Swinney Writing Group

The Swinney Faculty Writing Group, officially established in 2014, meets on Fridays at noon in the Swinney Room, TMH 105. It is a venue where members of the history department faculty can meet to read and critique one another’s research works in progress in an informal and collegial atmosphere. We welcome works at all stages, including preliminary stages—article drafts, book chapters, conference presentations, etc.

Papers should be sent to Shannon Duffy by 5:00 pm the Wednesday before the meeting.

Swinney Writing Group

Spring 2024 Schedule

  • Mar. 3, 2023: Josh Paddison/Margaret Vaverek, workshop on improving the US Survey.
  • Mar. 24, 2023: Elizabeth Bishop, ““UGEMA in Tunis.” Commentator Benjamin Brower, Professor of History, UT Austin.
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  • Presentation Archives

      • Sept. 8, 2023: Dr. Carrie Ritter, “Beacons of Cultural Diplomacy or the Back Door into Britain? The English-Language School Industry in the United Kingdom.” 
      • Sept. 22, 2023: Dr. Jessica Pliley, “Perpetual Banishment: The Transcarceral Crimmigration Case of Mary Masako Akimoto.” Commentator Dr. Jeffrey Helgeson.
      • Oct. 6, 2023: Dr. Elizabeth Bishop, Union générale des étudiants musulmans algériens, Chapter 6. Commentator Dr. Benjamin Koerber, Associate Professor, Arabic Language and Literature African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, Rutgers University.
      • Oct. 20, 2023: Dr. Josh Paddison, Unholy Sensations: A Story of Sex, Scandal, and California’s First Cult Scare, Introduction and Epilogue.
      • Nov. 17: Dr. Miranda Sachs, Chapter 1: “Immigration and Sex Education in the 1 “Sexual Education and Immigrant Communities in the 1970s.” Commentator Jessica Pliley.

      • March 3, 2023: Josh Paddison and Margaret Vaverek, “Workshop on Improving the US Survey: Some Resources and Strategies”
      • March 24, 2023: Elizabeth Bishop, “UGEMA in Tunis.” Commentator: Dr. Benjamin Brower, Association Professor of History, UT-Austin

      • Friday, September 23, 2022 | Josh Paddison, “Thomas Lake Harris, ‘Cults,” and the American West." Commentator Ana Romo
      • Friday, October 28, 2022 | Casey Nicols, “Forging a World City.” Commentator Dwonna Goldstone

      • February 25, 2022 | Elizabeth Bishop, "The Diplomacy of Egypt’s New Border with the Sudan, 1955-1959." Commentator Margaret Menninger
      • March 11, 2022 | José Carlos de la Puente, "Customs Apart: Land, Inheritance, and Family Life in Central Andean villages circa 1641.” Commentator Sara Damiano

      • September 3, 2021 | Elizabeth Bishop, “The Algerian National Union of Students (UGEMA).” Commentator: Peter Siegenthaler
      • September 17, 2021 | Peter Siegenthaler, “Youth Politics in Japan: A Review Essay.” Commentator: Louis Porter
      • October 15, 2021 | Shannon Duffy, “Christmas in Greater Philadelphia” and “The Fourth of July in Greater Philadelphia.” Commentator Ellen Tillman

      • February 21, 2021 | Justin Randolph, “Abolition Autumn.” Commentator: Jessica Pliley
      • February 26, 2021 | Miranda Sachs, “Training for Life, Training for Work.” Commentator: Ken Margerison
      • April 9, 2021 | Louis Porter, “Knowledge Internationals: Paul Otlet and the Russian Bibliographical Society, 1913-1929.”

      • January 31, 2020 | Jose Carlos de la Puente, “Of Widows, Furrows, and Seeds: New Perspectives on Colonial Andean Commons”
      • February 14, 2020 | Carrie Ritter, “Epilogue”
      • March 13, 2020 |  Presentation for History and Anthropology faculty: Adam Clark, Allison Robinson, and Trace Etienne: “Preparing to Move Your Classes Online”
      • April 17, 2020 | John Mckiernan-Gonzales, “‘Galan Construction demolishes Kelly Air Force base’: soccer and the fluid geography of race in 20th Century Central Texas”

      • Sept. 6, 2019 | Adam Clark, Web and Media Accessibility Workshop
      • Sept. 20, 2019 | Sarah Coleman, TBA
      • Oct. 4, 2019 | Shannon Duffy, TBA
      • Nov. 15, 2019 | Anadelia Romo, "Touring Black Religion: Candomblé and the Tourist in Salvador, Bahia, 1940-60”

      • Feb. 15, 2019 | Carrie Ritter, “Patrons of Postcolonial Culture”
      • Feb. 22, 2019 | Peter Dedek, “Authenticating Authenticity: Historic Preservation’s Shaky Foundation”
      • Mar. 29, 2019 | Peter Siegenthaler, “Nationalism’s Footprints in the Kiso Valley: Shimazaki Tôson, Training Hikes, and Local Entrepreneurship”
      • Apr. 12, 2019 | Geneva Gano, “Access to Experience: The Allure of the Taos Mystique”
      • Apr. 19, 2019 | Jose Carlos de la Puente, “Khipus as Legal Archives: Tribute, Justice and Strategic Translation in Early Colonial Peru”
      • May 3, 2019 | Sara Damiano, "To Her Credit: Women, Financial Practices, and the Law in Eighteenth-Century North American Cities”

      • Sept. 14, 2018 | Louie Valencia, “Inventing Dictatorship: Recent Historiographic Trends in the History of Science and Technology and the Study of European Authoritarianism”
      • Sept. 21, 2018 | Sara Damiano, “‘And Theron She Sues’: Debt Litigation, Lawyers, and Legal Practices”
      • Sept. 28, 2018 | Jessica Pliley, “Sex Trafficking in the Motor City: The Construction of an International Infrastructure in Detroit, 1924-1944”
      • Oct. 5, 2018 | Hathi Trust Presentation, Alkek Library (Margaret Vaverek)
      • Oct. 12, 2018 | Carrie Ritter, “Patrons of Postcolonial Culture”
      • Oct. 19, 2018 | EndNote 9 Workshop (Jessica McClean)
      • Nov. 2, 2018 | Allison Robinson, “Rosies ‘On the Inside’: War Work and Citizenship at the State Industrial Farm for Women in Virginia”
      • Nov. 16, 2018 | Jeff Helgeson, “Building an Archive of Bewilderment: Confronting the History of Fragmented Urban America.”
      • Dec. 7, 2018 | Alkek Presentation: “Where to Publish: Navigating the Scholarly Jungle” (Margaret Vaverek and Stephanie Towery)

      • Sept. 15, 2017 | Peter Siegenthaler, “Depopulation, Sustainability, and Gender in Japan’s Rural Townscapes”
      • Nov. 10, 2017 | Joshua Paddison, “Dangerous Celibacy: The Fountaingrove Sex Scandal of 1891-1892”
      • Nov. 17, 2017 | Jose Carlos de la Puente, “How Andean Khipu Recorded Time”
      • Dec. 1, 2017 | Sara Damiano, Topic TBA
      • Dec. 8, 2017 | Gokser Gokcay, “The Onset of US Foreign Aid in Turkey”
      • Dec. 15, 2017 | Carrie Ritter, “From Culture to Aid to Paid: The British Council, Development, and the English-Language Industry”

      • Feb. 10, 2017 | Jessica Pliley, “Sexual Surveillance and Moral Border Control”
      • Mar. 3, 2017 | Elizabeth Bishop, “Lena’s Sardines: Ecocriticism and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s Hunters on a Narrow Street”
      • Mar. 10, 2017 | Jose Carlos de la Puente, “The Interpreter Admonishes the Viceroy: Translating Indigenous Interests at the Peruvian Viceregal Court”
      • Apr. 7, 2017 | Peter Siegenthaler, “Frost-covered Trees and a Proletarian Future: Images of the Cultural Nation in Postwar Japan”
      • Apr. 28, 2017 | Paul Chevedden, “The Early Crusades Schematized: From Text to Image”

      • Sept. 16, 2016 | Elizabeth Bishop, Book Proposal
      • Sept. 23, 2016 | Jose Carlos de la Puente, Mendel Fellowship Proposal [Mendel Fellowship, Lilly Library at Indiana University, Granted 2016]
      • Oct. 14, 2016 | Caroline Ritter, Book Proposal, Title TBA
      • Oct. 21, 2016 | Elizabeth Bishop, “The Cold Stone Kiss: ‘Délice Paloma,’ and Governance in Algeria Under Globalization”
      • Nov. 4, 2016 | Shannon Duffy, “Women of Revolutionary Philadelphia”
      • Dec. 9, 2016 | Angela Murphy, “Jermain Loguen and the Politics of Race: 1840-1872”

      • Feb. 12, 2016 | Jessica Pliley, “From White Slavery to Anti-Prostitution, The Long View: Law, Policy and Sex Trafficking”
      • Feb. 26, 2016 | Peter Siegenthaler, Historic Environments, People’s Power, and the Struggle for Local Autonomy in Postwar Japan, Introduction
      • Apr. 8, 2016 | Ellen Tillman, “War and Society in Latin America”
      • Apr. 15, 2016 | Margaret Menninger, A Serious Matter and True Joy: Philanthropy, the Arts, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Leipzig
      • Apr. 22, 2016 | Jose Carlos de la Puente, Introduction, Andean Cosmopolitans: The Worlds of Indigenous Travelers to the Habsburg Royal Court

      • Aug. 28, 2015 | José Carlos de la Puente, “At His Majesty’s Expense: Indigenous Visitors and Imperial Quandaries at the Habsburg Royal Court”
      • Sept. 25, 2015 | John McKiernan-Gonzales, “Before the Doctor’s Wave: Latin American Migrant Doctors, Race and Contingent Belonging in the United States, 1900-1965”
      • Oct. 9, 2015 | Elizabeth Bishop, “When Ali Met Galya; Arabs at the 1957 Festival of Youth and Students”
      • Oct. 23, 2015 | Angela Murphy, “Agitation after Abolition”
      • Nov. 6, 2015 | Shannon Duffy, “Men of ‘High Spirit’: A Loyalist Looks Back at New England’s Indian History”
      • Nov. 20, 2015 | Jessica Pliley, “The Long History of Sex Trafficking: Preliminary Notes”

      • Feb. 13, 2015 | Ana Romo: “Para os Brasileiros Ver: The Original Insider Tourist Guides in Bahia, Brazil, 1945-1951”
      • Feb. 27, 2015 | Nancy Berlage: “‘The Beauty of the House is in Order’: Science, Aesthetics and Home Improvement”
      • March 13, 2015 | Peter Siegenthaler, To Save the Past, Build the Future: Generating a Preservation Consciousness in Postwar Japan (book chapter)
      • March 27, 2015 | Jose Carlos de la Puente, “Who Speaks for the Indians: Lima and the Making of a New Urban Elite” [revised]
      • April 10, 2015 | Angie Murphy: “‘This Foul Slavery-Reviving System’: Irish Opposition to the Jamaica Emigration Scheme, 1840-1842

      • Sept. 26, 2014 | Elizabeth Bishop, “‘Dogs of Wall Street, Leave Us Alone;’ Graffiti in Cold War Baghdad, 1953”
      • Oct. 10, 2014 | Jose Carlos de la Puente,  “Who Speaks for the Indians: Lima and the Making of a New Urban Elite”
      • Oct. 17, 2014 | Angie Murphy, “Foreign Influence, Political Corruption, and the Abolitionist Threat: The Louisiana Native American Association and Rise of Political Nativism in the Early Republic”
      • Nov. 21, 2014 | John Mckiernan-González, soy ilegal y tengo derechos: gender, women, radio, and the making of national matters in Texas
      • Dec. 5, 2014 | Shannon Duffy, “The Twin Occupations of Revolutionary Philadelphia.” Book Proposal for Routledge Critical Moments in American History Series

      • April 30, 2014 | Peter Siegenthaler, “Strategies for Community Survival in Postwar Japan: Studies of Local Cities and Towns and the Processes of Townmaking,” History Workshop journal
      • February 21, 2014 | Shannon Duffy, “An Earlier Affair of the Petticoat: A Diplomatic Scandal in the Barbary”
      • February 7, 2014 | Nancy Berlage, “‘The Most Important Crop of All’: Health, Gender, and the Farm Bureau, 1910-1935”
      • January 24, 2014 | Elizabeth Bishop, “Petroleum, Labor, and Legislative Politics in Hashemite Iraq”
      • January 17, 2014 | José Carlos de la Puente, “That Which Belongs to All: Khipus, Communal Infrastructures, and Indigenous Legal Activism in the Colonial Andes,” The Americas
      • January 10, 2014 | Shannon Duffy, “Homosexuality” and “Tar and Feathering,” articles for World of the American Revolution, ed. Merril D. Smith

      • December 13, 2013 | Jessica Pliley, “Coerced Sex and Forced Prostitution,”
      • December 6, 2013 | Elizabeth Bishop, “’Dirty, Airless, and Vermin-Infested,’ Hashemite Iraq’s Penal System Between Egypt and the United States,”