March 26, 2026

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Will Mackintosh Completes Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

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Will Mackintosh has just completed a residential research fellowship at the American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where he was working with their collection of nineteenth-century American tourist guidebooks. This fellowship was part of his ongoing research project on the origins of domestic tourism in the early United States.

Andréa Livi Smith Hosts Preservation Education Symposium

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Andréa Livi Smith, assistant professor and director of the Center for Historic Preservation, organized and hosted the second Undergraduate Historic Preservation Education Symposium (UHPES) on the UMW campus on June 20-22. Dr. Smith analyzed findings from the first symposium, held in 2010, culminating in an article published in the current edition of Preservation Education and Research. This second iteration of UHPES brought together faculty in historic preservation from undergraduate as well as graduate programs from around the country. Pedagogy, curriculum development, and student placement were the main topics of discussion. Findings from the second UHPES will be posted on the Center for Historic Preservation website. The event was held with the generous support of the Hofer Fund.

Nabil Al-Tikriti Presents at Cairo Conference on Iraq 10 Years Later

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During the conference, Nabil Al-Tikriti also took the opportunity to explore Cairo, the Sayyida Zaynab religious festival, Upper Egypt.

On June 3-4, Nabil Al-Tikriti offered a presentation entitled “Some Longer Term Effects of the 2003 Anglo-American Invasion on Iraqi Society” to the conference entitled Iraq – 10 Years On: Conflicts, Migrations, Futures in Cairo, Egypt. This conference brought together experts from the fields of Iraqi studies and forced migration to examine some of the lingering effects of the 2003 invasion of the country. Prof. Al-Tikriti presented both his impressions gained from a trip to Baghdad the previous month and his thoughts on the invasion’s legacies throughout a range of sectors. Organizers expect to complete an edited volume of conference presentations within the next few months. This conference was hosted by the American University in Cairo’s Center for Migration and Refugee Studies; and jointly sponsored by the Japan Foundation, Chiba University, Japan Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Here is a link to the conference program: http://iraq10years.info/wp-content/uploads/Cairo_Program2013Ver3.pdf.

Here is Prof. Al-Tikriti’s conference abstract:

“In 2003 the United States and Great Britain led a “coalition of the willing” in an invasion of Iraq which was only the latest in a long string of interventions by the two powers in the region dating back to the nineteenth century. With this contribution, I plan to examine some of the longer term effects of this particular intervention on Iraqi society and the region as a whole, as distinct from all the previous interventions as well as certain other developments endogenous to Iraqi society.

Within Iraq, I concentrate on changes in the cultural and educational spheres, extending and updating research I carried out in the years immediately following the invasion. In the cultural sphere, I ask what has befallen Iraq’s cultural patrimony since the invasion, particularly in terms of manuscript collections and archives. In the educational sphere, I examine changes in higher education and social studies textbook production since 2003.

Outside Iraq, I examine changes both to the region as a whole, as well as to the reach of U.S. foreign policy as a result of the 2003 invasion. As widely publicized at the time, American policymakers hoped to spread democracy throughout the region, transform Iraq into a base for intervention elsewhere, and demonstrate the vibrancy of an unregulated economy.  My contribution will conclude with a summary overview of the success, failure, and longer term effects of such policy orientations on both the region and the United States itself.”

 

Jim Groom Delivers Three Invited Presentations

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Over the course of two weeks, Jim Groom was invited to give presentations about the innovative work the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies has been doing recently. On May 16th, Jim Groom delivered a talk titled “Syndication-Oriented Architecture: a Solution to Problem of Coherence” for Campus Technology’s Virtual Leadership Summit. You can read more about the conceptual thinking about the ideas presented here.

On May 22, he was invited to speak about the open, online class ds106 to the College of Wooster, you can watch the presentation in its entirety below, and read more details here.

Finally, on May 30 he presented once gain about ds106 to the University System of New Hampshire, a presentation you can read more about and listen to the audio here. The slides can be found below.

Jeffrey McClurken Presents at Three Workshops

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Over the last month, Jeff McClurken, Chair of History & American Studies, has run digital history workshops at three institutions. In early May he worked with Duke’s Cathy Davidson to run a workshop at Davidson College to help faculty there develop a “Digital Studies Program.” In late May, he ran a multi-day workshop on “Developing the Digital Liberal Arts” for faculty and staff at UNC-Asheville, a fellow COPLAC institution. Finally, he was invited to run a workshop about “Teaching Digital History” at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University as part of the THATCamp Humanities and Technology Conference in early June. At THATCamp he also proposed and led a discussion session on “A SWAT Team for Rescuing Old Digital Humanities Sites.”