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Professor Emeritus of History E. Charles Chatfield introduces Peter van den Dungen at a Sept. 13 Department of History Colloquium. |
Founded in 1964, PHS seeks to broaden the understanding of and possibilities for world peace. Its members include scholars from many disciplines, as well as students of movements for peace and social justice from around the world. Members are concerned with making peace research relevant to the scholarly disciplines, policy makers and to their own societies.
"I want to thank the board for creating this award," Chatfield said. "In a way, it's a formal recognition that our field of history and our professional society have endured for the length of its professional career, and (that) of its founding generation."
Chatfield first came to Wittenberg in 1961 – a turbulent time in United States history marked by war and social change. Chatfield believes American culture matured in the 1960s, and the decade itself contributed greatly to the formation of a new branch of history.
"It has been an extraordinary experience to share in the creation and development of a new field of history, a type of history we now know as peace history," Chatfield said. He also credits the relationship between peace and justice as a major contributor to the formation of what was an innovative way of thinking in the 1960s.
"As for your recognizing me specifically [for the Lifetime Achievement Award], I hope you'll not think it too presumptuous that it is, in my humble opinion, a wonderful mistake," Chatfield said as he credited many scholars, past and future, for his personal and professional success, as well as the field of peace history itself.
"In light of the thoroughly collective character of life achievements among us," Chatfield said, "I take considerable pleasure in knowing that a number of other colleagues will be receiving this award."
Chatfield was Wittenberg's first professor to hold the H. Orth Hirt Chair in History, which was established in 1998, and he is the author of several books and articles on the subject of peace history, among them An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era, a book co-written with Charles DeBenedetti that won the prestigious Kuehl Prize in 1991.
During his tenure at Wittenberg, Chatfield served as chair of the history department, director of International Education and director of the "Global Issues and World Churches" study-abroad program. In 1996, Chatfield received the Wittenberg Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Teaching, the highest recognition Wittenberg bestows on its faculty.
Recognized on a national level for his contributions to the study of peace and war, his colleagues at Wittenberg agree that Chatfield is "among the most prolific scholars in the institution for the last quarter century and that his scholarly contributions to peace studies have been remarkable."
Chatfield has high hopes for the continued study of peace history.
"[The formation of peace history] has been, and remains, a wonderfully collective adventure, both for the founding generation and our successors," he said.
Written By: Rachel Morgan '08
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