NIU Today

Forty-five years ago this year, NIU’s Department of History conferred its first doctoral degree. Professor Anne Hanley, director of graduate studies, has led an effort by the department to mark the special occasion. The department has invited its Ph.D. alumni to campus for events to commemorate the anniversary, including attending the Graduate School commencement ceremony at...

NIU history professor James D. Schmidt has received the 2011 Philip Taft Labor History Book Award for his latest book, “Industrial Violence and the Legal Origins of Child Labor.” Schmidt received the prestigious annual award from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. “This is really an honor,” Schmidt said. “This award means...

Amitabh Pal is managing editor of The Progressive. His talk on "Non-Violence and Islam" will elaborate on the recent people's movements resulting in regime change in Egypt and Tunisia and how those nonviolent protests fit into the historical context of this Islamic tradition.

NOTE: Abhijit Gupta’s interviews scheduled for this week have been canceled. New dates will be forthcoming. Bradley G. Bond and Abhijit Gupta each will hold a series of open forums and interviews the week of Jan. 31 as candidates for dean of the NIU Graduate School and associate vice president for graduate studies. Interviews for...

History graduate student Maria ‘Rai’ Hancock will explore NIU’s rich Peace Corps heritage during a public lecture from noon to 12:50 p.m. Friday in Room 110 of the Campus Life Building. The presentation, titled “Connecting Globally, Locally: NIU, Southeast Asia, and the Peace Corps,” honors the memory of the late R. Sargent Shriver, founder and first...

NIU professor and historian Nancy M. Wingfield, selected  for a Fulbright Fellowship by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, is spending this fall semester in Ukraine researching humankind’s oldest profession: prostitution. Wingfield is currently hosted by Chernivtsi National University in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, where she is completing research on a book-length manuscript on prostitution in...

An informational meeting about study abroad opportunities in Ireland is scheduled for 4 to 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, in Watson Hall 323. NIU undergraduate and graduate credit is available in communication and English; undergraduate credit is available in history. Students can study at Dublin City University and examine Ireland’s role in international culture via...

NIU history professor Brian Sandberg has a written a new book that explores warrior values and violence in French noble culture during the early modern era. Sandberg will deliver a talk on the book – titled “Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France” (Johns Hopkins University Press) –  at 2:30 p.m....

Historian Ramón Gutiérrez — an award-winning author and director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago — will visit Northern Illinois University later this month to deliver the seventh annual W. Bruce Lincoln Lecture. The lecture, titled “Thinking About Race in a Post-Racial America: From Plessy v. Ferguson...

NIU historian E. Taylor Atkins, who recently published a new book, titled “Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945,” will conduct a presentation, book-talk and book-signing Saturday, Oct. 16. Atkins is donating royalties from the book to the Tahirih Justice Center, a not-for-profit organization that arranges pro-bono legal, medical and social services for immigrant women in...

The work of professional historians isn’t all glitz, glamour and high drama, as fictional accounts such as “The Da Vinci Code” and “The Historian” would lead readers to believe. “It is interesting work, but it also can be painstakingly slow,” says Christine Worobec, who is among the world’s leading historians of tsarist Russia. Worobec has...