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Not Even Past

2019 History PhDs on Not Even Past

This month on Not Even Past we are celebrating the accomplishments of seventeen students who completed their doctoral dissertations and received their PhDs in History in 2018-2019. Above you see some of them pictured. Below you will find each of their names and the title of their dissertations.

Many of these students were also contributors to Not Even Past throughout their time here, developing their skills as public historians alongside their training as a academics. Here we offer a comprehensive index to all our new PhDs’ publications on Not Even Past.  Congratulations to all!

Ahmad Tawfek Agbaria
Dissertation: The Return of the Turath: Arab Rationalist Association 1959-2000

Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture by Ziad Fahmy (2011)

Israeli tanks advancing on the Golan Heights. June 1967 (via Wikipedia)

Christopher Babits
Dissertation: To Cure a Sinful Nation: Conversion Therapy in the United States

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Dir: Desiree Akhavan, 2018)

Digital Teaching: A Mid-Semester Timeline

The Blemished Archive: How Documents Get Saved

Age of Fracture by Daniel T. Rodgers (2011)

Nature Boy, 30 for 30 (Dir: Rory Karpf, 2017)

Doing History in the Modern U.S. Survey: Teaching with and Analyzing Academic Articles

Finding Hitler (in All the Wrong Places?)

The Rise of Liberal Religion by Matthew Hedstrom (2013)

Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self by Jessica Grogan (2012)

Another Perspective on the Texas Textbook Controversy

Religious Book Week Poster from 1925 (via Library of Congress)

Bradley Joseph Dixon
Dissertation: Republic of Indians: Law, Politics, and Empire in the North American Southeast, 1539-1830

Facing North from Inca Country: Entanglement, Hybridity, and Rewriting Atlantic History

Map of Virginia, discovered and as described by Captain John Smith, 1606; engraved by William Hole (Via Wikimedia commons)

Luritta DuBois
Dissertation: United in Our Diversity: The Reproductive Healthcare Movement, 1960-2000

Historical Perspectives on Marshall (dir. Reginal Hudlin, 2017)

UT Gender Symposium: Women’s Bodies and Political Agendas

Thurgood Marshall in 1957 (Library of Congress)

Dennis Fisher
Dissertation: To Not Sell One Perch: Algonquin Politics and Culture at Kitigan Zibi During the Twentieth Century

The Many Histories of South Austin: The Old Sneed Mansion

A 1936 photograph of the Sneed House taken by the Historic American Buildings Survey (via Library of Congress)

Kristie Flannery
Dissertation: The Impossible Colony: Piracy, the Philippines, and Spain’s Asian Empire

A New History Journal Produced by Students

#changethedate: Australia’s Holiday Controversy

Acapulco-Manila: The Galleon, Asia and Latin America, 1565-1815

Notes from The Field: The Pope in Manila

Outlaws of the Atlantic by Marcus Rediker (2014)

Among the Powers of the Earth: the American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire by Eliga Gould

Sixteen Months in a Leaky Boat

The Sapphires (2012)

2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse by Matthew Restall and Amara Solari (2011)

Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America edited by Andrew B. Fisher and Matthew D. O’Hara (2009)

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2001)

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (1999)

detail of an 18c map depicting a pirate ship sailing near the Philippines.

Pedro Murillo Velarde and Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay. Mapa de las yslas Philipinas (1744) (Detail: Benson Latin America Collection, UT Austin)


Travis Michael Gray
Dissertation: Amid the Ruins: The Reconstruction of Smolensk Oblast, 1943-1953

Every Day Stalinism, by Sheila Fitzpatrick (2000)

Stalin’s Genocides by Norman Naimark (2011)

Soviets fighting during World War II (via wiki commons)

William Kramer
Dissertation: Faith, Heresy and Rebellion: Resisting the Henrician Reformation in Ireland, 1530-1540

Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Edward VI (via Art Institute of Chicago)

John Lisle
Dissertation: Science and Espionage: How the State Department and the CIA Deployed American Scientists during the Cold War

What Killed Albert Einstein

This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William Burrows (1998)

Soviet postage stamp celebrating the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Sputnik satellite

James Martin
Dissertation: In Search of the Nixon Doctrine on Latin America: Levers of Influence and Resistance in Hemispheric Relations

Vice President Richard Nixon’s motorcade drives through Caracas, Venezuela and is attacked by demonstrators, May 1958 (National Archives via Wikipedia)

Kazushi Minami
Dissertation: Rebuilding the Special Relationship: People’s Diplomacy and U.S.-Chinese Relations in the Cold War

Peeping Through the Bamboo Curtain: Archives in the People’s Republic of China

Cold War Crucible: The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World by Hajimu Masuda (2015)

Past and Present in Modern China

Historical Perspectives on Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises (2013)

shot from animated film of a boy looking up at airplane in the sky

from Hayao Miyazaki’s film The Wind Rises

Elizabeth O’Brien
Dissertation: Intimate Interventions: The Cultural Politics of Reproductive Surgery in Mexico, 1790-1940

Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in The Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973 by Heidi Tinsman.

Gendered Compromises: Political Culture and the State in Chile, 1920-1950 by Karin Rosemblatt

The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil by Thomas D. Rogers (2010)

“Women Advance with the Flag of the Motherland” La Unidad Popular poster (1970).

Nakia Parker
Dissertation: Trails of Tears and Freedom: Black Life in Indian Slave Country,1830-1866

Popular Culture in the Classroom

The First Texans: An Exhibit in Jester Hall

Confederados: The Texans of Brazil

Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South by Barbara Krauthamer (2013)

Chickasaw Freedmen filing for allotment in Oklahoma (Oklahoma Historical Society)

Christopher Rose
Dissertation: On the Home Front: Food, Medicine, and Disease in WWI Egypt

You’re Teaching WHAT?

Wrong About Everything

Mapping & Microbes: The New Archive (No. 22)

Searching for Armenian Children in Turkey: Work Series on Migration, Exile, and Displacement

Industrial Sexuality: Gender in a Small Town in Egypt

Texas is Adopting New History Textbooks: Maybe They Should Be Historically Accurate

Exploring the Silk Road

The Ottoman Age of Exploration by Giancarlo Casale (2010)

What’s Missing from ‘Argo’ (2012)

Chris is also the co-founder and main force behind our podcast, 15 Minute History, where he has done many of our interviews.

Map showing typhus outbreaks in Egypt, September 1, 1914 – May 31, 1919 (created by Chris Rose)


Edward Flavian Shore
Dissertation: Avenger of Zumbi: The Nature of Fugitive Slave Communities and Their Descendants in Brazil

 

History and Advocacy: Brazil and Turmoil

Sanctuary Austin: 1980s and Today

Beyonce as Historian: Black Power at the DPLA

Remembering Willie “El Diablo” Wells and Baseball’s Negro League

The Public Historian: Giving it Back

The Quilombo Activist’s Archives and Post-Custodial Preservation, Part II

The Quilombo Activist’s Archives and Post-Custodial Preservation, Part I

An Anticipated Tragedy: Reflections on Brazil’s National Museum

The Public Historian: Quilombola Seeds

Getz/Gilverto Fifty Years Later: A Retrospective

Por Ahora: The Legacy of Hugo Chávez Frías

The Cuban Connection by Eduardo Saénz Rovner (2008)

Che: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson

Narco-Modernities

Photo from Edward Shore’s Collection

Eyal Weinberg
Dissertation: Tending to the Body Politic: Doctors, Military Repression, and Transitional Justice in Brazil (1961-1988)

Our History Mixtape: Embracing Music in the Classroom

Ex Cathedra: Stories by Machado de Assis: Bilingual edition (2014)

For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in Sao Paulo, 1920-1964 by Barbara Weinstein (1996)

The Works Progress Administration’s music project employed musicians as instrumentalists, singers, concert performers, and music teachers during the Great Depression (via Library of Congress)

Zhaojin Zeng
Dissertation: Nourishing Shanxi: Indigenous Entrepreneurship, Regional Industry, and the Transformation of a Chinese Hinterland Economy, 1907-2004

 

Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State by Yansheng Huang (2008) 

Cantonese bazaar during Chinese New Year at the Grant Avenue, San Francisco, circa 1914 (via Wikipedia)

Pictured in photo: Dr. John Lisle, Prof Daina Berry, Dr. William Kramer, Dr. Nakia Parker, Prof. Ann Twinam, Dr. Christopher Rose, Dr. Elizabeth O’Brien, Dr. Eyal Weinberg.

Film Review – The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Dir: Desiree Akhavan, 2018)

by Chris Babits

The culture wars have roared back to life in recent years, with the practice of “conversion therapy” taking center stage. Fourteen states have banned gender identity therapies and sexual orientation change efforts on minors. At this critical moment comes Desiree Akhavan’s “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” a film based on the young adult novel by Emily M. Danforth.

Set in 1993, the film follows Cameron Post (Chloë Grace Moretz), an orphaned teenager who has just finished tenth grade. Cameron is in a closeted relationship with another girl, Coley (Quinn Shephard). When the two attend the school’s homecoming dance with boys, Cameron and Coley get bored of dancing and sneak off to a car to smoke pot. The two begin having sex, only to get caught red-handed by Cameron’s date. After learning of this incident, Cameron’s aunt, who is also her guardian, (Kerry Butler) forces Cameron to attend God’s Promise, a conversion therapy camp in Montana.

At God’s Promise, Cameron is immersed in the socially conservative world of the ex-gay movement. From the beginning, she learns that she’ll have to earn a range of “privileges” that most teenagers take for granted. When she’s introduced to her bunkmate, Erin (Emily Skeggs), for example, Cameron is informed that she won’t be able to decorate her side of the room until she has made progress in therapy. (Erin, who has earned decorating privileges, decided to plaster the walls with odes to her favorite football team, the Minnesota Vikings.) God’s Promise believes that access to the outside world needs to be controlled if their young “disciples” are to experience meaningful change. Cameron sees this in action right away when Reverend Rick (John Gallagher, Jr.), one of the counselors, finds a cassette tape in her luggage. Reverend Rick jokes that the Lord probably doesn’t approve of The Breeders, an alternative rock band, and hands the cassette to Cameron’s embarrassed aunt.

Reverend Rick and his sister, Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle), run God’s Promise. They are, in some ways, the “good cop” and “bad cop” of therapy. Almost immediately, Rick comes off as kind and caring. It probably helps that Rick can relate to what the disciples are going through. When he was younger, he experienced unwanted same-sex attractions (or SSA, for short). His sister, we are told, helped Rick overcome his attractions to other men. Rick is also upfront about how he was saved by God — he was at a gay bar one night when, out of nowhere, two members of his church appeared before him. The men told Rick that they had seen his car out front and they wanted to prevent him from committing sin. Sure, they were there to save Rick, some of the campers joke later.

The young cast carries “The Miseducation of Cameron Post.” Moretz plays a subdued Cameron, someone who, as Rolling Stones’ Peter Travers put it, can “feel more like a visitor to her own story” than an integral part of it. This effect, however, underscores what Cameron is: an observer to the queer world of ex-gay ministries. There are moments when Cameron is herself. But, she’s punished for these. Overall, Moretz captures the quiet torture of a teen who’s told she can’t be who she wants to be.

Two other actors play their characters exceptionally well. Sasha Lane is lively as the stubborn and wayward Jane Fonda. Forrest Goodluck, on the other hand, is particularly stellar as Adam Red Eagle. Adam is reticent at first, unsure if he can trust Cameron. Once he starts talking, though, he comes alive as a sarcastic and witty teenager. As two-spirit, he explains how he is a third gender, someone who claims to be neither male nor female, a position revered in American Indian history and custom. Adam also has long hair, which gets him in trouble with Dr. Marsh. It’s hard not to see God’s Promise as a modern “civilizing” boarding school for Adam, especially in one scene near the movie’s end.

In addition to these strong performances, Akhavan and her co-writer, Cecilia Frugiuele, offer a penetrating look at the complex world of Christian-based conversion therapy. The two writers highlight how conversion therapists have seen same-sex attractions as a manifestation of a much deeper problem — that of a deficient gender identity.

In their counseling sessions, Reverend Rick and Dr. Marsh often ask disciples to explore what it means to be male or female. Cameron’s roommate, Erin, has internalized the counselors’ message about conforming to gender norms. She admits that her SSA emerged from being too interested in sports. In a revealing flashback, we are shown Erin and her father watching a Vikings game. They celebrate when, presumably, Rich Gannon throws a big touchdown pass. Erin and her father are decked out in Vikings gear; both have their faces painted. Erin’s interest in the Minnesota Vikings takes on a whole new meaning at this point in the film — it is one of the main reasons, we are told, that she’s sexually attracted to other women.

About halfway through the film, there’s another scene where Akhavan and Frugiuele carefully depict the intellectual — and religious — world of conversion therapy. Here, Cameron is lying on the grass with a group of campers and Dr. Marsh. After Cameron fails to answer a question, Helen (Melanie Ehrlich), a choirgirl disciple at God’s Promise, exclaims, “Is this a joke to you?” Helen wants Cameron to be honest about her experiences with gender identity and SSA. Erin chimes in, saying, “Tell us about that girl you knew from home.” Dr. Marsh gives an encouraging look to Cameron, at which point she describes how perfect Coley was. After Cameron finishes, Dr. Marsh explains, “It’s said that cannibals only eat the enemies they admire as a way to take inside their best qualities.” Processing what had just been said, Cameron asks, “I wanted to be like her, and I confused that with being with her?” “Correct,” Marsh replies, nodding her head.

The cannibal analogy was a popular one with ex-gay conversion counselors. Leanne Payne, for example, used it in Crisis in Masculinity (1985):

When a man tells me he is experiencing strong desires for another man, I immediately ask him: “What specifically do you admire in this person? Right off the top of your head, what would those things be?” Invariably, in such cases . . . what they admire in the other man will be their own unaffirmed characteristics, those from which they are separated, can in no way see, and therefore cannot accept as part of their own being. These attributes they have projected onto another person . . . Cannibals eat only those they admire, and they eat them to get their traits.

“The Miseducation of Cameron Post” strikes a difficult balance. It is a damning critique of conversion therapy and, at the same time, an arresting, detailed portrayal of ex-gay ministries. The film is affecting, but not overly sentimental. Most importantly, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” accurately represents some conversion therapy techniques and should get people talking about this key part of the culture wars.

Conversion therapy isn’t a relic of the past. In a recent study, UCLA’s Williams Institute estimated that 20,000 U.S. LGBT youth currently between the ages of 13 to 17 will receive conversion therapy from a licensed health care professional before they turn 18. In addition, “approximately 57,000 [more] will undergo the treatment from a religious or spiritual advisor.”

Go see “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” if you want to better understand what these nearly 80,000 teenagers might see, hear, and experience.

More from Chris Babits:

“The Blemished Archive: How Documents Get Saved.”

“Nature Boy: 30 for 30”

“Finding Hitler in all the Wrong Places”

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