Award-Winning Historian Dr. Michael Neufeld to Speak on Wernher von Braun Feb. 26 and Feb. 28

Dr. Michael Neufeld, Chair of the Space History Division at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution and author of Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (Knopf, 2007), will give two public lectures the last week in February.

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 26
"Wernher von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War"
7:30 p.m.
Roberts Recital Hall, UAH
Book signing following the talk

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 28
"Space Hero or Nazi Villain? Wernher von Braun as Cold War Icon"
11:10 a.m.
Frank Franz Hall, UAH
(as part of the UAH Honors Forum)

Dr. Neufeld's biography of von Braun was just chosen as the winner of the 2008 Richard W. Leopold Prize of the Organization of American Historians. The Leopold Prize is given by the Organization of American Historians every two years for the best book written by a historian connected with federal, state or municipal government.

Neufeld's book has been critically acclaimed by the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the L.A. Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times of London. Neufeld also discussed his book on NPR’s Talk of the Nation in October and with the Smithsonian's Air and Space Magazine.

Neufeld is visiting UAH as a Humanities Center Short-Term Eminent Scholar.

Public Lectures on the History of Ghana: Thursday February 21

The UAH Global Studies Program, in cooperation with the Honors Forum and the History Department, is pleased to announce two upcoming lectures by Dr. Jean Allman, an African history specialist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Her main public lecture, on Thursday, February 21 at 7:30 in the Shelby Center, Room 109, is entitled ““Nuclear Imperialism and the Pan-African Struggle for Peace and Freedom: Ghana, 1959-1962.” The talk will explore Pan-Africanism, African nationalism, and movements for independence through a close focus on the relationship between struggles for the liberation of the continent from colonial rule and pacifist movements in opposition to nuclear armament. The movement against nuclear imperialism that took root in the Pan African freedom struggle not only showcases the “global” and the “transnational” in ways that need to be recovered, but stands as a counter-narrative, a corrective, to the afro-pessimism that has so dominated scholarship on Africa since the 1980s.

Dr. Allman will also give a lecture as part of the UAH Honors Forum. The lecture, at 11:10 a.m. on February 21 in Frank Franz Hall, is entitled "The Disappearing of Hannah Kudjoe: Nationalism, Feminism, and the Tyrannies of History."

Dr. Allman has written The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana, 1954-1957 (1993) and co-written TONGNAAB: The History of a West African God (2005) and "I Will Not Eat Stone": A Women’s History of Colonial Asante (2000). She has also edited several volumes and published over 25 articles. She has also served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora and for the African Studies Association.

AIA Talk: Early Peoples of Eastern North America

Dr. David Anderson will discuss “First Peopling to Monumental Architecture in Eastern North America” in Chan Auditorium at 7:30 PM on 4 February 2008. Our first speaker's talk will build upon and possibly challenge the suggestions that Dr. James Adovasio made in his engaging spring 2007 lecture on Paleolithic culture and the peopling of the Americas. For his University of Michigan PhD dissertation, "Political Change in Chiefdom Societies: Cycling in the Late Prehistoric Southeastern United States," Dr. Anderson received national recognition by winning the Society for American Archaeology's (SAA) prestigious Dissertation Prize. The SAA honored Dr. Anderson again in 1997 and 1999 with its Presidential Recognition Award and its Excellence in Cultural Resource Management Research Award. After a fascinating career with the National Park Service, which had Anderson working from the Caribbean to New Mexico to Shiloh, TN, he joined the anthropology faculty at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he has been teaching since 2004. The University of Alabama Press has published four of his last five books. His most recent tome, co-authored with K. Maasch and D. Sandsweiss, explores a timely issue that also had implications for past cultures: Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics: A Global Perspective on Mid-Holocene Transitions.

Mark Your Calendars! Dr. Michael Neufeld to Speak on Wernher von Braun

The UAH History Department is delighted to announce the upcoming visit of Dr. Michael Neufeld, the chair of the Space History Division at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Neufeld has just published Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (Knopf, 2007), a pathbreaking biography that has been widely praised by the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the L.A. Times Book Review, and the Washington Post. Neufeld also discussed his book on NPR’s Talk of the Nation in October.

Dr. Neufeld will be in Huntsville from February 25 to February 29 as a Humanities Center Short-Term Eminent Scholar. He will give two public lectures, one on "Wernher Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War" on Tuesday February 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Roberts Recital Hall, and a second on "Space Hero or Nazi Villain?: Wernher von Braun as Cold War Icon" as part of the UAH Honors Forum on Thursday February 28 at 11:10 a.m. in Frank Franz Hall. He will also lead discussions with students enrolled in Dr. Dunar's "U.S. Foreign Policy since 1920," Dr. Waring's "Modern America," and Dr. Johnson's "Studies in Modern Europe" classes.

Mark your Calendars!

Archaeology Talk: Desperate Etruscan Housewives

Did desperate Etruscan housewives cause the collapse of a whole civilization? Did the women's antics provoke a Roman army in 264 BC into leveling the rich Etruscan city of Volsinii (modern Orvieto)? Come find out in a talk by Dr. Jean Turfa of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The AIA talk will be Monday 5 November 2007 at 7:30 PM in Chan Auditorium of the Administrative Science Building on the UAH Campus. The following day, Dr. Turfa will speak on "Love and Death in Etruscan Urns," in the Multi-Purpose Room of Frank Franz Hall at 11:10 AM. Please bring a friend. For more information, call 824-6114.

Films on Communist East Germany (Friday November 16, 2007)

Please come watch two films on everyday life in communist East Germany on Friday November 16, 2007, in Roberts Hall 423.

The first film, the comedy "Goodbye Lenin," will be shown at 1:00 p.m. It focuses on the efforts of a son to protect his ill mother, a loyal communist, from the knowledge that the East German government has collapsed.

The second film, the drama "The Lives of Others," will be shown at 3:15 p.m. "The Lives of Others" focuses on how the strategies of the East German Secret Police (the "Stasi") affected East German citizens. This film won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Both films focus not only on what life was like in East Germany, but also on the collapse of East Germany and the process of German reunification.

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Molly Johnson at Molly.Johnson@uah.edu.

Public Lecture: Dr. Francille Rusan Wilson on the History of Black History (Tues., October 23, 2007)

The History Department and the Office of Multicultural Affairs are pleased to announce the visit of Dr. Francille Rusan Wilson, a specialist in African-American History and Women's History, to UAH.

Dr. Wilson will give a public lecture, “Carter G. Woodson’s Great Cause: The History of the Black History Movement,” on Tuesday, October 23, at 7:30 p.m. in McDonnell Douglas Auditorium in the Material Sciences Building at UAH (the building with the blue tower).

Dr. Wilson earned a B.A. from Wellesley College, M.A.T. from Harvard University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an Associate Professor of African-American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California.

A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Dr. Wilson is an intellectual and labor historian whose current research examines the intersections between black labor movements, black social scientists, and black women's history during the Jim Crow era. She is the author of The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890-1950 (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies) (University of Virginia, 2006). Her current research, a biography of lawyer and economist Sadie T. M. Alexander, explores the impact of racism and sexism on and media representations of black professional women in male professions in the early twentieth century.

Additional sponsors of Dr. Wilson’s visit include UAH Women’s Studies, UAH Continuing Education, the Bankhead Foundation, and the UAH Humanities Center.

Please contact 256-824-6310 with questions.