History News
Disability History Month: Dr Fred Reid
Dr Fred Reid, Emeritus Reader and former Head of Department for History, features in the 13 November dated edition of 'insite', the Warwick staff hub, for Disability History month.
Fred, who was 14 years old when he went blind, is known for his work to support blind and disabled people across the UK. He and his wife Etta have even been presented with honorary Warwick degrees to recognise their efforts.
UK Disability History Month (UKDHM) is an annual event which aims to promote disabled people's rights and their struggle for equality now and in the past. This year, UKDHM will take place from 14 November – 20 December 2024. Every year, UKDHM focuses on a theme. This year, the theme is Disability, Livelihood and Employment.
Professor J.E. Smyth on BBC 4's Woman's Hour
Professor J.E. Smyth appeared on BBC 4's Woman's Hour, 30 October 2024, to talk about their 'fiery, page-turning biography' [Sight & Sound] of pioneering American screenwriter and labour leader Mary C. McCall Jr.
Listen to the show at the following link: Woman's Hour - Online scams, US election, Mary McCall Jr - BBC Sounds
Dr Martha McGill features in new documentary series
Dr Martha McGill, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow for the project "Bodies, Selves and the Supernatural in early Modern Britain", will be appearing in a six-part documentary series, 'Witches: Truth Behind the Trials', airing on the National Geographic channel weekly from 8pm today, Wednesday 30 October.
100 ballads prize announcement
The 100 ballads website has won the prestigious Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History, awarded by the American Historical Association. Dr Angela McShane, Department of History Honorary Reader, and Professor Christopher Marsh, Queens University Belfast, identified 100 of the biggest musical hits from 17th-century England in the '100 Ballads' project.
Visit the 100 ballads website.
Dr McShane and Prof Marsh will be attending the awards ceremony in New York on 3 January 2025. Congratulations to everyone involved in the project!
American Historical Association Announces 2024 Prize Winners – AHA
Messages To Posterity – Tower Capsules In The German Lands
During a year of research leave, Prof. Beat Kümin has investigated the phenomenon of depositing chronicles and objects into tower spheres on top of prominent buildings like churches, town halls and fortifications. Documented from the Middle Ages to the present, seemingly only in and around territories of the erstwhile Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, the custom provides fascinating insights into how local societies saw themselves and what they wished to pass on to successive generations.
The project, supported by the German Gerda Henkel Foundation, has so far identified over 1600 sites and thousands of separate deposits (at one Zurich church, there were no fewer than 20 between 1505 and 1996). The funder has just released a video series of six episodes (accessible in both English and German) documenting field work in Switzerland in autumn 2023.
Professor Trevor Burnard
The department is very sad to learn of the death of Prof. Trevor Burnard.
The Maxine Berg Prize of 2024
Many congratulations to graduate Sara Akhavan-Malayeri, the Maxine Berg Prize winner of 2024! Her dissertation entitled "The Fight over the Five ‘Soviet-born Wives of British Subjects’: the Impact of Anglo-Soviet Marriages in Early Cold War Britain” was awarded Best Dissertation in the Field of Global History. Sara was also awarded the Final Year Undergraduate Iain Smith Single-Honours Prize set up by a bequest from Emeritus Reader Iain Smith.
The other 2024 prize winners are:
- Jacob McVaddy - Final Year Undergraduate Felix Dennis Dissertation Prize
- Richard Gregory - Final Year Undergraduate Roger Magraw History Joint-Honours prize
- Jade McFarlane - Final Year Undergraduate Year Abroad Reflective Assignment Prize.
A massive congratulations to the other prize winners and all Warwick History graduates 2024!
Find full details of the History prizes awarded at the end of each year here.
Credit for female screenwriter airbrushed from Hollywood history
Professor JE Smyth's upcoming publication is featured in an article by the Guardian about Mary C McCall Jr, the female screenwriter airbrushed from Hollywood history.
Professor Smyth's new book, "Mary C McCall Jr: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Most Powerful Screenwriter", will be published in September and aims to restore Mary C McCall Jr’s reputation as one of the film industry’s most important figures.