UR History Newsletter: April 2023


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News From the University of Rochester Department of History

Meliora Weekend

October 5-8, 2023

The weekend of October 5th through the 8th the University of Rochester community will celebrate Meliora Weekend. Join History Department faculty, students and alumni on October 6th from 3:30pm-5:30pm in Rush Rhees Library for the History Department open house. At 4pm join Professor Michael Jarvis in Morey Hall to learn about the University's ongoing archaeological research into the dawn of English colonization in Virginia (1607) and Bermuda (1609), including Jarvis's NEH-funded search for the latter's Lost Capital (1612).

Read more here

Professor Tanya Bakhmetyeva Wins NEH Grant

Examining the History of Soviet Glaciological Observations

Congratulations to Tanya Bakhmetyeva, a professor of instruction in the Department of History and associate academic director of the University’s Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, who has received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for an international collaborative project on the cultural history of the Fedchenko Glacier. One of the world’s longest nonpolar glaciers, the Fedchenko is located in the Pamir mountain range of Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia.

Bakhmetyeva, a member of the multidisciplinary team of scientists and humanists in the Pamir Project, which includes Rochester historian Stewart Weaver, will use the funding to plan and conduct a series of workshops that examine the glacier’s history.

Go deeper at the project’s website.

(Photo: Husband-and-wife team: Tanya Bakhmetyeva and her collaborator Stewart Weaver at the Aletsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps this past summer, a site of early glaciological research, which is connected to their work)

UR Travel Club Presents Antarctica Discovery

In January 2024, Professors Stewart Weaver and Tanya Bakhmetyeva will be the faculty hosts on a UR Travel Club trip to Antarctica. This once-in-a-lifetime voyage will embark from Ushuaia, Argentina, and cruise through the fabled Beagle Channel and Drake Passage to the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, where UR alumni will have the opportunity to observe first-hand the effects of climate change on this vulnerable and yet still spectacularly beautiful ice-bound region. Professor Weaver, who is currently completing a book on magnetic science and early-nineteenth century exploration, will lead classes on the environmental history of the Antarctic and the history of Antarctic exploration. Click here for more information on this trip.

Read more here

Question of the Month

Last month's question was:

Where did you travel as a UR history student? What did you do while you were there?

Here's what you said:

Marcia Esteves Agostinho (PhD candidate, MA ‘19):Tampere, Finland - History of Experience Conference.

Ray Fantone (BA '83): The summer of 1980 I worked on the Norwegian tall ship Sorlandet for a month. We motored from Kristiansand Norway to Kiel Germany and raced other tall ships to Karlskrona Sweden.

Melinda Lyons (BA '79): Just after graduation, I traveled to Europe. I particularly enjoyed visiting a small chapel that had been a church during the Byzantine period in Constantinople. It had frescoes all over the walls (one of the few of that period that was preserved).

News from History Alumni

John M. Barry (MA, '69) is one of the authors of Lessons From the Covid War (Public Affairs Press), a cooperative enterprise of 34 subject matter experts-- from public policy to the pharmaceutical industry to virologists who have done research in China. In addition to their own expertise they interviewed more than 300 people directly involved in the response in many states, in industry, and in both theTrump and Biden administrations. The book analyzes which failures and successes were systemic and which depended upon individual judgments. It also makes recommendations to improve preparedness for the next pandemic ranging from governance to manufacturing to international surveillance.

Ray Fantone (BA, '83), In April of 2023, Ray Fantone was appointed to the position of Director of Information Technology at Richland School District Two in Columbia South Carolina. As Director he will manage all business systems for the school district as well as lead software implementations. Richland Two provides K-12 educational services for over 28,000 students and has 2,500 employees in northeast Richland County.

Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild (MA ’64, PhD. ’76), Executive Producer of the film LEFT ON PEARL, screened the film, a documentary about the 1971 women’s takeover of a Harvard building, the surprise ending of Boston’s International Women’s Day march, at Rochester’s Little Theater, on March 8, 2023. The event, including a panel discussion, was sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony Center and organized by its Director, Catherine Cerulli, and Jenna Hiller from the University Alumni Office. Rochelle had not been back to Rochester since 1999 and enjoyed her tour of the Library and History Department, guided by Jacqui Rizzo.

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University of Rochester Department of History

362B Rush Rhees Library, PO Box 270070

Rochester, NY 14627 United States

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