Check out Professor Nudell on the Alliterative Podcast, episode 102, 22 Feb 2022, “Baking Greek Bread.”

 

On Tuesday October 19, 2021, Dr. Jason McDonald (Assistant Professor, Department of History) featured in “Prop A in the Context of Race and Policing in Austin, Texas: An Urgent Forum.” This event, sponsored by the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, brought together a panel of experts on the history of racism in Austin, Texas. Dr. McDonald spoke on the subject of race and policing as covered in his book Racial Dynamics in Early Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas. You can watch the discussion and get more information on Dr. McDonald’s book by clicking on the above links.

Students Shannon Fetzner (BA History), Nick Pruett (BA History), and Alexandra Miller (BA History) represented Truman at the Missouri Conference on History on March 11, 2021, by participating in a panel entitled “Regulating Class, Race and Ethnicity in Early Twentieth-Century America.” Due to the pandemic, the conference took place online this year. The panel was chaired by Dr. Jason McDonald, Department of History. The presentations delivered by Fetzner—“Pauperized and Degenerated: Eugenicists’ Perceptions of Native Americans in the Early Twentieth Century”—and Pruett—“‘Gentlemen with Few Peers’: Harry Laughlin’s Working Relationships with Select Eugenics Movement Leaders”—were both based on projects first started on a history course with Dr. McDonald in fall 2019. In summer 2020, Pruett completed the research for his paper thanks to support from the Office of Student Research’s Grants-in-Aid of Scholarship and Research program. Miller’s paper, entitled “‘The Making of Useful Citizens’: Social Engineering in Kansas City Parks, 1893–1923,” was based on archival research completed during summer 2020 as part of the TruScholars Summer Undergraduate Research Program sponsored by the Office of Student Research.

The Index recently ran the following piece on the History department’s Museum and Archives Internships

https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/museums-and-judicial-archives-internship-provides-opportunity-for-more-than-just-history-majors/

A huge shout out from the History department faculty to our fabulous librarians in Pickler Memorial. They do terrific work every day, but went above and beyond during the spring 2020 semester!!

Jason McDonald, Assistant Professor of History, was recently interviewed by Flatland, the digital magazine of Kansas City Public Television (KCPT). The interview features in “The Gene: A Brief History of Eugenics in the Heartland,” which accompanies KCPT’s airing of Ken Burn’s documentary The Gene: An Intimate History.

Students Ben Smythe (MAE history), Alexandra Miller (BA history) and Tucker Broadbooks (BA history) represented Truman at the Missouri Conference on History in St. Louis, March 12, by participating in a panel entitled “New Perspectives on the Presidency of Harry Truman.” The panel was chaired by Jason McDonald, assistant professor of history. Smythe presented a paper entitled “Defying Defeat: Harry Truman and the Presidential Election of 1948,” which was based on research undertaken on a graduate course with McDonald in spring 2019. The presentations delivered by Miller—“Truman the Historian: An Investigation of Foreign Policy in Israel”—and Broadbooks—“Truman and Hoover: Relations between the White House and the FBI during the McCarthy Era”—were both based on archival research completed by them during internships at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Mo., in summer 2019.

Hello Historians!

I know it’s getting to the last of the semester so everyone is busy with papers and studying, but luckily for you Historical Society is here to help! This Thursday we will be cohosting a writing workshop with the Writing Center. I hope you can all come down to VH 1428 at 6:30 to join us for this writing and editing bonanza! If you need help, if you can help, or if you simply want to be a room with all that writing energy, then walk on down to Violette and join in the fun!

As a reminder, this Thursday we will also be holding our elections so if you are a full member of the Society and you want to run for office or want a say in who wins office then you have another good reason to be there.

See you soon!

Professor Marc Becker, Department of History, chaired a session on “Imperialism and Resistance in Latin America” at the Missouri Conference on History held in Kansas City, Missouri, March 6-8, 2019. On the same panel, History major Shannon Fetzner delivered a paper entitled “Assimilation, Resistance, or Both? Indigenous Responses to Christianity in Colonial Peru.”

On the session “Otherness and Othering in Diverse Settings and Contexts,” Truman was represented by current student Anne Morgan, whose paper “Modernizing Migrants: Truman’s Commission on Migratory Labor and an ‘American Standard of Living’” was based on research conducted during a summer internship at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri. Participating on the  same panel were recent Truman graduate Houston Roberts, with a presentation based on the capstone paper he prepared under the supervision of Professor Torbjorn Wandel and entitled “Birth of a Klavern: The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan in St. Joseph, Missouri, 1921–1925,” and Dr. Jason McDonald, Department of History, with “Nature or Nurture? The Making of the Eugenicist Harry Laughlin.”