History Faculty at Work

This winter, Loyola faculty members have kept busy planning conferences, winning awards, speaking publicly, and participating in roundtable discussions.

From public radio interviews to a packed house with Loyola Libraries Speaker Series, Dr. Elliott Gorn has spoken widely on his recently published book Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till. His work looks at the murder, trial, and legacy of Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old Chicago boy who was killed while visiting family in Mississippi. Using new evidence and broadened historical context, Dr. Gorn’s book delves into how and why the story of Emmett Till still resonates, and always will. Want to learn more? Check out Dr. Gorn’s appearance on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight or catch one of his upcoming talks: he’ll be speaking at Harold Washington Library on Monday, February 25 and hosting a discussion with the Loyola History Department on Wednesday, April 10, 12:30-2pm.

Anthony Cardoza also published a well-received new book this past year, entitled A History of Modern Italy: Transformation and Continuity, 1796 to the Present. The book addresses the question of how Italy's modern history--from its prolonged process of nation-building in the nineteenth century to the crises of the last two decades--has produced a paradoxical blend of hyper-modernity and traditionalism that sets the country apart in the broader context of Western Europe. Over the past few months alone, Dr. Cardoza has given a book talk at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, participated in a moderated discussion as part of the History Department’s Faculty Book Talk Series, and hosted a special pre-concert conversation for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Alice Weinreb also had a successful year for her book Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany. Dr. Weinreb’s “ambitious, wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study” examines how hunger has been a central motivating force in German politics throughout the 20th century by analyzing food aid, school lunches, obesity, the condition of hunger, and gendered labor, among other topics. At the beginning of 2018, Dr. Weinreb’s book was awarded the Wiener Library’s Ernst Fraenkel Prize and just last month it also earned the inaugural Waterloo Centre for German Studies (WCGS) Book Prize. Jury members singled out Dr. Weinreb’s book for its crisp writing, its wealth of detail, and the wide variety of sources consulted, labeling the book as “a page-turner.” The jury concluded that this book will likely become one of the standard works on postwar German history. Learn more about Modern Hungers in our interview with Dr. Weinreb last fall.

In February, Dr. Tanya Stabler Miller helped organize a colloquium in honor of her doctoral advisor, Sharon Famer, who is retiring after 33 years in the Department of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The event began with papers by six of Dr. Farmer’s former students, each of whom spoke at length about the ways in which Farmer shaped their research and pedagogy.  After these sessions, Dr. Amy Remensnyder of Brown University, whom Dr. Farmer had tutored as a graduate student at Harvard, gave a talk on Muslim and Christian sailors who made the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa an interfaith refuge. Tanya Stabler Miller and Andrew Miller (DePaul University) ended the colloquium with a tribute to Dr. Farmer’s career, reflecting on the innovative and interdisciplinary nature of her research and her generous mentorship of graduate students.