History

Miriam Wallace

Directory — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 10:15:01 +0000

Miriam Wallace Directory Tue, 07/04/2023 - 05:15

Area of Expertise

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Writing

Miriam L. Wallace is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Illinois-Springfield, and Professor of English. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College (BA) and the University of California, Santa Cruz (MA/PhD) in Literature. As a proud liberal arts graduate, she advocates for the value and impact of academic study, art making and performance, public presentations, and study abroadâ¿¿noting their impact on self-confidence, intellectual curiosity, and personal and professional growth.

She has written extensively on late eighteenth-century British writers who used fiction to advocate for political reformâ¿¿most notably in Revolutionary Subjects in the English â¿¿Jacobinâ¿¿ Novel (2009) (which was supported by an NEH College Teacher Fellowship). More recent work explores Romantic-era public speaking as depicted in satirical prints, literature, and popular cultureâ¿¿particularly by those formerly excluded from rhetorical training by virtue of class, sex, gender, race, educational level, or disabilities. She was Principle Investigator for an NEH Humanities Connections Planning Grant to build a new â¿¿concentrationâ¿¿ in Health, Culture and Societies from 2021-2022 with colleagues in Epidemiology, Anthropology, History, and Physiology/Medicine. She continues as co-editor of the â¿¿Transits: Literature, Thought, and Culture 1650-1850â¿¿ series with Bucknell University Press with Dr. Mona Narain. Since January 2023 she has been involved in organizing and speaking about academic freedom and the importance of public universities as equity engines, resisting efforts to diminish or limit humanistic exploration and voices. Dr. Wallace is Co-PI with Dr. Emily Todd of an NEH Spotlight on Humanities grant on the humanities in an A.I. world for 2024-2025.

Office Location

1 University Plaza, MS UHB 3000

Research

Literature, particularly in English; Eighteenth-century studies and Romanticism; Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Public Speech, history of; Satire, political and cultural

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Administration

Phone Number

217-206-7444

Publications

Books: Teaching the Eighteenth-Century Now: Pedagogy as Ethical Engagement (2023 essay collection), with Kate Parker; Revolutionary Subjects in the English "Jacobin" Novel (2009); Enlightening Romanticism, Romancing the Enlightenment: British Novels from 1750-1832 (2009 essay collection); Re-viewing Thomas Holcroft, 1745-1809: Essays on His Life and Work (essay collection), with A. A. Markley.

English and Modern Languages

mwall29@uis.edu

Teaching

English, Literature, British literature & culture Enlightenment & Romanticism; Health Humanities, Disability Studies, Feminist and Queer Theory, Women Writers

Editorial Boards

Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850, Bucknell University Press, with Dr. Mona Narain

Dean

Professor

Area of Specialization

Humanities & Liberal Arts; Academic Freedom; educational gag orders; Literature and Politics; Women's and Gender issues; Higher education academic administration; Eighteenth Century and 1790s British literature and culture; Satirical Prints; Romantic-era novel; Virginia Woolf; feminist pedagogies.

Graham Peck

Directory — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 14:58:52 +0000

Graham Peck Directory Mon, 12/07/2020 - 08:58

Area of Expertise

History

Illinois

Lincoln

I am the Wepner Distinguished Professor of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. I am a Californian by birth, and a first-generation American, raised by parents who immigrated from England in the early 1960s. I received my B.A. in History from California State University, Hayward (now CSU East Bay) before journeying to the land of Lincoln, where I earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Northwestern University. I spent a year at Rhodes College in Memphis and seventeen years at Saint Xavier University in Chicago before coming to UIS in 2019.

I teach a variety of courses at UIS. The courses I teach regularly include HIS 206 American Immigration History, HIS 304 Illinois History, HIS 441 Civil War and Reconstruction, and HIS 450 Major Figures in History: Abraham Lincoln. Courses that I teach on rotation with other faculty include HIS 204 US History to 1877, HIS 301 Historianâ¿¿s Craft, and HIS 501 Graduate History Colloquium (a graduate reading seminar for MA students).

My scholarship has focused on antebellum Illinois, and particularly on the careers of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. I have published three essays on Lincoln and Douglas in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, an essay on the early Illinois Republican Party in the Journal of Illinois History, and an essay on the antebellum party system in Practicing Democracy (University of Virginia Press, 2015). My book, Making an Antislavery Nation: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom (University of Illinois Press, 2017), received the 2018 Russell P. Strange Memorial Book of the Year Award from the Illinois State Historical Society and was a finalist for the 2018 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

I have also written, directed, and produced two films with art professor Nathan Peck. Stephen A. Douglas and the Fate of American Democracy is a feature-length biographic film of Douglas. The film features performances by nationally distinguished Douglas and Lincoln reenactors, interviews with five historians of the Civil War, and hundreds of nineteenth-century images, including photographs of rare, archival documents from the Douglas Papers at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center.

Lincoln & Douglas: Touring Illinois in Turbulent Times is a travel film that Nathan and I created during the Covid summer of 2020. We visited four of Illinoisâ¿¿ Lincoln-Douglas debate sites to capture performances by Lincoln and Douglas reenactors. But the turbulent social and political climate that summer soon changed the focus of the film. Black Lives Matter protestors were inspiring demonstrators around the globe to pull down statues of controversial historical figures. In Springfield, Illinois, they petitioned for the removal of a Douglas statue on the grounds of the State Capitol. Spurred by these issues, the film pivoted to interrogating the contemporary legacies of Lincoln and Douglas in light of the challenges to American democracy then taking shape. Both films are freely available for streaming on my website.

I have also co-directed an art residency and exhibit interpreting Lincolnâ¿¿s legacies. In 2021, my UIS colleague Brytton Bjorngaard and I won a University of Illinois grant for Making Our History: Artists Render Lincolnâ¿¿s Legacies. The project brought together 20 Illinois artists via Zoom to make original art on Lincolnâ¿¿s contemporary legacies. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, the Springfield Art Association, and the UIS Visual Arts Gallery featured the art in a fall 2022 exhibit in Springfield. The permanent digital exhibit includes twenty photographs of the works of art, twenty professionally produced short videos documenting the artistsâ¿¿ process and concepts, twenty essays providing historical context for the art, and innovative elementary, middle school, and high school teacher modules.

Do not hesitate to contact me about your interest in History or UIS!

Office Location

UHB 3062

History

Phone Number

217-206-8683

gpeck6@uis.edu

Wepner Distinguished Prof. Lincoln Study-Studies

Heather Bailey

Directory — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 14:58:52 +0000

Heather Bailey Directory Mon, 12/07/2020 - 08:58

Area of Expertise

Heather Bailey has a Ph.D. in modern European history from the University of Minnesota and has been teaching modern European and Russian History courses at UIS since 2002. Her research focuses on the intellectual, cultural, and diplomatic relations between France and Russia in the nineteenth century. She has published extensively on negative attitudes about Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in western European discourses. Currently she is writing a book on Anton Berezowski's attempt to assassinate Emperor Alexander II in 1867, in the broader context of criminal justice systems, radicalism, and political terror in France and Russia. It will also explore French and Russian interpretations of the eventâ¿¿s significance both in the immediate aftermath and in the decades leading up to World War I.

Publications

Books:

The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy: France and Russia, 1848-1870 (Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell UP, 2020).

Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity: The Reception of Ernest Renanâ¿¿s â¿¿Life of Jesusâ¿¿ in Russia (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).

Articles:

â¿¿Eastern Orthodox Christianity,â¿¿ Handbook of Religious Culture in Nineteenth-Century Europe, eds. Anthony J. Steinhoff and Jeffrey T. Zalar, 15-34 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024).

â¿¿Anti-Russian-Orthodox Discourses in the Trial of Anton Berezowski,â¿¿Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 6, no. 2 (2023): 159-80..

â¿¿â¿¿The churches that call themselves orthodoxâ¿¿: Nomenclature for Russian Orthodoxy in Nineteenth-Century France,â¿¿ Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 2, no. 2 (2019): 149-77.

â¿¿Roman Catholic Polemicists, Russian Orthodox Publicists, and the Tsar-Pope Myth in France, 1842-1862,â¿¿ Canadian-American Slavic Studies 53 (2019): 263â¿¿285.

â¿¿A Russian Spectacle in Paris.â¿¿ St. Vladimirâ¿¿s Theological Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2017).

â¿¿Russian Interpretations of Ernest Renanâ¿¿s Life of Jesus.â¿¿ Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou, 147-55. Slavica Publishers, 2017.

Office Location

UHB 3061

History

Phone Number

217-206-7189

hbail2@uis.edu

Professor

Area of Specialization

Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodox Church, Modern European History, Franco-Russian Relations

Daniel Platt

Directory — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 14:58:52 +0000

Daniel Platt Directory Mon, 12/07/2020 - 08:58

Area of Expertise

Criminal Justice

Civil Liberties/Civil Rights

Daniel Platt is a scholar of law, political economy, and political culture. Raised in the Chicago area, he earned his PhD in American Studies at Brown University in 2018 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University at Buffalo School of Law before joining the faculty at UIS in 2020. His first book, The Price of Misfortune (2023), examined struggles over debtors' rights in the late nineteenth century. His current research deals with religion and the prison abolition movement in the late twentieth century.

Office Location

PAC 334

Legal Studies

Phone Number

212-206-6535

Publications

Books

The Price of Misfortune: Rights and Wrongs in Indebted America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023).

Articles

â¿¿The Domestication of Credit,â¿¿ History of the Present 9 (Fall 2019): 142-165.

â¿¿The Natures of Capital: Jewish Difference and the Decline of American Usury Law, 1910-1925,â¿¿ Journal of American History 104 (March 2018): 863-878.

â¿¿An Icon Adrift: The Modern Library in the 1990s,â¿¿ Book History 15 (2012): 183-208.

dplat2@uis.edu

Teaching

LES 202 Introduction to the American Legal System

LES 422 Religion and Politics

LES 451 Law, Film, and Popular Culture

LES 456 Capitalism and the Law

LES 463 Labor Law

LES 502 Introduction to Graduate Legal Studies

LES 512 Theories of Justice

Assistant Prof.

Devin Hunter

Directory — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 14:58:52 +0000

Devin Hunter Directory Mon, 12/07/2020 - 08:58

Area of Expertise

Associate Professor of History

Chair, History Department

Ph.D. Public History and United States History

Loyola University Chicago

Email: dhunte2@uis.edu

Phone: (217) 206-7432

Office: UHB 3056

Teaching Concentration: Public History, Urban History, Twentieth Century United States History

CV upon request

Devin Hunter is a public historian and scholar who focuses on issues of community identity, social equity, redevelopment and cultural heritage tourism. He arrived in academia after several years working in the archives and museum fields in Washington, DC, and Chicago. His first book, A Cosmos in the City: Postwar Politics, Culture, and Diversity in Chicagoâ¿¿s Uptown, is under contract with the University of Illinois Press. Dr. Hunterâ¿¿s next project traces the history of the commemoration and interpretation of race riots and massacres in Springfield (1908), Chicago (1919), and Tulsa (1921). His past and current board and committee memberships include: the Illinois State Historical Society, the Illinois Historical Sites Advisory Committee, and the Vachel Lindsay Association, among many others.

Recent Publications:

â¿¿Urban/Rural Frictions in the Midwest: The Chicago-Downstate Battle for Legislative Reapportionment in Illinois, 1953-1965,â¿¿ in The Conservative Heartland: The Rise of Conservatism in the Midwest, 1946-2016, edited by Jon Lauck and Catherine McNickol Stock. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2020.

â¿¿Interpreting Lincoln Today and Tomorrow: A Round Table Discussion on the State of Lincoln Public History,â¿¿ convener and editor, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter 2019).

Review of The Small-Town Midwest: Resilience and Hope in the Twenty-First Century, by Julianne Crouch. Illinois Geographer, Vol. 60, Issue 1 (Fall 2018).

â¿¿Uptown: The Roots of Diversity in the Twentieth-Century â¿¿City within a City,â¿¿ in Illinois Heritage, May/June 2015.

Review of 1950sâ¿¿Rocketmanâ¿¿ TV Series and Their Fans: Cadets, Rangers, and Junior Space Men, edited by Cynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper. Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 47, Issue 1 (February 2014), 198-201.

Awards and Grants:

Illinois Innovation Network Social Innovation Seed Grant" ($30,000), "Journeys to Justice: Reckoning with Illinois' History and Legacy of Anti-Black Terror," co-director with Lesa Johnson (UIS SOA), Peter Cole (Western Illinois University), and Tandra Taylor (Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, 2024-2025.

UIS Faculty Engagement Award, 2024.

University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and Humanities ($180,000), â¿¿I-Heritage as Public Engagement and Economic and Social Development,â¿¿ co-principal investigator with Helaine Silverman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019-2025.

University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and Humanities ($150,000), â¿¿The Humanities Innovating New Knowledge (THINK),â¿¿ co-investigator with Jennifer Brier, University of Illinois at Chicago (co-principal investigator); Barbara Ransby, University of Illinois Chicago (co-principal investigator); and Kathryn Oberdeck (co-investigator), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019-2025.

2020 Mid-America Emmy Award for Short Format Program, â¿¿Face to Face.â¿¿ Chris Costello, Director and Editor; Devin V. Hunter, Producer; Josh Hester, Executive Producer; featuring Dr. Wesley Robinson-McNeese.

Office Location

UHB 3050

History

Phone Number

217-206-7432

History

dhunte2@uis.edu

Associate Prof.

His Department Chairperson

Area of Specialization

Public History, Twentieth-Century United States History. Commemoration and Memory. Museums, Historic Sites, and Historic Preservation. Illinois History. Chicago History.