If you want a taste of what you might expect at the lecture, listen to our interview with Tomes in Episode 22 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast.
If you are a health-care professional or someone who is interested in our current health care debates, this lecture is for you. I will see you there.
On September 27, Tomes will deliver the 2018 Messiah College American Democracy Lecture at 7:00pm in Parmer Hall. If you are in the area you will not want to miss this lecture! See you there. Stay tuned for more details.
Listen to Tomes discuss her book on The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast.
Philip Deloria will deliver the 2014 American Democracy Lecture
We in the Messiah College History Department try to give our students an array of opportunities to learn outside of the classroom. Last Spring our students studying digital history and Pennsylvania history spent a lot of time doing archival research. This semester the students in our public archaeology course are hard at work studying a farm connected with a nineteenth-century Anabaptist group known as the “Bermudian Brethren” and uncovering an eighteenth-century Lutheran church building that has been buried for 250 years in the congregation’s graveyard. Several students continue to work on our Digital Harrisburg Project while others provide research support for an array of faculty research projects. We have put a new Public History concentration in place and have been working as well on a new concentration in “Administrative Studies.” In the past few years our students have interned at historical sites all over the mid-Atlantic. It has been a fun ride. I like to think that we are hard at work in creating a new kind of undergraduate history department.
In addition to all of our regular extra-curricular activity, the next few weeks will be particularly busy in the Messiah College History Department. We are very excited to announce (or re-announce) the following events:
On Thursday, October 23, 2014, Philip Deloria will be on campus to deliver the American Democracy Lecture, the most important lecture in the life of the department. I am sure many of you know Deloria’s work. He is a professor of history and administrator at the University of Michigan and a scholar of native American history. His talk “American Indians in the American Cultural Imagination” promises to be an excellent talk. Learn more about ithere. Also check out theFacebook “event” page.
Tibebe Eshete
On Thursday, October 30, we will hold our annual “Faith and History” lecture. This year’s lecturer is Tibebe Eshete, our new visiting lecturer in African history and the author of the definitive work on the evangelical movement in Ethiopia. In the 1970s Tibebe was a young Ethiopian Marxist who was active in the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie. His talk will describe his journey from Marxism to Christian faith and his understanding of the historian’s vocation. The lecture will be held in Boyer Hall room 335 at 4pm. If you are in the area feel free to stop by. It should be a good one.
Finally, on November 4 the History Department will sponsor its annual “Career and Graduate School” event. This year we will focus on careers. Our speakers will be two Messiah College history alums who have gone on to do amazing things with their degrees. Beth Baggett was a Messiah College history major who currently works as an executive in the New York City fashion industry. Caitlin Babcock, another Messiah history alum, works for a non-profit organization focused on the assimilation of new immigrants. It should be a great afternoon. Stay tuned for more information. If you ever wondered what you can do with a history major you need to be at this event.
We continue to try to make the Messiah College History Department an intellectually vibrant place that merges a classic liberal arts history education with the kind of experiential learning that allows our students to build their resumes and develop transferable skills that will be useful in the marketplace.
We in the Messiah College History Department are thrilled to have Philip Deloria of the University Michigan on campus next week to deliver our annual American Democracy lecture. His talk is entitled “American Indians in the American Cultural Imagination.” If you are in the area I hope to see you at the lecture. Here is the press release:
MECHANICSBURG, Pa. (Oct. 2, 2014) — Dr. Philip J. Deloria, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Professor of History and LSA Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at the University of Michigan, will discuss “American Indians in the American Cultural Imagination” Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. in Parmer Hall located in the Calvin and Janet High Center for Worship and Performing Arts. Admission is free; no ticket is required. The lecture is sponsored by the Center for Public Humanities and the Department of History. For more information, contact Shirley Groff atgroff@messiah.edu.
About Philip Deloria
Deloria is the author of Indians in Unexpected Places (2004) and Playing Indian (1998), among many publications. His family has held a prominent role in American Indian history. Grandfather Vine Deloria Sr. (1902-1990), Episcopal archdeacon of South Dakota, was the first American Indian named to an executive position by a major Protestant denomination, and father Vine Deloria Jr. (1933-2005) was a prominent author, scholar and activist.
I will be tweeting at @johnfea1 with the hashtag #shahatmessiah Here is the press release:
GRANTHAM, Pa. (Sept. 17, 2013) — Timothy Shah, associate director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and visiting assistant professor in the government department, Georgetown University, will discuss “Why Religious Freedom Is a Universal, Necessary and Dangerous Idea” Oct. 8 at 7 p.m. in Hostetter Chapel at Messiah College.
Admission is free; no ticket required. The lecture is sponsored by the Messiah College Center for Public Humanities and the department of politics. For more information, contact Shirley Groff at groff@messiah.edu.
About Timothy Shah Shah is a political scientist specializing in the relationship between religion and political freedom in theory, history and contemporary practice.
Since his arrival in the Washington, D.C. area in 1998, Shah has served in senior research positions in several institutes and think tanks, including the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (2003-2007) and the Council on Foreign Relations (2007-2009). Shah has published several articles and book chapters which explore the intersection between religious ideas and actors, on the one hand, and social and political freedom on the other.
Currently at the Berkley Center, Shah is focusing his intellectual energies on developing a robust concept of religious freedom that centers on both expanding the autonomy of religious actors and safeguarding their full and equal participation in social and civic life.
John Fea 
