Dennis Frost, the Wen Chao Chen Associate Professor of East Asian Social Sciences, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to support his project titled “The Paralympic Movement, Sports, and Disability in Postwar Japan.” His was one 232 humanities projects in the country to receive NEH funding. Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Professor Frost earned his B.A. at Wittenberg University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He completed research programs at University of the Ryukyus (Okinawa, Japan) and Iwate University (Iwate, Japan). He is the author of Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan. In addition to his study of the Paralympic Movement, sports, and disability in postwar Japan, his current research interests include a comparative exploration of military “base towns’ in Okinawa and mainland Japan. Said NEH Chairman William Adams: “The grants announced continue the Endowment’s tradition of supporting excellence in the humanities by funding far-reaching research, preservation projects, and public programs.”Congratulations to Professor Frost!
history
Kalamazoo College Lecture Will Focus on the Holocaust
The 2015 Edward Moritz Lecture in History coincides with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps and the end of World War II. The lecture will occur Thursday, April 16, at 7 p.m. in Dewing Hall Room 103. The event is free and open to the public. Professor Doris L. Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto (and one of the world’s most distinguished scholars of the Holocaust), will speak on “Holocaust or Genocide? Uniqueness and Universality.”
Professor Bergen received her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina, where she studied with Professor Gerhard Weinberg. Her research focuses on issues of religion, gender, and ethnicity in the Holocaust and World War II and comparatively in other cases of extreme violence. She has written many books including War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2003). The recipient of many honors and awards, Professor Bergen is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington , D.C.
The annual Edward Moritz Lecture pays tribute to the late Professor Edward Moritz, who taught British and European history at Kalamazoo College from 1955 to 1988 and served for many years as department chair.
Germany Honors K History Professor
David Barclay, the Margaret and Roger Scholten Professor of International Studies, was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik Deutschland), the country’s highest decoration, popularly known as the Federal Cross of Merit. Because he was unable to receive the award in Berlin, it was presented to him at a ceremony at the German Consulate General in Chicago on June 17.
The website of the Federal President of Germany describes honor as follows: “The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany was instituted in 1951 by Federal President Theodor Heuss. It is the only honour that may be awarded in all fields of endeavour and is the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation. The Order of Merit may be awarded to Germans as well as foreigners for achievements in the political, economic, social or intellectual realm and for all kinds of outstanding services to the nation in the field of social, charitable or philanthropic work.”
At K, Barclay has taught a wide variety of courses on European history and German history. He directed the Center of Western European Studies at Kalamazoo College from 1990 to 2003, and he currently serves as the executive director of the German Studies Association. He is the author of numerous books and articles, and the focus of his scholarship in particular has been the history of West Berlin from 1948 to 1994. Barclay has received many academic awards and honors, among the most prominent of these was his selection as the George H.W. Bush/Axel Springer Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin (2007). He and fellow faculty member Joe Fugate (professor emeritus of German and director emeritus of the foreign study program) are two Kalamazoo College faculty to receive the Order of Merit.
Physics Professor on the Starboard Guns
Professor of Physics Tom Askew had physics in mind this summer–the physics of force and trajectory of early 19th-century cannon fire. Askew as deckhand and gunner on the Friends Good Will during a reenactment of the Battle of Lake Erie. Small but well-armed, Friends Good Will led the British battle line into action against the American fleet. Askew’s is a replica tall ship from the Michigan Maritime Museum in South Haven, and Askew serves on board every summer. The original Friends Good Will was built in Michigan at River Rouge in 1810 as a merchant vessel. In the summer of 1812, she was chartered by the federal government to take military supplies to Fort Dearborn, a small military and trading post at what is now Chicago. She was returning with furs and skins when she was lured into the harbor of Mackinac Island. The British, having taken the island just days before, were flying false colors above the fort ramparts. The British confiscated the vessel, cargo, and crew, renaming her “Little Belt.” She was armed, taken into service, and fought with the Royal Navy until September of 1813, when she was recaptured by United States Commodore Oliver Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie. Within an hour after the great guns fell silent, Commodore Perry mentioned her in his now famous dispatch, “We have met the enemy and they are ours: Two Ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” That sloop was Friends Good Will. The ship then served in the United States Navy, transporting General William Henry Harrison’s troops across Lake Erie in the successful invasion of Southern Ontario. She was driven ashore in a storm south of Buffalo in December 1813. In early January 1814, during efforts to re-launch the ship, the British unceremoniously burned the once-proud vessel during a raid on Buffalo.
K History Professor Will Deliver Public Lecture in Berlin
David Barclay, History, will deliver a public lecture at the Free University of Berlin. The title of his talk is “Old Glory und Berliner Baer: Die USA und West-Berlin 1948-1994 [Old Glory and the Bear of Berlin: The USA and West Berlin 1948-1994].” The event commemorates the collaboration of the German Studies Association (GSA) with the Free University and also the 50th anniversary of the famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech by President John F. Kennedy. Barclay is the executive director of GSA. He will be introduced by Elke Loeschhorn, director of international programs at the Free University, and by Professor Harald Wenzel from the John F. Kennedy Institute of American Studies at the Free University. Barclay’s talk will be moderated by Professor Andreas Etges of the America Institute at the University of Munich. Commentary on the talk will be provided by Walter Momper, mayor of Berlin when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989; Professor Dorothee Brantz of the Technical University of Berlin and director of its Center for Metropolitan Studies; and Dr. Klaus Dettmer of the Landesarchiv Berlin (Berlin State Archives).
K professor talks about complex Bonaparte
K Professor of History Charlene Boyer Lewis ′87 is the author of the 2012 biography, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic. Boyer Lewis is quoted in a recent Baltimore Sun article about a new historical exhibit in Baltimore on its famous 19-year-old citizen who married Napoleon Bonaparte′s younger brother. Read more about Elizabeth′s long, colorful, and controversial life and view photos and a video about the new exhibit at http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bs-ae-betsy-bonaparte-20130608,0,1051008.story#ixzz2VqTTxKXU.
Celebrating the Life of Charles Goodsell Sr.
A memorial service celebrating the life Charles True Goodsell Sr. has been arranged by his son, Charles T. Goodsell Jr., a member of the Kalamazoo College Class of 1954. The event will occur on Saturday, May 11, at 11 A.M. in the Blacksburg (Virginia) Presbyterian Church (701 Church Street). The senior Goodsell was a professor in the K history department from 1928 until his sudden death while speaking in Stetson Chapel on November 25, 1951. Goodsell also served as the acting president of Kalamazoo College in 1935-36. Stories will be told by his son prior to the placement of his ashes in the Church Columbarium. (The ashes were discovered unclaimed at Langeland Funeral Home in Kalamazoo last November.) A lunch will follow the memorial service. Charles Jr. sent word of the service because some alumni who knew his father may still be alive and interested in knowing about the event. All are invited to the service. Persons interested in joining the family for lunch should RSVP at 540.552.9032 or goodsell@vt.edu.
K’s David Barclay is a Peripatetic Scholar
In recent months David Barclay (Margaret and Roger Scholten Professor of International Studies, Department of History) has made a variety of presentations in several different venues. In November 2012 he spoke on “Music and Cold War Politics in West Berlin” at the Max Kade Center for German and European Studies at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee). While at Vanderbilt Barclay was able to talk with Professor Edward Friedman, one of the world’s most distinguished Cervantes scholars, who taught at K in the 1970s. He also talked with Peter Collins, son of the late Professor David Collins, who taught French at K for many years. Later that month Barclay presented a paper on “Preussen in amerikanischer und europaeischer Sicht” (“European and American Views of Prussia”) at a conference of the Otto von Bismarck Foundation in Potsdam, Germany. In February 2013, in Fort Worth, Texas, he delivered a banquet address on “Myth, Memory, and the Legacies of 1813” at the 42nd annual conference of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era. In early May he will address the Southwest Michigan Association of Phi Beta Kappa by asking “’Why on Earth Do You Study German History?’ How I Try to Answer That Question.” Barclay also recently signed a contract with Princeton University Press to publish his next book, Cold War City: West Berlin 1948-1994, in 2017.
Barclay recently published an article (“A ’Complicated Contrivance’: West Berlin behind the Wall, 1971-1989”) in a volume titled Walls, Borders, Boundaries: Spatial and Cultural Practices in Europe edited by Marc Silberman, Karen Till, and Janet Ward. It’s just been reviewed in the journal Society and Space — Environment and Planning. The reviewer wrote: “In chapter 6 (’A complicated contrivance’) David Barclay draws together Berlin’s material histories with its alternative aesthetic potentialities. His account revisits Berlin behind the wall as a site of drama and epic personalities–the epicentre of the Cold War–together with the gradual demographic hollowing and cultures of experimentation fostered by the Allied occupation. The ‘oddly dialectical relationship’ between the Allies’ presence and the emergent, ’curious’ socio-political cultures of West Berlin (page 125) hinge upon the immense shadow of the Wall, which, all the same, formed an increasingly invisible backdrop like another ’piece of furniture’ (page 122). Perhaps more than any other chapter Barclay’s essay illuminates how the maintenance of ordinary life can have enduring and unpredictable effects. Against the backdrop of the wall, politically alternative cultures have survived in Berlin like perhaps nowhere else in Europe. These include new kinds of tactical subversion such as squatting and anarchist direct action. Subversion and the reproduction of walls are shown to inflect one another.”
K Alumnus Is Half of “Dynamic Duo” Behind Health Fair for Homeless
Stevie Simmons ’12 graduated from Kalamazoo College in June with a Bachelor’s degree in history. Now a Battle Creek, Mich., resident, Stevie is pursing a Bachelor’s degree in human service administration from Sienna Heights University, while working for AmeriCorps VISTA at Kellogg Community College, a national service program that aims to fight poverty. He’s also half of a “dynamic duo” helping to organize the upcoming Greater Battle Creek/Calhoun County Project Connect Homeless Health Fair.
Four K Faculty Present at East Asian Studies Conference
Rose Bundy, Japanese, was chair and organizer of a panel discussion at the Japan Study 50th Anniversary Conference: The Future of East Asian Studies at Liberal Arts Colleges. The conference took place at Earlham College in early October. The name of the panel presentation was “Passages to Asia: The Japanese Studies Curriculum–From Intro to Senior Seminar.” In addition to Bundy the panel included her fellow K professors Dennis Frost, history; Yue Hong, Chinese; and Noriko Sugimori, Japanese.