History
Faculty Projects
Contact UsHistory
Address:
404 Wayne Hall
West Chester, PA 19382
Phone: 610-436-2201
Fax: 610-436-3069
Carole Marciano
Departmental Secretary
Office: Wayne 404
Phone: 610-436-2201
Fax: 610-436-3069
CMarciano@wcupa.edu
Dr. Wayne Hanley
Departmental Chairperson
Office: Wayne 406
Phone: 610-436-2201
Fax: 610-436-3069
WHanley@wcupa.edu
Dr. Karin Gedge
Social Studies Coordinator
Office: Wayne 416
Phone: 610-436-2971
KGedge@wcupa.edu
Brenda Gaydosh
Acting Graduate Coordinator
Office: Wayne 421
Phone: 610-436-0734
BGaydosh@wcupa.edu
Jonathan Friedman
Director, Holocaust-Genocide Studies
Office: Main 409
Phone: 610-436-2972
JFriedman@wcupa.edu
Faculty Projects
Lisa Kirschenbaum
Dr. Kirschenbaum published her third book, International Communism and the Spanish Civil War, providing an intimate picture of international communism in the Stalin era. Exploring the transnational exchanges that occurred in Soviet-structured spaces – from clandestine schools for training international revolutionaries in Moscow to the International Brigades in Spain – the book uncovers complex webs of interaction, at once personal and political, that linked international communists to one another and the Soviet Union. The Spanish civil war, which coincided with the great purges in the Soviet Union, stands at the center of this grassroots history. For many international communists, the war came to define both their life histories and political commitments. In telling their individual stories, the book calls attention to a central paradox of Stalinism – the simultaneous celebration and suspicion of transnational interactions – and illuminates the appeal of a cause that promised solidarity even as it practiced terror.
Brenda Gaydosh
On July 12, 2015, in Yerevan, Armenia, Dr. Brenda Gaydosh presented a paper at the Twelfth Meeting of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. In her presentation, "Forgiveness or Forbearance: Rwanda, Twenty Years after the Genocide," Dr. Gaydosh discussed how the Rwandan people have been able to move their nation forward following the genocide of 1994. Through the use of traditional Gacaca courts, cooperatives, and community leadership, Rwandans have shown the world that forgiveness at all levels (true, step-by-step, motivated) is needed to reunite a nation following severe conflict.
Brent Ruswick
Dr. Ruswick published an article in The History Teacher about the semester-long project my HIS 150 students did in the Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 semesters. They teamed up to create databases and Google Maps that documented the people, subjects, and places referenced in their assigned textbook and a variety of K-12 texts, in order to evaluate just whose history it is that gets included in our American history classes. "What Does it Mean to be an American? Training History Students and Prospective Teachers to See the Assumptions in their Textbooks." The History Teacher 48, no. 4 (August, 2015), 667-692.
Jim Jones
Dr. Jim Jones became the first member of the department ever appointed to the West Chester Borough Historical & Architectural Review Board. The "HARB" reviews building plans and development projects for their consistency with the historic look of West Chester. Dr. Jones, who has written two books on West Chester history, was selected for his ability to explain the historical context of the Borough's different neighborhoods.
OHA Award Recipients
Professors Charles Hardy and Janneken Smucker were co-recipients, along with Doug Boyd from the University of Kentucky Libraries Nunn Center for Oral History of the 2015 Oral History Association Non-Print Format Award for outstanding use of oral history for their work on Goin' North: Stories from the First Great Migration to Philadelphia, a course they first co-taught in Fall 2014 and will reprise in Spring 2016.