Sascha Auerbach studies the cultural and legal history of race, gender, and nationalism in modern Britain and the British empire.  His first book, Race, Law and “The Chinese Puzzle” in Imperial Britain is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan Press (March, 2009).  Dr. Auerbach has published articles in the Journal of British Studies (“Negotiating Nationalism: Jewish Conscription and Russian Repatriation in London’s East End, 1916-1918,” JBS 46, 3, July 2007) and in Papers: Design and Critique (“Lacunae: Social Research in Victorian London,” P:D&C 12, December 2004).  He is currently writing his second book manuscript, “Armed with Sword and Scales”: Law, Identity, and the Culture of the Courtroom in Modern Britain.  Dr. Auerbach is also the Secretary/Treasurer of the Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies and the former assistant editor of the Journal of British Studies

Joseph W. Bendersky, a specialist in German history, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust, has authored numerous books and articles. His book, The "Jewish Threat": Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army (Basic Books, 2002), was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and has been translated into Japanese. Most of his work focuses on Carl Schmitt, the most controversial political and legal thinker in twentieth-century Germany. This scholarship includes Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich (Princeton, 1983), which has been translated into Italian and Japanese, and a translation and scholarly edition of Schmitt’s On the Three Types of Juristic Thought (Praeger, 2004). Dr. Bendersky has also authored A History of Nazi Germany (3rd expanded ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

His articles have appeared in American Jewish History, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitung, the Journal of Contemporary History, The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and Telos. Prof. Bendersky serves as Book Review Editor for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He is currently working on the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism among U.S. Army officers in the early 20th century, and on Carl Schmitt and the "Jewish Question." He is recipient of the College of Humanities and Sciences Distinguished Scholar Award and the Elske v. P. Smith Distinguished Lecturer Award, as well as grants and fellowships from NEH, Fulbright, ACLS, American Philosophical Society, and Holocaust Educational Foundation.

Leigh Ann Craig studies the history of medieval European religion, gender, and culture. Her present research focuses on the ways in which people from differing walks of life diagnosed and coped with mental illness, and specifically, the ways in which they diagnosed and treated insanity as opposed to demonic possession.  In the summer of 2009 she will be a seminar participant with the NEH Seminar “Disease in the Middle Ages” to be held at the Wellcome Library in London.

Dr. Craig’s first book, Wandering Women and Holy Matrons:  Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages (Brill, 2009) examined the participation of women in Christian pilgrimage, both to the shrines of miracle-working saints and to Jerusalem and Rome. She has also published two articles related to this research: "Stronger than Men and Braver than Knights: Women and the Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome in the Later Middle Ages" in the Journal of Medieval History, and "Royalty, Virtue, and Adversity: The Cult of King Henry VI of England" in Albion, both in the summer of 2003.   Dr. Craig is also one of the associate editors of the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Brill, 2009).

Curriculum Vitae

Andrew Crislip's research focuses on the history of Christianity in late antiquity, particularly focusing on monasticism and medicine in Egypt and Coptic papyrology - the edition and interpretation of texts preserved on papyrus, parchment, ostraca, and wood. His first book, From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism and the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity appeared in 2005 (University of Michigan Press), and explores the intersection between asceticism and healing in several late ancient monastic communities in Egypt and the ancient Mediterranean world. Professor Crislip has published widely in such journals as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Harvard Theological Review, and Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, and has received numerous awards and fellowships.

Some recent publications include "Lion and Human in Gospel of Thomas Logion 7," JBL 125 (2007): 595-613; '"I Have Chosen Sickness': The Controversial Function of Sickness in Christian Ascetic Practice," in Asceticism and its Critics, edited by Oliver Freilberger (New York: Oxford Universitiy Press, (2006), 179-209; "A Coptic Request for Materia Medica," ZPE 157 (2006): 165-167; and "The Sin of Sloth or the Illness of the Demons? The Demon of Acedia in Early Christian Monasticism," HTR 98 (2005): 143-169. His current research focuses on the Critical Edition of the Works of Shenoute of Atripe, the most important and prolific author in Coptic, the indigenous language of ancient Egypt, as well as on the cultural history of illness, healing, and the "cure of souls" in Christian monastic tradition.

Brian Daugherity's current research focuses on the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia. In addition to the history of school desegregation, he is also interested in the Civil Rights Movement more broadly, as well as southern race relations. He has given papers at numerous conferences in the last several years, including the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), Southern Historical Association (SHA), and the Oral History Association (OHA). He has received a number of grants to fund his research, from Duke University, the Virginia Historical Society, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and the College of William & Mary, among others. Brian recently co-edited a collection of 12 essays examining the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in various states around the nation, entitled “With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education” (University of Arkansas Press, 2008). In addition, he is currently co-producing a 60-minute documentary film on Green v. New Kent County U.S. Supreme Court decision (1968), in conjunction with PBS. Brian co-wrote an article on this historic but little-known case that was published in the summer/fall 2006 issue of the Oral History Review.

G. Antonio Espinoza studies the intersection of politics and society in the educational realm in Modern Latin America.  His doctoral dissertation is entitled Education and State-Formation in Peru: The Primary Schools of the Departamento of Lima, 1821 – c. 1920. This work, currently under revision for publication, analyzes the factors that drove the establishment of a primary-school system in Peru as part of the process of state-building; these factors included social demand, ideology, patronage, and nationalism. Dr. Espinoza has published several articles on intellectual and educational history in compilations and specialized journals. He is beginning to study the influence of US foreign policy and aid on peasant education in the Andes during the twentieth century.

Ibrahim Hamza's area of study is modern African history with particular reference to political and social developments since 19th century. He has undertaken research and publications on British colonial policies in Northern Nigeria, gender and the administration of justice in Africa and slavery and abolition in Muslim societies. He is currently teaching introductory African history classes and upper classes in history of slavery in Muslim socieites as well as the history of West Africa.

John Herman, Ph.D., earned his B.A. in History and East Asian Studies at the University of Oregon, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in History at the University of Washington. In 1986-87 Herman attended The Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies at Nanjing University; in 1991-92 he enrolled as a graduate student in the Department of History at National Taiwan University; twice he was awarded year-long research fellowships from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Endowment for the Humanities (1991-92 and 1998-99); and in 1997-98 he was named one of two An Wang Postdoctoral Fellows at The John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, Harvard University. He is currently an Associate Professor at VCU, the Director of VCU-China Relations, and a Visiting Scholar/Associate Member of the East Asia Center, University of Virginia.

Dr. Herman's research interests are in early modern and modern Chinese history, in particular the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1636-1912) dynasties, frontier history, transregional and transnational history, social-economic history, colonial discourse studies and ethnic studies. He has published a number of articles in English and Chinese, and his first book, Amid the Clouds and Mist: China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200-1700 (Cambridge Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2007), is currently being translated into Chinese for publication in China. His current research project is an examination of the Ming-Qing transition in Southwest China (ca. 1644-1750).

For more information on VCU's International Partnerships, please go to, http://www.international.vcu.edu/partnerships/

Norrece T. Jones is a specialist in African American history and African American Studies. Although his primary area of expertise is slavery and nineteenth century American history, he has always maintained a strong interest in African history. His book, Born a Child of Freedom, Yet a Slave: Mechanisms of Control and Strategies of Resistance in Antebellum South Carolina, was published in 1990 by Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England and he is under contract with Blackwell Publishers for Slavery and Antislavery: Race and Freedom Struggles in the Making of America, a forthcoming volume in its Problems in American History Series. He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the National Fellowships Fund. During the 1997-1998 academic year, he was Visting Scholar at the University of Houston in Texas.

Invited frequently to speak on African American history, he has appeared on Good Morning America, where he was interviewed by Charles Gibson, and was featured promintently in the four-part documentary, Africans in America, a production of WGBH in Boston that aired nationally on PBS in 1998. In addition to his interdisciplinary work with African American studies, he researches and lectures on the dynamics of social control. Dr. Jones has published in The Journal of Southern History, Southern Studies, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, and has contributed chapters to a number of monographs and anthologies.

John T. Kneebone is the author of Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920-1944. He was for many years the director of the Virginia Colonial Records Project at the Library of Virginia and a senior editor of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography project. His current research project has the working title, "Secret Nurseries of Opinion: The Anti-Catholic Underground and the Rise and Fall of the Second Ku Klux Klan," and he has been awarded a research fellowship to the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at Notre Dame University.

Sarah Hand Meacham studies colonial American history. Her specialty is women and gender in the colonial South. She is currently revising her manuscript Sex and Spirits: Making the Alcoholic Republic in the Early Chesapeake (working title) for publication. In this manuscript Meacham explores how ideas of science, technology, and the American Revolution coalesced in the Chesapeake to shift the production of alcoholic beverages from women’s cookery into men’s domain in the late eighteenth century. She has published articles on this topic in the Virginia Magazine of Biography and History, Early American Studies, and Colonial Chesapeake: New Perspectives. Her second project will focus on gender and the invention of the emotion of cheerfulness in the eighteenth-century South. She is researching why the formerly esteemed emotion of melancholy came to be devalued during the eighteenth century and why Americans began to instruct white women that they should always feel “cheerful.”

Curriculum Vitae

Bernard Moitt teaches courses and does innovative and path-breaking research on both sides of the Atlantic – Africa and the Americas – with emphasis on French West Africa (principally Senegal), and the French Antilles or Caribbean. He has gained a national and international reputation for his pioneering work on women and slavery – the primary focus of his research and numerous publications. His book, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635-1848 (Indiana, 2001) – the first comprehensive English-language study of the subject – has been enthusiastically received by the scholarly community, as well as by lay people, and is being used to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in institutions in Europe, North America and the Caribbean. His edited book, Sugar, Slavery and Society: Perspectives on the Caribbean, India, the Mascarenes and the United States (University Press of Florida, 2004) deals with the impact that sugarcane and slavery had on societies in various parts of the world. In addition to ongoing research on women and slavery in the French Antilles, Professor Moitt is engaged in a pioneering study of slavery and guardianship in urban Senegal during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since 1997, he has also directed a demonstrably successful and highly sought after history and culture study-abroad summer program to Barbados that attracts an ethnically diversified body of students from VCU and other universities in the United States.

George E. Munro studies Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century, particularly the reign of Catherine the Great. Most of his publications and continuing research have to do with the development of St. Petersburg and of commerce and finance. His book The Most Intentional City: St. Petersburg in the Reign of Catherine the Great (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) was published 2008 as was an article, “Catherine Discovers St. Petersburg,” in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. His translation and editing of volumes 39 (The Reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna: Academy of Sciences, Domestic Unrest, Foreign Affairs, 1741-1752) and 31 (Peter the Great. Triumph in the West and the Campaign to the Caspian) of S. M. Soloviev's History of Russia are completed and awaiting publication by Academic International Press. Work is now underway on volume 27. Dr. Munro is currently working on a study of commercial banking and finance in Catherine's reign and on a series of vignettes of daily life in eighteenth-century Russia. He serves regularly as a study leader on Smithsonian Journeys to Russia for the Smithsonian Institution's National Associates program (see Smithsonian website for details) and the National Geographic Society (see the National Georgraphic website for details).

John Powers studies the history of science and medicine in the 17th and 18th centuries, specifically the development of chemistry as a scientific field.  He is currently working on a book manuscript, titled:  Inventing Chemistry:  Herman Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts, which examines the transformation of chemistry from a melange of craft and alchemical practices into a university subject at the University of Leiden during the tenure of the Professor of Medicine, Herman Boerhaave (c. 1702-38).  

Karen Rader's research focuses on the history of science museums; specifically, the transition from static to dynamic (or 'interactive') modes of display and its relations to public understandings of science and technology in the period between 1930 and 1985. She has also done research on the history of 20th century life sciences; animals and science; the life sciences in US national laboratories; and women in science. She is the author of Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955 (2004, Princeton UP). For more information on the book see: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7787.html

Emilie E. Raymond studies America's postwar political culture, with an emphasis on neoconservatism, social movements, & women's history. She recently published From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston & American Politics through the University Press of Kentucky.

Ryan K. Smith specializes in American religious history and material culture. He is the author of Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2006. This book reveals the surprising artistic exchange that occurred amidst Protestant/Catholic hostilities in nineteenth-century America. Dr. Smith has also published articles and book chapters on church art, architecture, symbolism, and pilgrimage. He is currently writing an architectural biography set in the early American republic.

In addition, Dr. Smith has an interest in public history and has worked at institutions including the Library of Virginia, Colonial Williamsburg, the Winterthur Museum, and the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument.

Timothy N. Thurber studies civil rights and party politics in twentieth-century America. He is the author of The Politics of Equality: Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle, 1945-1978 (Columbia University Press, 1998). Recently, he published an essay on “Congress and the Second Reconstruction” in Julian Zelizer, ed., The Reader’s Companion to the American Congress (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). He has presented papers at several different conferences, and he has received research and travel grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Harry S. Truman Foundation, the John F. Kennedy Foundation, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, and the Nelson Rockefeller Institute, among others. For his current project, he is writing an overview of black civil rights and the Republican Party since 1945.

Ted Tunnell is a specialist in the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Prior to coming to VCU in 1985, Dr. Tunnell taught at Southwest Texas State University, Tulane University, and the University of Georgia. He is the author of Crucible of Reconstruction: War, Radicalism, and Race in Louisiana, 1862-1877 (LSU Press, 1984) and Edge of the Sword: The Ordeal of Carpetbagger Marshall H. Twitchell in the Civil War and Reconstruction (LSU Press, 2001). He edited Carpetbagger from Vermont: The Autobiography of Marshall Harvey Twitchell (LSU Press, 1989). His most recent work is Creating the Propaganda of History: Southern Editors and the Origins of Carpetbagger and Scalawag, which will appear in the November 2006 issue of the Journal of Southern History. Selections from Dr. Tunnell's books and articles have been reprinted numerous times in college readers. In the winter of 2004, Dr. Tunnell was one of several historian-narrators featured in a three-hour American Experience program entitled "Reconstruction: The Second Civil War." Dr. Tunnell is continuing to study the role of Southern editors in organizing white resistance to Radical Reconstruction.

Lynda Yankaskas earned her B.A. from Swarthmore College and her Ph.D. (2009) in American history from Brandeis University. She comes to VCU from Earlham College, where she taught courses in early American history and the history of gender. At VCU, she teaches the American history survey and upper-level courses on early American and history and memory. Her research focuses on early American social libraries, examining reading as a public activity, and the connections between print culture and national, local, and personal identity.