Trinity College History Department: Fifty Years Later
By Brendan W. Clark ’21
Editor; History Major
The Trinity College Class of 1969 is celebrating their 50th Reunion in June of 2019. In honor of the Class of 1969, the History Department posed for a department picture fifty years later.
History Course To Visit Significant World War II Locations In Japan
By Brendan W. Clark ’21
Editor; History Major
The Trinity College History Department is offering a new course that will provide students with the opportunity to visit key sites of significant military action during World War II. Associate Professor of History and Department Chair Jeffrey Bayliss will teach the course, and Associate Professor of History Michael Lestz will join the visits, which include stops in Tokyo, Okinawa, and Hiroshima this June.
These sites, added Bayliss, each have significance to the military history of World War II and the experiences of Japanese and American soldiers. Bayliss added that “because the Japanese have memorialized the war in various ways, we can get into questions of historical and political memory” during the course.
A Conversation with Professor of History, Emeritus, Borden Painter
By Brendan W. Clark ’21
Editor; History Major
Professor Borden W. Painter, Jr. ’58, H’95, is an alumnus of Trinity and a former Professor of History, interim Dean of the Faculty, and twice interim President of Trinity College.
Painter’s time at Trinity as a student included participating in football and swimming as well as majoring in history. Painter characterized the importance of “good, close relationships” with the faculty while at Trinity as a major asset to the college. Painter was also active in the Chapel and felt that, ultimately, Trinity was a “great choice” for his undergraduate studies.
Study Away: Studying History at Irkutsk State University
By: Dylan Hebert (History ’17)
Studying abroad in Irkutsk, a small industrial city in Eastern Siberia, one of my greatest and most rewarding challenges, was taking a mainstream history class with Russian students at Irkutsk State University (ISU). While everyone has different objectives when they study abroad, for those who want to get as much as they can out of the experience, I wholeheartedly recommend that they take a regular class from their host university. Studying abroad through the Middlebury International Language Program, I had taken history and other subjects in Russian with ISU professors before, but my other classmates were also English speaking Americans from the Middlebury program. Taking a mainstream Russian history class with ISU students was much more intimidating.
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D.B. Cooper and the Hijacking of Northwest Airlines flight 305
By: James Barret (History ’17)
For my final paper in ‘HIST 344: America’s Most Wanted’ taught by Professor Greenberg (a course that all history majors should take), I will be writing about D.B Cooper’s infamous hijacking of Northwest Airlines flight 305 and extortion of $200,000. Although the Cooper case has many different elements, one that I will likely not be able to address in my paper due to the parameters of the assignment is the aftermath of the hijacking. The way I see it, the general public’s fascination with Cooper comes down to two major questions: Who was this man? And perhaps more importantly, did he survive his skydive into a cold rainy night somewhere in the woods north of Portland, Oregon? I will certainly work to answer these questions, or at the very least put together a guess in the final paper. But a third question has been bugging me lately and it is much more abstract. What exactly does the world gain from a story like Cooper’s? And furthermore, what would happen if there became definitive proof as to who this man was and what happened to him? Similar questions have been asked before, specifically by The New York Times Geoffrey Gray. Gray and I reach similar conclusions but differ slightly, I see Cooper as interesting because all the options are still on the table. Gray believes that Cooper enthusiasts will lose their drive if they know what all went down.
My European Experience
Written by: Tyler Wren (History, Class of 2019)
I am ever so grateful to the history department for the opportunity to travel to and study in Europe. Their sponsoring of my attendance in the new J-term course offered in Paris, POLS-209, and also providing an additional $1,000 for travel expenses, this allowed me to not only travel to Paris but also enabled me to travel more broadly within Europe itself. For example, giving me a cheaper and faster route to also visit London. Going to both London and Paris were crucial experiences for my upcoming research paper on Brexit and its implications on Europe that I will be writing with Professor Regan-Lefebvre.
Beginning with Professor Lefebvre’s class provided the perfect precursor for me on Brexit. What I learned from the primary source analyses and big-picture observances will definitely be relevant in the paper. Meeting with the media coordinator of the Delegation of the European Union was a crucial experience, providing insight into the national inner workings of the EU in France.
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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J-Term in Paris: HIST 237: The History of French Wine
This course introduces students to the history of French wine. Students will gain a critical, contextualised understanding of how French wine has evolved over the past three centuries and how it has made its mark on French culture, society and politics. This intensive course incorporates the city of Paris experientially. Classes will be divided into short taught sections, in-depth discussions of primary and secondary literature, and three excursions: a professional wine tasting emphasising regional differences in France and the concept of terroir; a visit to a working vineyard to highlight the technical and spatial aspects of wine production; and a visit to a wine museum to explore the evolution of wine through material culture. Fee: $250.
Instructor: Jennifer Reagan-Lefebvre, PhD, is Associate Professor of History at Trinity College, where she teaches British history and a popular course on global wine history. She previously taught at the University of Cambridge and the American University of Paris. She is the author of Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire (2009) and is writing a history of the wine trade. In 2016 she was honored with Trinity’s Hughes Award for Achievement in Teaching. Contact: jennifer.reganlefebvre@trincoll.edu
J-Term classes are $1,500. Additional fees apply.
Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival Program, April 7–10, 2016
From its creation in academic year 2005–2005 by a group of Trinity College students as a vehicle to “combat the disunity, segregation, and violence of Hartford, CT and Trinity College,” the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival always has close ties with several History majors and faculty.
One its co-founders, for example, was Jason P. Azevedo ’08, currently a career U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer specialized on Africa and Brazil.
Since 2009, History and International Studies Assistant Professor Seth Markle has served as the main academic advisor to Trinity Chapter of Temple of Hip Hop and annual Trinity International Hip Hop Festival.
As the coordinating group has put it, from the beginning the festival’s main strategies and goals have been using a “the historically education-oriented and politically revolutionary medium — Hip Hop – and focusing on its global potency and proliferation, the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival works to unify Trinity College, the city of Hartford, and the Globe.”
This year’s program, includes lectures and panel discussions with a variety of scholars, artists, and community activists; film screenings, graffiti and photo exhibits, workshops, and performances, including Dance Event / B-Boy Battle on Friday, April 8th (7pm–2am), the Saturday April 9th (8pm-2am) Hip Hop Concert, featuring Rakim and several other MCs and DJs. The festival ends on Sunday, April 10th with a DJ showcase and the Iron Poet Slam Competition.
You can find the Festival’s FULL PROGRAM here: 2016 Program for the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival – We hope to see you there!
Message from Our Newest Historian: Prof. Jennifer Regan–Lefebvre
The History Department is delighted to welcome our newest member, Professor Jennifer Regan–Lefebvre, whom we recruited last winter through an international search to teach a variety of courses in British and British Imperial history.
Prof. Regan–Lefebvre earned a Ph.D. from Queen’s University Belfast in 2007 and a B.S. from Georgetown University in 2003. She has taught at the University of Exeter, the American University of Paris and the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow, the Director of Studies in History and the Assistant Tutor at King’s College.
History@Trinity hopes to publish soon excerpts from an interview in which she discusses in detail her research and teaching and her plans for the near future.
In the meantime, Prof. Regan–Lefebvre has kindly provided us with the following statement:
“I am delighted to be joining the History Department at Trinity in 2013 and am looking forward to getting to know students and colleagues at Trinity.
My expertise is in British and British Imperial history and I’m particularly interested in how modern Britain was shaped and affected by the British Empire.
I’ve written a book about relations between Irish and Indian nationalists in the nineteenth century and I’ve also published on the history of travel, race and racism, and the press. I am currently researching a history of the London wine trade since 1800.
In 2013-2014 I’ll be teaching a First Year Program seminar on the history of London (“London: Traditional, Modern and Global”) plus three History courses: “Modern Britain and Imperial Culture,” “Modern Britain since 1750” and “Modern Ireland, Global Ireland.”
I’m originally from Massachusetts but have lived in Europe for eighteen years. I’m very excited to be returning home to New England and am particularly looking forward to watching the leaves change on the Trinity campus this fall.”
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