence of these organizations on local, state, and national politics, law, and culture. My U.S. teaching interests include environmental, western/ frontier, and legal history subjects. mogren@niu.edu

Barbara M. Posadas (Northwestern University, 1976 Ph.D.) - I am the author of The Filipino Americans (1999), and articles by me on Filipino American history, particularly in the Midwest, have appeared in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Labor History, Amerasia, and the Journal of American Ethnic History, as well as in various scholarly collections. I have held a Fulbright Research Award at the Asia Center of the University of the Philippines, a post-doctoral fellowship at the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, and an NEH Summer Research Grant. I also serve on the editorial boards of the Journal of American Ethnic History, Amerasia, the Journal of Women's History, and the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. In addition, I served as a member of the Organization of American Historians' Committee on the Status of Minority History and Minority Historians from 1996-1999, chaired that committee in 1998, and have been a director of the Urban History Association. Currently, I am a director of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, am the immediate past president of the Illinois State Historical Society, and am also a member of the Organization of American Historians' 2002 Merle Curti Award Committee in American Social History. I teach courses on U.S. immigration and ethnicity, U.S. Women, and the history of Chicago. bposadas@niu.edu

James D. Schmidt (Rice University, 1992 Ph.D.) -My primary research and teaching interests are in the legal, labor, and social history of the nineteenth-century United States. My current research concerns the legal history of childhood. An article the legal evolution of children's work over the course of the nineteenth century will appear in Law and History Review in late 2005 or early 2006. I am writing a book tentatively titled, Mashed to Pieces: Childhood, Industrial Violence, and Law in the Industrializing U.S. South. My first book, Free to Work: Labor Law, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, 1815-1880 (1998), explored the effects of antebellum labor and social welfare policy on the outcome of emancipation and the development of a capitalist labor market. jschmidt@niu.edu

Sundiata Djata (University of Illinois, 1994 Ph.D.) - My fields are African, African American, Latin American, and Caribbean histories, as well as related issues in African Diaspora/Atlantic Studies. My current teaching fields are African American and African history, as well as the history of sport in the U.S. Among the topics I have dealt with in my teaching are Black life writing, comparative slavery, the Black Church and its African antecedents, African women, Blacks in the U.S. armed services, and the modern Civil Rights Movement. I have published a monograph, The Bamana Empire in the Niger, c.1712-1910, Fanga, Jihad, and Colonialism (1996), and my research interests also include Black music, Joãõ Cândido and the Brazilian naval revolt of 1910, Blacks and advertising, Blacks in tennis, and the historical construction of Black sexuality. sdjata@niu.edu

Michael J. Gonzales (University of California, Berkeley, 1978 Ph.D.) - I am interested in modern Latin American history, particularly the period from 1870 to 1940. My current research topics include the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) and the mining economy of northern Mexico (1880-1940). Publications: "Capitalist Agriculture and Labour Contracting in Northern Peru, 1880-1905," Journal of Latin American Studies (1980); "Economic Crisis, Chinese Workers and Peruvian Sugar Planters, 1875-1900: A Case Study of Labour and the National Elite," in Bill Albert, ed., Crisis and Change in the International Sugar Economy, 1860-1914 (1985); "Recent Contributions to Andean Ethnohistory," Peasant Studies (1985); Plantation Agriculture and Social Control in Northern Peru, 1875 to 1933 (1985); "Neocolonialism and Indian Unrest in Southern Peru, 1867 to 1998," Bulletin of Latin American Research (1987); "Chinese Plantation Workers and Social Conflict in Peru in the Late Nineteenth Century," Journal of Latin American Studies (1989); "Planters and Politics in Peru, 1895 to 1919," Journal of Latin American Studies (1991); "The Rise of Cotton Tenant Farming in Peru, 1890 to 1920," Agricultural History (1991); "Planter Control and Worker Resistance in Northern Peru, 1880 to 1921," in Brij V. Lal, ed., Plantation Workers: Resistance and Accommodation (1993); "United States Copper Companies, the State and Labour Conflict in Mexico, 1900 to 1910," Journal of Latin American Studies (1994); "Resistance among Asian Plantation Workers in Peru, 1870 to 1920," in Mary Turner, ed.,Chattel Slaves into Wage Slaves (1995); "U.S. Copper Companies, the Mine Workers' Movement, and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920," Hispanic American Historical Review (1996); The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940 (2002); plus additional articles and essays. gonzales@niu.edu

Anne Hanley (Stanford University, 1995 Ph.D.) - My field is modern Latin America with a specialization in Brazilian history since 1800. I teach the colonial and modern Latin America surveys as well as the history of Brazil. In addition, I offer courses that explore the roots of modern Latin America's persistent gap between rich and poor and the comparative experiences of Latin America, Africa and Asia in the making of the modern Third World. My research interests lie in the economic history of Brazil since independence. I recently published an article titled “Is it Who You Know? Entrepreneurs and Bankers in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” in the business history journal Enterprise and Society (June 2004). My book, Native Capital: Financial Institutions and Economic Development in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1850-1920, is in press with Stanford University Press. My new research project focuses on municipal finance and economic development in the Brazilian hinterland in the second half of the twentieth century. ahanley@niu.edu

Kristin Huffine (University of California, Berkeley, 2006 Ph.D.) - My research and teaching interests focus on science, race, and empire in colonial Latin American history. Cultural and intellectual history, postcolonial theory, and the history of the Church, together with studies of the indigenous populations, Afro-Latin Americans, enslaved populations, and free people of color are also subjects of interest in my work. I am currently co-editing a volume of essays entitled, Science, Power and the Order of Nature in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, to be published by Stanford University Press in January 2008, and my essay, “Raising Paraguay from Decline: Natural History, Ethnography, and the Science of Race in the Eighteenth-Century Accounts of the Paraguayan Jesuit Fathers,” appeared in Luis Millones Figueroa’s and Domingo Ledesma’s, Jesuit Knowledge, Natural History, and the New World, Iberoamericana / Vervuert, 2005. My courses include the colonial and modern Latin American surveys, and classes on indigenous Mexico , indigenous Peru , the African diaspora in colonial Latin America , and methods of postcolonial theory. khuffine@niu.edu

Stanley Arnold (Temple University, 1999 Ph.D.) My primary field is African American History but I am also interested in African History and in the subject of race and sports in American history. In addition to teaching in academic settings I have been archivist and the education director of an historical museum and I have also been a member of an Emmy-nominated research team, and worked on the film "Du Bois: a Life in Four Voices," produced by the award-winning film maker Louis Massiah. An article of mine recently appeared in The Journal of Sport History, and I am currently working on a book-length study, "Building the Beloved Community: Philadelphia's Interracial Civil Rights Organizations and the Politics of Race, 1930-1970." sarnold@niu.edu

Samuel M. Blackwell (Northern Illinois University, 1995 Ph.D.) My major area of interest is the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Period. I have taught The Civil War and Reconstruction numerous times at NIU, as well as the American Revolution, Jacksonian America, the American Frontier, U.S. Military History, and World War II. My first book, In the First Line of Battle, a history of the 12th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry in the Civil War (Northern Illinois University Press, 2001). It received a Certificate of Excellence from the Illinois State Historical Society in April, 2002.

Kristy Wilson Bowers (Indiana University, 2001 Ph.D.) I am an historian of medieval and early modern Europe who specializes in "Golden Age" Spain and the history of medicine. My dissertation at Indiana was entitled "Plague, Politics and Municipal Relation in Sixteenth-century Seville," and my current research continues to focus on bubonic plague in early modern Spain. In addition, I have written various articles on the history of science for the multi-volume series Science and its Times. kbowers1@niu.edu

Stephen Haliczer, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus (St. Andrews University, Scotland, 1969 Ph.D.) - I am a specialist in Early Modern European History. I have recently published a work entitled Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned (1996). Other publications include: The Comuneros of Castile: The Forging of a Revolution, 1475-1521 (1981), Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe (1987), Inquisition and Society in The Kingdom of Valencia (1990). shaliczer@niu.edu

Raymond E. Hauser (Northern Illinois University, 1973 Ph.D.) My field of specialization is ethnohistory, particularly the history of the Indians of Illinois. I have published a number of articles on this subject in such journals as the Illinois Historical Journal, Ethnohistory, and the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. My most recent publication is "The Role, Power, and Status of Women in the Illinois Indian Tribe," in People of Persistence, ed. R. David Edmunds (forthcoming from Indiana University Press). Most of my full-time academic career was spent at Waubonsee Community College, where I am now Professor Emeritus and where I taught a wide variety of courses, mainly in American History. I am also a past president of the Illinois State Historical Society and currently am a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. rayehauser@aol.com

Samuel Kinser, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus (Cornell University, 1960 Ph.D.) The relation of popular culture to elite, learned, folk, and official cultures in Renaissance Europe focuses my research and teaching. I also continue to teach and publish in the field of historical theory, method, and writing. Publications: The Works of Jacques Auguste de Thou (1967); The Memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, 2 vols. (1968, 1972); "Annales Paradigm? The Geohistorical Structuralism of Fernand Braudel," American Historical Review (1981); A l'Amour Comme à la Guerre (1984); Rabelais's Carnival (1990); Carnival American Style (1990); "Amerindian Masking in Trinidad's Carnival, The Black Elk of San Fernando," Drama Review (1998); "Danser la Conquête: Michoacan, Mexique 1586," in Créolìsatíons dans les contextes coloniaux et postcoloniaux, ed. L. Turgeon (2001). sakinser@aol.com

Ronald McGlothlen (Northern Illinois University, 1992 Ph.D.) I am primarily an historian of American military and diplomatic history. In addition to a number of shorter pieces I have published Controlling the Waves: Dean Acheson and U.S. Foreign Policy in Asia (1993) and I am currently working on two book length studies. One is to be entitled The Resounding Clash of Empires and will be a military and diplomatic history of the French and Indian War; the other, Decent Men, Indecent War is based on interviews with veterans who saw heavy combat in the European Theater in World War II.

Joseph J. Parot (Northern Illinois University, 1971 Ph.D.) My interests lie primarily in the history of religion, ethnicity, and immigration and multiculturalism in America. In addition to having been a member of the department of History at NIU, where I am now Professor Emeritus, I also served as Head of the Social Science Department in the University Libraries until my retirement in December, 2000. I have published a book-length study, Polish Catholics in Chicago, 1850-1920 (1981) and I have also served in a variety of editorial capacities on a number of mutlivolume publications concerning Polish and Polish-American history, including the Kruszka Translation Project (1993-1999). In addition, I have served as Associate Editor of Polish American Studies since 1975, I am the author of entries in Dictionary of American Biography, American National Biography, Polish American Studies, and the Encyclopedia of Chicago History, and I have published articles, conference papers, and reviews in such journals as International Migration Review, Illinois Historical Journal, Catholic Historical Review, and American Historical Review. Courses I have taught at NIU include Religion in America to 1865 and from 1865, US Immigration and Ethnicity, and the History of Chicago. josephparot@aol.com

Curtis Richardson (Northern Illinois University, 1999 Ph.D.) I am an historian of Imperial and Soviet Russia. I have published a number of short pieces in these areas and am currently revising for publication my doctoral dissertation, "Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin: An Intellectural and Political Biography." curtrichardson@hotmail.com

William Whisenhunt (University of Illinois at Chicago, 1997 Ph.D.) An historian of Imperial Russia, I am currently an associate professor of history at the College of DuPage. I have published several articles and most recently a monograph, In Search of Legality: Mikhail M. Speranskii and the Codification of Russian Law (2001). I am currently translating and editing (with Marina Swoboda) a Russian memoir from the early nineteenth century. I am also co-editing (with Steven Usitalo) a book of essays on Russian and Soviet history designed for classroom use. whisen@cdnet.cod.edu