John Gibson, who graduated in 2010 with Honors in History, is currently in Switzerland on a Fulbright-Swiss Government Research Grant for 2011-2012. He is associated with the Institut d’histoire of the Université de Neuchâtel and the Historisches Institut of the Universität Bern, and has been going to the archives almost every day for his research on diplomatic networks of the French Revolution. This hasn’t kept him from enjoying Switzerland’s magnificent scenery on the weekends, however.

Nancy Locklin (PhD 2000) has just published an article, “‘Til death parts us’: Women’s Domestic Partnerships in Eighteenth-Century Brittany,” in the Journal of Women’s History, Winter 2011 (volume 23, issue 4). In even bigger news, she and her husband have adopted a baby boy from Russia. Congratulations on both counts, Nancy!

Neal Robin (B.A. 2007) served as editorial producer for “Elusive Justice: The Search for Nazi War Criminals,” a documentary premiering Tuesday, November 15 (at 9PM on PBS; check for local listings) that chronicles the 65-year effort to identify, prosecute, and punish Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust.

After the end of WWII, the international community failed to uphold its pledge to prosecute and punish suspected Nazi war criminals. Thousands of Nazi officials fled to safe havens around the world, assuming false identities and concealing their war records to evade exposure.  The documentary explores how and why this happened, as well as profiles the men and women who, in the face of apathy and violence, pursued Nazis on their own terms when official institutions failed to enforce its laws.  The film includes interviews with suspected war criminals and their defenders, government investigators and prosecutors, intelligence officers, so-called Nazi-hunters, and Holocaust survivors.

As editorial producer, Neal conducted on-camera interviews, coordinated story assignments (including overseas assignments), located archival footage, and researched trials and investigations of suspected Nazi perpetrators to incorporate into the film.

Neal says, “My background in history served as an indispensable background for me during the documentary production, and will continue to be invaluable in all my educational and professional endeavors.  I read historical accounts of groups of people who were abused and disenfranchised for bigoted reasons, and whose memory served as a basis on which future generations attempted to raise the moral and social consciousness to issues of injustice.  I drew on the lessons I learned in class by listening to firsthand accounts of those who bore witness to crimes as they unfolded, and then trying to understand the stories behind them.”

Congratulations to Jeffrey Reznick (PhD 1999) for his new appointment as Chief of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. Previous to this appointment he was Deputy Chief and then Acting Chief of the History of Medicine Division of the NLM, and has an extensive background in the social and cultural history of medicine. He has also served as senior curator at the National Museum of Health and Medicine of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Executive Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Orthotic and Prosthetic Assistance Fund, and as the assistant director of the former Institute of Comparative and International Studies at Emory. He is the author of John Galsworthy and Disabled Soldiers of the Great War: With an Illustrated Selection of His Writings (2009) and Healing the Nation: Soldiers and the Culture of Caregiving in Britain during the Great War (2005) as well as many articles on the history of medicine and war.

Jerome V. Reel, Jr. (Ph.D. 1967) has received the South Carolina Humanities Council award for his outstanding service to humanities education and knowledge through his 48 years of teaching at Clemson University, his six books, several chapters in books, and a dozen articles for scholarly and popular magazines on historical topics ranging from 14th century Britain, higher education history, opera and general music history, to the effects of the Arthurian legend through music and popular festivals. Although retired since 2006, he continues to teach almost every semester at Clemson in response to student requests. His most recent book, The High Seminary: A History of the Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, 1889-1964 (June 2011) has sold its first printing; a second is at the press.