Notes from History Alumni

Joe Rice (‘09):  I graduated from Lewis and Clark in 2009 with a major in history, a minor in music and an informal focus on things Latin American.

The year after I graduated, I worked at my old high school in Bremerton, Washington, where I tutored potential first-generation college students through the AVID program and substitute taught for various classes.  I always tried to convey to students how intellectually exciting college can be, and even managed to bring the sophomore AVID class to visit L&C. 

Ready for a change of pace, I decided to spend my next year in Latin America, and to that end applied to Chile’s English Opens Doors program, sponsored by the Chilean government and the UN Development Program.  I taught English to 5^th-12^th graders in a public school in a small town on the island of Chiloé in southern Chile.   The kids were great, and overall it was a great time spent with welcoming, traditional people who liked to express their hospitality through delicious lamb roasts. 

When the semester was over, I made my way to Brazil, with the objective of visiting friends and learning Portuguese.  After backpacking around for a few months and getting my fill of historic cities, beautiful natural places and great music, I was finding it hard to leave, and found a job in São Paulo teaching English to private clients. 

I am now back in the US, planning to start a master’s in social sciences program at the University of Chicago in the fall, where I want to focus on issues like immigration, race and ethnicity and nationalism.  If all goes well, I plan to apply to PhD programs in history the following year. 

Peter Beland (‘07):  I spent last spring in Delhi, India, where I researched social entrepreneurship, environmentalism and other topics regarding “New India.” My experience in Delhi formed the foundation for my proposed Fulbright research grant to study water resource management in the capital city. I currently live in Portland, where I work as an Associate Writer for Oregon Business Magazine.

Quinn Slobodian (‘00):  I joined the History Department at Wellesley in 2008 after receiving my Ph.D from New York University with a dissertation titled “Radical Empathy: The Third World and the New Left in 1960s West Germany.”  My work revolves around the politics of race and representation in postwar Germany and traces the traffic of ideas, influences and activists over national and continental borders.  At Wellesley, I teach courses related to modern Europe on the history of cities, gender and sexuality, world economic orders and crowds.

Laura Benson:  After graduating from LC, Jeremy Brown and I spent a year in Mexico teaching English and doing fundraising work for NGOs in Oaxaca and Mexico City.  The following year I returned to Portland and a job at my old work study haunt, Community Energy Project, while Jeremy spent a year in China doing intense language study.  In the fall of 2001 we moved to San Diego where we spent the better part of seven years while Jeremy finished a Ph.D. in Chinese History at UCSD.  I worked as a community organizer for three years on San Diego’s living wage campaign. From 2006 to 2008 I worked at Environmental Health Coalition where I was an advocate and campaign director for environmental justice campaigns in local Latino neighborhoods.  In between (2005), I spent several months with Jeremy in Tianjin China, and worked as campaign staff for progressive mayoral candidate Donna Frye.  Probably the most momentous event of the last decade for us was June 26, 2007 when our son Henry was born. A year later the three of us moved to Vancouver, B.C. where Jeremy has a position as Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University.  I’m currently studying for a masters in Urban Studies at SFU and hope to eventually find my way back into the environmental and social justice movement in my new home.

Patrick Croasdaile (‘08):  While studying in Scotland I realized quite early on that 18th/19th constitutional history was not really my thing, nor was the history of the Highlands.  From about December onwards I began focusing my reading and studies around my dissertation topic, the energy industry in Scotland.  The dissertation was truly the high point of my studying at Glasgow.  My final course papers dealt with the slow-development of the environmental movement in Scotland/Britain during the 20th century as well as the growth of the coal industry up until the General Strike of 1926.

My dissertation is entitled, ‘Change Starts Here: Energy Industry and Government Policy in Scotland, 1943-2010’.  I set the paper against Scotland’s pre-eminent status as Europe’s renewable energy powerhouse.   Scotland has around 40% of Europe’s total potential in renewable energy (much of this will come from on/offshore wind and marine energy [tidal/wave]).  The Scottish Government has also pledged to reduce overall carbon emissions in Scotland by 42% in 2020.  In this light, I found it relevant to review how government policy in Britain/Scotland has shaped  the energy industry over the past 70 years.  I started out with a section on the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, founded in 1943, which radically changed the makeup of the Highlands.  My second section dealt with the fastbreeder reactors developed at the Dounreay Nuclear Establishment (in Caithness) and the facility’s lasting impact on the legacy of nuclear power in Scotland.  The final case-study was on the legacy of North Sea Oil as it relates to incoming energy industries with the potential of generating significant capital and garnering large sums of foreign direct investment.  All three studies are very pertinent to the growth of Scotland’s renewables portfolio.