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Making history
Two Department of History professors awarded fellowships from the National Humanities Center
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With only 35 fellowships available each year, it is rare that the same
college or university will get more than one individual selected in the
same year by the National Humanities Center.
And never have two professors in the same academic department at the same
college or university been selected to attend the nation's only independent
institute for advanced study in the humanities.
That will all change soon thanks to Department of History assistant professors
Joseph (Jay) Taylor (pictured in the left photo) and Paul Griffiths. The
pair has been awarded separate fellowships to the National Humanities
Center in Chapel Hill, N.C., for the 2002-03 academic year. A total of
474 individuals applied for the fellowships.
"The Center is purely designed as a place where we can go and write,"
Griffiths said. "The assumption is that each of us are at various
points of writing a book."
While in residence, Griffiths plans to finish his book, The First Bridewell
Petty Crime, Policing and Prison in London, 1545-1660. He focuses
on London Bridewell, a prison-workhouse that was the first of its kind
in Europe and a blueprint for similar institutions both inside and outside
England.
This will be the first full study of petty crime and the first to examine
the historical development of policing and punishment from the perspective
of petty crime. Not only will the book have the largest ever assembled
body of evidence for a study like this (161,000 criminal cases), but it
is also a conceptual study that examines the changing meanings of 107
crimes over a century and discovers a comprehensive feminization of crime
after 1625.
"Bridewell had a key role in policing crime in the fast-growing city,
and its multiple implications for histories of London and society are
emphasized including government, order, poverty, work, the rule of law,
the links between the Reformation and policy, and attitudes to institutions,"
Griffiths said.
Like Griffiths, Taylor is looking forward to a year of writing and completing
his book on rock climbing in Yosemite. He is on research leave during
the spring semester through a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant
and the National Park Services "Sabbaticals in the Parks Program,"
which allowed him to live in the Yosemite area for three months.
"Quite frankly my research is a little out of the normal," Taylor
said. "I'm attracted to topics where a lot of themes converge."
A former rock climber himself, Taylor was able to convince the NSF that
rock climbing had important themes relating to technology. In particular,
Taylor is researching the cultural and environmental impacts effect of
expansion bolts, equipment installed in rocks by climbers to insure a
safer climb in hazardous areas.
In 1998, the U.S. Forest Service ignited a huge controversy when they
banned such rock climbing equipment saying the 1964 Wildness Act made
the equipment illegal.
This will be Taylor's second book. His first, Making Salmon: An Environmental
History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis, was published in 1999 and
was the winner of the George Perkins Marsh Award from the American Society
for Environmental History.
Griffiths' first book, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in
England 1560-1640, was also an award winner, winning the Royal Historical
Society of Great Britain Whitfield Prize in 1997 for the best book published
in any period or field in British history.
A private, nonprofit institution, the National Humanities Center is part
of the "Research Triangle" in North Carolina. It was formed
to encourage excellent scholarship and to affirm the importance of humanities
in American society. The fellowship program identifies scholars at a breakthrough
moment in their work, and provides financial support and a stimulating
environment for the best new work in the humanities.
Since 1978, the Center has supported more than 700 scholars from more
than 150 American colleges and universities, as well as from more than
30 other nations. From their work at the Center, these scholars have published
over 750 books, 60 or more which have won scholarly and literary prizes
including the Pulitzer Prize.
"This is a wonderful opportunity and the fact that both Jay and I
received fellowships is quite an endorsement for our department,"
Griffiths said.
For Taylor, the fellowship is an ideal situation for him since three other
professors specializing in environmental history will also be participating
in the program.
"To be in such wonderful company will allow me to continue to work
on my book and research," he said, "and I'm tickled to death
to be going with Paul."
Paul Griffiths
Joseph Taylor
Around LAS
April 29 to May 11, 2002
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