On Tuesday, Feb. 11, Dr. Hudgins celebrated with three new Phi Alpha Theta initiates at Kumari’s delicious lunch buffet. Phi Alpha Theta is the National History Honors Society, whose membership is open both to history and jurisprudence majors at UB. Our chapter at UB has the denomination Tau Mu. The three new initiates were history majors Lester Pollitt III and Stephanie Danesie, and jurisprudence graduate Angelica James.
Dr. Hudgins and the three initiates wish to thank Dean Bryan for supporting Phi Alpha Theta by picking up the check! For more information about Phi Alpha Theta, get in touch with UB’s History Club on OrgSync, email Professor Hudgins, or visit the P.A.T. Web site.
On Saturday, February 7, Assistant Professor of History Nicole Hudgins took part in the regional Ethics Bowl for high school students at UB. The Ethics Bowl invites teams of students to grapple with ethical quandaries, often “ripped from the headlines.” It is a nation-wide contest with separate series for high school, community college, and 4-year college students. Dr. Hudgins took part as a moderator, which is the person who times the teams’ presentations and insures the national rules are followed. She worked with community leaders who served as judges during the matches.
In the photo, you can see Dr. Hudgins at the podium giving special praise to the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute team (standing behind her): a group of six freshmen who were participating in the Ethics Bowl for the first time this year. In the foreground: team members from Gerstell Academy. The display of excellent oral communication skills, philosophical concepts, and empathetic reasoning makes Dr. Hudgins a big fan of the event — and the students!
Eugene “Sonny” Moxley, Nicole Hudgins, Monique Koch, and Marshall Odell in front of the White House
With a little help from the “inside” (UB alum Jake Rotter, a White House intern), three UB History students and Professor Hudgins got on the list of visitors to tour the East Wing on Saturday, January 17. We all had to get security clearance beforehand and meet the Secret Service officers promptly at our 9:30am time slot on what was thankfully a sunny Saturday morning! The officers also act as stationed tour guides, answering visitors’ questions about the Vermeil Room, the Blue Room, Red Room, Green Room, East Room, and more.
Every room is filled with presidential and first lady portraits, beautiful period desks, and antique clocks, books, or figurines. Did you know that the First Lady need not be the president’s wife? A couple of our presidents were not married at the time of their administration, and chose a woman to be in charge of the White House social calendar! Professor Hudgins was also impressed with the array of beautiful chandeliers adorning the rooms.
After a latte break nearby, our group headed to the White House Visitors Center, which is well-worth a visit. Formerly our national Patent Library, this lovely hall is now full of interesting White House, presidential, and first lady facts and artifacts (don’t miss the video, broadcast at the far end of the hall). Did you know that Caroline Harrison used her influence to raise funds to establish the Johns Hopkins Medical School, on the condition that the school admit women?
Some of us went on afterwards to Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street (est. 1958), which was packed full of people lined up for Ben’s famous chili dogs and milkshakes. We agreed that this was the perfect cap to a fascinating day in D.C.
Cross-section of the entire East Wing of the White House
On October 29, 2014, students in Modern Korean history class took a field trip to the Korean Cultural Center on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. Students had an opportunity to experience Korean traditional culture by trying on hanbok (traditional Korean clothes), sitting in sarangbang (traditional guest room/living room) and sipping green tea, and playing percussion instruments for samulnori (folk music). The staff at the center offered a very interactive presentation highlighting the impact of traditional culture in modern Korean society. We also learned how pop singer PSY’s “Gangnam style” was just a part of the tides of hallyu (Korean waves), the increasing popularity of South Korean popular culture throughout Asia and the world.
Dr. Yi’s HIST 497 Modern Korea students try on some traditional Korean costume in D.C.
On October 29, 2014 Professor Elizabeth Nix took students in the honors learning community “Urban Solutions: Contemporary Issues in Historical Context,” on a field trip to the streets of New York. Students walked from UB’s campus to the train station and took an early morning Amtrak into the city. We walked to the base of the Empire State Building and then through urban parks to the Flatiron district, then explored Union Square farmer’s market and tasted New York pizza. Professor Carey Miller guided the group through his old neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Professor Jeff LaNoue discussed gentrification. Back in Manhattan, the group experienced different types of markets and streetscapes in Little Italy, Chinatown, and SoHo. We were privileged to see the 9-11 Memorial and the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere at Ground Zero. A quick subway ride took us to the newly completed High Line with more evidence of gentrification. We tried to beat the rain in order to see Central Park, but the drizzle caused us to break up for dinner, and then stroll through Times Square after dark. We all reunited at Penn Station and were back in Baltimore by midnight. The Helen P. Denit Honors Program provided the funds for the train tickets.
In an effort to document the ways that our contemporary cities are influenced by the past, students in Dr. Nix’s class will produce photo essays discussing the echoes of historical building styles they encountered.
Last Saturday, Professor Hudgins and UB student Stephanie Danesie met at the War Memorial Building on Gay Street to attend the fall meeting of the Western Front Association East Coast branch. They heard talks from the translator of a French soldier’s memoir, a member’s account of the German victory over the British navy at Coronel (off the coast of Chile), the director of the Woodrow Wilson House in D.C. discussing American neutrality, and more. The Western Front Association gathers amateur researchers and experts twice a year to discuss various aspects of the Great War. The fall meeting of the East Coast Branch takes place at the War Memorial building every year. At noon, an intermission allowed us to walk just a couple of blocks to the Inner Harbor for lunch.
This year is the centennial of the war’s commencement, and 2017 will be the centennial of U.S. entry in the war.
The War Memorial Building was constructed in 1925 to honor the Maryland veterans of WWI (photo by Wally Gobetz). WFA member Dane Coffman attended the meeting in a replica of General Pershing’s wartime uniform.
History and Jurisprudence students at UB may be interested to know that Professor Sawyer published a series of articles last year on the history of English law in early Maryland. The articles address several questions, but the main question is whether early American law was essentially an imitation of England’s or whether it reflected meaningful innovations. Sawyer found that the earliest Maryland laws were very innovative, especially with respect to simplifying rules of procedure.
Ordinary Marylanders were quite active in shaping the law to local circumstances through frequent legislation. Somewhat paradoxically, pressure to make the law more English and more uniform throughout the colonies increased during the reign of William and Mary. This project was aided by increasing levels of education, often including study in London, among American lawyers. As will be explained in a follow-up posting, the American Revolution, surprisingly enough, left much English law intact, especially in the mid-Atlantic–Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia.
The articles can be found in the issues of the Maryland Historical Magazine, beginning with the Fall 2013 issue.
The second annual “Knowledge at Work: A Conversation with LEHS Alumni” event took place last night with students, faculty, and alumni sheltered from the rain in the Bogomolny Room. Seven History, Jurisprudence, and Legal Studies graduates fielded student questions about how they parleyed their degrees into interesting careers. Whereas Stanley Brown (M.A. ’00) used his LEST degree to enter higher education administration, Godswill Agbagwa (M.A. ’12) used his to establish an NGO to cultivate leadership skills in Nigeria. History graduate Natasha Jones (B.A. ’11) uses her research skills to make the archives at Johns Hopkins University more accessible; while Zippy Larson (B.A. ’82) has been conducting historical tours in Baltimore for many years. This array of LEHS alumni definitely showed that the division’s programs prepare students for a wide variety of fulfilling careers.
Professor Jeffrey Sawyer opening the event last night
On Tuesday, September 23, Dr. Hudgins’ HIST 313 students walked to the Peabody Library in Mt. Vernon Square to see original editions of the books they’ve been talking about in class. “Europe 1815-1914” has been reading Heroes of Invention by Christine MacLeod, wherein the author discusses how the great inventors of the Industrial Revolution were celebrated by authors like Samuel Smiles and Bennett Woodcroft. Students got to handle original souvenirs from the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, and leaf through Victorian editions of the biographies of James Watt and others. This was the first time this semester that the class got to touch original artifacts. They are learning that, most of the time, the primary sources that they handle are either transcriptions, translations, or pixelated images on a computer screen. The class thanks Mr. Paul Espinosa at the Peabody Library for his time and expertise!
A “fisheye” photograph of the library by Jeff Lee.
In “The Historian’s Toolkit,” one of the core classes for history majors, students assemble portfolios about someone in their own family tree. Using primary (or exhibit) sources they place their family member in historical context. Since this original research often involves local history, the class visited the Maryland Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Central Branch on October 9. There they explored the City Directories, the library’s historical maps, Criss+Cross Directories, the collection of Maryland books in the stacks, and most importantly, the vertical files, where freshman Tyler Starkweather examined some 1980s news clippings about UB’s new president. Student Audrey Hayes, a photojournalist for the US Army Reserves, took these photos of the visit.
The Enoch Pratt Library is about a 20 minute walk from UB’s campus. On this beautiful October day, we strolled past the Belvedere Hotel, the Hotel Brexton, the Washington Monument, the Maryland Historical Society, the Walters Art Gallery and the Basilica. After our tour, some students stopped for coffee while others caught the free circulator back to UB, knowing that this would not be their last visit to this valuable resource so close to our campus.
A History student looks at a 1980s newspaper article entitled, “Schmoke Endorsed by Labor Unit,” written during President Schmoke’s political career in Baltimore.
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