Current News

David Hoffman, History, will present "The Great Socialist Experiment" in the College of Humanities' fifth Inaugural Lecture of the academic year, 4:30 pm, March 7, OSU Faculty Club. The Russian Revolution of 1917 offered the promise of a perfect society, with harmony and equality for all people. Instead it resulted in a Stalinist dictatorship, with gulag prison camps, bloody purges, and unprecedented levels of state violence. What went wrong with the Great Socialist Experiment? Most historians have answered this question in terms of factors unique to the Soviet Union Marxist-Leninist ideology, Stalin?s paranoia, or Russian backwardness. But Soviet state interventionism and violence had striking similarities, as well as important differences, with practices in other twentieth-century states. This talk will analyze these similarities and suggest that Soviet history is best understood not as a cautionary tale about socialism, but rather as the story of one particular response to the ambitions and challenges of the modern era. Contact: 292-1882.

Christopher Phelps, History: "How Should We Teach 'The Jungle'" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 3.

James N. Upton, African American and African Studies: "Citizen Participation and Democratic Theory: The 1965 and 1992 L. A. Riots" in Black and Latino/a Politics: Issues in Political Development in the United States, edited by William E. Nelson, Jr. and Jessica Lavariega Monforti (Miami, Florida: Burnhardt & Ashe Publishing, Inc. 2005: 56-64.

The following faculty members were honored at the 17th annual Sphinx/Mortar Board Faculty and Staff Recognition Reception: Cynthia Brokaw, History; Irene Delic, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures; Barry Shank and Sabra Webber, Comparative Studies. Also recognized were Senior Lecturer Martha Sims, English, and graduate student Waithera Karim-Sesay, African American and African Studies.

Edward A. Riedinger, University Libraries, Spanish and Portuguese, and History, was appointed a Visiting Research Associate in the Centre for Brazilian Studies at Oxford University for the autumn quarter (Michaelmas term) 2006. The appointment has been made in support of his work in compiling the Encyclopedia of Brazilian History and Culture, 2 vols. (Routledge, 2005-2009).

Graduate student Anne Collinson, History, presented "What Is She Talking 'aboot': Canadian Feminist Teaches U.S. History" at the Feminist Pedagogies Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center, February 24.

Graduate student Donald Hempson, History, presented "Lion's Pride: Czechoslovakia at the Porto Rose Conference, 1921" and participated in a roundtable session entitled "Justifying the Present with the Past: Historiography, Monuments and Architectural Reconstruction in post-1989 Eastern Europe" at the conference "Idea Exchange: Mediums and Methods of Communication in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia," University of Pittsburgh, Center for Russian and East European Studies and the Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia, February 24-26.

The Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities invites you to "Performance Literacy: When do 'hearing' and 'seeing' result in 'experiencing'", moderated by Edward Adelson, Colleges of the Arts and Sciences and Professor of Music, 4:00 pm, March 7, Knight House, 104 East 15^thAvenue. Panelists include Graeme Boone, Music; Sheila Marion, Dance; and Jan Radzynski, Music. Contact: Elizabeth Lantz, 688-0265 or lantz.38@osu.edu.