In Memoriam

Leo Schelbert (1929-2022)

Professor Leo Schelbert, a historian of American immigration and especially of Swiss migration to the United States, died March 30, 2022, having just turned 93.  Schelbert got his PhD in 1966 from Columbia University, then taught at Rutgers before joining the UIC Department of History in 1971, where he taught for 32 years until his retirement in 2003.  Schelbert edited seven volumes and authored two books, including Historical Dictionary of Switzerland and Swiss Migration to America: The Swiss Mennonites.  In addition to the books, his CV lists more than a hundred articles, reviews, translations, and popular pieces.  While much of his scholarship focused on the Swiss community in the United States, his work also dealt with the experience of the Irish, Jews, Poles, and other migrants. Leo’s work also reflected a heartfelt concern about the often devastating impact such migrations had on America’s indigenous communities.  As a teacher, Schelbert was a three-time winner of the Shirley A. Bill Excellence in Teaching Award (1985, 1990, 1994) and won the 1992 UIC Award for Excellence in Teaching.  He served as chair of the Department twice, from 1977-1979 and from 1981-82.  Widely regarded as an exceptionally kind man, Schelbert is well remembered by the legion of graduate students he mentored and often welcomed into his home.

Nicole Jordan (1950-2022)

Professor Jordan was a specialist in twentieth-century Central European and French history. She received her BA from Wellesley, her MA from Oxford, and her PhD from the London School of Economics.  Her book, The Popular Front in Central Europe: the Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918-1940 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992) won the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association and was a selection of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Humanities E-Book Project.  Professor Jordan went on to win fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. During her 38 year tenure at UIC, she regularly taught the large survey course of Western Civilization, educating hundreds of students each year (up to and including the semester in which she died), and a sequence of research seminars for History majors, where she taught the craft to developing scholars. A fierce advocate of undergraduate students, she led the Department’s Undergraduate Award Committee for many years. Dr. Jordan will be greatly missed by the UIC community.

Richard Levy (1940-2021)

Professor Levy taught a variety of courses on modern German history, 1740-1945, and on the history of the Holocaust during his 49 year tenure with the department. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago, and a master’s and a Ph.D. in German History from Yale University. His writing has gradually expanded from analysis of German antisemitism before World War I to the study of antisemitism worldwide, treating the subject in its cultural context and examining its function in politics and society. He has edited the two-volume Antisemitism: Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio Press, 2005) and, most recently, an anthology for Oxford University Press, Antisemitism: A History (2010). He also served as Director of Undergraduate Studies from 1994 to 2013. Richard was loved and admired by many UIC students and faculty. He will be greatly missed.

Michael Perman (1942-2020)

A Brit from Cockfosters who was educated at Oxford, Michael first came to Illinois in 1964 to pursue his MA from UIUC.  He then moved to the University of Chicago to pursue his doctorate under the tutelage of John Hope Franklin, receiving the degree in 1969. Micheal began his work in the profession at the University of Manchester but quickly came to UIC in 1970, where he spent the remainder of his career.  A staunch advocate of voting rights, Michael wrote several important books on nineteenth-century Southern political thought.  A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979-80, the book that resulted, The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879 (UNC Press, 1984), received a jury nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in History, was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, and won both the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians and the V.O. Key Prize from the Southern Political Science Association.  The author of six books and editor of three more, Michael’s work culminated in his final two monographs, Pursuit of Unity: A Political History of the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) and The Southern Political Tradition (Louisiana State University Press, 2012).  An advocate of UIC, public education, and classical music, Michael served as Chair of the Department from 1997-2000.

Linda Van Puyenbroeck (1951-2020)

Linda Van Puyenbroeck served as the coordinator of the departmental graduate program for 26 years. She arrived at the Department from UIC’s medical campus in 1992 and helped to shepherd generations of graduate students through the graduate program before her retirement in 2018. Many alumni have remembered her in the acknowledgments of their books. She was an advocate, a mentor, and a friend. She was a proud native of Illinois, the wielder of irreverent humor, and a devoted parent and grandparent.

Perry R. Duis (1943-2019)

Perry Duis was a native of Illinois and a noted historian of Chicago. He authored four books on urban social history, split evenly between those intended for academic audiences and those that addressed a broader public. He became one of the department’s pioneering public historians, curating exhibitions at the Chicago Historical Society and penning dozens of columns for Chicago magazine. Duis taught at UIC for a total of 43 years, beginning in 1966 when he became a Teaching Assistant while working on his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He received a full-time position in 1971 and worked his way through the ranks to retire as a full professor in 2010. He had notable success in the classroom. He was a two-time winner of the Silver Circle Award for Excellence in Teaching and served as an advisor for nine doctoral students.

Peter d’Alroy Jones (1931-2019)

Peter d’A Jones was a widely published professor of History at UIC who wrote on topics including American capitalism, religious history, and ethnicity in Chicago. Jones was born in Hull, England, in 1931 and studied at Manchester University before briefly serving in the Royal Air Force as a translator of Russian communications. He was hired at Smith College in 1960 with only a Master’s degree, took a year off in 1962-63 to complete the Ph.D. under Marcus Cunliffe at the London School of Economics, and earned a promotion to professor by 1968. He arrived at UIC that fall and taught economic history for the next thirty years. He retired in 1998 but remained in the greater Chicago area. He published over a half-dozen books, including The Consumer Society: A History of American Capitalism (1963). While a visiting professor at the University of Salzburg, he met his wife of 32 years Johanna (née Hartinger).

Steven Fanning (1947-2018)

Steve Fanning taught medieval, Byzantine, and religious history at UIC for more than 30 years, from 1980 until 2012. Fanning’s publications include the 1988 book A Bishop and His World Before the Gregorian Reform: Hubert of Angers, 1006-1047, and two other co-authored works. Inspired in part by his own religious journey, which was punctuated by a near-death experience in 1988, Fanning published Mystics of the Christian Tradition in 2001, followed by an autobiography released shortly before his death. Fanning served multiple terms as associate chair in the Department of History, punctuated three years as assistant dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He twice received Silver Circle Awards for Excellence in Teaching. Fanning was born in Weatherford, Oklahoma, on February 17, 1947, attended Texas Tech University, and received the Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 1977. He remained active after retirement, particularly at Grace Episcopal Church in Oak Park, IL.

Marion S. Miller (1927-2018)

Marion “Babs” Miller was a historian of Italian history and colonialism. She was born August 29, 1927, in Hillside, NJ, and grew up in Nova Scotia, a region she loved and to which returned frequently throughout her life. A specialist in Italian and European history, Miller formally joined the faculty in 1971 after having taught as an instructor, and she remained in the Department until her retirement in 1997. She earned her B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, studied at the University of Toronto, and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. While working on her doctorate as a groundbreaking female graduate student, she received a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the Universities of Turin and Rome. She published widely on issues of Italian decolonization, diplomacy, and politics, and music, a topic that was particularly close to her heart. Miller served as Director of Graduate Studies and was a passionate teacher of generations of UIC undergraduates. As a Professor Emerita, she continued to serve on dissertation committees and to pursue her own research as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Newberry Library. Upon her retirement in 1997, the Department named its research graduate fellowships in her honor.

Carolyn Andervont Edie (1930-2017)

Carolyn Edie was a longtime faculty member and specialist in British history. She began her teaching career at the University of Illinois Navy Pier campus in 1961 and became a founding member of the Department of History when the university relocated to its current campus in 1965. She retired in 1997. Professor Edie was born in Boston and attended Wellesley College as an undergraduate. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1957. A historian of Restoration-era Britain, she was one of the first women to publish an article in the American Historical Review, thanks to the appearance of “Succession and Monarchy: The Controversy of 1679-1681” in 1965. Her book The Irish Cattle Bills: A Study in Restoration Politics was published by the American Philosophical Society in 1970.

Melvin G. “Mel” Holli (1933-2016)

Prof. Melvin was a founding member of the Department of History at what was then known as the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. An expert on urban history, particularly that of Detroit and Chicago, he had a strong interest in the history of mayoralty and of immigration to the United States.  He was the advisor to several generations of urban and Chicago historians and author or co-author of 18 books and edited volumes. Some of his former students counted among these co-authors and co-editors and several of his books are still in print. Holli had formal training as an archivist and throughout his career collected manuscripts and historical documents related to the urban and immigration history of Chicago. Many of these documents, including the speeches of Richard J. Daley and letters of Jane Addams, now form part of the library’s Special Collections Department. He served as chair from 1991 to 1994 and retired in 2003.

Louise Año Nuevo Kerr (1938-2015)

Louise A. Kerr was a distinguished alumnus and faculty member of the Department of History, and a pioneering scholar of Mexican-American history. The daughter of farmworkers who had migrated to the United States, she was encouraged by her high school typing instructor to pursue higher education. She received her B.A. and M.A. from UCLA before moving to Illinois in 1966. Professor Kerr received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle in 1976. Her dissertation, “The Chicano Experience in Chicago: 1920 – 1970” remains an influential work in Latino studies and Mexican-American history. Kerr joined the department as a faculty member after graduation and was later promoted Associate Professor before becoming Associate Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at UIC, a position she held from 1988 until her retirement in December 1999. In 1996, students in her class on Latino history interviewed family members who had migrated to the United States; these interviews are now housed in the Special Collections Department of the Daley Library.

Robert Conrad (1928-2014) 

Bob Conrad taught at UIC from 1967 until 1978, when he left for the Free University in Berlin. He was the author of seven books on slavery and emancipation in Brazil and continues to be regarded as one of the path-breaking scholars on the subject. Among his books is a Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil, which includes never before published documents about slavery and emancipation in that nation. It continues to be one of the most widely used collections in college classrooms today. He also authored The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, which remains one of the standard treatments of the final decades of the slave regime. Conrad received several fellowships, including an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Robert V. Remini (1921-2013)

Prof. Remini was the nation’s leading scholar of Jacksonian America, taught in the Department of History from 1965 until he retired in 1991, serving as the Department’s first chair. The author of more than 20 books and the recipient of numerous awards, Bob was most famously the winner of the 1984 National Book Award for the final volume of his three-volume biography of Andrew Jackson. He later went on to serve as Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2005 to 2010. He published his last book in 2011, at the age of 89, entitled, At the Edge of the Precipice: Henry Clay and the Compromise that Saved the Union. Obituaries ran in The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post.

James F. Searing (1953-2012)

Prof. Searing was a transformative figure in the field of African history, taught in the Department of History from 1992 until he died unexpectedly on December 3, 2012. Searing had served as Chair of the Department from 2005-2010 and was continuing his founding role as head of the Encounters graduate concentration at the time of his death. Searing’s research, which focused on the history of Senegal, was enriched through an ethnographic approach to the peoples and cultures of Senegal, including their historical encounters with Islam, the Atlantic world, and French colonial rule. He published two important books, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1993) and “God Alone is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal, 1859-1914: The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol (Portsmouth, 2001), and was at the time of his death working on a third, on ethnicity and conversion through a fieldwork-based study of the Sereer-Safèn. He is missed for his sense of humor, his deep intellect, and his commitment to the Department. See a more complete obituary for further details about his work and reflections on his life from his students, colleagues, and family.

Daniel Scott Smith (1942-2011)

Daniel was a pioneer in social history, taught eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American history at UIC from 1974 until his retirement in 2009. His studies of the histories of kinship relations, child-naming practices, fertility and feminism, and historiography, among other subjects, were widely cited and resulted in many honors, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He was named a University Scholar in 1985. Committed to bringing the tools of the social sciences to the practice of history, he was editor of Historical Methods from 1979 to 1990 and an editorial board member for American Historical Review (1994-97) and other journals. He was president of the Social Science History Association in 1987-88. In November 2010, the association celebrated his career with a special session at its annual convention in Chicago.

Edward C. Thaden (1922-2008)

Dr. Thaden was the senior Russian historian at UIC from 1968 until his retirement in 1992. He received his doctorate at the University of Paris, Pantheon-Sorbonne (1950). Among his many publications were: Conservative Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Russia (1954); Russia and the Balkan Alliance of 1912(1965); Russia Since 1801: The Making of a New Society (1971); and The Rise of Historicism in Russia (1999). He edited, with his wife, Marianna Foster Thaden, The Western Borderlands of Russia, 1710-1870 (1984). He served as Chair of the history department at UIC (1971-1973); as Executive Secretary for the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (1982-1984); and as President of the Commission Internationale des Etudes Historiques Slaves (1995-2000). For further information on Thaden’s career, see the online obituary in the Perspectives of the American Historical Association for April 2009.  In 2012, the estate of Marianna F. Thaden presented an extremely generous gift UIC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to establish the Edward and Marianna Thaden Chair in Russian and East European Intellectual History. In 2014 Marina Mogilner, a specialist in Russian imperial history became the first Thaden Chair.

Bentley B. Gilbert (1924-2008)

Dr. Gilbert received his Ph.D. (1954) in Modern British history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He came to UIC in 1967 and retired in 1997. His books include The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain: The Origins of the Welfare State (1966); British Social Policy, 1914-1939) (1970); and David Lloyd George: A Political Life, volume I (1987) and volume II (1992). Gilbert was Executive Secretary to the North American Conference on British Studies (1974-1978), editor of the Journal of British Studies (1978-1983), and chair of the department of history at UIC (1988-1991). He endowed the Bentley Brinkerhoff Gilbert Fellowship for UIC history graduate students to travel to the United Kingdom or Europe in the course of their dissertation research.

Stanley Mellon (1927-2008)

Having taught at Michigan, Berkeley, and Yale, Prof. Mellon came to UIC in 1969. He retired in 1995. Regarded by many of his colleagues as the most stimulating lecturer in a large department, Mellon published The Political Uses of History: A Study of Historians in the French Restoration (1958) and edited, with an introduction, M. Guizot’s Historical Essays and Lectures (1972). For an assessment of Stanley Mellon’s career, see the online edition of H-France Occasional Papers, 2009, “Stanley Mellon: An Appreciation” by David P. Jordan.

Peter D’Agostino (1962-2005)

Peter received his Ph.D. in the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago (1993). He taught at UIC from 2001 until his tragic death near his home in Oak Park, Illinois. His book, Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (2004) won the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History (2003). Before coming to UIC, he was on the faculty at Stonehill College, which has since endowed an undergraduate Peter D’Agostino Prize for Excellence in History.  UIC’s Peter D’Agostino Memorial Scholarship supports graduate study in religious, transnational, and immigration history.

Peter J. Coleman (1926-2004)

Dr. Coleman taught American history at UIC from 1966-1971 and from 1976 to his retirement in 1987. A native of New Zealand, he earned his Ph.D. (1953) at the University of Texas at Austin. His three books, broadly on economic and social history, include The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790-1860 (1963); Debtors and Creditors in America: Insolvency, Imprisonment for Debt, and Bankruptcy, 1607-1900 (1974); and New Zealand and the Origins of the American Welfare State (1987). For further information on Coleman’s career, see the online obituary in Perspectives, the journal of the American Historical Association.

John B. Wolf (1907-1996)

Prof. Wolf spent much of his distinguished career as a French and Diplomatic historian at the University of Minnesota (1943-1966) and subsequently served as Professor of History at UIC from 1966 to his retirement in 1974. Indeed, he presided over the construction of a European history program at this relatively new urban university. As one of his colleagues, David P. Jordan, has remarked, “John Wolf’s idea of a good European history department was to have as many French historians as possible!” His books included: The Diplomatic History of the Baghdad Railroad (1936); The Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685-1715 (1951); France, 1814-1919: the Rise of a Liberal-Democratic Society (1963); Early Modern Europe, 1500-1789 (1972); The Barbary Coast: Algiers under the Turks, 1500 to 1830 (1979), and, perhaps most important, Louis XIV (1968). John Wolf served as President of the Society for French Historical Studies (1968-1969) and was made a Chevalier des Palmes Academiques by the French government (1979). In honor of John Wolf and his wife, the John B. and Theta Wolf Fellowship was endowed to defray research and travel expenses for UIC history graduate students in the field of European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern history.

Robert L. Nicholson (1908-1985)

Dr. Nicholson taught Medieval and European history at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier and UIC from 1946 to his retirement in 1977. He was educated at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 1938. A distinguished historian of the Crusades, his books included: Joscelyn I: Prince of Edessa(1954); Joscelyn III and the Fall of the Crusader States, 1134-1199 (1973); and Tancred: A Study of his Career and Work (1978)

Richard Millman (1932-1983)

Richard received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (1963) and taught European and Diplomatic history at UIC from 1968 until his death. He was the author of British Foreign Policy and the coming of the Franco-Prussian War (1963) and Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875-1878 (1979).

Shirley A. Bill (1919-1980),

Professor Bill was an American constitutional and legal historian received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1950). She taught at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier and at UIC from 1947 until her death. Bill edited, with Louis Gottschalk, The Letters of Lafayette to Washington, 1777-1799 (1976). She was a member of the Executive Board of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (1975-1979). After her death, a fond undergraduate student endowed the Shirley A. Bill Award for Excellence in Teaching, to be awarded annually to a member of the UIC history department.

Peter McKeon (1938-1979)

Dr. McKeon taught European and Medieval history at UIC from 1965, the year he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, until his death. He published Hincmar of Laon and Carolingian Politics(1978).

Gilbert Osofsky (1935-1974)

Gilbert received his Ph.D. from Columbia University (1963) and taught at UIC from 1963 until his death. He was a leading figure in the emerging field of African-American studies in the 1970s. His books include Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (1966); The Burden of Race: A Documentary History of Negro-White relations in America (1967); and Puttin’ on Ole Massa: The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northup (1965). Following his death, the Department of History and friends founded an annual lectureship at UIC in his honor. Speakers for the Gilbert Osofsky Lectureship have included scholars such as Arnold Hirsch, David Brion Davis, George Fredrickson, Mary Beth Norton, Eric Foner, John Hope Franklin, Linda Kerber, Louise White, Marcus Rediker, and David Scott.

Gordon L. Goodman (1922-1966)

Gordon was a historian of Britain, received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1956). He taught at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier and at UIC from 1955 until his death. A specialist in British history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he published articles on Liberal Unionism and Gloucester City politics. After his death, his family, colleagues, and friends endowed the Gordon L. Goodman Award, to be given annually to a promising UIC undergraduate history major.