Letter from the Chair
What a year it has been! This year has been all about the acquisition of knowledge, but not in the way that I ever expected as new chair of the Department of History.
Little did I know in March 2020 that when I shut my office door to leave a campus closed by Governor Pritzker, I would not be back full-time in Peck Hall until Summer 2021! In only my second semester as chair, when the learning curve was already high, SIUE and the history department quickly faced a pivot to all virtual meetings and events, teaching and learning until just recently. Then, my learning curve climbed as high as the United States’ COVID-19 case curves with the Delta variant.
Just as the pandemic brought many challenges, it also brought welcome change and innovation. Who knew so many forms could now be signed and filed electronically at SIUE? Could faculty who were not previously inclined pivot to mandatory fully online courses, and how will all of this online teaching affect the department’s curricular offerings going forward? How great is it that we could reach dozens of people in an online audience from near and far in SIUE’s inaugural Sankofa Lecture and Dialogue Webinar series, highlighting African American history? Is it possible to teach “in-person” and learn to recognize students by their masks, not their faces?
And speaking of faces, I’ve seen more Brady Bunch squares and learned more about Zoom than I care to imagine—from CAS and University meetings to department faculty meetings, office hours with students and online conferences.
In spite of all these challenges and new circumstances, our history students, staff and faculty, and alumni have shown resilience, grace and patience. My heartfelt thanks as chair to all our constituents—2020 is “one for the history books.” We are ready for 2021 and beyond; and I’ll add a special shout-out to Dr. Steve Tamari and CAS’ Kim Sletten for helping with this edition of the newsletter.
Allison Thomason, PhD
Chair and Professor, Department of History
