It's that time of year again. The History Department's annual newsletter, Past . . . and Future, hopefully finds its readership hale and hearty in the first year of the new millennium. Last year in my editor's message I stated that since every issue brings a new editor, you will see some changes. Well, I stand corrected on at least one point: the editor (myself, Ellen Fleischmann) has not changed this year, yet the issue, as you will note, has. After all, what is history if not a record of change? Past . . . and Future is a work in progress, perhaps permanently. But one thing has certainly not changed: we continue to ask all alumni to contact us. We have had requests for more alumni news, but without receiving it from you, the alumni, we can't disseminate what we do not have. So please write us. The History Department's address is included at the bottom of this message. We are, of course, especially interested in the way you may have used your History degree from the University of Dayton in ways that have contributed to any or all aspects of your life -- social, cultural, economic and personal.

In this issue, we are focusing on the faculty. We introduce a new feature: updates on what individual faculty members have been working on this past year. Our special articles are on our newest tenure-track hire, Dr. Juan Santamarina, and the participation of one of our faculty members, Dr. Una Cadegan, in the International Summer Studies Abroad Program in Florence.

Do, please, write us and send us your news: Editor, Past...and Future, Department of History, University of Dayton, 300 College Park, Dayton, Ohio 45469-1540.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope you enjoy this year's edition of

Past . . .and Future.

JS: I suppose I should start with the fact that I was born in Havana, Cuba, and lived there until 1973.
 

EF: You lived as a child completely out of the country.
 

JS: A little over 6 [years] in Cuba, and then a little over 8 in Spain, in Madrid. From that point forward in New York and New Jersey, which is where I basically grew up, and went to school: grade school, and high school.
 

EF: What did your father do?
 

JS: He's a biochemical engineer and he did pharmaceutical research most of his life, actually, until probably the last 15 years, research and development. He did that in Cuba as well. He was a professor of biochemical engineering at the University of Havana, and ran a couple of research institutes in Cuba. Leaving Cuba was mainly for political, ideological reasons. Going from Spain to the U.S. was a little more interesting because we left in January 1975 right after Franco died. The defense minister was blown up in a car in Madrid. My father was thinking to himself, "oh boy, this is going to be a mess!" When the bombings began to happen they decided to leave.
 

EF: So you grew up in New Jersey and had a "normal" childhood.
 

JS: I had an essentially suburban upbringing around Rutgers [University].
 

EF: You went to Rutgers for grad school, and Wisconsin as an undergrad. Did you major in history at Wisconsin?
 

JS: I majored in U.S. diplomatic history, mainly, I think, because of the faculty that I liked and took a number of courses with: Tom McCormick who was a diplomatic historian. I did some work in Latin American history but it was more secondary...mainly [because] at that time at Wisconsin, the people who could teach Latin America weren't around so there weren't any courses, basically. When I went to grad school I decided that I wanted to study Latin America first and diplomatic history as a secondary field. So that's what I did, and I applied to a number of places -- about 3 or 4.
 

EF: Was there someone at Rutgers who was a mentor in particular?
 

JS: Yes..my professor at Wisconsin, Tom McCormick, was close to his colleague Lloyd Gardner, who had been at Rutgers many years. He said if you want to do diplomatic history you should study with him. So I knew that two people who taught Latin America there were outstanding; combined with my interest in diplomatic history, Rutgers would be the place.
 

EF: Who were the Latin Americanists there?
 

JS: Mark Wasserman and Sam Bailey, neither of whom do Cuba because at the time there was really nobody in the US who did Cuba in any doctoral-granting institution.
 

EF: Was it because people couldn't go there to do the research?
 

JS: Partly because of that, partly also because of the fact that there just was not an interest in Latin America historiography, aside from the revolution. If you think about the people who were teaching in graduate programs in the 80s and 90s, or even the 60s or early 70s at the latest, the interest was in Brazil, Argentina, Chile- they called them the ABC countries--Colombia...Mexico. There was one person, Lou Perez, who taught at the University of South Florida, who's published at this point 20-25 books, and he was on my dissertation committee...
 

EF: Wouldn't the 60s radical types have been attracted to it?
 

JS: No... you're getting into a bit of a topic in historiography there. Those who were interested in Cuba were actually more diplomatic historians. If you look at the history of Cuba that's done in the US its American diplomatic historians in particular trying to figure out what went wrong with American foreign policy (or if you're the Bill Williams school of diplomatic history, the failure of America foreign policy, the tragedy of American foreign policy...)
 

EF: There weren't people into the social history of revolutions?
 

JS: Not much. If you think about social history that's 20 years. Not in the 60s..there's a person named Philip Foner who taught at Columbia also, and did a lot of work on the war of 1898 and Cuban Independence war but not really on Cuba itself. Some anthropologists, but rarely anyone who had a specialty in Cuba.
 

EF: The other thing you would think would have happened would be that there would be people like you, Cuban-Americans who became academics who would enter the field.
 

JS: It's happened, but it's people my age, and just beginning. There's a couple of other people who teach - one at University of Miami - mostly exiled Cubans. And somebody else at Georgetown, Luis Aguilar.
 

EF: Was it just a natural progression for you because of your background?
 

JS: Probably. I would say more than anything else the idea of doing Cuban history was partly personal, or at least that was the driving force. I liked US history and I still do, but it was a personal idea of searching and understanding where you came from...
 

EF: Don't you think a lot of people's specific fields or interests in their fields come from some kind of personal hook?
 

JS: Definitely. I think you've got to have some kind of reason why you would do something like that: go through the hardships and everything else. Although, to be honest, I don't know that the older historians are that way. I think they probably blame us for being too politically minded or partisan...but I think some of the older historians -- certainly some of the ones I've known -- were told "why don't you do this country"...."okay that sounds interesting..."
 

EF: But Third World historical fields are different...and difficult. Difficult languages and places that are difficult to research. So speaking of research, what's your special focus and what is your dissertation on?
 

JS: My dissertation was on an American company that developed all the railroads in the eastern two-thirds of the country.
 

EF: When?
 

JS: In 1900, right after the War. 1900 to about 1959. I end up at the Revolution. The company went out of business at that point. It was not nationalized but it was an interesting ending point. Although, to be honest, there's probably something, although I don't want to look at that yet -- on what was going on in 1959...Why the dissolution. There are definitely some nationalist overtones.
 

EF: What's the name of the company and why were you interested in this particular company?
 

JS: It's The Cuba Company, and it has a variety of sub-companies and subsidiaries. Actually there are a couple of reasons. It's one of those typical, historical reasons: that the archives of the company were lost for 30 years, from '59-'60 until the late 80s. The company's records were warehoused in Brooklyn and the warehouse sort of forgot that the records were there and nobody paid the bills or invoiced anyone. And, they suddenly did an inventory in 1988 and they realized they had 500 feet being taken up by something that nobody had paid for in 25 years. They looked into it, and decided it was their private property. In order to get back the costs they sold it to rare book dealer.
 

University of Maryland bought them because it was trying at that time to build a landmark Ph.D. program and put them into the archives. That was 1989.
 

EF: What are they?
 

JS: Corporate records, correspondence, legal records.
 

EF: Is that why you did it, because you wouldn't have to go to Cuba?
 

JS: That was partly it. I was interested in economic and business history, economic networks. I was interested in Cuba from that different perspective. If you were going to say that Cuba and the US were tied together, which was part of Cuban historiography, my thought was you should look at corporate records or the corporations that did the tying together. And the interest also came from interest in business and economic history. When the records became available it was easy to do for a seminar paper for my research seminar. It was easier to go to Maryland than to go to Cuba, so I wound up going in the spring of 1990 for the first time for a couple of weeks.
 

EF: To Cuba.
 

JS: No, to Maryland, and stayed at youth hostels - you know the usual stuff - and I decided this is pretty good stuff and I went back a couple of times and developed the research seminar paper out of it. Doing that I realized this is really good stuff. I went to Cuba and used the similar archives in Cuba, and a variety of other things, provincial records and some other stuff. So that's essentially what happened. And so the seminar paper got to be a dissertation. Sam Bailey, who was teaching the seminar, encouraged it. He said "look at what you could develop it into." I wound up going to Cuba a few times for several months in 1992, 1993 and later.
 

EF: Was that the first time you'd gone back since you were a child?
 

JS: Since I was a child... I was actually there for a couple of months and it was really, really a lot of work. My grandmother is in Cuba and my father's two brothers and a variety of other cousins. I actually spent about a month in Havana where I would go to the archives and the national library from 8-5, the hours they were open, then spend the evening with my family. Every day! Exhausting.
 

EF: There was no problem of access or your American connections?
 

JS: I had sort of figured that out ahead of time. One of the dissertation directors, Lou Perez, had done the legwork and written letters of introduction to ease. It did take a few days, even with those there. But once I was cleared I had access to everything.
 

EF: How long did it take?
 

JS: It was probably two or three days. It was two months ahead of time the whole process had started. All the appropriate letters [had been] sent everywhere from all the right places and still when I got there -the national archives -- they had the letter sitting in front of them and they still questioned me a little bit. They said "well, we have to check up on this." So even though I had the right letters from the right people from the Institute of History of Cuba in Havana, and the Department of the Interior, it still took a couple of days. They did the same thing at the provincial archives. But the interesting part of it was that I went to the archives during the day then I went back to my little hotel near the University of Havana - it was like $15 a night - I ate dinner and breakfast there. Then [I'd go] to my grandmother's house in the evening and we'd spend from until 7 or 8 in the night until midnight talking and having rum, of course, then [I'd go] back to the hotel, sleep, then the next morning do the same thing until 7 o'clock the next night. I was exhausted by the end of the trip.
 

EF: How long did you do this for?
 

JS: This was a couple of months. There's a long history of the family having been divided when my father left.
 

EF: About politics.
 

JS: Exactly...my father at that point hadn't talked to his brother since 1964 or something like that.
 

EF: But they welcomed you back?
 

JS: Yeah, there was certainly on my part more trepidation than on theirs, I think. I remember very specifically I had set up the hotel ahead of time and had everything ready, and they came to the airport. I wasn't necessarily expecting anyone. I was like "oh boy"...I was a little overwhelmed. I did remember them but just as a face. I really hadn't talked to them except every couple of years. That very first day we went back to the hotel and I had to sort of splash water on my face and say, "okay let's do this." So we went to my grandmother's house and of course my grandmother [was] crying - at that time she was 87 years old - now she's 95...
 

EF: She's still alive?
 

JS: Yes, she is, and perfectly fine. We had to do all that family rebuilding and that kind of stuff.
 

EF: Were they supporters of Castro?
 

JS: Yeah, my father and his family, although there was a generational make-up to the support.
 

EF: Your father was also? Why did he leave then?
 

JS: I suppose you could look at it from my father and mother being in their late 20s-early 30s and idealistic in the late 50s. By the late 60s with three children and things not getting much better, perhaps this [the revolution] wasn't what they wanted. This wasn't exactly what they had planned on.
 

EF: So they became disillusioned?
 

JS: Yeah, I would say. Actually, no question about it. And that's what led us to leave in the early 70s.
 

EF: But they aren't like the Miami types, are they?
 

JS: No, although they're growing more so. But their point of view is that they left and at that point they gave up any right in saying anything about Cuba. They say that if you want to criticize Cuba then you should stay there. So that's their point of view. But at the same time they're at the point where they want to get rid of Castro. There are the usual references to the "son of a bitch."
 

EF: Well, he has been in a long time.
 

JS: Forty two years. Might be time to quit.
 

EF: Well, when you visited your family and were doing your research, what kind of things did you talk about every single night?
 

JS: God, family stories a lot of it - sort of translating back and forth family stories of what was going on in our lives and theirs...it was absolutely fascinating. A lot of it was me understanding more specifically, more from a family point of view what life was like in Cuba on an everyday basis.
 

EF: Have you thought about using this for research?
 

JS: I kept an extensive journal: everything I saw and did and heard about plus my analyses at the time of what people were saying, for what reason, and what may have motivated this or that. I thought it could make an interesting novel.
 

EF: When was this, did you say?
 

JS: 92-93. Then I was there in 93-94. Because Cuba is isolated, not only from us but the rest of the world, there's a huge amount of information that Cubans have no idea about; for example, they cannot understand how credit cards work, or buying cars or houses, or credit in general.
 

EF: Is it like going back in time somewhat? In Cuban movies I've seen it feels like it.
 

JS: No question about it, but...There are things that were in Cuba in 1960 that don't exist now - that if you were going back in time should exist but don't exist now...
 

EF: Like what?
 

JS: The physical place. It's going back in time because they haven't done credit cards and telephones and things like that. But they also haven't had maintenance in forty years...things are falling to pieces... and everything is -- I hate to use the term Third World -- but it is very Third World. It does fit. Whereas at the same time Cuba really wasn't Third World in the 1950s. Cuba was -- one of my favorite examples: there were more Cadillacs in Havana per capita in Cuba than in anywhere else in the world including New York City. A certain amount of wealth and imports from the US were there, too - refrigerators - Frigidaire, I believe, is what people called all refrigerators.
 

EF: So in other words the standard of living has really gone down.
 

JS: Yeah, especially for the middle class -- the middle class and professionals. There's no question that 70% of the society is better off than it was -- those in the countryside, those that are black, wage-earning laborers, etc. It's the middle class that's declined the most, but at the same time a couple of million other people's lives have improved dramatically. Again, the Cubans that are here are essentially those of the middle class and those are the ones who are complaining about losing money and property, etc.
 

EF: But do you think also, though, that with Cuba's isolation that the poorer people, the proletariat, are better off now? They're better off than they were before but now they're in a society that hasn't been able to move forward much. Aren't they now worse off, say, than their peers in ....?
 

JS: Yeah. there's no doubt about that. From 1960 to 1980 they were much better off. From 1980 to the year 2000 it's arguable. They do reach a certain level by the 1980s -- a certain kind of sustained standard of life that's better than it's ever been... But at that point, it's nice to have a car but when you can't get gasoline it's a bit frustrating.
 

EF: Let's turn back to your research. What do you think it contributes to Cuban history?
 

JS: More than anything what I was trying to do in the research -- in this most recent article and this book manuscript I'm working on right now -- is to address this whole question of Cuban development and its ties to the US from an inside perspective. That's why I use a corporation as a vehicle. If you're going to talk about intimacy (which Lou Perez, my teacher, has been thinking for the last 20 years) you have to look at it from the internal point of view: who's networking with whom, why did certain things happen. And actually what I've been able to find is an intersection of US interests with Cuban interests of Cuban elites with American elites. An intimacy that develops out of social and economic relationships or probably economic first, then social, that leads to this (in some ways) bizarre relationship between the US and Cuba. I've always said you can't talk about Cuba without talking about the US, and you can't talk about Cuban history at least since 1850 without talking about the US. The US has been a central player.
 

EF: How would you characterize the relationship in the period that you study?
 

JS: No question, intimate.
 

EF: It was an unequal relationship.
 

JS: Unequal, no question. It's American expansion in 1898 coinciding with wealthy interests in Cuba...
 

EF: Is it imperialism?
 

JS: No doubt. I always characterize it as the US in 1898 exploding - we filled out a continent and explode overseas. There's no way to explain the Spanish-American War and Dewey in the Philippines and the US troops in Santiago and Puerto Rico ...Theodore Roosevelt and expansion of American greatness...That coincides with the Cuban independence wars of 1898. I never refer to the war of 1898 as the Spanish-American War. The Spanish-American War was 2 weeks in July in 1898. The American role was limited and very small. Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines...were all the last vestiges of the Spanish Empire and are swallowed by the American Empire.
 

EF: When did slavery end?
 

JS: 1888. Actually 1886 - 1888 was Brazil. The Cubans never wanted to launch a revolution earlier, even though they might be separatist or independent-minded, because ending slavery is one of the probable results of an independence war. So they always opted for staying the course with Spain. And that really does happen until 1898, although there is war between 1868 and 1878, and subsequent to that some uprisings and the war of 1895.... but it really is the last vestiges of Spanish Empire and the Spanish holding onto it. And white Cuba trying not to end slavery...
 

EF: What do you think is the unique challenge of doing research in Cuba?
 

JS: (laughs) Everything. From the archives in terms of lights, desks, electricity... one of the times the first week I was doing research and I finally got the things I wanted and I went to the bathrooms and the bathrooms had not been flushed or cleaned for weeks and I got sick right there.
 

EF: Are they disorganized?
 

JS: No, they're actually quite well organized. So once you're there and if you're actually looking for it...very nicely indexed actually. Cuba was divided into Secretary of the Treasury and so on and it's all very nicely catalogued by years....Xerox didn't exist so everything you had to do by hand and paper.
 

EF: Did you have a laptop?
 

JS: No this was the early 90s and laptops were expensive and there was kind of a problem...the problem with laptops was electricity and lack thereof in Cuba!
 

EL: Did they have electricity cuts?
 

JS: Yes and they still do. There were certain sections of the city where they would have power for an hour, two hours...the area where the archives were in was sort of poor...if you're going to cut electricity you're going to cut there instead of tourist hotels...but the biggest problem was that the stacks were actually closed and there were no windows. There were no flashlights and the last thing you want to do is bring in matches...or candles... into the stacks!
 

EF: You weren't allowed to bring in flashlights, or there just weren't any?
 

JS: There just weren't any... and so if you had requested something and the lights went out then they could not get what you wanted. I remember days where I'd go and request something and the lights would go out and the lights would go back on and then they'd close and say "well, we're not going to get them for you" because it was the end of the day. And so there would be days I would show up and be there the entire day...And never see a thing. It was very difficult. That and quite frankly the fact that there were no research grants or money available.
 

EF: That I was going to ask you about. Did you have to finance this?
 

JS: One of the nice things about Rutgers...besides it's a spectacular place...They're very wealthy... I had money for research...it came out of my grant...
 

EF: Rutgers funded your research but you couldn't get a Fulbright...it doesn't help on your CV not having a fat fancy grant...that's probably limited the research for many scholars.
 

JS: Yeah.
 

EF: But also you were able to go there because you were a dual citizen.
 

JS: Legally anybody is able to go there and do research.
 

EF: How many trips did you take for the research stuff?
 

JS: Before the dissertation was done it was two trips... I spent a year doing research in Maryland and the national archives in Washington...probably three/four months in Cuba and then about a year in Maryland and Washington...my work has very little do to with American interests or American foreign policy or American history. It's focused on Cuba, no question, but from my perspective it's an integral piece. You must understand America in order to understand Cuban history.
 

EF: So here at UD, what is your contribution to the curriculum? Have you created some new courses?
 

JS: I heavily modified some of the ones that existed...Bruce Taylor had a pretty good core group of courses that would be standards anywhere you went: history of Mexico, social and cultural history of Latin America, 20^th century Latin America...early on I was able to teach a 499 which was basically a seminar on Cuba. That was the first time I taught Cuba to a class so that was quite fun. Then I've done 20^th century Latin America, social and cultural history of Latin America, US diplomatic history, which is a standard. I do it every year...Right now I'm developing an Economic History of Latin America class as well, so it's a pretty good group of classes on Latin America.
 

EF: Do you anticipate developing any other classes?
 

JS: Yeah, probably comparative more than anything else...
 

EF: What would you do in comparative courses?
 

JS: One of the things I've thought of is Comparative Revolutions or Comparative Slavery...slavery would be a fascinating one: comparative slavery in the Caribbean... I think next fall I'm gong to teach History of the Caribbean, which is already established.
 

EF: How about Latin American women?
 

JS: [laughs] Maybe...it's never been my focus so I'd be a little hesitant just because it hasn't been my focus or interest.
 

EF: But have the other ones been?
 

JS: Yeah....it probably would be interesting actually, I just haven't thought about it.
 

EF: What are you doing research-wise these days?
 

JS: There was a piece on the economic impact of the railroads. Right now I'm developing a manuscript entitled The Cuban Spike: Building a New Cuba Through Business Networks...it's a combination between the dissertation and a couple of articles I've done this year.
 

EF: A book manuscript?
 

JS: I hope to have it ready to go out this summer or early 2002...At the same time I've put together a proposal and sent it to a couple of publishers. I had to do it for the grant I've applied for, the Newcomer Fellowship.

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Special Feature: Interview with Dr. Una Cadegan about teaching history in Florence

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This past summer, Dr. Una Cadegan participated in the university's International Summer Studies

Abroad Program in Florence. Accompanying her were 42 students and three colleagues: Dr. Roger Crum, the site director, who taught Florentine Art and Architecture; Dr. Heather Hill-Vasquez, who taught Images of Women in Literature: Artistic, Cultural and Social Construction of the Female in Italy; and Dr. Mark Vasquez, who taught Major American Writers: the Creative Temperament in Italy. Dr. Cadegan taught Social and Cultural History of the United States: Italians in America, Americans in Italy.
 

Q: Can you briefly describe the program in Florence? I know the various ISSAP programs have themes. What was the theme for the Florence program?
 

UC: In Florence, the students live in a family-owned hotel across a busy street from the train station, with a view from the dining-room balcony of the Duomo and Giotto's bell tower of Florence's Cathedral. All the courses in the program aimed to get students out into the city as often as possible, and asked them to reflect on the connections between their experience as students abroad and the experiences of the historical and literary people they were studying. We took the same questions with us on day-trips to nearby cities and towns in Tuscany -- Pisa, Lucca, Cortona, Siena.
 

Q: What did you teach?
 

In some ways, it was quite a stretch to teach American history in Florence, but the longer I was there, the more the connections seemed natural instead of strange. For example, in studying the widespread nineteenth-century skepticism about whether immigrants could ever really become American, we could go to the Church of Ognissanti (All Saints), just a couple of blocks away from the hotel, and experience the physical impact of the devotional, medievally-inspired Catholicism that seemed so foreign to the heirs of the Puritans. The other course I taught, Religion and Literature, was much less of a stretch -- teaching Dante in Florence is one of life's great privileges.
 

Q: As a historian, what did you find most valuable about the experience? What do you think the history students found most interesting or memorable?
 

I was very surprised by how at home I felt, to the point that I worried I wasn't paying close enough attention to what was going on around me. As a US historian who had never been to Italy, I expected to feel overwhelmed, even out of place, but instead, while I learned a ton every day (almost more than I could take in), from the first day I felt as though I was on familiar ground that added to and deepened what I had been studying for years. The students were tremendously perceptive about their encounter of a different culture and a longer history, and were very good at making connections between their own experiences and the material we were studying.
 

Q: Did the Florence experience stimulate any research interest of yours, or influence other research interests or projects you may be involved in?
 

As a historian of US Catholicism, being in Italy for the first time gave me a much deeper sense of the connections and the differences between European Catholicism and U.S. Catholicism. There is no substitute for the experience of the physical space -- the scale and atmosphere of the buildings, the effect of the landscape, the multi-sensory experience of simply walking down the street. I've wanted to visit Italy for years, both personally and as a historian, but in some ways I'm glad I waited this long, because I was prepared to see and understand things that I would have missed had I gone much earlier.

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The Book Nook
 

This regular feature includes reviews of books recommended by faculty.
 

Marybeth Carlson reviews The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750-1900, by Mary Peckham Magray (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): By 1800, the English penal law system plus decades of political and economic instability had eroded the position of the Roman Catholic church in Ireland. Historians have argued that the church's position was restored only after the emerging Catholic middle class made a "devotional revolution" an element of their new Irish identity during the nineteenth century. In The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion, and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750-1900, Mary Magray introduces us to an entirely new perspective on the devotional revolution, by placing female religious orders at the center of this cultural shift. Basing her argument on a close examination of personal documents and correspondence held by individual convents, Magray illustrates the dynamism of the orders' foundresses, women who mobilized networks of well-off kin and friends in order to establish groups such as the Presentation Sisters, the Sisters of Mercy, and so on, often in the face of the active opposition of the clerical hierarchy. Like other philanthropic women of the nineteenth century, the women religious studied here built hospitals, schools, orphanages and other charitable institutions not simply to provide relief, but also as vehicles for influencing the behavior of a lower class which they regarded as ignorant and degraded. This is an important and fascinating book which is recommended for anyone interested in Irish history or women's history.
 

Janet Bednarek reviews Eyes of Artillery: The Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II, by Edgar F. Raines, Jr. (Washington, DC : Center of Military History, 2000). This book focuses on that part of the Army's World War II aviation assets that remained with the parent organization into the post-war period to the present. Much of the existing literature on World War II aviation focuses on the U.S. Army Air Forces, its strategic bombing campaigns, and its fight for independence from the Army. Much of this literature also assumes, either implicitly or explicitly, that one of the primary reasons that the leaders of the Army Air Forces insisted upon independence was the fact that the Army leadership and ground personnel simply did not understand the use of air power. This work, very valuably, provides a corrective for that assumption. Raines clearly demonstrates that Army artillery officers, in particular, far from having no understanding of the use of air power, simply had a different understanding of the use of air power. The Army Air Forces also emphasized speed and power. The Army artillery officers came to the conclusion that airplanes suited for low and slow flight could also play a role even on the modern battlefield.
 

John Heitmannreviews Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom, by Brian Black (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000): Since oil is so current in the news, from an environmental and economic standpoint, this book is particularly timely. Brian Black's Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom is a revealing interpretative synthesis. Focusing on Northwest Pennsylvania's oil region, Petrolia examines the ecological changes that took place between 1859 and the 1870s. In telling this story, he raises difficult questions concerning American attitudes about land use, individualism, and community. Edwin Drake's 1859 oil strike at Titusville led to a "new paradigm for illumination technology." Accordingly, new groups of producers, speculators, and marketers were involved, all possessing an initial vision of unlimited petroleum resources located beneath the earth. Compelled by an individualist philosophy that was legally reinforced by "the rule of capture," the oil industry subsequently boomed without restraint or regard to community. And as one might expect, its early history was characterized by greed, waste, environmental degradation, and more than occasional life-threatening fires. Yet the significance of all of this, according to Black, is that both the improved technology and new attitudes towards the land and community were incorporated elsewhere. Thus, what began in one localized area had inordinate influence upon later events associated with the development of the entire American petroleum industry. Petrolia is therefore a local history but more; the reader becomes acquainted with such towns as Oil City, Franklin and Pithole (you will have to read the book to learn where the name Pithole came from!) This work reconstructs oil's Pennsylvania past in a fresh and meaningful way.

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News From the Faculty

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This is our new section, providing our readers with news of the faculty in their multiple roles as scholars, teachers and members of the U.D. community. Faculty report on recent work which is particularly exciting to them.
 

Professor Roberta Alexander, after spending three years teaching and going to law school, graduated in May from U.D.'s School of Law. She then spent the summer studying for the Ohio Bar, which she passed. Now she is enjoying getting caught up with all the history she has not been able to read. Professor Alexander still had time to do some research and writing. An article entitled "The Future of Disparate Impact Analysis for Age Discrimination" appeared in the U.D. Law Review. She presented a paper in March at the "Law, Culture, and Humanities" Symposium on the role of religion and morality in legal education at the end of the nineteenth into the early twentieth century. She also wrote all the biographical sketches for the inductees to the National Women's Hall of Fame for 2000. She wrote book reviews for the American Journal of Legal History, the Journal of American History, the American Historical Review, and the Georgia Historical Quarterly. She is currently working on several projects: women lawyers at the end of the 19th century, Clement Vallandingham and the copperhead movement in Ohio, and a history of the federal district court of the southern district of Ohio.

Department Chair Dr. Janet Bednarek reports that last winter term she finished revisions of her book manuscript, Have You a Landing Field in Your Town? A History of Municipal Airports in the United States, 1918-1946, which will be published by Texas A&M Press in the fall of 2001. Now she is working on the manuscript of a short book which will be a history of general aviation in the United States, also under contract with Texas A&M Press. It will be part of a series of books published in recognition of the hundredth anniversary of powered flight, due out in 2003. As a general aviation pilot and aviation historian, she reports that, although naturally interested in this subject, she has been pleasantly surprised at how much more "varied and challenging" a subject it is. She has learned much and is excited about bringing this learning to her aviation history class during Winter Term 2001. Her long-term research agenda will continue examination of the history of airports in the United States. Her future research will explore two topics. The first is the relationship between airports and parks. In the early history of aviation, cities built airports on land purchased as "park land" because they did not have the authority to purchase land for aviation purposes, thus engendering disputes over proper land usage of park lands. The second topic which Dr. Bednarek will examine is state and city actions promoting airports. The existing literature deals almost exclusively with federal government action promoting and regulating airports, whereas she plans to take a new approach and look at state and city actions.

Professor Emeritus Erving Beauregard's 456-page book, Notables of Harrison County, Ohio, was published by the Edwin Mellen Press. He has completed a book-length manuscript, History of Higher Education: Harrison County, Ohio. This past year he wrote three articles: "The Other Muhlenberg College," in Lutheran Quarterly; "A Clergyman in Antimasonry," in Journal of Unconventional History; and "The Scio College of Pharmacy and Chemistry," in Journal of the Alleghenies. He had one review in History: Reviews of New Books, and four reviews in Choice. He presented papers at the Great Lakes History Conference and the Ohio Academy of History. He lectured at the Franklin (Ohio) Museum and was inducted as an honorary life member. He sits on the editorial boards of Proceedings of the Ohio Academy of History and Research Review. He serves as Membership Director, American Catholic Historical Association and is an officer of the Ohio and U.D. chapters of AAUP.

One particularly exciting activity in which Professor Leroy Eid was recently involved was teaching a course -- consisting of six two-hour lectures -- for the Institute for Learning in Retirement (ILR) on the "Irish Diaspora." This translated into his engaging in very secondary sort of class preparation on Ireland in places like England, South Africa and Australia. Because of recent feminist materials, study of this topic has become very conscious of the role of women, which he believes should enrich his regular Ireland-America History course. Another interesting new theme he will bring to his regular course is viewing the diaspora as a form of cultural imperialism. This moderates the usual theme of the Irish being oppressed by the English, broadening the scope and definitions of their experience of oppression.

After teaching in the first U.D. summer program in Morocco, Assistant Professor Ellen Fleischmann has been working on the revisions to her book manuscript, The Nation and Its 'New' Women: Feminism, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Palestinian Women's Movement, 1920-1948, which is to be published by University of California Press. Her next research project will be on the missionary encounter between American Protestant women and Arab women in the Mashreq (contemporary Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan). She has already published one article on this topic, and another is forthcoming in the fall of 2001 in the journal, Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations. In her first three years at U.D. Dr. Fleischmann has created a number of new courses. Currently she is very excited about the most recent two: History 354, Women and Gender in the Middle East, and History 356, Comparative History of Third World Women. She is teaching the former during winter term 2001, and the latter will be offered in the fall of the same year.
 

Dr. Brad Hume just published a book review of a collection of essays entitled Sexology in Culture: Labeling Bodies and Desires, edited by Lucy Bland and Laura Doan, and a companion volume of sources entitled Sexology Uncensored: The Documents of Sexual Science by the same editors, in Volume 9 of the Journal of the History of Sexuality. He is currently revising his dissertation into a book, tentatively entitled We the People: Heredity, Social Science and Identity in America, 1776-1861. Johns Hopkins University Press has expressed interest in it. The first fruits of that labor are under consideration in the form of a paper entitled "Words, Blood, and Property: Antebellum Ethnology and the Cultural History of Heredity."
 

Assistant Professor Ann Little spent the summer of 2000 finishing research for her book manuscript, Abraham in Arms: Gender and Power on the New England Frontier, 1620-1760. Her research was supported by a Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts Fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Three publishers have expressed interest in the manuscript, which she expects to finish this year. Chapter Two, entitled "'Shoot that rogue, for he hath an Englishman's coat on!' Cultural Cross-Dressing on the New England Frontier, 1620-1760" will be published as an article in the New England Quarterly this year. She has already begun work on her next book, a biography of a New England girl turned Abenaki-captive turned Ursuline nun in Quebec, Esther Wheelwright (a.k.a. Sister Marie-Joseph de l'Enfant Jesus). Through her interest in biography as a genre of historical writing, she has taken the opportunity to explore writing women's biographies in teaching History 351: American Women's and Gender History. Last winter term, the class read only biographies of American women through American history, something which elicited a positive response from students-- particularly those who think they don't like history. She is repeating this teaching strategy this semester since it proved to work so well.

Dr. Juan Santamarina has been busy with the usual threefold activities of faculty -- scholarship, teaching and service. In 2000 he was busy with a couple of projects which resulted in two publications in the Business History Review of the Harvard Business School and one in Essays in Economic and Business History. Dr. Santamarina also was busy with two other article-length projects he hopes to publish in 2001-2002, as well as his book manuscript which he hopes to have completed in 2001. In terms of teaching, Dr. Santamarina was more fully engaged in teaching his specialty -- Latin America and US Diplomatic -- after several years of focus on Western Civilization. He taught a seminar on the Cuban Revolution, as well as courses in Latin American social and cultural history and US diplomatic history. Next fall he's teaching the History of Mexico, a new course in his schedule. Finally, Dr. Santamarina's work on the Cincinnati Observatory and the Mt. Lookout Civic Association continues as usual with more work than ever, since he's in charge of a $1 million renovation of the Observatory that is now taking place. On a more personal note, Dr. Santamarina this year visited the Netherlands and the Caribbean. The trips were fascinating learning as well as pleasurable experiences that he will incorporate in his classes.

Associate Professor Larry Schweikart is currently completing a book on bias in the news media, especially the critical turning point years of the Kennedy administration, when "objective" news began to deteriorate as a standard -- or goal -- for journalists. Originally he had become interested in this via conspiracy theories, and sought to explain the rash of conspiracy theories to explain EVERYTHING in the late 1970s through the present. This led him to the decline in objective and reliable news, and the re-politicization of the press for the first time (on a consistent basis) since the Jacksonian era. One chapter, "The Transformation of the Partisan Press into Objective Journalistic Enterprises" will appear in the next issue of Continuity: A Journal of History.
 

Associate Professor Bill Trollinger reports that he had a productive and enjoyable sabbatical this past autumn. Among other things, he delivered two papers at national conferences that have since been accepted as articles: "There is No Center to American Religious History - and That's Just Fine," which will appear in Church History, and "Faith, History, and the Conference on Faith and History," which will appear in Fides et Historia. He also served as guest editor of a special issue of Mid-America: An Historical Review, which focused on the history of fundamentalism; this task involved not only soliciting and editing three essays, but writing a brief piece on the historiography of American fundamentalism. In all of this work Dr. Trollinger was happily forced to deal with some of the general theoretical questions attendant to the writing of American religious history.
 

When not engaged in the classroom or in classroom-related duties, Associate Professor Laura Yungblut has been heavily involved in the University's initiatives to improve teacher education through cooperative efforts between the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education. Dr. Yungblut has been working on these initiatives in various capacities since January. Some of these activities include preparation of history content subject area accreditation review materials for the School of Education and ongoing service on the ASED (Arts & Sciences and Education) Council and its steering committee, including traveling to the Project 30 conference in Toronto as part of the U.D. team.