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Alumni Newsletter
If you wish to contribute personal information about yourself to this newsletter, click here to compose email on-line or attach a file. "Columbus
and the Wide World Web" It would be very difficult to over-exaggerate the historical significance of Columbus' first voyage of discovery to the New World. It could be argued, in fact, that the ultimate expression of the Columbian Legacy is the rapid exchange of information from one corner of the globe to another, something totally beyond the wildest imagination of the 15th century European. Columbus and his fellow travelers knew not where they were on the face of the Earth; in hopes of finding a way to circumvent the Moslem monopoly on the riches of the Far East, these Medieval adventurers sailed away from a world that still believed that Earth was the center of the Universe. This geocentric theory of the Universe left no room for compromise, since the scriptures revealed all truths--even those of Nature and of the Cosmos. The idea that humankind inhabited a third rate planet hurling itself at astronomical speeds through space around a fixed Sun was totally unacceptable. Now contrast this picture with that of today; even the image of the Universe that school children have is more accurate than that of the most learned scholars of the Ancient or Medieval Worlds. Contrasting also is the manner in which new information is handled. Today, almost as soon as new information is revealed it becomes part of a global knowledge base; within minutes of its revelation, it enters the information super highway of the Internet and public broadcasting; and it appears almost instantly in the home, the dorm, the office and every other place that there is a computer monitor or TV set. Reflect for a moment upon the recent spectacular show from space. Almost simultaneously with the scientific community, millions of people in a world-wide audience were able to view NASA-enhanced images of Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing onto the surface of Jupiter. This once-in-a-lifetime experience was, in itself, remarkable; but what made it even more amazing was that the new information entered the global knowledge base instantly, at the same moment it was being revealed to the scientific world. Enhanced and colored by NASA, these images arrived uncensored to a global community in seconds or minutes. Contrast the above phenomenon with the Middle Ages, a time during which there was no mechanism at all for disseminating new, uncensored and raw information. In a segmented Europe with no public school system, no newspapers or news magazines, or TV satellite coverage (e.g., "give us 15 minutes and we will give you the world"), there was no means by which new information could enter the knowledge base and be absorbed by the people. Conspicuous in Medieval world was the Roman Catholic Church, a bastion of privileges and a powerful voice that one hundred years later condemned Galileo for advancing the heliocentric theory. The Church was suspicious of novelty, it resisted new ideas that threatened its primacy, and it feared the bourgeoisie, of which most of the navigators were its agents. Considering that the Church controlled nearly all of the centers of learning as well as all publication, the late Middle Ages was not a time during which new information was hailed, appreciated, or even sought. Yet, sailors and navigators along with the scholarly community, were beginning to question the traditional view of the Universe. Illiterate seaman as much as the scholar were beginning to question ancient authorities. As ships returned to the parts of Europe from the newly found lands, a new picture of the Universe began to emerge, one that challenged the ancient authorities and one that based its new conclusions on hardcore empirical evidence--not theory, scriptures, or tradition. Hitherto, "fact" had not been considered a necessary ingredient in a successful argument or defense. What made the fifteenth century Age of Discovery so profoundly different from other periods in history was that barely 50 years earlier the moveable type printing press had come into use throughout Europe. Though this new invention did allow greater and speedier dissemination of information, the lack of a popular system of education, or of an information system that was anything other than the most rudimentary, kept Christian Europe from experiencing full exposure to new information. As late as the middle of the 16th century it was still difficult for the Medieval mind to absorb all of the new and exciting information that arrived from around the world. With such alacrity did the new information arrive that the knowledge base could not assimilate it all; or, what was also observed, earlier first impressions during this exciting age were so deeply engraved in the minds of the Europeans that subsequent images of the contact could not obliterate earlier ones. In modern terminology, the system became over-loaded. That the first impression was so deeply engraved in their minds was due largely to the fact that the discovery of new land in the Western Hemisphere was more an accident that the result of a pre-set goal. Looking for a new world was clearly not one of the motivations for the Age of Discovery. Not only did Europeans run into a hitherto unknown world but they found PEOPLE, too. By chance the first natives they encountered were among some of the most primitive societies in the Western Hemisphere. The Europeans equated the natives with beasts, barbarians, savages, cannibals, in other words, subhumans. (Even the Church took 40 years to reach the conclusion that the natives were rational beings). More than a generation after the initial contact, when the Spaniards encountered the more sophisticated natives of terra firma, the earlier image of "barbarian" persisted in the minds of the Europeans and prevented them from seeing the true native societies. This older image (that is, the first impression) was so deeply engraved that it could not be obliterated by the new ones of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas. Besides, the Europeans could not see any other native other than the one they wanted to see; they saw the natives of the New World as a labor force and not a cultural entity worth of preserving. Columbus, Cortez, Pizarro and countless other adventurers were about as far from being cultural anthropologist and ethnographers as you can get. Their actions speak loader than any of their words; they cared little for the indigenous culture. Thus, the native cultures--as well as the native population--began to disappear. In what can only be described as the greatest holocaust of all time, disease and other conquest- and invasion-related activities lead to the destruction of tens of million of natives. Only today are we realizing the enormity of the loss of people and the inestimable loss of culture. Contemporary investigations, studies, and presentation relating to the ideas above can be found in much more detail in a electronic database called CIRS (The Computerized Information Retrieval System on Columbus and the Age of Discovery). Created and installed by Millersville University as its contribution to the national commemoration of the Columbian Quincentenary, the information service is accessible to anyone who has a WEB browser and an Internet connection. Simply point your browser to http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus. You will find among the over 1000 text files, articles covering the 500th anniversary of Columbus' historic first voyage. There are articles relating to both Columbus and the impact of the Age of Discovery; some articles are scholarly research papers and speeches taken from respected professional journals and conferences while others are newspaper articles relating more popular themes. Endorsed as an "Official Project" by the U.S. Christopher Columbus Commission, this university research project will continue for as long as there is a demand for information. The History Faculty Welcomes a new Dean Dr. Barbara Montgomery, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences On July 1, 1996, Dr. Barbara M. Montgomery began serving as our new Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Dr. Montgomery was most recently an Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire. She received a B.S. in Education with a major in Speech and Drama from Ball State University, an M.A. in Rhetoric from Memphis State University, and a Ph.D. in Interpersonal Communication from Purdue University. She has been on the faculties at Clemson University, the University of Connecticut, and the University of New Hampshire. Dr. Montgomery's teaching and research have focused on communication in personal relationships, and her most recent book, co- authored with Dr. Leslie Baxter and titled Relating: Dialogues and Dialectics, was published this year by Guilford Press. Dr. Montgomery is currently working on another book, titled Dialectical Approaches to Interpersonal Communication, that is due to be published in 1997. In addition to the traditional administrative responsibilities and activities of dean, Dr. Montgomery will be working with the faculty, staff and students of the School to develop a comprehensive plan for academic programs, educational activities, and professional development opportunities that will insure the School's central role in learning at Millersville University as it proceeds into the next century. A Few Words from the History Faculty Dr. Jack R. Fischel, Department Chair In the past year, the History Department lost Dr. Koppel to retirement and has employed Professor Craig Koslofsky in his place. It would seem that in the next few years there will be additional retirements. By the year 2,000, at least four present members of the department with either have retired or will be planning to do the same. The spate of retirements will give the department an opportunity to reassess its course offerings as we move to employ a new generation of faculty. The History Department remains committed to teaching and scholarship. The large number of release-time and sabbaticals awarded to the department is a testimony to the respect our colleagues receive throughout the University. Dr. Ronald Benson Professor Benson has served on the Library Advisory Committee, the Presidential Scholarship Committee, and as a member of the Five-Year Program Review Committee for the Department of History of Kutztown University for the Academic Year of 1995-1996. He continues to pursue his research on Americans in World War I and to offer Special Topics in American Military History. He also serves as the Department's Pre-Law Advisor and the coordinator for the Department's Internship and Coop. programs. The Applied History Program is alive and well with very good students in the American Material Cultural Course. Over the past five years Dr. Bremer has been active professionally on both sides of the Atlantic. He received a Fullbright Fellowship which enabled him to spend his 1991-92 sabbatical as a visiting fellow affiliated with the history faculty of Cambridge University in England. He was chosen a fellow of the David and Mary Eccles Center for American Studies of the British Library in 1991 and in 1994 was elected a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Also in 1994 he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct a Summer Seminar for Teachers on "Two Faces of Puritanism: John Winthrop and Oliver Cromwell." He has received numerous other grants and fellowships to pursue his researches in conjunction with the Winthrop Papers and on the biography of John Winthrop which he is writing. These years have been extremely productive period for Dr. Bremer as a scholar. Since 1991 he has published five books, five articles, and reviews in eleven different journals; completed work on fourteen essays published or scheduled to be published in encyclopedias; delivered five major papers; and prepared manuscript reviews for eight presses. The most significant of the publications was Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the Anglo-American Puritan Community, 1610-1692. That study had been well received by scholars of early America and of Stuart English history. Among the comments are: "...an important and persuasive work..." (William and Mary Quarterly); "a model of synthetic scholarship built upon original research... Provides the means for restoring a historical fabric torn apart by the subsequent historiography of two separate international scholarly endeavor and thereby deepens our understanding of this extraordinary transatlantic community" (New England Quarterly); "...Bremer's excellent book on Puritanism covers the much-studied seventhteenth-century transatlantic movement in amazing detail...; offers a fresh perspective of several scholarly debates;... a persuasive correction to the scholarly tendency to treat the colonies in isolation." (American Historical Review); "...timely and important and gives new life to the old notion of a Puritan mission." (Journal of American History); and "...remarkably fruitful...; Guides the reader with wonderful style, compelling argument and an unprecedented biographical knowledge..." (Historical Journal [England]). His other works have also been well received and reviewed. His thorough revision of an earlier work that will be familiar to some alums, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society form Bradford to Edwards, just appeared in the Fall of 1995, and has been called "...the best survey of Puritanism I have ever read..." (Harry S. Stout, Yale University) and characterized as "no other book at all comparable... As far as quality of scholarship, readability, and pre-eminence in the field, it is easily the best" (Michael G. Hall, University of Texas). Dr. Linda Clark-Newman Dr. Linda Clark-Newman has spent the last two academic years (1994-95, 1995-96) as Interim Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences. She continues to work on a book about the history of women's careers in the French civil service from 1837 to 1945 and from that project has published two articles: one on the pre-1914 Third Republic's Appointment of Women Inspectors, which appeared as a chapter in Gender and the Politics of Social Reform in France 1870-1914, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1995; and one on France's first nursery school inspectresses (1837-1879) in the Proceedings of the Western Society for French History (1994). She also wrote the introduction to and edited the bibliographical chapter on "Modern France, 1789 to the Present" for the American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature, published by the Oxford University Press in 1995. She is looking forward to a sabbatical in 1996-97 and plans to spend part of it doing research in Paris. For the past three years, Dr. Downey has served as Acting Director of Graduate Studies, attempting to advance academic development and program initiatives for the universities master's degree programs. He continues his research interest in racial lynching and late nineteenth century cultural history. Dr. Downey has introduced new courses on the history of violence in America at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Dr. and Mrs. Downey's fifth child, Anna Christine was born February 28, 1995. Mr. James Jolly Mr. James A. Jolly has taught at Millersville University since 1966, specializing in U.S. History and Pennsylvania History. He is also interested in Lancaster County History, and has been active in the rural conservation movement. He has served as president of the Millersville Borough Council and in local politics. During his sabbatical leave he lectured on U.S. History at Exeter, Nottingham, and York Universities. Dr. Craig Koslofsky is the newest member of the History Department. A specialist in the history of Germany, Dr. Koslofsky completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1994 and worked as a research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Geschichte in Gottingen, Germany for a year before joining the faculty at Millersville in the fall of 1995. He is currently finishing a book titled The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450-1700 , which will be published by Macmillan Press in 1997. At Millersville he has served on the university committee that reviews faculty grant requests to the State System of Higher Education, and on the library and awards committees of the History Department. He also serves on the planning committee of the university's annual conference on the Holocaust. Dr. Suziedelis has been granted tenure and promoted to associate
professor and has been coordinating the Department's graduate program
since 1994; |
