University of South Alabama Department of History News

Department Newsletter Fall 2024

Newsletter Archives

June 2025: David Mathews Center Jean O'Connor Snyder Internship Program 

For the fifth year running, the Department of History, along with the McCall Library and Archives, holds a Jean O'Connor Snyder Internship Grant from the David Mathews Center based in Montevallo, AL, meant to encourage cvivic enagegement and community outreach in the communities students live in. Our grant is focused on collecting and disseminating oral histories from Mobile's Down the Bay neighborhood, a once vibrant African American community largelty destroyed by urban renewal and the constuction of the Interstate 10 highway. In June, directors of the David Mathews Center visited us in Mobile to discuss the project. 

IN the foreground, Chauntina Whittle (David Mathews Center McKenzie Fellow), Ayana Thompson (University of South Alabama intern), Dr. David Messenger, Eric Ware (University of South Alabama intern), Dr. Ryan Morini (McCall Library, Univerity of South Alabama ), Chris Gibson (United Mobile and David Mathews Center board member), Scotty Kirkland (David Mathews Center Executive Director), Mike Bunn (Direcotr of Historic Blakeley State Park), Lauren Lockhart (David Mathews Center Education Manager) 

Spring 2025 HY 290 Students in Dr. Deidra Dees Class " Introduction to Native American Studies" write an article in The Vanguard https://jagmedia.org/the-vanguard/

McKiven publishes new book 

Congratlations to Dr. Henry (Mel) McKiven, who published his second book, The Consequences of Confederate Citizenship: The Civil War Correspondence of Alabama's Pickens Family with LSU Press. The book is a collection of letters between family members in the Army of Northern Virginia and those in Greene County Alabama, with introductions and commentary by Dr. McKiven throughout. Dr. McKiven was recognized for this achievement by being promoted to full professor, effective August 2025! 

History Department well represented at South Alabama Regional History Day

In February 2025, the Mobile County Public School System (MCPSS) hosted the South Alabama Regional History Day with over 300 participants competing to take their project to the state competition in Montgomery and, ultimately, to Washington, DC for the national competition. History Day is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and in Alabama, by the Alabama Humanities Alliance. Drs. David Messenger, Michele Strong and Rebecca Williams all served as judges, as did adjunct faculty member Bill Barton and graduate students Jon Gutknecht and Liam Jones. Below is a photo of Drs. Williams and Messenger with Tyler Macon of Davidson High School, who won in the senior category for individual documentary film, and went on to win the state-wide award as well!  

Urban Wins Another Grant

June 2024 Dr. Kelly Urban has been awarded a Faculty Development Council Grant of $5000 from the  University of South Alabama's Office of Research and Economic Development. She will use this grant to work on researching her second books on tropical medicine in Cuba from 1930 to the present. This is her seventh grant from the University for her research, and her second from the Faculty Council. 

Congratulations, Dr. Urban!

Miller publishes second novel

June 2024. Dr. Harry Miller has published his second novel, Meet Me at the RASCAL, with Asterism Press. It is an over-the-top reworking of a seventeenth-century Chinese account of a despicable family, transplanted into contemporary and near-future Baltimore. Dr. Miller used both his expertise in Chinese history in finding and working with the original manuscript, as well as his creativity and enthusiam in writing the book set in his hometown of Baltimore, MD.! Congraulations, Dr. Miller! 

Urban Publishes First Book

March 2023 Congratulations to University of South Alabama Department of History assistant professor Dr. Kelly Urban, whose first book, Radical Prescription: Citizenship and the Politics of Tuberculosis in Twentieth-Century Cuba, has been published by the University of North Carolina Press. Click here for more information: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469673080/radical-prescription/

Meola Publishes First Book

March 2023 Congratulations to University of South Alabama Department of History associate professor Dr. David Meola, whose first book, We Will Never Yield: Jews, the German Press and the Fight for Inclusion in the 1840s, has been published by Indiana University Press. Click here for more information:  https://iupress.org/9780253065223/we-will-never-yield/

Cage Publishes New Book

September 2022 Congratulations to University of South Alabama Department of History professor Dr. Claire Cage, whose second book, The Science of Proof: Forensic Medicine in Modern France, has been published by Cambridge University Press.
Click here for more information: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/science-of-proof/769EFA62E2C8A00D2342299AB9BCA66A

Recent History Department Faculty Publications

• Claire Cage, The Science of Proof: Forensic Medicine in Modern France

• Mara Kozelsky, Crimea in War and Transformation

• Timothy Lombardo,  Blue Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia and Populist Politics

• Henry McKiven, The Consequences of Confederate Citizenship: The Civil War Correspondence of Alabama's Pickens Family 

• David Meola, We Will Never Yield: Jews, the German Press and the Fight for Inclusion in the 1840s

• David A. Messenger, War and Public Memory: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Europe

• Harry Miller,Meet Me at the RASCAL 

• Michele Strong, Education, Travel and the 'Civilisation' of the Victorian Working Classes

• Kelly Urban, Radical Prescription: Citizenship and the Politics of Tuberculosis in Twentieth-Century Cuba

• Rebecca Williams, Muhammad and the Supernatural