Seats filled to hear author talk by history professsor

  It's only her second year as part of the Muskingum University community, yet Assistant Professor of History Karen Dunak filled all seats at her author talk in the library on Oct. 20.

  Students and faculty alike listened in as Dunak spoke about a recent paper she has been working on, in relation to the upcoming book she is in the process of publishing.

  The talk, "Politics in Practice," was based on Dunak's research of the Port Huron Statement, which she described as a key document of those from the 1960s.

  "This is a document that was created by members of a fledgling students for a democratic society- guys at the University of Michigan who take a look at the world, and don't feel so good about it," said Dunak. "And they are self indentified in the document—they lay it all out."

  At Muskingum, Dunak teaches several history classes including U.S History from 1877, American Consumerism, and upper level courses varying from Women and Gender to Modern U.S History.

  "In my 212 class, we talk about the 1960s and the memory is anger, riots, furious young people, who were raging against the machine," said Dunak.

  The importance of the Port Huron statement was the backbone for Dunak's research on her topic of "Politics in Practice."  "They're really waging a measured critique against the United States that had developed in the 1950s and was going into the 1960s," said Dunak.

  The evidence she found from analyzing this "statement of statements" from the 1960s, paved the way for a change in all kinds of relationships; more specifically, the relationship between men and women and the marital foundation.

  The world of weddings and marriage is Dunak's primary focus for the book that she is currently finalizing.

  "I was at the age where I was starting to get invited to a lot of weddings, and I started looking at registries," said Dunak. "I was like—who do these people think they are—that they can ask me to buy them a $300 blender? Where did this thing come from? This is absolutely insane. Why has it stayed so powerful?"

  The subject in question always had some appeal for Dunak.

  "It started out that it was the research for [my] dissertation," said Dunak. "I wanted something that I thought would interest me for a long time, because I knew the dissertation would take three, maybe four years and this definitely filled that for me. Where I did not get bored of this, I enjoy doing it. I think there was something nice, too, that when I talked about it to people they were interested also."

  Chair of the History Department Bill Kerrigan, one of Dunak's esteemed colleagues, attended the talk on Thursday afternoon.

  "Karen is a fantastic colleague, an outstanding and inspiring teacher, and a top-notch scholar," said Kerrigan. "Her project is based on the research for her book which is looking to get published by the New York University Press."

  Dunak gave the audience a new and often unthought-of view of weddings and how the industry has changed and grown over the past several decades.

  "I thought what she had to say was interesting. I never really thought of weddings and relationships in that aspect before," said sophomore Ashley Reynolds.

  Dunak outlined a specific goal for her project.

  "How do you take ideas and rhetoric and put them into your daily lives," asked Dunak. "This is the question I am trying to answer, a problem that I'm trying to solve with this project."

  Dunak presents a compelling argument.     Although the title is not set in stone quite yet, her book will most likely be published in 2013.

  "It's going to be a scholarly monograph, it's all about the wedding from early post World War II, up until right now," said Dunak. "The working title is ‘As Long as we Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Post War America."