Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
After 27 years teaching at UF, Alice Freifeld retired at the start of Fall 2021. Freifeld is a historian of Eastern Europe, particularly Hungary. Her book Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848-1914 (Johns Hopkins University Press) won several prizes from Hungarian and Slavic studies organizations, and she has published many articles and chapters related to Hungarian history. Freifeld won several teaching awards at UF, supervised three PhD dissertations, and served as a co-director or mentor on many other committees. In addition to her work in the history department, Professor Freifeld spent several years as director of UF’s Center for European Studies. Most recently, she was an invited fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and will continue her project on Hungarian Jewry in the wake of the Holocaust, which she presented at the department’s paper workshop in the spring. As emerita faculty, she will move back and forth between Washington, D.C. and Gainesville.
Bill Link is retiring after 18 years on the faculty at UF as Richard J. Milbauer Chair. When Professor Link arrived in Florida, he had already established a distinguished record at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He continued to be a prolific author on the history of the U.S. South during his time at UF. Among his many published works, he is the author or editor of 13 books, including last year’s Frank Porter Graham: Southern Liberal, Citizen of the World (UNC Press). This winter will see the release of a new book, The Last Fire-Eater: Roger A. Pryor and the Search for a Southern Identity (LSU Press), which is the product of Professor Link’s delivery of Louisiana State University’s Walter Fleming Lectures in Southern History in November 2020. At UF, he supervised sixteen doctoral students and served as a mentor to many more undergraduate and graduate students. He will be missed as a regular faculty member but will continue to be with the department as an emeritus member. We all look forward to seeing the work he will produce next!