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By Michael Huner, Chair, Department of History

In the 2024-2025 academic year, the History Department graduated approximately seventy (70) students from our three major programs (History, Group Social Studies, History Education). They join the thousands of alumni of the GVSU History Department who are leading meaningful lives of perpetual learning, piecing together fulfilling careers, altering small and large chunks of society for the better, and all the while never, ever forgetting the value extracted from the craft of interpreting the past. These students brought immense value to the lives of GVSU History faculty—and the professors’ own pursuit of meaningful professional fulfillment—upon passing through our classrooms. Substantial majorities of our alumni would likely affirm that upon their passing through our classrooms the GVSU History Department faculty reciprocated and then some.

Two new tenure track faculty continued this proud tradition upon completing their first academic year here at Grand Valley: Dr. Blair Stein and Dr. Yue Liang. Professors Liang and Stein enhance our offerings in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Already the feedback received from students and colleagues indicates that their positive impact in teaching and scholarship will register in multiple ways. That said, two other faculty who have been registering such impact for decades are departing at the end of this academic year: Dr. Louis Moore and Dr. Steve Tripp.

Prof. Lou Moore leaves enormous shoes to fill. He is now a world-renowned scholar on the History of Race and Sports in the United States, author of three highly acclaimed books,

but also remains a cool dude who keeps it all real even while reminding about the seriousness of what we do—in our writing, in the classroom, and beyond. He departs for a new position at Michigan State University, luckily not far, just a spell or two down I-96. He devoted fifteen years of his professional life to GVSU and its students. We are grateful.

Prof. Steve Tripp perhaps leaves even larger shoes to fill. Dr. Tripp is arguably the most graceful, sublime writer among a faculty of fine writers. His two books (on the Civil War Era and baseball legend Ty Cobb) are not only substantial contributions to scholarship about the History of the United States. They are pure sugar delight for the reading eye. But that just describes one dimension of Dr. Tripp’s contributions to the discipline. Since 1990, he has evolved into one of the most dynamic teachers among a faculty of dynamic teachers. He embraced experiential, high-impact learning practices in his classroom long before they became trendy buzzwords. Students still randomly approach me to describe in vivid detail how his teaching proved transformative for them. To our immense detriment, Professor Tripp is retiring at the end of the winter 2025 semester.

We welcome new faces but say farewell to veteran hands. The cycle of academic years continues even as larger societal landscapes become more edgy, icy, and slippery to do the good work we do. We plod onward working with “students to achieve a lifetime of learning and purpose which includes a commitment to democratic citizenship” as we have done for the past sixty plus years.

In Fall 2024, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at GVSU named Alice Kalinowski (Class of 2015), Public Services Manager at the at Stanford Graduate School of Business Library, a Distinguished Alumni-in-Residence. On Thursday, Oct. 31, Alice gave a presentation on careers in library science to interested students. Later in the day she participated in a panel on the value of education in the humanities in professional life.

Alice earned her BA in history at Grand Valley State and a Masters of Library Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where she worked before assuming her position at Stanford University. She began as a business librarian helping faculty, students, and staff find historical market data, identify business opportunities, and gain access to historical data in newspapers for text and data analysis. In her current position, she oversees library circulation and research support, manages online instructional content, supports collection development, and works with the library leadership on strategic planning.

Librarians work in public, academic, and business settings. Alice explained the variety of career paths in academic libraries, which provide a range of research and teaching support at colleges and universities. She also met with Honors College students while on campus Thursday and Friday, Nov. 1.

Black baseball thrived in Grand Rapids in the mid-twentieth century, including at the venerable Sullivan Field, now Valley Field, on the northwest side of Grand Rapids. Professor Matthew Daley, an expert in Michigan and Great Lakes history and public history, has been working with students to discover more about this overlooked part of Grand Rapids sports history.

In the summer of 2024, Professor Daley worked with Connor Madden (Class of 2024) to research the history of black baseball in Grand Rapids. Black teams like the Grand Rapids Black Sox, owned by Ted Rasberry, and the Chicky Bar Giants played against black, white, and integrated teams at Sullivan Field. Black teams played elsewhere in Grand Rapids as well. Legendary pitcher Satchel Paige played in front of thousands of fans at Bigelow Field in Wyoming Township.

Rasberry’s Black Sox built the steel-and-concrete Is-land Baseball Field just off the east bank of the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids, where the new Acrisure Amphitheater is currently under construction. Regional and local teams, black and white, played at the stadium through 1934.

Lacking consistent coverage of black clubs in the Grand Rapids papers, Professor Daley and Madden had to pore over out-of-town and neighborhood newspapers looking for information.

Next fall, Madden will be starting the Master’s Program in History at Bowling Green State University with a full tuition scholarship.

Investigating black baseball and local ballparks is only one of Professor Daley’s ongoing public history projects. He is working with the Muskegon Intermediate School District and Muskegon Public Schools to secure a state grant to create a collaborative digital repository of local oral history narratives. Eventually, he and his collaborators want to visit some of the towns and rural areas in the South from where the black migration to Muskegon originated.

Professor Daley will also be working with junior his-tory major and GVSU Student Summer Scholar (S3) Ava Politi on a study of urban renewal and gentrification in Grand Rapids, focusing on neighborhoods around Monroe Center and Wealthy Street. Ava is also an intern on a digital history project for the Grand Rapids Historical Commission, which is located in the History Department and supervised by Professor Daley.

Professor Steve Tripp retires at the end of the Winter 2025 semester. He came to Grand Valley State in 1990. Over the years, he has been an inspiring and creative teacher, both in the History Department and the Honors College. Professor Tripp helped spearhead the creation of the Faculty Teaching and Learning Center, played a large role in creating the History Department’s 100-level curriculum, and has long taught the introductory writing course on topics drawn from across American popular culture. He introduced upper-division courses in African American history, labor history, sports history, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. He has also been a model teacher-scholar and an inspiration to his colleagues, with scholarship ranging widely over American social history, sports history, and masculinity. He is currently writing about the ways in which Americans explored and defined the American Way during the Depression years, looking especially at the films of Frank Capra and Robert Riskin. Professor Tripp has published Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg (1996) and Ty Cobb, Baseball, and American Manhood (2016). The Department thanks Steve and wishes him the best.

Professor Louis Moore has accepted a position at Michigan State University beginning in Fall 2025. Professor Moore came to Grand Valley State in 2008 and has taught courses in African American and civil rights history, including creating new courses, such as “The Black Athlete in History.” He also directed the Africana Studies Program and has been a noted mentor and leader on campus. Professor Moore is the author of I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915 (2017), We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality (2017), and The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback (2024). We wish Professor Moore great success as a Spartan.

Visiting Professor Kevin Chrisman, who has been teaching American history at Grand Valley State this year, has accepted a tenure-track position at Hampden-Sidney College in Virginia. Professor Chrisman specializes in the cultural history of modern Mexico, particularly consumerism, gender, sexuality, and transnational business history. His book manuscript, “Meet me at Sanborns: A Cultural History of the Mexican Department Store (1903-2023)” is under contract to the University of Nebraska Press. We thank Professor Chrisman and wish him good fortune in his new position.

Jason Crouthamel participated in a virtual roundtable discussion of “German-Jewish Pilots in the First World War” at Baruch College, City University of New York.

Abigail Gautreau presented on teaching and publishing public history at the National Council on Public History Annual Meeting, which she reprised for a virtual meeting of the NCPH and Organization of American Historians.

Chad Lingwood presented on medieval Sufism at the Fourteenth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference in Mexico City, and served as Faculty Program Coordinator for Middle East Studies in the winter.

Paul Murphy published “More (and Sometimes More Important) Ideas that Made America Roundtable: Re-thinking the Primacy of Pragmatism” in The Carryall.

Patrick Shan published Li Dazhao: China’s First Communist (State University of New York Press, 2024) and presented a paper on China President Xi Jinping’s use of the past at the American Historical Association annual conference in 2024, which appeared as “What did the CCP Learn from the Past? An Analysis of Xi Jinping’s Dexterous Utilization of History,” in China under Xi Jinping: A New Assessment (Leiden University Press, 2024).

Scott Stabler published “Reconstruction’s Accomplishment: Black Education and the Rise of the Civil Rights Movement” with Justin Sheldon and Timothy J. McKeeby in Teaching Emancipation and Reconstruction, 1861–1876, edited by Matthew R. Campbell (Peter Lang, 2025). He co-directed a study abroad program in Vietnam in Summer 2024.

David Zwart published “Pedagogical Humility: Learning from Social Studies Majors’ Intellectual Autobiographies,” in the Great Lakes Social Studies Journal, 4:2 (2024). He presented “Making Sense of Michigan’s State Social Studies Standards” with Annie Whitlock at the Michigan Conference on Introductory History Courses.

In September 2024, the History Department hosted the annual Great Lakes History Conference. Professors Jason Crouthamel and Julia Köhne (Humbolt University in Berlin) co-organized this year’s conference on the theme of “Intoxicated Warfare: Psychoactive Substances, Violence and Trauma.”

The interdisciplinary conference brought together specialists from Europe, Africa, and the US to discuss how drugs and alcohol have been used to enable killing as well as cope with the traumatic effects of war. Colleagues from the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences participated on a variety of panels. They explored not only medicalized and military systems for managing drug use, often as a catalyst for violence, but also how individuals use intoxicants for self-therapy. Three keynotes shared their expertise and scholarship on drugs and war: Professor Edward Westermann (Texas A&M University), Dessa Bergen-Cico (Syracuse University), and Peter Andreas (Brown University). Next year’s conference on “Climate, Environment, Psyche, and History” will be held October 17-18, 2025.

If you are interested in supporting current Grand Valley State University undergraduates, consider making a donation to one of the following funds established to honor past history faculty or advance current historical work.  Contact the History Department with any questions (616-331-3298) or the University Development Office (https://www.gvsu.edu/giving/).

Quirinus Breen Prize Scholarship: Benefits students regularly enrolled in any history course.

Frances Ann Kelleher Endowed Memorial Scholarship: History or Social Studies students studying abroad.

James F. and Virginia L. Goode Global Programs Endowed Scholarship: Need-based scholarship for students planning to study abroad.

Glenn A. and Betty J. Niemeyer History Scholarship Endowment: Benefits deserving junior or senior history majors.

David M. Stark Endowed Scholarship in Latin American History: Benefit s History and Latin American Studies majors.

Veterans History Project Endowment: Funds oral history interviews, documentaries, educational materials, and live presentations by U.S. veterans.

Kathleen Underwood Endowed S3 Fellowship: Assists students in the Student Summer Scholars (S3) Program and who are conducting research on social inequality in women and gender studies and/or history.

Joan L. Chapman Endowed Scholarship: Assists students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences who are enrolled in either the history or English programs and also demonstrate financial need in covering the cost of their education.

Grand Valley State University Department of History

The craft of history interprets the past. History examines the lives of people, the consequences of ideas, and the products of human ingenuity. Historians engage in deep inquiry and persuasive debate. They craft narratives about the past based in evidence. The skills students gain through the study of history allow them to analyze and interpret evidence and evaluate how human societies change over time.

History Highlights

Grand Valley State History Department Alumni Newsletter

Vol. 5, No. 1 (April 2025)

The History Department Alumni Newsletter is published by the Alumni  Outreach Committee:

Steeve Buckridge

Michael Huner

Chris Jansson (Digital Newsletter Editor) 

Paul Murphy (Chair, Newsletter Editor)

Scott Stabler

Questions, comments, or if you have news for future editions:

please contact Paul Murphy ([email protected]).

GVSU Department of History, Mackinac Hall, D-1-160, 1 Campus Dr., Allendale, MI  49401, (616) 331-3298

Chair:  Michael Huner ([email protected])

Department Coordinator:  Elizabeth Ehlers ([email protected])

Joint Department Coordinator:  Chris Jansson ([email protected])