NEWS FROM CENFAD FACULTY, ALUMNI, AND STUDENTS

Compiled by Jerome Montes

Faculty

Dr. Beth Bailey published an article on the history of the All-Volunteer Army in the Journal of American History entitled "The Army in the Marketplace" in June, 2007, and has signed an advance contract with Harvard University Press for her book on that topic. Over the past year she gave several talks on that research, both at academic conferences and as an invited speaker, and participated in two conferences in Germany on war and society.

Dr. Regina Gramer, assistant director of CENFAD, has been awarded a Temple University Research and Study Leave for 2008-2009 to complete her manuscript “Trouncing Antitrust: The Transatlantic Controversy Over German Reconstruction, 1923-1957.”  At the invitation of Dr. Kevin Brady, President of the American Institute for History Education, she has given lectures on World War II, the Cold War, the Cuban-Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War for school teachers throughout New Jersey.  Together with Aashka Merchant, Temple honors student, she has revived CENFAD’s undergraduate forum SCENFAD (Student Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy).

This fall, Professor William I. Hitchcock, professor of history and acting director of CENFAD, completed a book titled The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe. This work treats the human experience of liberation, paying close attention to the interactions of liberating soldiers and European civilians from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. It also provides analysis of the role of humanitarian relief organizations in liberated Europe. The book shows that even in the great cause of Europe's liberation, allied liberators caused catastrophic loss and destruction among European civilians, with consequences that continue to shape European attitudes toward wars of liberation to this day. The book, to be published by The Free Press, will appear in bookstores in October 2008. Professor Hitchcock presented some of his findings at the Seventh meeting of the European Social Science and History Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in February 2008. He has begun work on his next book, a short history of the Geneva Conventions.

Dr. Richard Immerman reports that his tenure as Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence has is challenging, rewarding, and illuminating. He directs the Office of Analytic Integrity and Standards and serves as the Intelligence Community’s Analytic Ombudsman. Diplomatic History published his Presidential Address to the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, “Intelligence and Strategy: Historicizing Policy, Politics, and Strategy,” in its January 2008 issue.

Dr. Jay Lockenour spent the fall semester on study leave, writing his new book on Erich Ludendorff. Dragonslayer: The Life of Erich Ludendorff in the Weimar Republic will examine the famous general’s postwar political career. Ludendorff set much of the tone for German political life in the 1920s and 30s by his authorship of the “stab in the back” myth, his early, critical support for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and his influential military publications. Dr. Lockenour will present his research at the Modern Germany Workshop held at the University of Pennsylvania in March and hopes to put the finishing touches on the manuscript over the coming year. Dr. Lockenour has also recently participated in scholarly events and conferences at Queens College (on Ken Burns’ The War) and Villanova University (on Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children). Upcoming commitments include chairing a panel on the interwar metropolis at Association for the Study of Nationalities conference at Columbia in April.

Gregory J. W. Urwin, professor of history and CENFAD associate director, spent three days at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, in mid-January 2008 to conduct a Professional Military Education session for Marine Attack Squadron 211 (VMA-211). VMA-211 traces its lineage to VMF-211, the Marine fighter squadron that helped defend Wake Island from December 8 to 23, 1941. Urwin presented a lecture titled “’Issue in Doubt’: The Siege of Wake Island” to VMA-211’s officers and senior noncoms and received a handsome framed lithograph of the squadron’s AV-8B Harrier II aircraft signed by every member of his audience.

Urwin presided over the February 15 session of Dr. Ralph Young’s weekly Dissent in America Teach-In. Urwin spoke on “Wrestling with the Greatest Generation: WWII as History and National Myth.” 

   On March 28, Urwin was in New York City to chair a paper panel on “Confederates and Unnecessary Killing during the Civil War.” He then drove into south central Pennsylvania later that day to participate in a Chambersburg Civil War Seminar over the weekend of March 29 and 30 dedicated to George Armstrong Custer. Urwin delivered a lecture titled “The Rise of George Armstrong Custer, 1861-65.” 

Urwin attended the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History in Ogden, Utah, April 17-19, where he chaired a session on “New Frontiers in World War II History: The U.S. Army in the ETO, 1942-45.”

   The U.S. Army Center of Military History has chosen two different venues to publish “When Freedom Wore a Red Coat: A Social History of Cornwallis’ 1781 Virginia Campaign,” a paper that Urwin gave at the 2007 Conference of Army Historians. It was initially chosen to appear with other selected papers in the conference proceedings, which will be released in September of this year. Charles Hendricks, editor of Army History, the Center of Military History’s quarterly journal, has also obtained permission to publish the paper as an article in his summer issue.

   Urwin continues to tutor the British Army’s elite regiments in their 18th-century heritage. His article, “March to the Bank in 1787” appeared in The Guards Magazine: Journal of the Household Division in mid-February.

   Urwin was honored last November by the e-journal, Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution (SCAR), when he delivered the keynote address at the Revolutionary War Cavalry Conference in Spartanburg, South Carolina. SCAR publisher and editor, Charles B. Baxley, presented him with an award for “Lifetime Achievement in Military History,” citing Urwin’s “decades of research, authorship, numerous books and publications, and for raising the bar of and about our vast U.S. military history.” A revised and expanded version of Urwin’s address, “’There Is No Carrying on the War without Them’: The Continental Light Dragoons, 1776-83,” will be published next year in an essay collection derived from the conference. The volume will be edited by Professor Jim Piecuch of Kennesaw State University under the sponsorship of the South Carolina Historical Society.

   In the past year, Urwin has published book reviews in Pacific Historical Review, On Point: The Journal of Army History, Military History of the West, Military Collector & Historian: Journal of the Company of Military Historians, Civil War Book Review, H-CivWar, and South Dakota History.

Alumni

Marty Levitt has pursued a dual career as library administrator and educator. He joined the staff of the American Philosophical Society in 1986, and was appointed Director of its Library in 2003. The APS Library is the repository of such icons as the Journals of Lewis and Clark, the Papers of Benjamin Franklin, the final draft of the Declaration of Independence, and some 10,000 linear feet of other manuscripts and 350,000 books. As an educator, Levitt is a professor in Temple’s Department of History, and he has published widely in a variety of archival and history journals on subjects ranging from the politicization of the helium industry to the psychology of terror bombing in World War II. Levitt obtained his Ph.D. in history from Temple University, where he wrote his dissertation, The United States Navy and Lighter-Than-Air Aviation, 1916-1962 under the guidance APS Member Russell F. Weigley. 

Patrick Murray received his Ph.D. at Temple in 1991 with Dr. Russell Weigley as his advisor He recently contributed an article to Dr. Weigley’s festschrift, Beyond Combat: Essays in Military History in Honor of Russell F. Weigley; entitled, “Eisenhower as Ground-Forces Commander: The British Viewpoint.” He considers being asked to contribute a chapter the greatest honor of his career and was delighted to work with Ted Zeman and Ed Longacre. Murray also recently wrote a review Michael Korda’s Ike: An American Hero for World War II Quarterly, an online referred journal.

J. Britt McCarley (Ph.D., 1989) published his essay, “‘The Great Question of the Campaign Was One of Supplies”: A Reinterpretation of Sherman’s Generalship during the 1864 March to Atlanta in Light of the Logistic Strategy,” in the festschrift entitled Beyond Combat: Essays in Military History in Honor of Russell F. Weigley.  Edward G. Longacre and Theodore J. Zeman edited this collection of essays published in 2007 by the American Philosophical Society. McCarley will read a conference version of his essay at the Temple University Center for CENFAD’s April 2008 Beyond Combat Conference, which features four of the book’s essay authors. McCarley has chaired three conference panels lately, two covering the work of branch history offices and branch museums to preserve the documentary and artifactual record of the Army’s activities and operations in the Global War on Terrorism, and one on the varieties of irregular warfare in the South during the War of American Independence.  As Chief Historian, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which has the largest public history program in the Federal government with 28 field history offices and activities and 23 Army museums, McCarley spoke to the University of Kansas Department of History Master’s in Public History and Museum Studies Program in March 2008 on the TRADOC Military History Program as a career choice for graduate history majors.

Michael A. Palmer (Ph.D., 1981) currently serves as the interim chair of the Department of English at East Carolina University.  The department is the largest at ECU with over 100 full-time faculty. He previously served as chair of the Department of History (1999–2007) and as interim chair of the Department of Geography (1997–1999). Potomac Press recently released a trade paperback version of his latest work, The Last Crusade: Americanism and the Islamic Reformation. Palmer has also sold the Turkish- and Spanish-language rights to Command at Sea: Naval Command and Control since the Sixteenth Century, published by Harvard University Press in 2005. He wrote his dissertation, "The Quasi-War and the Creation of the American Navy, 1798–1801” under the direction of the late Russell F. Weigley. The subsequent book remains in print as Stoddert’s War: Naval Operations during the Quasi-War with France, 1798-1801, published by the Naval Institute Press in the second edition of its Classics of Naval Literature series.

David J. Ulbrich (Ph.D., 2007) continues to teach history courses on campus and in the prison program at Ball State University. He also teaches online graduate courses in military history for Norwich University. Ulbrich’s review of The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan was published in the November issue of Journal of Asian Studies. In December 2007, Ulbrich gave public a lecture titled “Logistics in the Pacific War: Key to Victory” at the Center for World War II Studies and Conflict Resolution at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. The same month, he also presented a paper titled “Japanese and American Logistics in the Pacific War” as part of CENFAD’s Colloquium Series. Ulbrich was recognized by Ball State’s Disabled Student Services Office with the 2007-2008 Accessible Teacher Award for his work as an instructor and mentor to undergraduates with disabilities. Ulbrich served as a historical consultant and on-air segment host for the WIPB-TV and Ball State production of Echoes of War: Stories from the Big Red One (September 2007), which will receive a pair of 2008 Silver Telly Awards for the categories of “Live Events” and “Education.” Most recently, Ulbrich and his colleague at Ball State, Professor Michael W. Doyle, became co-recipients of a $50,000 grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation. As co-directors of “From Service to Memory to Archives: Cantigny First Division Oral History Project,” Ulbrich and Doyle will train Ball State students to conduct oral history interviews with veterans of the First Infantry Division. The grant will also fund the videotaping, transcribing, and web streaming of those interviews during the summer and fall of 2008.

John F. Votaw, Sr. (Ph.D., 1991) has contributed chapters in two new books. “The Ambassador’s Troops: U.S. Military Attachés and Military Intelligence, 1885-1920” is chapter 4 in Beyond Combat: Essays in Military History in Honor of Russell F. Weigley, a festschrift edited by Edward G. Longacre and Theodore J. Zeman, and published by the American Philosophical Society in 2007. “Robert Rutherford McCormick: Journalist, Citizen-Soldier and Country Gentleman” will appear as a chapter in Unknown Soldiers: The American Expeditionary Forces in Memory and Remembrance, edited by Mark A. Snell, a forthcoming book by Kent State University Press in early summer, 2008. Dr. Votaw, an adjunct associate professor of history at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, is teaching a course titled “The United States in the Era of World War I.” In support of the course he presented a faculty seminar on 27 February titled “Why Should We Be Interested in World War I?” He is currently writing a book on the U.S. First Division in World War I. Votaw completed his dissertation on U.S. Military Attachés under the supervision of Dr. Weigley.

Michael E. Weaver (Ph.D. 2002) will see two articles in print later this year. The Journal of East Tennessee History will publish "Making a Difference: The Tennessee Air National Guard in the Berlin Crisis, 1961-1962," and Intelligence and National Security will publish "International Cooperation and Bureaucratic In-Fighting: American and British Economic Intelligence Sharing and the Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1939-41." He is currently an assistant professor and course director for the Strategy and War course at the Air Force Air Command and Staff College.

Major Grant T. Weller, USAF (Ph.D. 2008) has been selected for promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel.  He will be presenting a paper on his Temple University dissertation at the 2008 Society for Military History Conference, based, to be entitled “A Motor-Minded Army:  The U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps and Motorized Logistics, 1917-1941”.  Harnessing the Heavens: National Defense through Space, a collection of essays on the military history of space which he co-edited, will be available from Imprint Publications this spring.  He serves as Assistant Professor and Deputy for Faculty Development at the United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Current Students

Benjamin Brandenburg, a 2nd-year Ph.D. student in International History, served as precept for Princeton University's diplomatic history course, "United States and World Affairs" in spring 2008. Benjamin will be presenting his research on the so called "Underground State Department" at the James A. Barnes Club Conference in April 2008.  His paper highlights the postwar emergence of a religious NGO that built diplomatic connections through elite "prayer breakfast groups" during the Cold War. He will be presenting "Government Issue Missionaries: The GI Gospel Hour and Reemergence of Conservative Religious Global Engagement in the South Pacific" at the American Historical Association’s biennial Conference on Faith and History in September 2008.

Earl J. Catagnus, Jr., a first-year Ph.D. student studying under the tutelage of Dr. Gregory J. W. Urwin, recently had an article accepted for publication in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings. The article titled “Considerations in Helicopter-Borne Air Assault,” redefines the scope of hostile air defenses, discusses landing zone selection, and considers the implications of increased offloading time in the landing zone. In addition to the above article, Earl reviewed Mark D. Mandeles’s Military Transformation Past and Present: Lessons for the 21st Century for On Point: The Journal of Army History. The review is to be published in the Summer or Fall 2008. Currently, Earl is writing a review for On Point of Steve Call’s Danger Close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and Iraq. His present research focuses on the coordination between air and ground combat elements at the small unit level during air assaults, ground attacks, and counterinsurgency operations. 

Eric Klinek, president of the James A. Barnes Club, recently passed his preliminary exams. He is a senior lecturer at the University of the Arts, where he is teaching a course on Franco’s Spain. He will teach this course again during the fall 2008 semester, and he is also creating a course titled “1492,” which he will offer in the spring 2009 semester. Klinek has been serving as an editorial assistant for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and Pennsylvania Legacies for the 2007-08 academic year. He recently received a College of Liberal Arts Travel Grant from Temple and a Russell Weigley Travel Grant from the Society for Military History. Klinek will be presenting a paper on the United States Army Replacement System in the European Theater during World War II at the Annual Society for Military History Conference in Ogden, Utah, from April 17-20, 2008.

Ph.D. candidate and former Strategic Visions editor-in-chief Drew McKevitt is currently serving the second semester of a year-long tenure as a Teaching Fellow in the Center for the Humanities at Temple. The fellowship has afford Drew a semester free of teaching duties so that he can devote his energies fully to the dissertation, “Consuming Japan: Cultural Relations and the Globalizing of America, 1973-1993.” He has spent the semester traveling, researching, and writing in preparation of defending the dissertation during the fall 2008 semester. At the 2008 Barnes Club Conference, Drew will present a condensed version of one dissertation chapter, titled “Wakarimasuka: Shifting American Images of Japan from Shôgun to Rising Sun.” 

Kelly Shannon advanced to candidacy in early March 2008 and is also serving on the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relation’s (SHAFR) Ad Hoc Committee on Women.  She is currently this year's Thomas Davis Fellow for CENFAD.  At the SHAFR annual meeting this June, she will sit on a roundtable that will discuss the question, "Is SHAFR Sexist?"  She will also present a research paper entitled, "Battling the Veil: Popular American Concern for Muslim Women's Human Rights Since the Late 1970's."  She also conducted research in the Columbia and Barnard archives in late March. Kelly is a third-year Ph.D. student at Temple, and her area of concentration is U.S. foreign relations and international history.  Her dissertation will explore how and why Americans have become interested in the issue of Muslim women's human rights since the 1970's.

Jason Smith will complete his coursework in the spring and plans to take comprehensive exams early in the fall semester. He is also in the process of revising a seminar paper entitled "Lighting the Path of the Mariner: Hydrography, Empire, and the U.S. Navy, 1898-1908" so it can be considered for publication.

Josh J. Wolf traveled to Richmond, Virginia in November to attend the Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association.  This was his third year attending the conference and it has consistently proven to be a valuable experience. Additionally, Josh is excited to be participating in this year’s Barnes Conference.  He will be presenting his paper on the connection between the British naval practice of impressment during the early Republic and a rise in child mortality due to intestinal worm infestations in Philadelphia from 1805-1807.