Fall 2023 List of Accomplishments
We've done a lot over the last semester--and this list is not exhaustive!
Student Accomplishments
- Graduate student Jeff Nichols worked as an archival researcher on an episode of WTTW’s "Chicago Stories," titled “Angels Too Soon: The School Fire of ’58." The episode focuses on a tragic Catholic school fire in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.
- PhD student Kimberly Beaudreau successfully defended her PhD dissertation, titled: "Economic Migrant or Refugee?: Externalizing American Refugee and Asylum Policy, 1975-2000." The dissertation traces how the "economic migrant" category became a catch-all classification used by the US government to prevent people from accessing refuge and asylum. Her committee consisted of Adam Goodman (Chair and Advisor), Jonathan Connolly, Keely Stauter-Halsted, Rebecca Hamlin (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), and Yael Schacher (Refugees International).
- The History Department inducted 6 more students into the Phi Alpha Theta History Honors Society. This brings the total number of Pha Alpha Theta inductees from UIC to 40 in just the two years since the chapter was founded. The Fall 2023 initiates include: Angelica Aguillon, Daniel Solorio Garcia, Daniel Lapczynski, Joe Reyna, Christian Rodriguez-Hernandez, and Finn Yatvin.
- 2023 PhD graduate and now Senior Fellow with the University of Michigan Society of Fellows Ismael Biyashev, won the Outstanding Thesis and Dissertation Award from the UIC Graduate College. Ismael was one of just six winners among all the PhDs awarded at UIC last year, and the sole winner in the Humanities category.
- Graduate Students Joe Parziale and Zichan Qiu won the UIC Provost Graduate Research Award.
- Graduate students Alexander Callaway and Aleksei Epishev were recipients of Awards for Graduate Research from the Graduate College.
- PhD students Katie Brizek, Alexander Callaway, Anindita Ghosh, Jess Lipka, Briana Sales, Aleksandr Turbin, and Forrest Wales were recipients of the LAS PhD Research and Conference Grants.
- PhD student Sarah Barton won the Leo Schelbert Teaching Prize.
- PhD student Ismael Biyashev won the Leo Schelbert Dissertation Prize.
- PhD student Katie Brizek won the Peter D’Agostino Scholarship.
- PhD student Joanna Dobrowolska won the Polish Resistance (AK) Foundation Scholarship.
- PhD student Aleksei Epishev won the John B. and Theta Woolf Fellowship.
- PhD student Joe Parziale won the Robert V. Remini Scholarship.
- PhD student Aleksandr Turbin won the Deana Allen Memorial Fellowship.
Faculty Accomplishments
- Mark Liechty won the Surya Subedi Prize from the Royal Asiatic Society for his book What Went Right: Sustainability versus Dependence in Nepal's Hydropower Development (CUP, 2022). What Went Right explores why Nepal's hydropower sector is one of its few development success stories.
- Gosia Fidelis was named Honorable Mention for the 2023 Heldt Prize from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies for her book Imagining the World From Beyond the Iron Curtain (Oxford, 2022). Exploring the social lives of hippies, members of the avant garde, and rural youth in Poland, this book demonstrates that the border between east and west was far more akin to a porous skin than to an Iron Curtain.
- Marina Mogilner won honorable mention for the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History from the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for her book A Race for the Future: Scientific Visions of Modern Russian Jewishness (Harvard, 2022).
Student & Faculty Publications/Appearances
December 2023
Prof. Marina Mogilner published the English version of a co-authored "textbook" called, A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 600-1700: From Russian to Global History. First released in Russian a few years ago, the book introduces "the 'new imperial history' approach,” seeking to propose a new language for studying and conceptualizing the spaces, societies, and institutions that existed on the territory of today's Northern Eurasia.
October 2023
PhD student Liliana Macias spoke on WBEZ’s Reset about her work on the Chicago Monuments Project: Pilsen Latina Legacies, including facilitating three teach-ins at the Pilsen Arts and Community House about the histories of Latinas’ political organizing and their impact in Pilsen.
September 2023
Prof. Marina Mogilner published Jews, Race, and the Politics of Difference: The Case of Vladimir Jabotinsky Against the Russian Empire with Indiana University Press.
August 2023
Prof. Clare Kim published an article titled “The Art and Craft of Mathematics: Computational Origami and the Politics of Creativity” in Osiris, as part of a special issue titled Beyond Code and Craft: Human and Algorithmic Cultures, Past and Present. The article examines the history of a U.S. intellectual property dispute between a computational origami designer and a conceptual artist in order to explore questions of cultural appropriation, the epistemology of creativity, and the racialization of logics.