History Faculty Research

September 2008

Marc Becker’s research focuses on constructions of race, class, and gender within popular and Indigenous movements in the South American Andes. He is interested in how social movement activists negotiated political relationships across deep cultural divides, and how subalterns communicated their concerns to the dominant classes.

Kathryn Brammall’s current research involves an analysis of attitudes toward abnormality and deformity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. This period was a time of transition and upheaval in the country, witnessing such events as the Reformation; the rise of poverty, landlessness, and crime; the English Civil War; the Scientific Revolution; and the Glorious Revolution. The fear and wonder engendered by a “monstrous birth” were affected by religious and intellectual developments and, some scholars have claimed, mutated from “superstitious and credulous” to more “modern and scientific.” At the same time, however, a new “rhetoric of monstrosity” emerged that heightened negative associations and ideas. This rhetoric focused attention on internalized “deformities” of the population, such as heresy, immorality, and irrationality. Sources include legal and other official records, broadsides and ballads, plays, sermons, as well as religious, political, and moral treatises from a variety of perspectives and authors.

The focus of Jeff Gall’s scholarly work the past two years has been in the area of history education. I am the member of a five person team writing a detailed curriculum and set of teacher resources for former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett’s two volume U.S. history work entitled America: The Last Best Hope. An online sample of our materials (called the “Roadmap”) is available at:
http://www.roadmaptolastbesthope.com/
The goal is to strengthen history education across the country by introducing these resources into public and private schools.

Mark Hanley’s current research interests focus on the dynamic relationship between religious and political culture in antebellum America (1820-1860), as well as in a global context. Central to that work is the question of how mainstream Christianity both absorbed and in turned significantly influenced the course of American political development and the Protestant understanding of missionary outreach. At present, he is also exploring how the religious and political commitments of American educators have shaped classroom content and pedagogical priorities in higher education.

Jerrold Hirsch has several ongoing and interrelated research projects on the intellectual history of the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project, Benjamin Botkin and the development of American folklore studies, and the disability history dimension of life in slavery, in southern textile mills, and in such famous individuals and incidents as the caning of Charles Sumner, the post-polio life of Franklin Roosevelt, the Emmett Till Case, and the career of George Wallace. He is using unpublished federal records and personal papers in these projects. He is also using newspapers and magazines to examine how folklore and disability are represented in public discourse in the past.

Huping Ling’s current research project examines the similarities and dissimilarities between Chinese in Chicago and St. Louis on immigration and assimilation, in order to better understand the impact of globalization and transnationalism on the Mid-America. The methodology involves acquisition, analysis, and utilization of both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources consist of archival manuscripts, media coverage, census statistics, oral history interviews, and annual reports of the Chinese community organizations. The secondary sources include books, theses, dissertations, and journal articles.

Sylvia Macauley’s research focuses on Sierra Leone in general, and gender issues in particular. She is looking at women and power not only from a historical point of view (re-conceptualizing power in colonial and pre-colonial Sierra Leone) but also in terms of empowerment of women and engendering the peace building process to ensure sustainable peace in post-civil war Sierra Leone. In addition, she is also examining Sierra Leone and its diamond industry to help illuminate the on-going debate about the resource scramble dubbed the “new scramble for Africa.”

Daniel Mandell’s primary research examines the evolution of the concept of equality in America, beginning with English colonization in 1600 and continuing through the present. He is particularly interested in the conflict between the values of equality and liberty that developed after the American Revolution, and his initial study will focus on the period between 1760 and 1840, when democracy became the foremost American value but hierarchies of race and class become more significant.

Jason McDonald is presently researching the history of African Americans and Mexican Americans in Austin, Texas, from the dawn of the Progressive Era to the onset of the Great Depression. By comparing the experiences of these two populations, including their relations with each other and with the dominant white community, his research sheds light upon the dynamics of group interaction in multi-ethnic urban centers in the Southwest during the early twentieth century. This project utilizes a comparative approach to explore the issues of migration, marginalization, adaptation, identity, and community. Dr. McDonald is also starting work on a project that will examine the issues of migration and ethnicity from a global perspective, comparing the American experience with that of other major sending and receiving countries.

Steven Reschly’s current research examines rural consumer culture among Amish and related groups in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, from the 1920s through the 1940s. He is using photographs, census records, interviews, and especially a massive Consumer Expenditure Study conducted by the federal government in 1935-1936. During these decades, the Amish public image moved through stages of irrelevant rural oddity, to model for American agriculture to survive the Great Depression, to wartime producers of bountiful food, to postwar tourist attraction. Meanwhile, the Amish themselves continued to survive and thrive.
David Robinson’s early publications focused on the establishment of experimental psychology in the context of German higher education during the late nineteenth century. Recently he has expanded his research into history of psychology and psychiatry, and of higher education, in late Imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union. Current projects include an English edition of Gustav Fechner’s German classic, _Elements of psychophysics_, and a comparison of German and Russian reception of early French work in hypnosis.

Lynn Rose is interested in restoring people with disability to the pages of history. To this end, she examines how any given society views people with physical, psychiatric, and intellectual disability. Most recently, she looked at ancient Greek society and argued that, contrary to popular belief, the Greeks did not customarily dispose of their “deformed” infants. Dr. Rose is currently involved in creating a Disability Studies Program at Truman. With colleagues from Australia, Canada, and England, she is in the process of establishing a society for disability in the pre-modern world.

Torbjorn Wandel’s current research concerns the emergence of the historical profession in France in the mid-to-late 19th century. He explores the tension between the new practitioners’ commitment to science and objectivity on the one hand and their active role in supporting the French state on the other. Both intellectual and social, epistemological and archival, Wandel’s work offers a contextually grounded critique of the classical model of historical objectivity, which he argues sprang from the need for scientific ideological underpinnings to the modern state.

Sally West’s research examines the rise of consumer culture in late tsarist Russia (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Focusing in particular on commercial advertising, she examines ways in which consumption both challenged and drew upon Russian traditions at a time when Russian society and culture was undergoing dramatic changes on the eve of revolution.

Tom Zoumaras’s research focuses on C. Douglas Dillon, who graduated from Groton and Harvard, served as executive officer of the U.S. and Foreign Securities Corporation, Dillon, Read & Company, Inc., the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as ambassador to France (1953-57), Deputy Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (1957-59), Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (1959-61), Secretary of the Treasury (1961-65), and President and Chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1971-1983). Extensive archival research includes multiple visits to the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon presidential libraries, the National Archives, Groton, Harvard, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Haut Brion vineyards in the Gironde district near Bordeaux, France, and the Dillon family archives. Over 300 hours of interviews with Dillon and family members are supplemented by interviews with senior members of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations as well as industrialists and philanthropists such as Lawrence and David Rockefeller, and Brooke Astor.
Dillon’s career placed him at nexus of key historical events during the Cold War, including the Vietnam War, the rise of Castro to power in Cuba, the Alliance for Progress, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassination of President Kennedy.