by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Some claim lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but for Teddy Chappell it struck twice, and it was happy lightning.
“It was quite shocking,” he said. “I’m definitely happy.”
Chappell was recently awarded two highly prestigious scholarships from the History Department at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He not only received the “Beineke Scholar” award for 2015, but he then also was given the Hedley Donovan Scholarship. The latter is the most lucrative and prestigious undergraduate scholarship offered by the History Department. The other scholarship is for graduate studies in history and English.
Chappell, the son of Polly and Paul Chappell, is a 2011 graduate of Sartell High School.
After high school, Chappell began his studies at St. Cloud State University and was accepted into the honors program for the study of history and English. Later, he transferred to the U of M. In the meantime, he spent a semester at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Oxford University in England.
Thanks to his scholarships, he is about to embark on a seven-week study trip to Florence, Italy where he will study the manuscripts of Antonio Nardi’s “Scene of the New Science.” Nardi, an acolyte of the scientist-astronomer Galileo, wrote in the mid-1600s on such topics as geometry, cosmology, physics and religious issues. In preparation for his trip, he has begun to study Italian and Latin.
Chappell has plunged into a flurry of work and study at the U of M. He was an officer in the Undergraduate Historical Society; he conducted an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program on the subject of great poet John Milton as a reader of Shakespeare. He is also involved in activities at the U of M’s Consortium for the Study of the Pre-Modern World.
Aside from his constant studies, he also works in Special Collections/Rare Books in the university’s James Ford Bell Library.
Chappell plans to earn a doctorate in history and hopes to teach at a research institution.
“True history,” he told the Sartell Newsleader, “is not just names and dates. It’s a way of thinking about things, thinking about the past, finding parallels to our own times, noting the changes and the interactions.”
Chappell is fascinated by how the invention of the printing press brought changes, made knowledge more accessible and opened new ways of seeing things.
“My favorite period of history is early-modern Europe in general,” he said. “From about the early Renaissance in the late 14th century to about 1750 or so.”
