Internship Spotlight.1: National News vs. Local News
By: Jessica Wachtel (Class of 2012)
After working at CBS News in New York City over this past summer and at WFSB in Rocky Hill over the course of this school year, I have come to realize that my experiences at both these new stations were extremely different, based on their coverage of local versus national news. While I had my internship at CBS News in the city, I worked everyday, eight hours a day, for ten weeks. I was assigned to the News Marketing department with three other interns out of the total 180 interns. Upon my arrival at the building, I met my fellow interns who were from all over the country, stretching as far west as California and as far south as Florida. Two boys from my high school happened to be assigned to the same department as myself, but overall I was working with a diverse group of people with various experiences and backgrounds in journalism and communication.
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2011 Grossman Grant Awardee: Max deLone Reports Back on Research Project
By: Max deLone (Class of 2012)
As a history major it can sometimes be hard to figure out where your education can actually meet up with the real world and find practical applications and uses in your life. I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed the study of history throughout my life but was never really able to understand where the skills that I have honed as a history major could find an application outside of an academic environment. In the summer of 2011 I heard about an opportunity to apply for a research grant offered by Trinity’s Center for Urban and Global Studies. Grossman research grants are awarded every year to Trinity students investigating topics around the world either for a Trinity course or under the supervision of a Trinity professor. Although this sort of research wouldn’t allow me to quite escape the confines of academia, I was still able to envision a project that I could carry out on my own, and find a way to put my skills as a history major to work somewhat distanced from the classroom.
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Anniversary of the Tsunami in Japan
By: Prof. Jeff Bayliss
I promise to keep this short. I’ll have to, because it’s already late, and I intend to post this before I call it a night and set the clocks forward for the spring. But I won’t do that until sometime after 12:46am here, at the very earliest. That will be the exact moment, one year ago, when the quake that spawned the killer tsunami waves struck, and irrevocably altered life for so many people in northeastern Japan. 12:46am in Connecticut is 2:46pm in Japan. As of the morning of March 11th, 2012 in Japan, the figures from the disaster stood as follows: 15,854 confirmed dead, 3,155 still missing but officially presumed dead, and 343,935 dislocated and living in temporary housing facilities or other arrangements. In addition to these figures, it is necessary to bear in mind that these numbers represent whole communities along the coast of northeastern Japan; communities that are nowhere near making a recovery after a year. Some may never do so, especially in the areas closest to the failed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The disaster goes on. So much so, in fact, that it almost doesn’t seem to make sense to speak of an “anniversary” – although much has changed since. So, as I sit down to watch the NHK satellite feed tonight, as we press on toward 2:46pm in Japan, here are a few thoughts, by way of commemoration. Most of what I would like to say, though, concerns not how far things have come in a year, but how much further they have yet to go. This is not to be overly pessimistic. Reconstruction is happening, because the survivors won’t let it be otherwise. Still, in the very act of “reconstructing” one finds the ongoing toll of the disaster at every turn.
Read entire blog post HERE.
Prof. John Elukin Speaks to Guided Studies Class
Jonathan Elukin speaks to his Guided Studies class about the transition of scroll to codex and manuscript to print in late medieval and early modern Europe using sources in the Watkinson. Read more HERE.
History Professors Attend Historic Conference in Trinidad & Tobago
By: Prof. Markle (History/International Studies)
From March 18th to March 25th, a delegation of Trinity College faculty members traveled to Trinidad and Tobago to attend and participate in the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies’ THE COMMON SENSE CONVOIS: RE-AWAKENING THE CARIBBEAN SPIRIT. History professors Dario Euraque and Seth Markle were part of this delegation which also included Milla Riggio (English), Pablo Delano (Studio Arts) and Kifah Hanna (Language and Cultural Studies) as well as undergraduate senior Antonea Ascione (Political Science/English). Since the early 2000s, Trinity College has been partnering and collaborating with the Lloyd Best Institute — named after the renowned Trinidadian economist who died in 2007 — in giving our undergraduate students an incredibly enriching active learning and cultural immersion study away experience.
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Rafting Down Hartford’s History
By: Francis Russo (History, Class of 2013)
There are many things people don’t know about Hartford. Perhaps no one cares enough to find out, or maybe Hartford’s secrets are buried so deep beneath its unfortunate reputation of a dying city that no one knows where to look. Some things, though, are especially hard to find when they’re literally buried—like the Park River. In a discrete gulf between Pope Park and I-84, the river slips into a massive concrete tomb that travels three miles under the center of Hartford before letting out into the Connecticut River. This is about all I knew of the river when a friend asked if I wanted to raft down it. Most people we told of the venture thought it was ridiculous. Rats, sewage, wild animals and gang members, they assured us, would be lurking underground. While most of our friends passed on the trip, four of us agreed to brave the mysterious river under Hartford.
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Deadline Approaching:Undergrad Research Grants from CUGS
GROSSMAN RESEARCH GRANTS FOR GLOBAL STUDIES:
“The Kenneth S. Grossman ’78 Global Studies Fund, established in honor of Professor Eugene E. Leach, supports student investigations of global issues that confront humankind in the 21st century. Examples of such issues include human rights, peacekeeping, the preservation of the ecosphere, migrations and diasporas, international health standards, and the consequences of revolutionary advances in information technology and bioengineering. All students undertaking investigations in global issues for a Trinity course or under the supervision of a Trinity faculty member are eligible to apply for grants from the Grossman Fund to attend conferences, visit libraries, conduct fieldwork, or offset other research-related expenses. A faculty committee meets each year in April to evaluate applications, and to determine the amount of grants. The maximum grant in 2011 will be $1,000. Students awarded grants are expected to make use of their funding by September of the following year, or, in the case of seniors, by graduation, and to submit a report to the Center for Urban and Global Studies describing the activities made possible by the grant. All applications should be submitted to Anne Lundberg (anne.lundberg@trincoll.edu) at the Center for Urban and Global Studies by April 9, 2012. The next round of grant competition will be held in April 2013.”
Reflections on the Writing Process
By Joseph Laws (Class of 2012)
“Just to recap: I am writing a Senior history thesis on the Connecticut colonization movement to Liberia before the Civil War. My advisers are Professor Gac (first reader) and Professor Markle (second reader). The thesis is a culmination of a year long project, and will end up being between 80 to 100 pages! Progress on the thesis has been going well. Although I have done A LOT of research, it still seems like there is A LOT left to do. I have about 60 pages in draft right now. And, I only have a handful of research trips left to make. This week I met with both my thesis advisers to update them on my progress and get their input on what I have written thus far. On Monday, Professor Gac and I went out to lunch at The Kitchen, a restaurant at Billings Forge. On Thursday, Professor Markle and I had breakfast in Mather. Thus far, I have written about race relations in antebellum Connecticut, the Colonization vs. Anti-slavery debate, and the experience of blacks from Connecticut while they are in Liberia. I still have some more sections to write about, including the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. AND then, a swarm of REWRITES! Rewriting is where I plan to make sure the thesis has a coherent thread, argument, and narrative structure. After rewrites, there will be a couple of rounds of editing. Then, poof! Thesis will be done.”
Read the entire blog entry HERE.
History Dept. Meet-n-Greet
By: Francis Russo (Class of 2012)
About a week ago in a room inside of a room, the History Department held a ‘meet and greet’ for faculty and students. If you’ve never been to the Goodwin Lounge, stop by—its transplanted interior is a hidden gem whose antique eloquence is a great place for anything history. I had only been reminded of the event a few hours before by a fellow history friend, and walking over we had a lurking suspicion we might be the only ones there. However, it turned out to be a filled room and lively event. The Adam Whitehurst Trio jazzed up conversation and light food was served. A good number of professors appeared. There were also a fair number of students, some veterans of history major-dom and some just about to enlist. Topics of discussion ranged all over the board. The meeting was a nice reminder that the history department faculty and students could congeal into a recognizable body. Perhaps the labyrinthine guts of Seabury limit a community space for impromptu conversation, but the ‘meet and greet’ was a nice opportunity for some history department solidarity. Stay tuned for more events.
Meet Team Senior Thesis
By Jacob Pronit (Class of 2012)
Seniors are busy people but seniors who write theses are really busy people. Thankfully, because they are super nice and wonderful, each senior history author took a couple minutes to write a short profile for the history blog. We hope you like our questions and their answers!
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