History Department
June 2007

The History Department has launched three sets of initiatives that constitute unique examples of the New American University at work. Please celebrate with us these “Exemplary New American University Initiatives.”

I. Exemplary Initiative in Intellectual Fusion—$500,000 Templeton Award (2006-09).
                       
            ASU History Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson is the PI for a pathbreaking project in intellectual fusion funded by the Metanexus Institute, “Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science, and Technology.” The $500,000 grant funds the “Templeton Research Lectures.”  The second year (2007-08) will examine transhumanism’s conviction that technology will transform human beings and that this transformation constitutes “progress” for the human species. The core of the project is an interdisciplinary faculty seminar that meets monthly under the auspices of Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict.  Established in 2004, the faculty seminar (“Being Human: Science, Religion, Technology, and Law”) has brought together faculty from the humanities, the life sciences, the social sciences, engineering, and law.  Scholars trained in philosophy, history, and religious studies have been challenged to read about physics, biology, and chemistry, and conversely, scholars trained in the natural sciences have been exposed to philosophy, intellectual history, and religious studies. All participants have had to grapple with issues of law and public policy, which are quite different from the ordinary concerns of scientists or humanists.  The interdisciplinary nature of the engagement has demonstrated to all participants how important it is to interact with scholars from disciplines other than our own and how enriching such a conversation can be.

II. Exemplary Initiative in Social Embeddedness—$960,000 Teaching American History Award.

            ASU History Professors Linda Sargent Wood and Brian Gratton at Arizona State University direct the department’s partnership with Phoenix’s Deer Valley Unified School District (DVUSD), a rapidly growing urban/rural district of 35,000 students located in Northwest Maricopa County.  This partnership, “Learning History by Doing History,” is made possible through a three-year, $960,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History (TAH) program.  Between them, Wood and Gratton have directed four previous TAH projects. The Deer Valley project, one of only two awarded in Arizona in 2006, constitutes their most ambitious effort to build relationships between professional historians and public school teachers.  The Department provides two graduate courses for thirty 7-12th grade teachers. Professors and graduate students work directly with the teachers on individual projects designed to help them, and then their students, learn history by doing history (http://www.asu.edu/clas/history/teaching/dvusd.html). The partnership also includes the renowned Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLI) of New York City.  Winner of the National Humanities Medal in 2005, GLI has pioneered the development of “history high schools” and other novel approaches to history education (http://gilderlehrman.org/teachers/seminars1.html).

III. Exemplary Initiative in Global Engagement--$1,131,000 International Development Funding.

            ASU History Professor Stephen Batalden (director of The Melikian Center) is PI on four projects funded by USAID and the U.S. State Department that are stretching the traditional boundaries of U.S. higher education involvement in international development. Three of the projects involve incubation of new curriculum at partner institutions in Eastern Europe and Eurasia—1) $200,000 Partnership in Religious Studies with the University of Sarajevo; 2) $206,000 Partnership in Public Policy Research with Moscow State University; and 3) $450,000 Partnership in Reform of Accountancy Training with the University of Pristina (Kosovo).  A fourth $275,000 project funded by USAID has commissioned ASU to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of “Freedom Support Act (FSA)” and “Support for East European Democracy (SEED)” funding upon job creation in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.