Studying History in Cape Town, South Africa
Written by: Chelsey Crabbe (History, Class of 2017)
I never thought that I could come to love a place as much as Cape Town, South Africa. Having arrived back home over a year ago, the memories I made in South Africa are still fresh in my mind. I spent the fall semester of 2015 participating in the Trinity-in-Cape Town program with eight other Trinity students. In terms of my academic experience, I attended the University of Cape Town, a school beautifully set into a mountain face, a setting that would greatly juxtapose the political turmoil boiling on campus. The #FeesMustFall campaign became the movement at school as the university’s students began protesting the rising student fees that barred a number of individuals from attending school. Their efforts are still at the heart of the greater goal of decolonizing the school system and continue today. Coming from Trinity, I had never seen mass student protests before especially with my own eyes. I became entranced by the students’ active political participation, a symbol of their deep value of education. As a history major, I realized that history was occurring before my very eyes, a strong reminder that Apartheid still remained a key component of the nation’s collective memory.
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Celebrating Black History Month at Trinity College
Written by: Callie Prince (History, Class of 2017)
As students return from long winter breaks, the end of January seems a bleak and uncelebrated time. While walking through unplowed snow to eat at Mather once again, many students will wish to return to lazy days at home. For those of us involved with Multi-Cultural organizations or clubs on campus, the return to school also means extensive planning for Black History Month. February not only marks Valentine’s Day and President’s Day, but also an entire month dedicated to the celebration of African American History. The entire month is a time to dedicate oneself and effort to creating events that tie into this certain part of American history. For the Black Student Union groups this is an opportunity to work together towards a common goal on campus. However for many of us the stories of Madam C.J. Walker, W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther Kind Jr., and many more are repeatedly heard from kindergarten through High school. Everyone should know that George Washington Carver was a inventor and “The Peanut Man”, but also that Thurgood Marshall was the first African American Supreme Court Justice. However, this creates an interesting dilemma for planning Black History Month at Trinity. As members of the Black Student Organizations, it is our job to both lead the celebrating and sharing of African American history, while keeping the events relevant and engaging.
Trekking the Tamang Heritage Trail: A J-Term Course
Written by: Michael Lestz, Associate Professor of History
In January 2017 twenty-two students and faculty from Trinity College took part in an eighteen-day trek along the Tamang Heritage Trail in the northern area of Nepal close to the border with Tibet. All the trekkers were lured to Nepal by its spectacular mountains. Among the faculty leaders who joined the expedition were Professors Craig Schneider of Biology, Richard Prigodich of the Chemistry Department, and Coach Anne Parmenter who leads Trinity’s field hockey team. Schneider and Prigodich have led numerous similar expeditions in Nepal or Tibet in past years and Coach Parmenter is a supremely competent mountaineer who summited Mount Everest from the Tibetan side in 2006. Professor Christoph Geiss from Environmental Science, an experienced mountaineer and nature photographer, was also on board and created a spectacular photo record of the rugged terrain we crossed.
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Celebrating Black History Month: Connecticut’s Paul Robeson
Written by: Dylan Hebert (History, Class of 2017)
Known as the most talented man of the twentieth century, Paul Robeson is famous for his role as a prominent singer, actor, social activist, athlete, and lawyer. He was the ultimate Renaissance man. Born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1898, his mother was a teacher and his father was a Presbyterian Minister, who escaped from slavery in 1860 at the age of fifteen through the underground railroad. Robeson’s mother died when he was just five years old and his father when he was only twenty. Earning a scholarship to attend Rutgers University, he excelled both academically as the class valedictorian and in sports as an All-American athlete. By twenty-four, he had graduated from Columbia Law School, funding his studies by playing for two seasons in the National Football League.
Where Do Historians Work? A Look at the Data
“Based on the ground-breaking “The Many Careers of History PhDs,” the AHA has gathered data from more than 30 departments that grant history PhDs. Using this information, we have created the only interactive, discipline-specific, and cross-institutional database of career outcomes for PhDs. The data from each program represents a snapshot of the employment of a 10-year cohort (2004–13) of graduates. The AHA plans to continually update that underlying data to expand the number of departments included and to provide data useful to our members. Use the database to get a fine-grained sense of the range of careers open to history PhDs (using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Standard Occupational Classification system, or SOC) and to compare program outcomes by field of study, geographic location, gender, date of graduation and more. For information about the methodology used in gathering this data, please see About the Data” For more information, go HERE.
“Hartford Hip Hop: Then and Now”
A Conversation on hip hop in Hartford during the 1980s-1990s and how the culture has evolved to the present featuring Empress Nijuabi, a Hartford based emcee who was a member of the pioneering hip hop group Palm Expedition and Seth Markle, Associate Professor and Faculty Advisor to the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival.
When: Thursday, November 3rd, 6-7:30pm
Where: Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library (downtown)
Free and open to the public.
“Headstrong”: A Photo Exhibit on the Haitian Diaspora in Hartford
By Sara Kippur, Associate Professor, Language and Culture Studies
As part of my first-year seminar course on “Francophone Hartford,” and with the immense help and guidance of Professor Pablo Delano (Studio Arts) a photo exhibition and reception was held on October 20th for Haitian photographer Marc-Yves Régis’s work. Marc is a Haitian-born Hartford resident whose photos about Haiti’s economic and social burdens resonate powerfully today.The opening reception for the exhibition was held at Trinity’s Broad Street Gallery (1283 Broad St.), and Marc was there to talk about his work. History major, Seth Browner, attended and helped organize this event while serving as my first-year seminar mentor/teaching assistant. This exhibit can be viewed until November 7 via appointment only. (contact. sara.kippur@trincoll.edu). Photographs by Pablo Delano.
“Warsaw Ghetto’s Secret Archive Goes Hollywood”
“By the time Serena Kassow appeared in a film about the Warsaw ghetto’s secret archive, she had heard about “the most important untold story of the Holocaust” for the better part of her life. As the daughter of Holocaust historian Samuel Kassow, the 21 year old grew up watching her father collect stories from local survivors in Connecticut, particularly those from Poland. Years of learning culminated in May, when Kassow joined her father on the set of “Who Will Write Our History?” a documentary based on his book about the Warsaw ghetto’s “Oneg Shabbat” archive. The day after receiving her theater studies degree from Boston’s Emerson College, Kassow flew to Poland for what she called “an incredibly personal month.” Having heard she was a theater student, the film’s producers cast Kassow as a featured extra. On ghetto sets in Warsaw and Lodz, she portrayed a typist preparing reports for the clandestine archive, from which 25,000 documents have come down to history.”
Read entire article here:
The Annual Philip C.F. Bankwitz Lecture: Money, History and the French Revolution
On Thursday, November 3, 4:30pm (Reese Room, Smith House): The History Department will be sponsoring its annual Philip C.F. Bankwitz Lecture titled, “Money, History and the French Revolution” featuring Rebecca Spang is Professor of History and Director of the Center for EighteenthCentury Studies at Indiana University. Her first book, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture, has been translated into Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish, and Modern Greek. It was the recipient of two major prizes, the Gottschalk Prize for the best book in eighteenth-century studies, awarded by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and theThomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize for best first book, awarded by the Harvard University Press.
Her most recent research is on the subject of money. Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution, published by Harvard University Press in 2015, uses one of the most infamous examples of monetary innovation — the assignats — to write a new history of money and a new history of the French Revolution. It shows that revolutionary radicalization was driven by the ever-widening gap between political ideals and the experience of daily life and restores economics, in the broadest sense, to its rightful place at the heart of the Revolution (and hence of modern politics).
