On Christmas Eve 2018, graduate student Jason Stubblefield drove to an acquaintance’s farm and was handed a brown paper bag with a sheep hide inside. The hide—which remains vacuum packed in a freezer—is going to be critical to a research project he’s doing with fellow grad student Karen Norwood.
Department of History
Undergraduates to Present Research to Legislators at Posters at the Capitol
This year, 63 Tennessee undergraduates will present their research posters to legislators at the annual Tennessee Posters at the Capitol on Tuesday, February 26. Seven UT students are traveling to Nashville for the event.
The Posters at the Capitol project started in 2006 as a way for legislators to meet with students from their districts and to see the quality and value of research being done by undergraduate students across the state of Tennessee.
Read more at ugreasearch.utk.edu.
UT Ranks #9 in Nation for NEH Fellowships Awarded Since 2005
Two professors in the College of Arts and Sciences—Sara Ritchey and Anne-Hélène Miller—were awarded yearlong fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support their research into medieval history and literature.
Ritchey, associate professor of history, and Miller, assistant professor of French, both received grants of $60,000, the only two NEH fellowships given to researchers at Tennessee universities.
Both professors have appointments with the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UT’s internationally acclaimed center for the study of history and culture from approximately 300 to 1700 AD.
Since the start of the the program in 1967, UT faculty have been awarded 32 NEH fellowships, 18 of those since 2005 when the Office of Research and Engagement created a position to assist faculty in the pursuit of humanities awards. The 18 NEH fellowships rank UT ninth in the nation in the number of these prestigious awards received since ORE started this initiative.
Read about Miller and Ritchey’s fellowships at news.utk.edu.
Recognitions, July 25
Peyton Manning Recognizes Four Exceptional Students
Peyton Manning returned to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to recognize the 2018 Peyton Manning Scholars. Since the endowment was created in 1998, 37 students have benefited from the scholarship.
“I always look forward to this event and the opportunity to recognize and reward such exceptional and deserving students,” said Manning. “I am very proud of the growth of this scholarship program and for the resources to help provide many of the same opportunities and chances that I had.”
The Peyton Manning scholarship is awarded annually to first-year students in UT’s Haslam Scholars Program, an initiative that attracts some of the brightest students from across the country. The scholarship is granted to students who demonstrate strong academic achievement, leadership, and community service.
The recipients this year include Ford Brewer, an English major from Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee; Keri Burge, a biological sciences major from Pope John Paul II Catholic High School in Huntsville, Alabama; Kyler Groner, a political science major from Morristown-Hamblen High School in Morristown, Tennessee; and Deanna Riley, a chemical engineering major from Summit High School in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
Award-Winning Book Examines US-Mexico Agrarian Relations
Tore Olsson, assistant professor of history, has received multiple awards from organizations in three very different historical disciplines for his recent book, Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside, published by Princeton University Press in 2017.
The Agricultural History Society presented Olsson with the annual Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award, which recognizes the best book on agricultural history in the United States. The American University School of Public Affairs and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies awarded Olsson with the annual William M. LeoGrande Prize for the best book on US-Latin American relations published in 2016-17. His third award, the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, is given for the best first book in the history of US foreign relations.
“It has been absolutely thrilling to see my work receive such honors from the intellectual societies that have fostered this project from its very beginning,” says Olsson, a historian of the 20th century United States in international context. “My work has always straddled multiple fields of history – from US southern history to agricultural history to Latin American history. But because I’m all over the map, I’ve often felt intellectually homeless, a jack of many trades and master of none, but receiving these prizes has helped me overcome some of these anxieties.”
Read more at history.utk.edu.