BackStory; Best of BackStory: The Time Joanne Freeman Went to Congress

major funding for backstory provided by an anonymous donor the national down for the committees and josephine robert cornell the moral foundation kennedy welcome to back story the show that explains the history behind today's headlines i enjoyed freedom now if you're new to the podcast each week along with my colleagues at areas and brian balogh we explore a different aspect of american history now i drink backstory in two thousand seventy which seems like a short time ago and it won't somehow and although i was the only female co host i really didn't join the team thinking about that word didn't really give much thought to my identity as a historian because after all all of the co hosts we're an art historian so that was a but during my time and that's very different shows have been surprised

me as a woman and as a historian in ways that i really hadn't anticipated and in ways that have really stuck with me it was not that hard for me to think back to these segments you're going to hear about today when i was asked to find some it stood out because so many of them doing this as the second to last instalment and i'm going yes series backstory starts to wrap up after more than twelve years the final one will be best of backstory the listener evasion which means we're looking for submissions from view let us know what you are most memorable for you and tell us why just check the show notes to find out how to get in touch as for this episode i'm excited to have the chance to share these three conversations with you i hope you enjoyed that you learn about nineteenth century and aquariums collectors who are nostalgic for the so called olden times and you hear my conversation from two thousand nineteen with sen tammy duckworth

about her life of service and what it takes to change the culture of congress but first we're going to talk about on our culture in america on a culture you probably think about doing in the nineteenth century and of course at this point we've all heard the story of alexander hamilton aaron burr and they're notorious duel in eating or for the affair was all about art and politics and the culture demanded that any particularly publicly and protect their good names and reputations by any means necessary i don't do it anymore a few years ago i spoke with writer karen to tori about how she discovered a decades old family secret it was a secret that connected her family to honor culture in a surprising and disturbing way my interview with carrington tori who reconstructed and wrote about family honor killing from generations

past really grabbed me and wouldn't let me go and i remember even as i was preparing for the interview and reading about it on the train headed into work it brought tears to my eyes i was surprised and stunned and moved by what i saw and i remember i felt the need to call a backstory producer on the phone so that i could process my thoughts there are many aspects of the story and the interview that really touched me but perhaps most of all i was deeply struck by this attempt to erase the life and identity of a woman and the work and passion that went into recovery her story and acknowledging her life so here is my conversation with karen from the show death before dishonor shame and reputation in american history and a warning this story contains disturbing descriptions of violence against women and several years ago care and did torrey discovered a devastating family secret she's a journalist and writer from a close knit italian american family and what he knew a lot about

her father's side of the family she realize she knew very little about her mother's family which emigrated from sicily in the early twentieth century so she started asking her grandmother her mother and her aunt some questions but for some reason they didn't want to talk they say okay come over on tuesday and then monday night i get a phone call was no grand as a doctor's appointment cetera et cetera i didn't realize for many years that i was getting the runaround she finally managed to get her grandmother to agree to speak with her about the family and i walked in and my grandmother was already agitated and sputtering and sicilian to my aunt who shouldn't show she going to tell and on the corner of the table was an old shoe box filled with documents in the top one was a family passport and my inquiries opened it up and pointed to a line in the list of children that had been obliterated with a black pen and she said that's the one they got rid of did your mother ever tell you

and it took and about another hour for her to explain that my grandmother had a sister next to her year younger who was murdered by her brother's about nineteen twenty and each write in an honor killing tory spent more than a decade piecing together the whole story she eventually published a book about her great aunt smarter she learned that the one they got rid of was her grandmother's sister a girl named francis she come with her siblings and parents to betray from sicily in nineteen fourteen but francis disappeared from the census records in nineteen twenties she would have been about sixteen years old and that she had been promised to a quote mafioso who was twenty years older than she was by her father and because she broke that engagement and she eloped with the man she was in

love with her older brothers were very upset with her that she had black and the family name she had dishonored the family by disobeying the father and by reading their chances to get a leg up in a better street gang the brothers took matters into their own hands that was so angry with her that they kidnap her and they took her to belle isle which is an island in the detroit river and the story was that they cut off her hands or feet and waited her down with cement and threw her in what led you to call this an honor killing everyone in the family we talked to said it was an honor killing because she dishonored the family she black and the family name when a common mother later that day and said it is what crazy told me true she so she unhappy as that she was fooling around with boys in the alley and that did not make sense to me at all and i thought you know what she was sixteen and no matter what she did it she did anything she didn't deserve the fate she got ya but to their older generation of the family in sicily and transplanting

that culture to the united states the honor of the family was tied up in the chess city of the way men the appropriate conduct of the women the way they dress the way they behaved obedience and just not doing anything out of line in public because to do that would bring shame on the man oh yes yes it was it was control i guess is what you wanna say that the men could not keep their women under control that dishonored the men that they weren't there i guess that it boils down to virility and manliness and if they couldn't keep their women in control than they weren't weren't really man absolutely it's old owner is always in some way about manhood yes whether it's fighting a duel or killing your sister because she proved a few chances to run well in reconstructing this did you how much do you find out about francis and who she was and what her life was like well when my mom was dying

one of the younger brothers for her uncle came to visit and he was the one when he was a little boy he hated his older brother's for murdering francis and vowed that he was gonna grow up until he said that she was sweet that she would take any little money that she had and by the little brothers ice cream and that she was really the sweetest in the kindest of all the sisters and did you get any sense of what her life was like before she eloped well here she is murdered in nineteen twenty about right when women in this country are getting the right to vote the highway and everything is opening up and in the future that she would have had and she had to been allowed to grow up women basically they cooked they cleaned the higher and i understand that the brothers through their shirts down you know they wear their shirts to three shifts a day and then she like my grandmother being the

two girls from first two girls would do the cooking the cleaning the ironing with the starch and it was pretty much a life of toil now how did your family respond as you began unraveling this well it was quite interesting my mother of course was outraged that i was gonna follow up or ask any more questions and part of my family was horrified by the news of this family secret that have been kept for eight years my mom said we heard about it when we were little kids and our parents thought we were sleeping i would hear my mother and her sisters talking about francis i'm crying so you're putting together this amazing story so then what led you to go the next step and then to publish it in some way well because of the stigma and the honor of my own family you know in telling this tale that they thought was so horrific i thought you know what you wear it where honoring the bad guys by protecting

them from what they did and endless honoring her that the night they murdered her they came back and destroyed everything of hers her pictures or clothing and i just that you know i have to give her back her name there's a jewish curse me your name and your memory be erased and that's what i thought of when i saw that line obliterated in the passport and that they burned everything of hers that night it was like they obliterated her as a she never existed so they've been telling this story about his honor killing basically you work on redeeming her honor in a way absolutely absolutely so over the course of researching the book in writing about it did you come to feel differently about your family's honor that's an interesting question i did it i had considered under but not exactly in the word honor there's an italian word for gone young everyone years that is that it is the shame it's a shame was more the word that honor and the shame was on the

brothers the shame was now on france it's right and it was okay for them that didn't dishonored the family that they murdered their own flesh and blood it's mind boggling your family's sense of themselves changed now that the secret is out i think there's a sense of relief and a sense of closure some of the women cousins we've talked about going to belle isle an unduly a memorial service for her but we have not yet been able to do that when you go to belle isle there's a beautiful scott fountain there and people would go whistles like a wedding cake of a fountain in the bridal party will go down there my parents went made graceland live wedding pictures of every everybody gathered around the fountain and you go to the island an old blues did a killer on the side of a killer on that side you know it's like if we knew where she was we could really honor her by doing something like that so you your family comes from sicily to detroit add in all your

research and you get so much did you get a sense of what that world would have been like coming from italy to america how different was no similar was in italy in sicily they came from poverty and they lived in stone houses and m scramble for for something to eat and america was a promise of you know food on the table and a better and a better life for the family but it was also an insular community in the detroit area and they brought it overflowed in the customs in the end the culture with them they just lived in different kinds of homes so is i mean the family had to get transported to america and by being in that a sicilian italian community everyone else order shared that same sense of honor and family honor and so they all felt bound by the same rules and by the same customs and i guess by the sea and demands it sounds like yes and and it's not just limited to the detroit area

it has that when the book came out the feedback that i've received from readers who grew up in the sicilian american family has been astounding some people were upset because the solo that didn't happen in my family and it gives a bad name to sicilian it you know honoring sicilians by publishing this story because it's reacting badly upon us by boat one woman wrote to me and she said is seventy years old says that all my life i thought it was my fault and now i understand world is on her end you know female second place business came from such amazing thing you know because our culture generally it's obviously deeply powerful to the people who are in it right it means a lot to the family means a lot to the community it's this enormous network and then it's a thing that no one talks about that fee on their time they're fifty radio keep quiet keep you also keep your head down and obey the show you well it shows you have absolutely powerful is right it really needs to talk about

it is to something that everyone knows is the way things should be exactly where it ripples out like a pebble at a time and in it it does it affects it affects everybody counting torrey is a journalist and author of and to the daughters the legacy of an honor killing singing america cain story spoke to the power of recovering the past this next story shows how the process of recovery is something americans have been doing or attempting to do says italy's eating hundreds back then the united states was still young of course the nation was charging get it into the future and cities were

modernizing at a really rapid pace americans were focused on the nation's future but not all in this next segment you'll hear we chat with historians seth kotler about early american antiquarian as people who needed their business to collect and preserve the past now of course this is less dire and the story that i was just talking about but anyways every day and what that might make us think about my interview with historian said about early american antiquarian really was fun that'll be obvious i think when you listen to it but what moved me with the ardent sometimes and structured and unplanned often random literally heartfelt efforts of people in the early nineteenth century to record and collect memories and memorabilia of the american past of course this was a white male pass without question and something that we're telling a story about people

trying to recover the past in some way and it drove home for me undeniable realization that the past can never be recovered so here's our conversation from the show saving american history minus of cholera and it just reopening university says if the nineteenth century american visited a revolutionary war battlefield they would probably just encounter apathetic farmers people would come by curious about these places and i would ask people about him say oh yeah i guess something happen here i don't know maybe it was over there as barb i think his farm is is where they were fighting or something even some of the most revered historical sites are in danger of being flattered independence hall i think at one point they were considering just tearing it down because i was in the way of new modern construction oh why me you can't imagine these places being really taken for granted in that way so what do you attribute that to cat come from syriza because i think

any media really is that you know it is that the founding yet to them rate it's made that stuff that just happened right and it does have one the nation itself doesn't see y'all are monumental in grandiose yet perhaps that's a that it's like a junior varsity country but that started to change by the two twenties that's when americans realize that objects and people from the eighteenth century are starting to disappear and then when adams and jefferson died on the same day of july fourth at twenty six fifty years to the day after that and the declaration of independence that leads again to this sense of the passing of this generation who bequeathed to us this nation in which we now live americans started snapping up biographies of george washington and other political figures as part of this new appreciation for the past these biographies were mostly written by elite men of property who knew the founding fathers but less famous people began collecting stories from the past to they call themselves and

aquariums the aquarium is indeed the age of antiquarian says no collar told me about one of the first and aquariums a philadelphia bank clerk named john fanning watson in his thirties or forties probably in the only eighteen teens early twenties he just became obsessed with what he called ancient philadelphia in the olden times and started collecting information in his spare time you know we also did some of this on his work time as well which made the managers bank and one of you doing during your he was probably looking over old books and taking notes on them more caution i certainly wasn't browsing the internet much of the best information on ancient philadelphia which by the way was pretty much the eighteenth century was preserved in family letters stashed away in trucks so in the hope

of saving some of that stuff done fanning watching started walking around the city knocking on the doors of prominent philadelphians and you just go knock on the door and say hey did you know that your house was hundred years old i think i am and by his account if we can trust them people be really excited about the summit wanna know more un would start asking him questions uncertainty for a felt it felt himself like user the pied piper of the olden days seem to turn around and get other people excited he also liked to go around interviewing people old people they deputized a bunch of other people who had a few run into someone in their eighties or nineties and the list that i found had like thirty questions on a and involve things like tell me about black beard and what you know about black beard tell me about the natural hair and the first time you ever saw natural hair which i assume that means men without winks not wearing wings it asked about carriages to tell about carriages i he asked them whether or not young people stay out as late back in the

days as they do now whether people have porches on their houses or not i was very much the stuff of what we today would call cultural history or social misery it and he wanted to know about the texture of daily life in the city of philadelphia in the late eighteenth century you know thirty or forty years in the past with this sense that it was just really different like what it looked and smelled and felt like just what was really different than what it is now but so he's giving these live fleetingly to his friends to ask all people so it's a it's not even just the art historian might say all i wanna understand what that period was like that this is better than that right he's collecting on a on a much wider scale right right yeah yeah i'm anna and there really is a sense that he wants to preserve this year he started this conversation took people on a canal boat and it turns out that this person just happens to have fought in the battle of saratoga and a look at them ever

a bullet with some in there and then they just get on this stuff and sometimes marta believe like really but that there's a way let me when he when he started asking these questions about the olden times of people who he meets that frequently he and he meets with the response of like wait a minute you're actually interested most well let me tell you and then people this november in themselves and start talking about this it was also a taboo that was all something that people were slightly ashamed order felt was devalued in kentucky about this passed a forty or fifty or sixty years ago so we know that watson certainly wasn't the only person running around in and collecting pieces of wood from old houses in pieces of clothing and asked people about hair but why tell us about some of the other people that were doing the same thing that so the there was a whole network of these local historians that

began emotion eating twenties and thirties and they became aware of each other as a community of at aquarius will probably the most important and to query letter they call themselves or antiquities dating twenties and thirties was a man named christopher columbus baldwin who was the first professional librarian of the american antiquarian society which today for their stories in the audience they will now is probably hardened archive for studying the history of nineteenth century at the nineteenth century america chris rock on the spot when took it upon himself to try to collect every single fingerprinted in north america before the time he was looking to hear about some old tavern in boston that apparently had a full year of the boston gazette from the seventeen sixties and he would go to boston and go to their tavern keeper and give the money to get that one year of the boston gazette that they didn't have in their collection is his great account of his diary where he spent a week in

boston in august sweating bullets in and actually going through all these papers part of which included part of that cotton mather is diary which he saved from oblivion clues about to be just thrown out and burned as the person who had lived in the house and died and he took all that stuff and he rented several parts with i think it was something like two three thousand pounds worth of materials and laugh brought it all back to a western massachusetts to be housed in the american antiquarian society so i think the almost felt themselves to be a bit like the collectors of things that other people would do important work with and watson himself says that's exactly what he intends he's just gonna he's just collecting as much stuff as he can and really no particular order and other people then make of it what they went through and that's kind of interesting you know that that kind of deal is

capacious understanding of what counts as history is something that makes him feel really modern to us right that he cares about what people's hair looked like i don't think he knew why anybody would care and i don't think he even knew it was interested in it he just knew he was curious about it and you know thankfully he was because now if we want to write about the history of hairstyles or the history of fashion for example of things he did in his manuscript version of panels is that he clicked sections of the dresses that women wore to them ask younes on in philadelphia so which was this grand already was a big rises blade dancer held by a british officers stationed in philadelphia which is an event that a lot of the science was subsequently wrote about and as his window into the culture of philadelphia in the seventies and a lot of the raw materials that we use to do that were collected by people at fanning awesome so i have a question

presents of these people feel about the pasadena they are they collecting all these things because their longing for that time and they want to go back to that time i think that there is an element of that is a big degree melancholy about there's a sense of loss that can't be me better but i think they understood that the past was not coming back they understood that the railroad was here and was here to stay what they're registering is one change happens it produces both the new things that are liberating and wonderful in some ways yet it also in the process of producing that knew it also destroys things from the past but we also maybe really like i really want and so it's a way of kind of naming the harm that comes with change that the ideology of modernization tells you you're not allowed to feel that way you know we're not allowed to be sad and

mournful for the days of you know walking between towns or whatever it might be the best just silly devalued nostalgia but yet there's also pleasure this must also always has its always a mixture of pleasure and pain and all the more pleasurable as you say because they know they can't have it again yeah there's a kind of bitter sweetness to it an icon acknowledgement of the pain of change but without this kind of humorless desire to just stop it in its tracks and keep everything the same color is a historian atlanta university he's working on a cultural history of the stout generally america is it a wind up the

show with my conversation with illinois senator tammy duckworth in many ways my interview with sen tammy duckworth is one of the most surprising and memorable segments that i did i was of course really exciting us capitol itself but in the course of our discussion i was moved by some of what we ended up talking about women in a supposedly males feel like myself i'm a political historian and it was remarkable to hear her acknowledge the power of things like imposter syndrome or the frustration of having and repeat which he had just said in meetings without acknowledging her in any way are giving her credit for her ideas and the joy of having enough when president to continue our conversation in a restroom during breaks there was a kind of bonding there that i really hadn't expected the fact that i shared so much with his incredibly accomplished woman with reassuring but also kind of frustrating at the same time and i think the

power of that realization really comes through oh in this interview so here is this conversation from the show the year of the woman a history of women in congress tammy duckworth is the junior senator from illinois congress wasn't built for someone like tammy duckworth as a woman of color a new mother and a disabled veteran tammy duckworth has had to make congress work for her i spoke to senator duckworth and started by asking her what it felt like to first enter the male dominated space of congress in two thousand thirteen what was really interesting in that there we had leader pelosi and so we were led by a woman of very strong woman on who had been speaker and so it was i think a very unfortunate to have that role model that you could look to someone who was very active in teaching new members especially the women members to speak up and one things she always said was you know when you sit around in a circle especially as a freshman i you're afraid to say something

because the imposter syndrome is very real and when i would go into the chamber's even though i'd serve in combat it often in the only woman in an all male unit i had this real strong sense of imposter syndrome like when i'm i'm doing here you know these you know there's there's so and so another sam farr was then a congressman for it literally in the decades and in all of these people had seen on tv and it was it was very intimidating but leader pelosi was one who said you know who she didn't let you let your turn pass by without saying something and then she would have you on set something anywhere and then the next person like the competition moved on into other people and it's in the us a man picked up what you had to say she'd she'd be sure to say women attend the set that wow and and directed back to our bed but she relied on you to push yourself use backup backup yes which was written it was a good example to have well that powerful actually and i would sort of pressure that you know i wonder then thinking more recently i know that you read somewhere recently had a daughter

vs my second one did you feel about that knowing the rules that were in place at that time what went through your mind as to how you might have to just me changing things are hoping to change things to allow for you to bring your daughter on the forehead of that progress so i ran my first our twenty fourteen so the second year my first term in the house of representatives and it was actually while i was on maternity leave with kurt i decided to run for united states senate and i was saved that with my second daughter i was undoubtedly much more mr ruffalo are my first time visitor there's an office environment nuland and all of that so i actually had my daughter my first order and hold land was out from washington for three months and was eighteen and had my maternity leave that i missed all those votes and now here we are and twenty eighteen and the mob to give birth to my daughter i'm now in the senate and the difference in votes was to every vote counted we can afford

to have me out for three mile well if any of you go on maternity leave the senate rules say you're not allowed to voting and are allowed to introduce legislation was in the house i was able to get in the zone and i live in cycling officially take paternity leave and i invite her to decide to give birth in washington dc subway nearby for votes and so knowing that set of hard to say what damage than it right you know do you get these rules the numbering my baby when i come to vote and in fact when she was just ten days old they needed my vote will be and so you can hear is like a military outfit felt fabulous fantastic tales of a long overdue and was funny because i receive support leading up to it that the fight to be a big refund the floor from a lot of strange bedfellows an insanely there that the democratic women are very supportive but then i had some of the republican men came foreigners almost generational that the younger members of our remember oh marco rubio who might've ever would have the same with him on and all ten percent of our roads cannot dream

for the tami you interchange rosa maria daughter under the foreign i was steeling myself what he's going to say is i will support you i'm quoting you up whatever you need i brought my children is her his kids are young well as i've blown away and roy blunt of missouri on whom i campaigned against his attorney as soon as i'm the chairman of the rules committee i would change role for you because i remember when i could bring my children and four when i was in the house and how great that was and i was you know when i went back for a carousel and that so important to say that as much as we're seeing you're talking about gender issues or there's a generational component in this to arrive for sure right and yet some of the members who were you know a little bit older or worse had questions like we see could breastfeed on the floor like i was some horrible play or alike alike alike that would be such a scandal or they ask what the dress code was going to be for the baby you know yeah yeah because there's the senate to address couldn't wear blazers i had to wear to a close toed shoes and ice and no hats and i said whoa she's a baby so probably lenient on the cleanup

part of her job at a one c i got to put a laser on her tiny to an issue so sucks i mean those are the most inane questions like why i'm asking this is the rules put a laser on her that day that online and find that they see as a manager there that's i wanna wanna say as a woman who works in a largely male field seeing you sitting here and talk about imposter syndrome is you have a couple of times on the one hand it is infuriating monument is really empowering to hear you say that the sense i feel the same thing and i also don't necessarily bring it up because i think i don't know i guess i feel i want to have people not assume that i worry about that sort of stuff but you're right and so actually related to that when you were saying that speaker pelosi was back up by their ways in which you think is a woman legislator that your strategy is different in how you address or interact in congress

it's a cliche but i think it's the consensus building and into and really working a lot of those relationships we're very fortunate in the senate that now that we do have to love their women senators group so we do support each other as much as possible and try to back each other up across the aisle on and then you've seen there's been some images of in a user murkowski says susan collins who are voted on some traces shoes or something like that where democratic women senators who stood next to them to provide them with support as it were me some really tough vote today we're really being harassed mom for by their male counterparts my colleagues here is that feel different in the senate in the house when it does is there much of many many more women in the house and again out we have an all female leader i'm in the senate nominee chuck is great but we just don't have that type of leadership over in terms of appear with patty murray says the first is the first arab leader over here on the senate side and so on we certainly could use

more representation now i'm looking in from the outside and seen a large number of women that came in in the soliciting and generate so i was on the outside cheering thinking me what i'm really curious about is that it offered a different sense of what we do you mean on the inside did that awareness above and beyond the fact that we need more representation from women did that change the ethos for you in any way we have more center for mass alive and i don't get to over to the house side religious heritage is over in the senate side and ends of the total number of female senators didn't change but i will tell you that on the house side it was over there and i know before the state of the unions and there's a waiting line for the female stalls and a female after it was so you know they went with a new midi changed its worst also to race in an area around talking to each other and that was really it is a there's a lot of ahmad shoptaw going on you know ours are just chatting with each other feeling i

wonder also given what we've been talking about here looking at the historic number of women right now who are running for president what are your thoughts at this moment i mean i am so proud and i'm so proud that there's no questions of whether or not they're qualified as there was a geraldine ferraro or for the women before her and i think you know hillary clinton in another woman who ran prior you know it showed that women just legally qualify but what i'd really like is affected no one has questioned these women's ability to do this job are made is a reflection of who's in the white house right now but i mean i don't think people look at any one of the women of iran and think oh she's a capable but it it's definitely more aware that how to wreck a stack of that the various people running and then in terms of you know and was it more experience like it as a movie and these women as is having more expenses many of the men who are running are very young i ask one last question and it's kind of goofy question if

you were to be stowed with magical political powers and could do anything right now to make the space in congress feel more inclusive what might you do harm by word get more diversity in the staff room at the highest levels if it's not there and we're trying very hard to do that and that this gaffe or even i think many ways less diverse than the membership a special unit at the house so it's still a largely white male workforce and tom there are not very many females chiefs of staff this government email legislative directors of these people who aren't rising there that represented their centers on the bills to write so you haven't even though you could have a female senator if her advisers are all white man they're not going to be as attuned to criminal justice reform issues economic injustice issues equal pay and all of that and so

for anyone example how it makes a big difference and even though it's not about the law's my chief of staff timothy has been with me on from the time she was on his own paid volunteer and light to be to the staff as a woman as well and arguably they belong to the women's chief's group who get together in a bipartisan way to try to solve some of these issues in and agreed to bring up some of these legislation work together on legislation and nudged their bosses in the right direction but also i'm caitlin um is someone who's been my right hand prison development will leave policies and we have twelve weeks of paid family leave for birth of a child adoption fostering also to take care for an ill family member sent equally to men or women in my office and has a minute caitlin helped me develop having a few niche she was really important part of the process and she and i were married and we gave birth within three months of each other oh i now i know there are changes that he does in the office because another young man in my office season is going to go have a baby and take time off and come back to work and the senator didn't make the real time

an end actually been heard anything i really was just fine and so now i'm waiting and just pray that one of my male staff members actually has a child and takes them take the family themselves the example that's going to do a first today thanks for joining me just look back to some of my favorite moments i'd like to know without it since world war ii and you'll find a backstory or send an email to actually at virginia that pollute ralph on facebook and twitter at backstory really need your support provided by an anonymous

donor and the national endowment for the humanities is joseph roberts received additional support provided by the tv and forgiving fresh it is and the humanities brian balogh is a professor of history and davies is professor of the humanities and president emeritus john freeman is professor of history and american studies at yale university they simple atoms associate professor of history of the johns hopkins university it