Professor William G. Thomas, III hosted the Phi Alpha Theta History Honors Society Initiation dinner last week. The nationwide fraternity of historians enjoys a strong tradition at UNL and the history department was pleased and proud to welcome its newest members. Professor Kenneth Winkle is the faculty superwisor of the UNL chapter that gives a lot of leadership opportunities for history majors.

2012-13 Initiates are:

Margaret Abbott, Alexandra Adams, Ashlee Anderson, Michelle Clark, Chance Counts, Krissa Delka, Nicole Drinkwalter, Bryan Lasley, Anna Leas, Alexander Mallory, Felicia Nehl, Robb Nelson, Mark Pelini, Robert Perry, Monica Pettit, Janelle Ruzicka, Adam Smith, Kent D. Stejskal, and Meredith Underwood.

The Office of Graduate Studies presented a dozen awards for outstanding graduate education at the Graduate Studies Awards Reception on February 13.?Department of History alumna Kaci Nash won a Lowe R. and Mavis M. Folsom Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award for the thesis “On Our Way to the Sunny South, Land of Chivalry: Northern Imperial Attitudes in the  Civil War South.” Kaci successfully defended in Spring 2012. An Omaha native, Nash studied for her Master’s degree in History under Professor William G. Thomas.

Congratulations Kaci Nash and Professor Thomas!

The most recent issue of Perspectives on History, a newsmagazine of the American Historical Association has published an article by Dr. Patrick Jones, Professor William Thomas, and Andrew Witmer on the UNL Department of History experience with the History Harvest. Now in its third year, the project engages gradauate and (mainly) undergraduate students to collect and digitize community history. After organizing and holding a History Harvest event, students get together to make the digitized artefacts and oral histories available online at the History Harvest website. The project has now received nation-wide recognition and there are hopes that other communities will take up this Nebraska initiative.

Professor William G. Thomas, III, Chair, Department of History, and John and Catherine Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History, will speak THIS WEDNESDAY at 3:30 PM as part of the Paul A. Olson Seminar in Great Plains Studies. The event will take place at Great Plains Art Museum at 1155 Q Street,  and will be free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies.

Department Chair Will Thomas has been named to the Chancellor's Innovation Campus Advisory Committee. He is one a select group of faculty members invited to participate in its shaping. Get the full story and an audio clip from NET.

On September 28th at the National Endowment for the Humanities, the recipients of the 2010 NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants will give the public a sneak preview of 46 ground-breaking projects that apply cutting-edge technology to high quality research in the humanities.

UNL Assistant Professor of History Douglas Seefeldt is presenting the Start-Up Grant-funded project "Sustaining Digital History" that he and Professor and department chair William Thomas co-direct. For more information on this important effort to chart the course for scholarly communication in the digital era, follow this link to the project's blog: http://digitalhistory.wordpress.com/

Begun in 2007, NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants support pioneering projects that use technology to advance the humanities. These small grants are designed to spur innovation, test new ideas, and act as a catalyst for further development in the field.  Some projects focus on specific topics in the humanities. Others explore new technology-based methods for research, scholarly publications, collaboration, or public programming.

On September 28th, Start-Up grant recipients from around the country will assemble at NEH headquarters in Washington D.C. to present their projects in “lightning-round” format.  Project directors will have just two minutes and three PowerPoint slides to introduce and explain their projects to the public.

“This meeting will highlight some of the most exciting digital humanities research coming out of American universities, libraries, and museums,” says Brett Bobley, Director of NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities. “The projects represent an incredible array of technologies and the two-minute format makes for a fast-paced – and sometimes mind-blowing – afternoon.”

Drs. Douglas Seefeldt and William Thomas are among the recipients of a 2010 NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant. They will be hosting a meeting for "Sustaining Digital History," this Friday, October 1st.

For information, please follow this link to the History Department's Events Page at http://events.unl.edu/history/upcoming/

A link to the NEH press release for the project directors meeting that includes the agenda and the lightning round presentation schedule: http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20100916.html