Introducing our Fall 2023–Spring 2024 Lepage Center History Fellows
The Lepage Center is delighted to announce its Fall 2023-Spring 2024 History Fellows: Ryan Snyder, MA’24 and Cole Scheuring, BA ’24. The Fellows will assist the Center in all the ways it communicates historical scholarship and perspectives to various audiences, including events, workshops, and social media. Below are some of their thoughts about the Lepage Center and studying history, by way of introduction.
Why did you choose Villanova?
RS: I came to Villanova because of its first-rate history faculty, because of the unique opportunities afforded to MA students as Villanova does not have PhD students in History, and because of the non-competitive culture among graduate students. It has been a fantastic academic home.
CS: I am a legacy at Villanova. My mom is an alum of the class of 1990 and my sister was in the class of 2020. Villanova’s been in my blood since I was little, and I feel privileged to be able to be the third member of my family to join the Villanova community.
Why did you apply to be a Lepage fellow?
RS: Having studied under Lepage Center Director, Dr. Paul Rosier, I was eager for an opportunity to work for him outside the classroom. The center is a great opportunity to get experience in public-facing history while still in a university setting.
CS: I was encouraged to engage with the Lepage Center by Dr. Craig Bailey because he believed my experience with both history and communications made me a good fit for the Lepage Center. After seeing the position open, I was eager for the opportunity and excited to be able to help promote history to a wider audience using my skill set.
What are you looking forward to this year? (Either in the history program or the Center)
RS: I am looking forward to getting a wider perspective on history by attending the many events the Lepage Center is hosting this year. Having lived in downtown Chicago, this year’s theme of Cities in the Historical Perspective is particularly interesting.
CS: The city series of panel discussions is exciting because it provides a unique and interesting framework for viewing a wide range of historical topics. The speakers we are getting are experts that all provide unique and fascinating viewpoints on a range of topics based in urban environments.
What is your next step after graduation?
RS: I plan to pursue a PhD, to keep the fun rolling.
CS: I want to move into the marketing field, and being able to utilize these skills for the Lepage Center is an exciting chance for me to grow and develop in a topic that I have an amazing passion for.
What are your long-term goals/career path?
RS: I love to teach, at either the college or high school level; however, I am also interested in working for a historical society, archive, university, or in local government.
CS: I want to be able to work to market brands I am passionate about in a creative capacity. In particular, I would love to do marketing for museums like the Brian group did for the Penn museum’s renovated space. Being able to apply both my passions would be amazing.
What is your favorite historical topic/origins of historical interest?
RS: I got my start in history thinking about the historical interconnections of race and Christianity in the Atlantic World; more recently I have been working on the 20th century history of capitalism, although I still attempt to consider how race and religion are implicated therein.
CS: I’m interested in post-Civil War race relations in the American South. I wrote my senior thesis on the Wilmington, North Carolina race riots/massacre that led to the only successful coup d’état on American soil. That research provided a lot o enriching knowledge on this country’s dark past and helped me understand how race relations have developed in the modern day.
How do you like to spend time outside of class and academic study?
RS: My wife and I enjoy hiking, board games, and TV. I also play classical viola and piano.
CS: I am a diehard fan of the Philadelphia Union. As a member of the Sons of Ben and a partial season ticket holder, I love to go to the games and take in the unrivaled atmosphere of the best fan-base in sports.
What draws you to public facing history?
RS: With my BA in Communications, I find Public-Facing history an exciting way to bring together my various interests.
CS: As a communications and history double major, I am fascinated in how history is communicated to the public and how people interpret those messages. That interplay gives a unique understanding of both the history and communications fields.
Why should the public care about the Center?
RS: The Lepage Center is a great way to discover more about a wide array of topics from leading scholars in their respective fields. It brings makes great scholarship accessible in a really important way.
CS: Lepage Center events are a great opportunity to bring in speakers with a broad range of viewpoints, offering new perspectives on history. Attending these events is a great way to engage with history as a topic and allows attendees to question and refine their own viewpoints.
What do you want to do/accomplish as a Lepage fellow?
RS: I hope to make the Lepage Center Blog a useful tool for the Lepage Center community to think more about the discussions each of our events begins.
CS: As a Lepage fellow, I’d love to help organize events on topics I am passionate about. By doing this, I hope to broaden my viewpoints about history in a holistic sense.
What was your favorite Lepage event from the past year?
RS: I really enjoyed Climate Change in Historical Perspective: Historians, Scholarship, and Advocacy.[1] I especially enjoyed hearing from Dr. Dagomar Degroot and considering how we can use the natural archive (like ice cores) to accurately gauge the global temperature at various points in history. [2]
CS: Dr. Helena Rosenblatt’s event about the weaponization of the word “liberal” fascinated me personally.[3] This event was so interesting because it analyzed common interpretations of the word “liberal”, but it also provided a historical framework that showed the linguistic development of the word into becoming a smear term.[4]
What is your favorite historical text or idea that you were exposed to here at Villanova?
RS: Shoot. There are so many. I’m not sure it’s my favorite, but one book that I recently really enjoyed was Gregory Brew’s Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War. It is an incredibly useful book for thinking about the way mid-20th-century development economics intersected with global oil and the politics of Middle Eastern decolonization.
CS: In Dr. Gallicchio’s class we interpreted American, Chinese and Japanese history side by side, which showed the ways these countries interacted with one another, shifting between being allies and enemies. I have taken many American history classes in my lifetime so this perspective put familiar content into a much more interesting framework than I have used prior.
What is the last non-History book you read and why should someone else read it?
RS: I have a few non-history books on rotation. The last non-history book I read was either Karl Marx’s Capital Vol. 1 or a collection of poems by Christian Wiman, Survival is a Style. Somehow reading both of these concurrently in this neo-liberal era feels right. The latter is definitely more fun. It’s hard to say which is more incisive.
CS: Invincible. It was a nice change of pace from the stuff I normally read. I have hit the wall of being sick of superhero media due to the saturation of content, and Invincible told a good story without worrying about fulfilling tropes of the genre.
[1] Watch our first Climate Change in Historical Perspective Panel Here
[2] Read “Climate Change and the Role of the Historian” by ‘22-’23 Graduate Fellow Tripp Wright
[3] Watch “When Did “Liberal” Become an Insult?” Here
[4] Read “When Did “Liberal” Become an Insult?” by ‘22-‘23 Undergraduate Fellow Alise Adornato
