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The History Department is pleased to announce the following 2013 summer research grants:

Professor Barry Shapiro will use support from the Jonathan E. and Nancy L. Helmreich Research and Book Grant Fund to help cover a research trip to Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. He will be gathering materials on the political leader Frederik van Zyl Slabbert’s parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activities during the 1980s. This will involve searching the archives and special collections of the libraries of three universities in the Cape Town area, the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, and the University of the Western Cape. Documents from the universities represent three distinct populations, the University of Cape Town being the university for English-speaking whites, Stellenbosch serving more conservative Afrikaans-speaking whites, and the University of the Western Cape as the university for “non-whites.”Professor Shapiro will use this research as part of a book-length project on the pre-negotiation stages of the South African transition from apartheid to democracy. He is also scheduled to present a paper on Slabbert at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in Baltimore this November.

Visiting Assistant Professor Sarah Hardin will use support from the Helmreich Fund toward a research trip to Senegal. There she will conduct research for a journal article exploring the political effects of pesticides and for a book manuscript tentatively titled Poisoned Development? Peasants and Pesticides in Southeastern Senegal. She also will use her time in Senegal to set up Skype conversations in the fall between her Allegheny students and Senegalese scholars and activists.

Associate Professor Kalé Haywood is the recipient of funding from the Edwin Van Duesen Selden Fund for travel to Seville, Spain. There she will work in the Archives of the Indies as part of her research on Mexican cathedral chapters in New Spain.

Associate Professor Kenneth Pinnow will use support from the Bruce Harrison ’45 History Department Fund to conduct research in New York and Washington, DC this fall as part of his new project on the history of clinical research and medical ethics in the Soviet Union.