By Andrew Darien
Department of History

Andrew Darien, History Department

Many students view the research and scholarship of their professors as a mysterious and nebulous world, far removed from the more familiar classroom experience of lecture and discussion. The History Department at Salem State College removes that mystique by asking its majors to take themselves seriously as scholars. Our students understand the discipline of history and see themselves not merely as consumers of facts but rather as practitioners of the craft. We want our majors to know not merely what happened but also the process by which historians come to research, weigh evidence, examine documents, and render judgment about what happened. Our greatest satisfaction as faculty is to witness well-informed students who know about the past, but, more importantly, who have acquired the tools to investigate it on their own. It is a skill set that enables some students to become outstanding academics and teachers in their own right and empowers others to pursue careers in research, law, public policy, government, business, and education. Our young historians leave Salem State with an even more valuable resource: the capacity to make sense of the world around them, personally, politically, socially, locally, and globally.

As the faculty adviser for Phi Alpha Theta, the national honors society for history, I have had the great pleasure of witnessing the evolution of our students and their scholarship. Each year we acknowledge exceptional work within the department by inducting our most accomplished majors and minors into Phi Alpha Theta. It is a well deserved honor. Yet the most gratifying aspect of Phi Alpha Theta is working with new inductees to develop the work that they have produced in our historiography and research seminars so that they can present it at Phi Alpha Theta’s national and regional conventions. One of the most regrettable facts of student work is that it dies shortly after the end of the semester. Students spend four months, sometimes an entire academic year, nurturing their projects. How tragic when their babies have nowhere to go! Phi Alpha Theta provides students with an opportunity to breathe new life into their work, to send it out from the classroom into the larger world where it can shape the perception of fellow historians. Our conventions equip students with a forum to develop their research, polish its finer points, and then engage in a more public dialogue with a community of like-minded historians.

The seminal event for Phi Alpha Theta is its biennial convention, where undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to meet distinguished historians and to present their own research papers. Phi Alpha Theta is one of the few honor and professional historical societies that encourages student participation in all its functions. Prominent historians also appear on the program of every biennial convention and share their contributions to historical scholarship. Students and professors have the opportunity to meet others interested in history, and, more specifically, in their own fields of specialization, while enjoying social and intellectual dialogue.

In 2008, five students from the Salem State College chapter of Phi Alpha Theta traveled to the biennial convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they delivered their original scholarship to a national audience. Undergraduate presenters were Jonathan Leysath, Andrew Fogarty, Evan Noce, while Matthew Tangney and Karen Goodno represented the graduate contingency. Leysath served on a panel focusing on nineteenth-century European history and shared his work on popular culture and the Queen Caroline Affair. Fogarty’s research on the Korean Independence movement, Karen Goodno’s exploration of war literature and gender, and Noce’s exposition on the soldier and modernity constituted an entire panel on World War I. Tangney’s work on the shipping and brewing industries of Portsmouth, part of a panel on labor history, was nominated for best graduate student paper.

In addition to receiving feedback from professional historians at other institutions, students were able to network with undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty from colleges and universities throughout the country. The event was held at the astoundingly picturesque Tamaya resort, surrounded by New Mexico’s stunning Sandia Mountains. Students made a day excursion to Santa Fe, where they dabbled in Native American history and folklore and in the local arts scene.

The following spring, Priscilla Herrington and Matthew Dean represented Salem State College at the regional Phi Alpha Theta conference at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Herrington presented works from a book she is editing on poetry related to the history of Massachusetts. Matthew Dean, the previous year’s recipient of the History Department’s Kiefer Scholarship, delivered a paper on the life and times of Ambrose Martin. Students were treated to an historical tour of Lowell, a city with a rich cultural heritage in industrial production and labor. Phi Alpha Theta capped off the academic year by inducting fifteen students into its society, and awarding the Kiefer Scholarship to Shey Jaboin for her exceptional work in the History Department and on behalf of elementary education.

This year, four of our talented undergraduates, Rachel Emelock, Kristopher Masszi, Michael Morse, and Jordan Townsend, traveled to Quinnipiac University to share their work in the field of historiography. Emelock, President of the Student Historical Association, presented her research on medieval marriage practices. Masszi delivered a paper on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Morse spoke about his work on the economic collapse of East Germany. Townsend reviewed the challenges of peeling back the layers of myth surrounding Roman Emperor Tiberius Claudius.

On April 15, 2009, the Salem State College chapter of Phi Alpha Theta will induct a record thirty-five students, a testament to the growth of the history program and the excellent work being produced by its young scholars within it. Next year we look forward to the biennial convention in San Diego where we hope to bring a new crop of Salem State scholars to share their work.

This article is part of ASpect’s May 2009 issue, Undergraduate Research.