The image above is of a Friday-night dance held in NOTO, likely in the 1950s. The photograph was included in Influences on NOTO: A Historical Review of North Topeka, an exhibit at the NOTO Arts Center curated by Washburn History alumnus Jack Williamson (B.A. '20). (See story below.)
Message from Tom Prasch, Chair
So on the Friday between the end of classes and the start of finals this semester, I headed across the bridge to North Topeka to catch, on its final day, Influences on NOTO: A Historical Review of North Topeka, the special exhibit on the history of the district at NOTO Arts Center, for which our spring alum Jack Williamson was head curator. This is the second NOTO Arts Center exhibition which has drawn on the talents of Washburn History students, after the exhibition and activities put together in 2018 for the World War I centennial by Eleanor Sharemet (class of 2019), and, beyond my interest in the history, it seemed valuable to support this sort of collaboration.
The exhibit divided the display space between two sections, one tracing the history of the area from its foundation to early in this century, the second celebrating the revitalization of NOTO as an arts district over the past decade or so; walking through the exhibition, one literally turns a corner (like the district itself does) between that earlier history and the more recent story, the turn marked by a repositioned fixture of the center: the portrait of NOTO Arts District co-chairs John Hunter (a Washburn emeritus professor) and Anita Wolgast, painted by Barbara Waterman-Peters (whose Studio 831 was the first new business to open in the district as the NOTO Arts District project got underway). I found myself, however, especially drawn to the less familiar deeper history that Williamson charted in the first half of the exhibit. There, amid an interesting and imaginatively-displayed array of artifacts—old tools, a chunk of tin ceiling from 1902, antique glass bottles, architectural drawings, rusted signs, a block of hardened “flood mud” from the great flood of 1951, a manual typewriter damaged in the same catastrophe, photographs, newspaper clippings (you can see a few photographs of the displays below)—a series of large-scale placards lays out the history of the neighborhood from Kansas Territory days forward, with businesses and other institutions (churches, post office) along the core North Kansas stretch mapped at the foot of each placard.
The story told on those placards is above all else one of struggle and recurrent hardships, even existential threats: the dispersion of original native populations, the hard-scrabble life of the early settlers, repeated floodings, downed bridges cutting the district off from the rest of the city, the discrimination faced by racial and religious minorities, economic downturn. And yet the district survives. NOTO seems, in Williamson’s telling, an embodiment of that familiar Kansas motto, “Ad astra per aspera.” And that narrative made the exhibition a particularly timely one: in our current multi-dimensional crisis, facing pandemic and economic downturn and a renewed struggle for racial justice, the show underlined the ways in which our history is also our present.
Ironically, this was underlined in another way as well: the pandemic has severely cut down the area’s foot traffic and slashed visitors to museums and exhibitions deeply. That final day of the exhibition, for the duration of my tour of the exhibit, I was the only visitor. For so rich a display of the area’s history, one could wish for what we can’t have now: crowds.
The NOTO exhibition can provide us with a useful lens through which to consider the varied challenges we have faced over the course of this past semester. The coronavirus pandemic has presented us with enormous challenges: facing clusters of infections in our student population, finding new ways to deliver content and still ensure our and our students’ safety, forcing us to deal with declines in enrollment and diminished budgets. Some of the ways we have risen to these challenges are discussed below. The amplification of the message of Black Lives Matter in the wake of the murder of George Floyd has touched us all, especially because of our long-term commitment to find ways to integrate issues of racial justice and equity into our curriculum and extracurricular offerings. Again, some of the initiatives instigated by this movement are discussed below. The fraught political season, with its deep polarization, have also presented challenges, but we have found ways to deal with that as well.
In all of this, we remain committed to our work as historians: to illuminate more fully our understanding of the past, in order that we can apply its lessons to the present; to explore new questions about our history, reflecting the new issues our contemporary situation poses; to use the analytical tools that have served us in analyzing historical events to examine our present as well. As historians, we carry on. Both our students and faculty may, at semester’s end, look more frazzled than at the end of a more ordinary semester, but still, we got through this one. And we are preparing to offer new courses and new programs this coming spring.
A Semester for the History Books
As historians, we place special emphasis on the past. But the unique conditions of teaching and learning during a global pandemic and a period of national and international outcry over racial inequality and systemic discrimination have made us more aware than ever that we are living history as we teach it. It has also made us more aware of how our teaching of the past must respond to the crises of the moment.
Faculty members in the Department of History & Geography made significant changes to their teaching this fall in response to both the social distancing conditions required by the pandemic and our students' demands for more culturally relevant and inclusive teaching. Read on for details.
Photo credit: College of Arts and Sciences Dean Laura Stephenson took this photo during the Unity March on campus that followed the murder of George Floyd in June.
Adapting to New Course Modalities During Covid-19
Due to the pandemic, classes this year are being taught in a variety of different instructional methods or “course modalities.” For example, some courses, including Kelly Erby's History of Colonial North America, met entirely virtually using the software platform Zoom. Others, such as Tom Prasch's Modern Africa, met face to face in in socially distanced classrooms, with desks six feet apart and masks required, while also livecasting via Zoom and recording classes so students could participate remotely and at a different time if necessary. Some were taught entirely online and students could schedule their own classwork time. This included Rachel Goossen's special topics course Social Movements of the Sixties and Kerry Wynn's Making of Modern America. Sill others, like Tony Silvestri's Early World History and Kim Morse's Modern World History courses, included elements of several different modalities.
To prepare for the many challenges teaching in these different modalities presented, members of the History & Geography Department joined faculty across Washburn in taking advantage of the nearly 70 professional development workshops the University's Center for Teaching Excellence and Learning (C-TEL) offered this summer (to put that number into context, CTEL typically offers 5–10 pedagogy workshops in the summer).
Our faculty tested out new technologies to preserve active-learning strategies, including a feature in Zoom that allows students to "break out" into their own small groups for discussion and collaborative projects. They made use of tools like Hypothes.is, a free social annotation tool that enables students to read and annotate texts together, as well as the chat feature in Washburn's Learning Management System, D2L.
But not everything changed. Above all, our faculty focused on keeping the quality of their teaching high and on cultivating connections with students. While they may have utilized different strategies and technologies, these goals remained the same as in any other semester.
Teaching for Black Lives
The Washburn Department of History knows that Black lives matter. As primarily white faculty members, we also know we speak from positions of power and privilege, and, as historians, we are fully aware of how deeply rooted violence against people of color is in U.S. history specifically and Western history more generally. As historians, we further know that change is possible. We pledge to continuously educate ourselves on ways we can support the efforts of people of color to achieve equality and we commit ourselves to advancing racial justice through our teaching, research, and service.
To this end, the faculty members of this department each took part in professional development opportunities this summer and fall to further advance our pedagogies in ways that make our classrooms more meaningful as sites of resistance to white supremacy and anti-Blackness. More than ever before we strove--and will continue to strive-- to offer classes that examine how racist ideologies are at the heart of histories of inequality, of policing and prison systems, of shaping global power dynamics, and how American identity has for too long been shaped by forms of exclusion.
For example, as Rachel Goossen was preparing to teach her special topics course Social Movements of the Sixties, she felt compelled to ensure the course was relevant for students engaged in the ongoing contemporary Black Lives Matter protests and broader justice initiatives for people of color. In its first two weeks, the class focused on the life, contributions, and recent death of Congressman John Lewis, icon of the Civil Rights Movement and relatively recent visitor to the Washburn campus. Students were also invited to share how the ongoing, mostly nonviolent, protests had affected them and their families and friends. The class further engaged in a robust online discussion of the students’ own participation and involvement in BLM and other protest movements throughout the preceding summer months. Students who had not participated in any protests were invited to reflect on why they had not, and to contribute to discussions of other ways (beyond publicly demonstrating) to contribute to the movement. The discussion yielded detailed and rich posts by students who had been directly involved in protests in Wichita, Topeka, Kansas City, St. Louis, and one or two smaller Midwestern communities. Interestingly, a few of Goossen's students had also taken their own young children to the protests, and this sparked a lively exchange in which students debated the ethics of involving young children in the earlier Civil Rights movement in the 1960s at very tense sites in Alabama and elsewhere.
A number of students in the class had not participated in Summer 2020 protests because of safety concerns related to the Covid pandemic, but several provided specific and useful information to the rest of the class about other forms of support that they had provided: i.e., creating signs, patronizing Black-owned businesses, and contributing financially to local and community justice initiatives. According to Goossen, this series of discussions "set the tone for the rest of the semester, throughout which I was constantly humbled and inspired by my students’ deep engagement and respect for each other’s perspectives and passions around the class’s historical and contemporary subject matter."
In his United States history survey classes this fall, Bruce Mactavish similarly worked to be more intentional to construct assignments that asked students to analyze and interpret primary sources reflecting the lived experiences of Black Americans at key moments in history. He has also gotten involved with an initiative at Seaman High School to create "Race, Equity, and Moving Forward Together,” a YouTube community conversation dedicated to hearing from students of color about their educational experiences.
The newest member of the Department, geography instructor Avantika Ramekar, says she, too, has felt galvanized to do more to bring discussions about racial and ethnic tensions in different places of the world into her geography classes. She reports success with using TedTalks like “The Danger of a Single Story” by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as away to get these conversations started. In this TedTalk, Adichie bravely recounts stereotypes she has experienced as a Nigerian woman, and also stereotypes she has held of others. Adichie's talk, and especially its discussion about the relationship between narrative and power, is ideal for the history classroom as well.
The Department is also proud to be part of Washburn's new program, the African American and African Diaspora minor, that launched this fall.
But we know there is always more work to be done. As Goossen explains: "I’m determined to do more to engage in an ongoing way in making my classroom a site of resistance to white supremacy and anti-Blackness as well as a site where all students can thrive.”
The 1619 Project in the Classroom: A Zoom Forum
From its publication in May 2019, the New York Times's 1619 Project had education--or re-education--at its heart. The original publication, pulled together by Nikole Hannah-Jones, was not about groundbreaking new scholarship--practically everything the project offered was already known to historians--but about a rethinking and recentering, a new emphasis on the centrality of slavery as fundamental fact at the foundation of the American state, indeed even before. The initial publication included an incisive critique of the way educators have mishandled the subject of slavery as well as links to materials for educators.
But that was before the murder of George Floyd, the subsequent nationwide protests, and the re-examination of our racial conscience those events entailed. That was before Tom Cotton, Republican Senator from Arkansas, submitted a Senate Bill that would formally ban federal funds for any school district teaching with materials from the 1619 Project, while himself calling slavery a "necessary evil" in American history. That was before President Trump himself prohibited all federal agencies from teaching critical race theory or talking about white privilege, calling any such work "anti- American."
Committed to providing both courses and extracurricular offerings that examine the historical context of contemporary racial injustices (see story above, and look for additional evidence of our redoubled commitment in action below), the Department decided it was clearly time to talk about The 1619 Project some more. A panel discussion in late September focused on how we as historians and educators must center the history of slavery in our classrooms. Panelists included Darren Canady, associate professor of English at the University of Kansas; Kelly Erby, associate professor of history at Washburn; Steve Hageman, Student Success Lecturer at Washburn's Mabee Library & Center for Student Success; Michael Kates, social studies teacher at Highland Park High School Social, Bruce Mactavish, associate professor of history at Washburn, and Victoria Smith, president of the Washburn Student Government Association.
Alumnus Curates Public History Exhibit on NOTO
This fall, alumnus Jack Williamson (B.A. 2020) curated the exhibit Influences on NOTO: A Historical Review of North Topeka. The exhibit was on display in the Redbud Room of the NOTO Arts Center from October 10–December 5. It featured a variety of artifacts that told the story of the neighborhood. Photos of some of the exhibit highlights are included below.
Alumna Update: Mary- Lucia Darst (B.A. '14)
Mary-Lucia Darst is now a doctoral student at Oxford University studying musicology. She is currently working on writing her doctoral thesis. She says that while performing took a hit this year with Covid-19, she was able to assistant direct a friend's film during a brief respite from quarantine and lockdowns. Darst's own film is still in pre-production because filming in Brasenose and Corpus Christi colleges remains to be completed and these institutions are currently off limits until the UK government gives the all clear. In addition, Darst is captain of the Oxford University Pistol Club ladies team.
Professor Silvestri was able to visit wtith Mary Lucia when he was in Oxford last year. Here they are pictured together at a concert in London at St. John’s Smith Square.
Alumnus Update: Austin Main (B.A. '16)
After completing his senior thesis on Viking-Age Scandinavia and graduating from Washburn, Austin was accepted to the master’s program in archaeology at Uppsala University in Sweden. Beginning in 2018, he studied on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, where the University's sister campus is located. This island contains numerous archaeological sites ranging from the Neolithic to the Medieval Period. The town of Visby, where the University is located, was a major Hanseatic trading city during the Medieval period, and boasts the best-preserved example of a Medieval ring-wall in Northern Europe. Because of that, the entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and United Nations law dictates that the town must maintain a strictly “Medieval” look. According to Main: "As one might imagine, Visby is a city dripping with historicity; in fact, it is possible to walk the exact street layout the city has had since its founding almost a thousand years ago."
During his studies, Austin focused primarily on Iron Age Norse mortuary customs, religious symbolism, and socio-religious power structures. He excavated in five different archaeological sites on Gotland. Two of these experiences were part of the University’s advanced field course. These excavations included a hill-fort with evidence of continuous habitation from the Neolithic to the medieval period, and a small stone grave-mound in an Iron Age grave field. During an internship experience as a field supervisor for the summer 2019 Gotland Archaeological Field School, Austin excavated a Vendel Period (550—800 AD) house foundation which had several hints of ritual activity, such as “sacrificed” weapons, a term in Norse archaeology referring to weapons that have been intentionally bent, partially destroyed, and deposited beneath a house’s foundation. In the same area, he excavated a larger stone grave-mound which gave Austin his first experience excavating human remains, a very delicate and precise process. Austin reports: "We were digging with toothbrushes and butter knives by the end!" Austin's last excavation was part of an internship with the Gotland Museum, where he excavated the remains of a medieval stone house foundation before the construction of a new building began in Visby’s inner city.
After successfully defending his thesis and receiving encouraging feedback from the archaeology program’s chair, Austin has begun the process of revising his thesis for publication as an article in a scientific journal. He is now seeking employment in Swedish archaeology and plans to pursue a PhD in archaeology in Scandinavia. He writes: "Thankfully I was fortunate to have landed in Washburn’s History department, where the professors are truly invested in their students, which made my path in life possible!" Thank you for the update, Austin!
The picture to the right is of Austin excavating a bent spearhead at Eke in 2019.
Phi Alpha Theta Forges On with Virtual Programming
Though it could not hold on-campus events this fall, Washburn's chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, led by their faculty advisor Tom Prasch, coordinated a wealth of virtual programming anyway, including film nights and panel discussions. Read on for details below.
Washburn Willmott Week
In mid-September, Phi Alpha Theta held a Washburn Willmott Week during which participants watched 4 of local filmmaker and Academy Award Winner Kevin Willmott's films, viewer-party style, and live tweeted along at #WUWillmottWeek.
The Department last hosted filmmaker Willmott in September, 2018, a few months after he had won an Oscar as co-writer of Spike Lee’s BlacKKKlansman. Willmott has been busy since then, but--Covid aside-- we thought it was high time we did some catching up.
The schedule of films included William Allen White: What's the Matter with Kansas, Willmott's 2018 documentary on the legendary Kansas journalist. The film highlights White's efforts to oust the Klu Klux Klan from Kansas while also underlining the haunting echoes of White’s concerns in contemporary rhetoric about race, immigrants, widening income disparities, and what it means to be American.
Next up was Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods (2020). For this film, Willmott and Lee took a script about a group of veterans returning to Vietnam to recover a stash of gold left behind and, as Willmott has said in interviews, “Blackified it,” transforming the screenplay into a meditation on African Americans serving in Vietnam as the Civil Rights struggle of the ‘60s played out back home. In Da 5 Bloods, four veterans return to Vietnam to recover that CIA gold (“reparations,” they call it) and to deal with the ghost of their lost comrade.
Later in the week Willmott himself joined in the fun for a live Zoom Q&A with Dr. Tom Prasch and audience members. The interview began with Willmott's thoughts on the legacy of Chadwick Boseman, one of the stars of Da 5 Bloods, who had passed away just a few weeks earlier. He discussed reworking the screenplay of that film with Spike Lee to focus on the neglected Black veterans, not just of Vietnam but of American wars going back to the Revolution. He amplified on why he and Lee, both ferocious critics of the current president, chose to make the film's central character a Black supporter of Trump, and how that character's politics embodied his sense of isolation and exclusion. Willmott talked about reworking, with one-time student (now famous actor) Trai Byers, his decades-old script for The 24th. He explored the ways in which that film underlined the range of Black identities in the period, rather than seeing them as a monolithic population, and how he emphasized Black agency in a period of heightened racist violence in U.S. history. And Willmott revealed a couple new projects in the works, including a screenplay about tennis icon Arthur Ashe and a documentary based on C. J. Janovy's No Place Like Home, about gay life and activism in Kansas.
Finally, the week concluded with The 24th (2020). In interviews, Willmott has talked about the photograph that inspired this film: of 64 black soldiers at a mass trial for the events (racist-violence-sparked mutiny turned riot) that transpired in Houston in 1917. The Houston story comes in the midst in a period, too little noted in popular culture, of intense racial violence, running from the East St. Louis attacks on blacks earlier that same year (alluded to in the film) to the assault on Tulsa's black community four years later; in Houston, more unusually, armed black soldiers rose up against white violence, initially in self-defense. The resulting film (directed by Willmott from a script he co-wrote with Trai Byers, who plays Pvt. William Boston, the film's central figure) nicely maps out the undertold tale, and the movie comes fully alive when it embraces the story's complexities. In that messy transition from self-defense to armed violence against white civilians, things get complicated, and Willmott embraces the messy complexities rather than opting for a simple story.
Lessons from Pandemics Past: A Virtual Forum
Black Death. Red Death. Smallpox. Cholera. “Spanish” Flu. Asian Flu. AIDS. It's not like we haven't been here before.
Pandemics and plagues figure in our myths (like Oedipus in Thebes; maybe we just have to answer the riddle right?), ravaged ancient Greece and Rome and Byzantium, devastated medieval Europe, decimated Native American populations after European contact. Modern plagues from the 1918 Flu Epidemic to the AIDS pandemics have killed millions. Pandemics have infected out literature (Sophocles, Boccaccio, Defoe, Poe, Porter, Camus, Kramer, Hollinghurst) and colored our arts (Bosch, Brueghel, Dürer, Haring, Wojnarowicz, Jarman), transformed social orders and forced medical science to adapt.
So surely, in our Covid times, we can learn something from that past. Surely?
To this end, Phi Alpha Theta sponsored a panel discussion to talk about pandemics of the past and what lessons we might take from the ways they were (or were not) handled. Panelists included Washburn historians Tony Silvestri on the Black Death and Kerry Wynn on pandemics and Native Americans; writer and lecturer in the Washburn English Department Liz Derrington on AIDS; and Washburn history alumni Dustin Gann, now an assistant professor of history at Midland University, and Brooke Manny, currently a master's student at the University of Nebraska's Rural Futures Institute, on the 1918 Spanish Flu.
Historical Movie Nights Continue, Covid Style
Historical Movie Nights had to be a bit different this semester. It turns out we can't just show any movie in a Zoom environment; only copyright-free ones. But Phi Alpha Theta was determined to keep up traditions. Their fearless leader and film aficionado Tom Prasch selected four silent, out-of-copyright films streaming on YouTube: Plague in Florence (Die Pest in Florenz, 1919), Häxan (Witches; aka A History of Witchcraft, Denmark/Sweden, 1922), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and Genuine: The Tragedy of a Strange House (1920). Between September and December, Phi Alpha Theta screened each of these movies on Zoom while Prasch and Mass Media Professor Matt Nyquist chatted about the film while it played (since, after all, the films were silent). The idea was like Mystery Science Theater, only with better films. If you weren't able to join us for a historical movie night this semester, watch the Department's FB page for news on this spring's selections, which will also held in a similar format.
Students Present Capstone Research Projects Via Zoom
COVID 19 could not stop this spring's crop of history majors from carrying on with their senior capstone research projects. They overcame social distancing and closed libraries and archives to complete their research. Students presented their projects virtually using Zoom to an audience of their fellow capstone students and history faculty members.
WUmester 2021
The Department is looking forward to participating again this spring in Washburn's WUmester, an initiative that seeks to engage the entire WU community in a cross-disciplinary learning experience on timely subjects and help students see the connections between the subjects they study in the classroom and real-world debates and problems. This year's topic is sustainability.
As usual, history faculty members plan to dive head first into all things WUmester. Kim Morse, for example, will make sustainability the special focus of her enriched honors version of HI 102: Modern World History. After thinking through sustainability theoretically and in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, students will use primary sources to analyze sustainability as a transnational and interdisciplinary phenomena in reading, discussion-intensive class sessions, and an independent research project.
We will report the other ways we got involved in WUmester in our spring newsletter. In the meantime, please join us on February 18, when Harriet Washington, author of A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and its Assault on the American Mind will give a virtual public lecture for the Washburn community (yourself included). Tune in to youtube.com/WashburnVideo to watch beginning at 2 PM.
Spring 2021 Upper-Division Course Offerings
HI 319A American Indian History: This course examines the histories of multiple Indigenous nations in North America, concentrating mainly on the period from the eighteenth century to the present. It emphasizestopics related to sovereignty, gender, kinship, political and economic trends, and art/literature. Students will read extensively in primary and secondary sources, and will produce research papers on topics they select. There will be two exams and student participation in class discussion will also be assessed. (11:00–12:15 MW) Wynn
HI 326VA Anabaptism Radical Reformation: This ONLINE course focuses on major events, people, literature, and practices of Anabaptist-related groups from the sixteenth-century Reformation to the present, including Mennonites, the Amish, and Hutterites. Students will trace the evolution of this religious movement from its European origins to diverse contemporary practices on five continents. Class components include films, book reviews, class discussions, writing assignments, and one exam. This general education course can be taken to fill either European or American degree requirements. Goossen
HI 322A Kansas History: A comprehensive survey beginning with the land itself and its earliest inhabitants and ending with an overview of the state today. Political and economic aspects of the state’s development are covered, but there is also an emphasis on social and cultural history. Analysis of the evolutionary and dramatic changes in agriculture, education, transportation, manufacturing, and the social fabric lead to a better understanding of the state’s history. Several papers and essay exams. (11:00–12:15 TR) Mactavish
HI 338 Victorian Britain: This course provides a thematic approach to the Victorian period in British history, covering the period from around 1830 (with some glances back to earlier developments) till the end of the 19th century (with some nods forward toward WWI) The course emphasizes doing history by introducing students to primary sources—works produced at the time under study—and the methods historians employ to interpret them; this will be supplemented by lectures and text material that demonstrate how historians shape material into historical narratives and arrive at interpretations of the past. Students will be taught how to think historically as well as learning the broad outlines of British history in the period. Critical and evaluative skills will be developed in part through direct encounters with primary sources, with some lectures employed to acquaint students with the methods with which historians deal with such sources. Lectures and text readings will also augment students’ reading and interpretive abilities. Reading and writing skills will also be developed and assessed through both take-home and in-class tests, as well as through research papers. (1:00–2:15 TR) Prasch
HI 300C Traditional Japan: This online-hybrid course explores the political, military, economic, religious and cultural history of Japanese civilization from prehistoric times through 1868. Students will read primary and secondary literature from and about Japan in order to understand major topics and themes, such as the earliest development of civilization in Japan; Shinto, Buddhism and religious life in Japan; the integration of Chinese influences; the development and culture of the imperial court; the rise of the warrior aristocracy; samurai culture; the development of the Shogunal system of government; the influence of Europeans on the development of early modern Japan; the Warring States Period and the rise of Tokugawa; high Tokugawa culture; and finally, the opening of Japan to Anerican and European trade in the 19th c. Coursework will be provided ina combination of asynchronous and live instruction and discussion over Zoom. Students should expect both brief and longer essay assignments, brief presentations, and midterm and final essay exams. (1:00–2:15 MW) Silvestri
HI361A Colonial Latin America: This a readings- and discussion-driven exploration of colonial Latin American experiences. Students will analyze constructions of agency and power in colonial processes through reading historical monographs, scholarly articles, and primary sources. Discussions of said sources will address the intersections of race, class, gender, economics, literacy, mobility, and the law over time and space. Students will have the opportunity to write brief historiographies with revisions to further analysis of a sub-topic of their choice. (8–9:15 AM TR) Morse
GG 300A Introduction to GIS: This course serves as the first class in a two-part sequence. The course prepares students to understand the technical capabilities of GIS programs and provides a firm understanding of the conceptual and technical knowledge required to use GIS. (1–2:15 PM) Ramekar
History Department Honors Spring, Summer, and Fall 2020 Graduates with Virtual Celebration
The Department celebrated several of its recent graduates at a virtual ceremony held December 15, 2020. Pictured clockwise from top left: faculty members Kerry Wynn, Tony Silvestri, Tom Prasch, Rachel Goossen, Kim Morse, and Kelly Erby; graduates Brianna Bradshaw (B.A. Fall 2020), Emily Hall (B.A. Spring 2020), Rhys Tayrien (B.A. Spring 2020), Kimmy Woodworth (B.A. Fall 2020), and Jack Williamson (B.A. Spring 2020); and faculty member Bruce Mactavish. The faculty expressed their profound pride in the accomplishments of these recent alumni, all of whom successfully completed historical theses projects and, in some cases, historiographical essays as well, with severe limitations of library and archival sources due to Covid-19. Graduates, please stay in touch!
Congratulations to All Our Fall 2020 Graduates:
Elizabeth Andrasik
Brianna Bradshaw
Alexis Douglas
Kimberly Woodworth
We wish you all the best in your future endeavors!
Connect with the Washburn Department of History on Twitter (@wuhistory), Instagram (@HistoryBods), & Facebook (@ WashburnUniversityHistory).
The Washburn Department of History & Geography wishes you a healthy and joyous new year!
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