Richard Corby

Professor of History
School of Social Sciences
University of Arkansas at Monticello
PO Box 3619, UAM
Monticello, AR 71656
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Email
Office: MCB 200
870.460.1847
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Teaching Interests:

• World History
• Africa
• Middle East

Courses Taught:

• Two semester sequence in World History
• Africa
• Middle East and North Africa
• Islam in West Africa
• Africa through Fiction

Education Background:

• BM (Music), MM (Music), Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois
• MA (African History), Western Illinois University, Macomb
• Ph.D. (African History), Indiana University, Bloomington

Professional Memberships:

• African Studies Association
• Arkansas Association of College History Teachers
• Arkansas Council for the Social Studies
• National Council of the Social Studies

Institutes and Workshops:

I have been the director of a number of institutes, held on campus and abroad, for social studies teachers in grades 6-12. In each of these programs specialists in the area of study of that program delivered lectures. Teachers also read widely, engaged in simulation games, gave oral book reviews, and developed curriculum materials to use in their classrooms. When the projects were held abroad, we had an affiliation with a university in that particular country where we received lectures on the history and culture of the people and then traveled to places of interest throughout the country in a chartered bus. Many teachers transformed their classrooms into centers of active learning as a result of their participation in these programs.

• Director of Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad programs which enabled 15 social studies and English teachers from grades 6-12 to study and travel internationally and develop curriculum materials to use in their classrooms. In some of the programs all of the teachers were from Arkansas. In others they came from throughout the U.S. These Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad programs, which lasted for six weeks, were held in the following countries:

  1990 – Sierra Leone
  1992 – Egypt and Israel
  1995 – Senegal and The Gambia
  1998 – Czech Republic and Poland
  2000 – Ghana and Guinea
  2002, 2005, 2008 – South Africa.

• Director of three six-week institutes for 25 teachers from all over the country, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which were held in Ghana in 2004 and in South Africa in 2006 and 2009.
• Director of two five-week institutes on Islam in West Africa for 30 social studies and English teachers from throughout the U.S. in grades 6-12. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, these programs were held on campus in the summers of 1994 and 1999.
• Director of two-week institutes, funded by the Arkansas Humanities Council, held on campus for 20 social studies and English teachers from Arkansas:

  1991 – The Middle East
  1997 – The Holocaust, Israel, and the Arab States
  2001 and 2008 – The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
  2004 – Conflict Resolution: The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Apartheid in South Africa
  2008 – The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

• Director of a two-week institute in June 1996 for teachers on the Middle East, funded by The National Faculty and held on the campus of Tulane University, New Orleans. The participants came from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Illinois.
• Director of a three-week institute for 20 Arkansas teachers on Africa in the summer of 1989. It was funded by the History Teaching Alliance and held on campus.

Awards:

• Recipient of the campus-wide award for Faculty Excellence—teaching, service, and scholarship—with its $1,000 prize in 1994; received the second place award for Faculty Excellence in 2004.
• Faculty award to conduct research at Indiana University, Bloomington and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2006, 2004, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1996, 1995, and 1994.
• Awarded a Malone Fellowship by the National Council on U.S.—Arab Relations in a national competition; visited Saudi Arabia for two and a half weeks in May 1998; the twelve fellows studied the history and society of Saudi Arabia, meeting with government, business, and educational leaders in Riyadh, Damman, and Jiddah, and visited historical sites.

Professional Service:

• Member of the Board of Directors of the Arkansas Humanities Council, 2003-2008.
• Member of the Board of Directors of the Delta Cultural Center, Helena-West Helena, 2006-2009.
• Evaluator for the United States Department of Education’s proposal for its
• Fulbright-Hays Group Seminars Abroad and Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad programs, Washington, D.C., 1998, 1999, 2003.
• Evaluator for the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C. for Proposals submitted by universities to host summer seminars and institutes, 2002 and 2004.
• Member of the Board of Directors, Arkansas Council for the Social Studies, Little Rock, 1989-1998.
• Consultant on an occasional basis for immigration lawyers from throughout the U.S. who request my assessment of the factual and historical points made by their West African clients who are seeking political asylum in the U.S.

Selected Publications and Papers Presented:

• Life in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Denver: Center for Teaching International Relations, 1994.
• “Education Africans for Inferiority under British Rule: Bo School in Sierra Leone,” Comparative Education Review, 34, 3 (August 1990), 314-49.
• Manding Traders and Clerics: The Development of Islam in Liberia to the 1870s,” Liberian Studies Journal, XIII, 1 (1988), 42-66.
• Paper, “Islam in Liberia before the Twentieth Century,” presented at the annual conference of the Liberian Studies Association held in Monrovia, Liberia, May 2009.
• Papers on aspects of Islam in West Africa at African Studies association meetings in San Francisco in 1994 and in Orlando in 1995.