The James H. Hayes and Claire Short Hayes Professor of the Humanities
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“Native people--in particular, the Abenaki people who have always made New Hampshire part of their homeland--have taught me to rethink the very idea of New Hampshire.” |
“Northern New England played a much more important role in early colonial American history than scholars have realized. To fully understand how and why that is so, much more work remains to be done on colonial New Hampshire.” |
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Siobhan Senier’s year as the Hayes Chair will provide the opportunity to conduct extensive research on the Abenaki people who have always made New Hampshire part of their homeland. “Abenaki territory extends down into western Massachusetts, across Vermont and up into Canada; Abenaki people today maintain connections and do their tribal and cultural work across those borders," Senier says. "Teaching and writing about Native New Hampshire therefore involves thinking about how New Hampshire’s identity is intertwined with broader regional and ethnic identities.” Her research will become part of an anthology of writings by local Native American authors and, potentially, a new course for UNH undergraduates. Read More. . . |
During her year as Hayes Chair in 2011, Cynthia Van Zandt will continue to investigate how the early history of New Hampshire connects with her current book project. That research explores the unsubstantiated fears of seventeenth-century Protestants about a world-wide Catholic conspiracy. Van Zandt’s goals are to understand how those fears among New Hampshire Protestant colonists impacted tensions with the Catholic and French settlers to their north and east. She will also compare and contrast the attitudes of New Hampshire colonists with those of other New England Protestants in the 1680s. Read More. . . |
| James H. Hayes, an exuberant, generous UNH alumnus, successful New Hampshire businessman and a civic leader fiercely devoted to New Hampshire politics and traditions, established the Hayes Chair to be a focal point for research and teaching on New Hampshire's history, culture and government. A committee convened by the Center for the Humanities identified Professors Senier and Van Zandt as UNH scholars whose work shows outstanding potential to meet the goals of the chair. Through these two short-term appointments, the Center for the Humanities hopes to highlight the opportunity that the Hayes Chair provides to UNH faculty whose work may make them eligible for appointment to a full, five-year term as the James H. Hayes and Claire Short Hayes Professor of the Humanities. Read more about past recipients of the Hayes Chair. |
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