Dr. Forsyth Presentation on February 7
25 Thursday Jan 2018
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25 Thursday Jan 2018
Posted Events, Faculty News
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17 Thursday Aug 2017
Posted Faculty News
in≈ Comments Off on Dr. Jackson interviewed on removal of confederate statues on 13ABC
This Sunday at 11:00 AM on 13 ABC, “Conklin & Company” will address the removal of confederate monuments. The show invited Dr. Nicole Jackson to answer questions such as are statues bad for future generations? What do we owe our kids and grandchildren when it comes to history? Watch the show this Sunday on 13ABC and find out! The tape will be posted online during next week in this link.
19 Monday Dec 2016
Posted Faculty News
in≈ Comments Off on Connecting to the past with bread soup
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Last Sunday it was cold and snowing in Bowling Green. The weather invited to stay inside, savor a cup of hot cocoa and fill the house with the smells of a stew or a soup. I’d been thinking a lot about soup in the last couple of months. A student in the History-Spanish dual MA, Nanosh Lucas, is writing a thesis on food culture and social distinctions in 19th-century Mexico under my supervision. As he started his research on cookbooks, one family of recipes stood out: the sopa de pan or bread soup. There were many variations; in some early cookbooks virtually all soup included bread—often old bread. In its most common form, sopa de pan was one slice of bread covered with vegetables (probably boiled), and covered with a cup of hot broth. The word soup, in fact, originally meant bread dipped in broth. A mix of expensive spices and toppings, or just fresh bread, made this an appetizer on the table of the wealthy; but newspaper articles often described it as a poor family’s everyday meal.
The sopa de pan doesn’t sound very enticing for our present-day taste, but Nanosh and I have joked for a while about trying out the sopa de pan. And last Sunday it was the perfect storm: I had plenty of vegetables and chicken leftovers to make a broth from scratch, a day-old loaf of bread, a bag of spinach that was screaming to be cooked right away, and a couple of mozzarella balls that I bought impulsively from the supermarket’s new “olive bar.” Add to the mix the actual snow storm outside.
Some hesitation ensued. I can do my own variant of sopa de pan, but is it going to be authentic? I had some ingredients that often pop up in the sources I consulted in my research on food supply: carrots, onions, parsley, tomatoes. My bread was day-old, whole-wheat and homemade. Not your typical Mexico City bread, which was bought in bakeries. (The added tablespoon of chia seeds in the dough do not make up for its lack of Mexican authenticity.) Ovens were a luxury, and there were no communal bread ovens as in the Middle East. And finally, spinach and cheese. I have not found any mentions of spinach in the sources I’ve worked with. In the wonderful online collection of 19th-century newspapers run by Mexico’s National Library, the term spinach (“espinaca”) appears only very late in the century, and I suspect it wasn’t a popular fixture in produce markets. Cheese was more frequent, although I suspect only a few consumed it regularly. Mexico City residents bought a quantity equivalent to an ounce (the weight of my mozzarella ball) every five days, according to trade statistics of the eighteenth century. Sopa de pan was defined not by the ingredients, but by its simplicity and flexibility. To me it was a sort of edible compost of leftovers. What is more historically authentic than the constant adaptation of the old to new circumstances?
As I put the pot to boil and then simmer for a couple of hours, I couldn’t help thinking of that other element of modernity in this sopa de pan: the gas burner. In these two hours at low heat I burned close to 15,000 BTUs (British Thermal Units). And I did not care. Gas is an abundant and relatively inexpensive fuel today. But in the nineteenth century, this was certainly a different calculus. To generate this heat, a cook would burn almost one pound of charcoal. The cost of fuel was a major consideration in working-class families. This use of energy represented up to 5 percent of the budget of a working-class family in Mexico City. It is no surprise that meals in a pot (such as beans, soups and stews), and the quick heating of tortillas on a flat clay or iron pan were the typical ways of cooking. Mexican cuisine was optimized for a relatively high cost of fuel. Today cost is not such a major consideration in our American life and gas (or electricity) is instantly available, but excess use of fossil fuel contributes to global warming. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I cooked my broth too much; maybe 90 minutes was enough. A family cook in 19th-century Mexico City would have optimized their methods to deal with a scarce world, burned the coals slowly to maximize the heat output; I feel that I (and others like me) should recover that ability.
How did the soup turn out? While the ingredients were my own unique mixture, I preserved the format. On a flat bowl I placed a crunchy slice of day-old bread, topped it with sauteéd spinach and the mozarella balls, and served a soup laddle of broth on top of it. The bread did not lose its consistency, but I found myself using a spoon and a fork. I figured, if this was served in a house of no means, the bread was probably dipped in the broth to save on utensils. It tasted OK; better than I expected. The little amount of broth made a good contrast against the bread, and the layer of spinach and mozzarella added flavor (and nutrients). In all it was a good experiment: a simple, humble meal that connected me to the past.
Dr. Amílcar E. Challú, Associate Professor, History Department, BGSU. Dr. Challú studies the history of living standards and nutrition in Latin America. Some of his publications can be publicly accessed via https://works.bepress.com/amilcar-challu/ and http://bgsu.academia.edu/AmilcarChallu
12 Tuesday Apr 2016
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On Friday, April 8, 2016, the History Department held its History Professionals Day, an annual event that brings approximately 30 history and social studies teachers to BGSU for a morning of workshops and lectures on the latest developments in a variety of historical fields and topics. Dr. Nicole Jackson presented on “Civil Rights in the US: From Reconstruction to the Present,” Dr. Becky Mancuso on “The Underground Railroad’s Canadian Connection,” and Dr. Amilcar Challu on “Environmental History.” In addition, BGSU’s Director of Pre College Programs and College Credit Plus Coordinator (and BGSU History MA alumnus) Michael Ginnetti reported on new initiatives to aid teachers gaining the graduate credit hours in History required for College Credit Plus certification. The teacher-participants responded well to all of the presentations. “Love the diversity of topics,” noted one teacher, “and the collection of primary sources that I can definitely use in the classroom.”
12 Tuesday Apr 2016
Posted Alumni News, Faculty News, Graduate Student News
in≈ Comments Off on History Department Presence at the Ohio Academy of History Conference
At the annual Ohio Academy of History conference, which met at the Stark Campus of Kent State University on April 1 and 2, 2016, BGSU History faculty and alumni participated in four panels. Drs. Ben Greene and Steven Schrag delivered papers, “Waging a Cultural Cold War: U. S. Public Diplomacy During the Cold War,” and “Goering in Captivity: An Analysis of the Treatment of High Value German POWs in the Immediate Postwar Period,” respectively, while PhD alumnus Dr. Don Eberle’s paper was entitled “Dumped in to the Maumee River of Placed in a Padded Cell: Scott Nearing, Toledo University and Academic Freedom During the First World War.” Graduate Director Dr. Michael Brooks participated in a roundtable discussion of Graduate Directors in Ohio. Department Chair Dr. Scott C. Martin chaired and commented on a panel that was co-sponsored by the Alcohol and Drugs History Society: “Drink and Temperance: Literature, Rum, and Central Asia.” In addition, Dr. Martin, who assumed the presidency of the Ohio Academy for the coming year, delivered his Presidential Lecture at Business Meeting/Luncheon on Saturday, speaking on “Serendipity in the Cemetery: The Anglo-American Community in Florence, 1840-1860.”
26 Tuesday Jan 2016
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in≈ Comments Off on Alcohol Encyclopedia Gains ALA Recognition
At the American Library Association’s winter meeting earlier this month, the ALA named The SAGE Encyclopedia of Alcohol: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives, edited by Professor Scott C. Martin, as one of ten publications on its 2016 Outstanding References Source List. Academic and public libraries use this list when considering which reference works to purchase for their collections. Andrew Boney, the senior acquisitions editor at SAGE, congratulated Martin for receiving this “great honor in the academic publishing world,” calling the award “well-deserved recognition.” The encyclopedia contains 1,774 pages in three volumes, with a total of 550 entries.
26 Tuesday Jan 2016
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in≈ Comments Off on Martin Presents at AHA/ADHS Conference
Professor and Department Chair Scott Martin participated in a roundtable discussion on alcohol and drugs history at the American Historical Association meeting in Atlanta on January 8, 2016. The roundtable, “Alcohol and Drugs History: Accomplishments and Prospects,” sponsored by the Alcohol and Drugs History Society (ADHS), examined developments within the field over the past 35 years, along with likely directions for future research. Other panelists were William Rorabaugh, David Courtwright, Scott Haine, Isaac Campos, and Jon Miller.
30 Wednesday Sep 2015
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in≈ Comments Off on Nicole Jackson presents paper at Midwest Conference on British Studies
On Friday, September 25, 2015, Dr. Nicole Jackson presented a paper at the Midwest Conference on British Studies meeting in Detroit. Her paper, “Representing Black British Histories: Race, Nation, and Empire,” appeared as part of a panel entitled “Britain in the 21st Century: Contemporary Issues.” It addressed the experiences of the Afro-Caribbean population as members of the British empire.
23 Thursday Jul 2015
Posted Emeritus News, Faculty News
in≈ Comments Off on Hess’ Book on Vietnam in the BGSU News!
Dr. Gary Hess’ new book, Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War, is being published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the escalation of troops in Vietnam. The BGSU News published an article detailing the book and Dr. Hess’ interest and approach.
Dr. Gary Hess is the Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Bowling Green State University. For more on his research, please visit his faculty page.
10 Friday Jul 2015
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in≈ Comments Off on Reception for Dr. Beth Griech-Polelle: Friday, July 17 from 1-3 pm
The Department of History will host a farewell reception for Dr. Beth Griech-Polelle on Friday, July 17th from 1-3 pm in the History Conference Room (Williams 141). Dr. Griech-Polelle will be heading to Pacific Lutheran University in the fall, after having been at BGSU since 1999.
Please RSVP to Tina at tamos@bgsu.edu!