Professor of Latin American history Eileen Findlay was presented with the “Outstanding Teaching in a Full-Time Appointment” award at the 2016 University Faculty Awards ceremony. This prestigious award is designed to reflect “sustained contributions to the university over many years” and requires excellence in teaching as documented by student evaluations, comments, and feedback; success of former students; and a wide range of advising and mentoring activities with AU students. Across the years, students have praised Prof. Findlay’s “energy, passion, and enthusiasm” in the classroom, her intellectual rigor, and her extraordinary capacity to motivate them.

According to former Department Chair Pam Nadell, who presented the award to Findlay, “time and again students say that she is ‘one of the best, if not the very best, teachers, that they have ever encountered.’” Perhaps the most telling testimony of all, Nadell says, comes from the excited student who claimed: “I have never come across a professor who could make the process of writing a 60-page paper fun” until meeting Prof. Findlay. Nadell went on to note that Findlay has mentored more than a dozen students to Fulbright awards and other prestigious scholarships, her alumni have gone on to graduate study at the most elite universities and won major fellowships, and her doctoral students are engaged in teaching and research at universities, institutes, and seminaries around the nation.

Former History Major Colleen Moore (Class of 2001) first explored her passion for history at American University. Now, after obtaining her Ph.D. in Russian History at Indiana University in Bloomington, she is an assistant professor of history at Florida Southern College. “My undergraduate coursework in history at American well prepared me for graduate school, and beyond,” Moore said.

She singled out classes taught by the late James Mooney as particularly inspiring. “If it weren’t for Mr. Mooney, I wouldn’t have become a history major, but I am so glad I did. I recall my classes at American fondly and use some of the same texts that I read for them in my own teaching.”

On April 11, students in Prof. Justin Jacobs’s modern Chinese history course (HIST 251) were treated to an exclusive audience with Ambassador Shen Lyu-shun of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Ambassador Shen and his attentive staff hosted approximately twenty AU students at the historic Twin Oaks estate in Woodley Park. The event began with an informative tour of the 26-room English Georgian Renaissance-style mansion, which was originally constructed in 1888 and once served as the summer residence of the founder of the National Geographic Society. Ambassador Shen personally granted access to rare works of art and explained their historical significance. After the tour, Prof. Jacobs and his students were served coffee, tea, and pastries while seated for a roundtable discussion of Chinese politics and history. Ambassador Shen was exceedingly generous with his time, spending nearly an hour and a half patiently answering questions about Taiwan’s place in world politics today and the legacies of modern Chinese history. This lively discussion touched upon the cultural identities of Taiwan and mainland China, simplified and traditional characters, Taiwan’s outsized economic footprint in the global economy, the legacy of Japanese rule in Taiwan, and the fate of antiquities in the National Palace Museum.

Reflecting on the event afterwards, Kaitlin Winterroll, a senior in political science, said that “It was especially interesting to listen to how the ambassador answered questions so candidly without much hesitation. It was an amazing experience and I thoroughly enjoyed the excursion.” John Tuttle, a junior in the School of Public Affairs, said that “events like the one today are the reason I wanted to study in DC.  There is nowhere else in the country I would’ve been able to have a similar experience.”

The History Department at AU would like to thank Ambassador Shen and his staff for providing such a wonderful educational opportunity to our students, and Prof. Jacobs looks forward to taking future students in his modern Chinese history course to Twin Oaks.

In her new book, Islamic Law, Gender and Social Change in Post-Abolition Zanzibar (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Elke Stockreiter analyzes the transformation of Zanzibar’s Islamic judiciary under British colonial rule from 1890 to 1963. In particular, she explores the ways in which socially marginalized groups—women and former slaves, for example—managed to engage Islamic courts to pursue their own diverse interests and agendas. Prof. Stockreiter’s work at AU has already been the subject of one feature article. Now, in this video interview, fellow AU History Dept. professor Justin Jacobs speaks with Stockreiter about some of the more comparative and thematic aspects of her research.

A recent study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that “among humanities and liberal arts majors, history majors have the highest annual wage” (p. 93). Approximately one in five humanities and liberal arts majors choose to study history, surpassed only by English. The full report, “The Economic Value of College Majors,” is available here.