Spotlight on History

Looking back for the future

By Jessica Luton

jluton@uga.edu           

 William Faulkner's famous lines from Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It's not even past,” supply an important reminder about how history stays with us—and how only in trying to understand it can we make sense of the present and prepare for the future.

The Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of history is home to a wealth of opportunity for both students and faculty engaged in research topics that continue to inform us about our world through the lens of the past.

Every semester, the department produces a newsletter highlighting the latest and the greatest from the department.  This semester’s newsletter includes profiles of students and faculty and highlights the truly diverse areas of study. This issue includes a profile of Husseina Dinani, a faculty member with a focus on teaching African History, Gender & Sexuality, and Women’s History; a profile of graduate student Matthew C. Hulbert, a fourth year Ph.D. student studying Civil War memory and guerrilla warfare in the western border states of Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas; a profile of graduate student Katie Fialka, a Ph.D. student studying 19^th century cultural and intellectual history and women and gender and the U.S. South; and a profile of undergraduate history student Greyson Clark whose interests include the industrialization of the Georgia Poultry Industry in the 1950s and ‘60s.  This collection of profiles is a testament to the department’s ability to attract students with interests in a wide range of perspectives.

A great collection of work, collected all in one place. For alums as well as friends of history at UGA, the newsletter also includes the latest news from within the department.        

You can check out the newsletter here. And, as always, you can learn more about the UGA department of history at the department website.

Image: The home of history in the Franklin College, LeConte Hall (lovely portrait courtesy of UGA photoservices).