*Indicates student co-author.
Bjornlie, Shane. “Urban Crises and the Contours of the Late Antique Empire through the Lens of Antioch.”Studies in Late Antiquity, vol. 7, no. 2, 2023, pp. 184-200.
Abstract: This introduction sets the stage for three essays that each address different crises in the late antique history of Antioch. The essay considers some of the difficulties presented by various methodological lenses for “reading” the urban experience of a city such as Antioch and provides a framework for understanding the cultural meaning of the late antique urban landscape and the modern discourse concerning the role of cities in the Roman Empire. The essay also considers the rhetoric of Antioch in late antique sources and the intersection of that rhetoric with the centrality of cities in the maintenance of the Roman Empire. The essay suggests that the complicity of the cityscape in modern narrative frameworks for the fall of the Roman Empire has produced teleologies that inflect the understanding of disaster and crisis at Antioch and elsewhere in the Roman Empire.
Cody, Lisa. Review of Public Vows: Fictions of Marriage in the English Enlightenment, by Melissa J. Ganz. Journal of British Studies, vol. 62, no. 4, 2023.
Tusan, Michelle and Lisa Cody. “In Remembrance of David Lieberman.” The North American Conference on British Studies, May 18, 2023.
External Grant: Cody, Lisa. “How Abortion Became an American Obsession.” The Library Company, William H. Helfand Fellow in American Medicine, Science, and Society, 2023.
Abstract: Research examining lesser known cultural forces shaping American and Atlantic World attitudes towards pregnancy, birth control, abortion, and population policies, c. 1600-present.
Ferguson, Heather and David Gutman. “Introduction.” Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies, vol. 10, issue 1, 2023, pp. 1-3.
Ferguson, Heather. “Letter From the Editor.” Review of Middle East Studies, vol. 56, issue 1, 2022, pp. 1-3 [Officially published in 2022 but not available until 2023].
Geismer, Lily. “The Battle of the Suburbs Is Back. Will It End Differently?” The Washington Post, April 25, 2023.
Geismer, Lily. “It’s the Global Economy, Stupid.” Review of A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism, by Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein. The American Prospect, October 6, 2023.
Geismer, Lily. Review of Brutal Campaign: How the 1988 Election Set the Stage for Twenty-First-Century American Politics, by Robert L. Fleeger. Jacobin, August 8, 2023.
Hamburg, Gary. “A Russian Triptych: Intellectuals Before and After 1917.” Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography, vol. 16, no. 1, 2023, pp. 50-94.
Abstract: This article deals with three Russian intelligenty – the historian Vasilii Ivanovich Semevskii, the historian and journalist Sergei Petrovich Mel’gunov, and the literary critic Mstislav Aleksandrovich Tsiavlovskii – with their contributions to the journal Golosminuvshego and successor journals. It analyzes their scholarly and political interests against the background of revolution and civil war that intensified partisanship in Russia and led to the fracturing, but not to the complete destruction, of the intelligentsia.
Hamburg, Gary, translator. “To Russia with Love: Boris Chicherin’s 1857 ‘Contemporary Tasks of Russian Life.’” Econ Journal Watch, vol. 20, no. 2, 2023, pp. 402-437.
Abstract: In this essay published in 1857, Chicherin surveys the structural and historical circumstances that have made for the contemporary situation of Russian society, Russian law, and Russian institutions and culture generally. He assesses the situation to address the tasks before the Russians. In interpreting the situation and the tasks ahead, he develops a conservative liberalism suitable to Russia at the time. The essay gives expression to what Chicherin in other works listed as the “seven principles” of civil liberty: freedom on conscience, of speech, and of the press; openness of court proceedings and government business; academic freedom and freedom from the servile status of serfdom. He writes: “Our entire discussion suggests that freedom of speech is essential in Russia. Therefore, one should bring it to the forefront as the cornerstone of liberal politics.”
Hamburg, Gary and Semion Lyandres, editors. Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography Volume 16. Brill, 2023.
Childs, Matt D. Luis A. González, Dan Livesay, Elizabeth Manley, Anne Pérotin-Dumon, and Juan José Ponce Vázquez. “The Caribbean and French Guiana.” Handbook of Latin American Studies Vol. 76, edited by Katherine D. McCann. University of Texas Press, 2023, pp. 120-188.
External Grant: Livesay, Daniel. Bright Institute Fellow, Knox College, 2023.
Abstract: This was the second year of a three-year fellowship at the Bright Institute at Knox College. The fellowship brings together a cohort of early-American historians who teach at small liberal arts colleges for two weeks each summer to discuss their research and teaching pedagogies.
Kiernan, Ben, Wendy Lower, Norman Naimark, and Scott Straus, editors. The Cambridge World History of Genocide: Volume 3, Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914-2020. Cambridge University Press, 2023.
About this book: Volume III examines the most well-known century of genocide, the twentieth century. Opening with a discussion on the definitions of genocide and 'ethnic cleansing' and their relationships to modernity, it continues with a survey of the genocide studies field, racism and antisemitism. The four parts cover the impacts of Racism, Total War, Imperial Collapse, and Revolution; the crises of World War Two; the Cold War; and Globalization. Twenty-eight scholars with expertise in specific regions document thirty genocides from 1918 to 2021, in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The cases range from the Armenian Genocide to Maoist China, from the Holocaust to Stalin's Ukraine, from Indonesia to Guatemala, Biafra, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and finally the contemporary fate of the Rohingyas in Myanmar and the ISIS slaughter of Yazidis in Iraq. The volume ends with a chapter on the strategies for genocide prevention moving forward.
Kiernan, Ben, Wendy Lower, Norman Naimark, and Scott Straus. “Introduction to Volume 3.” The Cambridge World History of Genocide: Volume 3, Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914-2020. Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 1-30.
Abstract: This introductory essay traces the origins of Lemkin's legal concept of genocide, the role of modernity and the different definitions of genocide and other mass atrocities.
Lower, Wendy and Adam Jones. “Dynamics and Consequences.” The Cambridge World History of Genocide: Volume 3, Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914-2020, edited by Ben Kiernan, Wendy Lower, Norman Naimark, and Scott Straus. Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 103-126.
Abstract: This chapter explores the role of gender in the history of genocide, approaching all facets and comparative case studies historically and geographically.
Lower, Wendy. “Szyk's Hometown: Lodz Poland and the Holocaust.” Arthur Szyk: Art, Propaganda, Memory, edited by Philip Eliasoph. Fairfield University Art Museum, 2023 pp. 9-12.
Pető, Andrea, Ruslan Kavatsiuk, Omer Bartov, Marta Havryshko, Wendy Lower, and Tali Nates. “‘Never Again!’ Roundtable Organized by Eastern European Holocaust Studies and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center.” Eastern European Holocaust Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, 2023, pp. 53-67.
Abstract: Roundtable organized by Eastern European Holocaust Studies and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre took place on the 25th of April, 2022 with the technical support of Yana Ustymenko, Daniella Hovsha, and Borbala Klacsmann. The transcript was edited by Yana Ustymenko. The event was chaired by Andrea Pető, professor at the Central European University (Vienna) and the Editor-in-Chief of the Eastern European Holocaust Studies journal. Participants were asked to reflect on what this “Never Again” means for them, their research, the Holocaust research, and for the present war against Ukraine.
narrative-of-peasant-passivity-in-bengal-19411945/971C7301A6CEFE0F35E5BC6CDB62FA8A">From Fascism to Famine: Complicity, Conscience, and the Narrative of ‘Peasant Passivity’ in Bengal, 1941-1945.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 57, issue 5, 2023, pp. 1551-1584.
Abstract: Between 1941 and 1944, World War II changed the physical and moral geographies of Bengal, an important base for the British government. In 1943, a man-made famine resulted in the death of about four million peasants. The Bengal Famine has been the subject of intense scrutiny in terms of establishing the moral culpability of the colonial government and its provincial collaborators. This article revisits the wartime period and the famine as a moment of historical and social transformation. By examining the Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association’s engagement with fascism, I argue that a new form of Bengali subjectivity emerged, one that recognized itself as part of a global collective, premised on its being forced to participate in World War II. I explore how this predicament led to reflection on the intellectual legacies of colonialism, including the promises of Enlightenment and the fraught universality of literature itself. By analyzing selected works, I show how the Bengal Famine represented a moment of moral collapse that implicated both imperial centres of power and the local colonial bourgeois class. A left-leaning intelligentsia had to struggle to find a language through which to express the inexpressible realities, local and global, of this genocide. What emerged was a tortured literature of complicity and conscience that decentred the peasantry. I argue that the historiographical problem of ‘peasant passivity’ is intrinsically tied to the literary and cultural production of the time, which made the peasant a symbol of social disintegration and moral transformation for the bourgeois middle class.
Panda, Ahona. “Sāhityer Communitas: simānter āḍā āḍi Bāṅgāli.” Samayer kuwāśāy: Dipesh Chakrabartyr sammāne prabandha guccha (“The Communitas of Literature: Bengalis across Borders” Mists of Time: Essays in Honor of Dipesh Chakrabarty), edited by Ahmed Kamal, Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury, Nazmul Sultan, Thomas Newbold, Taimur Reza and Sabbir Azam. United Press Limited, 2023, pp. 162-178.
David Fedman, Eleana J. Kim, and Albert L. Park, editors. Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments. Cornell University Press, 2023.
Abstract: Bringing together a multidisciplinary conversation about the entanglement of nature and society in the Korean peninsula, Forces of Nature aims to define and develop the field of the Korean environmental humanities. At its core, the volume works to foreground non-human agents that have long been marginalized in Korean studies, placing flora, fauna, mineral deposits, and climatic conditions that have hitherto been confined to footnotes front and center. In the process, the authors blaze new trails through Korea's social and physical landscapes.
What emerges is a deeper appreciation of the environmental conflicts that have animated life in Korea. The authors show how natural processes have continually shaped the course of events on the peninsula—how floods, droughts, famines, fires, and pests have inexorably impinged on human affairs—and how different forces have been mobilized by the state to variously, control, extract, modernize, and showcase the Korean landscape. Forces of Nature suggestively reveals Korea's physical landscape to be not so much a passive context to Korea's history, but an active agent in its transformation and reinvention across centuries.
With support from the Henry Luce Foundation, our goal is to produce all titles in this series both in Open Access, for reasons of global accessibility and equity, as well as in print editions.
Park, Albert L. and Eleana J. Kim, “On Environmental Ethnographies and Systems of Mediation.” Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments, edited by David Fedman, Eleana J. Kim, and Albert L. Park. Cornell University Press, 2023, pp. 178-190.
Park Albert L. and Marc Los Huertos, '“The Korean Peninsula: A Brief Biography in Maps.” Forces of Nature: New Perspectives on Korean Environments, edited by David Fedman, Eleana J. Kim, and Albert L. Park. Cornell University Press, 2023, pp. 15-32.
External Grant: Park, Albert and Claremont Colleges, Principal Investigators. Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment, Henry Luce Foundation, 2017 - 2023, $1.4 million.
External Grant: Park, Albert. Japan-U.S. Global Partnership Grant, Japan Foundation, 2023 - 2025, $200,000
Abstract: to support a multi-disciplinary project on the relationship between Globalization, demographics, rural and elderly and elder care and technology in Japan, U.S.A., and Asia. Grant supports research, fieldwork, conferences and workshops and partnerships between universities, colleges and NGOS in the U.S.A, Japan, South Korea and China (Project Director and Co-PI)
External Grant: Park, Albert. The Henry Luce Foundation Grant to Support an EnviroLab-Sponsored Book Series, 2021 - Present, $240,000.
Petropoulos, Jonathan. “Arthur Szyk’s ‘Missing Masterpiece’: Satan Leads the Ball and the Art of the War Cartoon.” Arthur Szyk: Art, Propaganda, Memory, edited by Philip Eliasoph. Fairfield University Art Museum, 2023 pp. 19-22.
Abstract: I wrote about a picture created by Arthur Szyk that depicted Nazi leaders following the devil. This work has been missing for about five decades and I offered what information I had about its disposition.
Petropoulos, Jonathan. “Kindred Spirits: The Courage and Creativity of Egon Schiele and Fritz Grünbaum.” Christie’s Magazine, 2022 [Published in 2022 but not previously celebrated].
Abstract: I published a revised version of this article in conjunction with the auction of six other works by Egon Schiele that were restituted works of Nazi looted art, which took place at Christie's in November 2023. I wrote the expert report that served as the basis for the restitution of these other works (they came from the Museum of Modern Art in NY, the Neue Galerie, and Oberlin College, among other institutions).
External Grant: Petropoulos, Jonathan. Support for Research, Croul Family Foundation, 2023.
Abstract: Members of the Croul family, including Jack, Kingsley, and Spencer, continue to support Prof. Petropoulos’ scholarly activities. He is grateful for their on-going support.
Sarazynski, Sarah. Review of Selling Black Brazil: race, nation, and visual culture in Salvador, Bahia, by Andelia A. Romo. Journal of Tourism History, vol. 15, issue 3, 2023, pp. 344-346.
Sarzynski, Sarah. “Entrevista com a historiadora Sarah Sarzynski.” Interviewed by Brasil por Brazil. História Da Ditadura, March 7, 2023.
Sarzynski, Sarah. “Sarah Sarzynski, "Revolution in the Terra Do Sol: The Cold War in Brazil” Interviewed by Ari Barbalat. New Books Network, December 30, 2023.
Selig, Diana. Review of Breaking Down Barriers: George McLaurin and the Struggle to End Segregated Education, by David W. Levy. New Mexico Historical Review, vol. 98, no. 3, 2023, pp. 302-303.
Roy, Keidrick, David M. Carballo, Clarissa W. Confer, Celso Armando Mendoza, Jon Chandler, Tamara Venit-Shelton, and Ben Railton. Smithsonian America: The Atlas. Thunder Bay Press, 2023.
About the book: Smithsonian America: The Atlas is a superb depiction of the history of North America and the United States told through extensive photographs and maps, both old and new. In collaboration with experts from the Smithsonian Institution, every corner of the continent is explored in detail—from the early people who first settled the land thousands of years ago to the diversity of the present day. This edition also includes 32 pages of bonus material, including a timeline of American history and a guide to all 50 U.S. states, as well as a large foldout page featuring two detailed full-color maps.
Venit-Shelton, Tamara. Review of All Health Politics is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health, by Merlin Chowkwanyun. H-Environment, January, 2023.
Venit-Shelton, Tamara. Review of Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City, by Carol Lynn McKibben. California History, vol. 100, no. 2, 2023, pp. 124-126.
Venit-Shelton, Tamara. Review of A Way of Life: Things, Thought, and Action in Chinese Medicine, by Julia Farquhar. The Historian, vol. 84, issue 2, 2023, pp. 331-332.
Venit-Shelton, Tamara. “Transplanted: Chinese Herbal Medicine in the United States, 1800-1911.” Chinese Medicine and Culture, vol. 6, no. 4, 2023, pp. 357-366.
Abstract: Chinese medicine has a long history in the United States, dating back to its colonial period and extending up to the present. This essay focuses on the earliest generation of practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine in the United States. Although acupuncture is the modality most commonly associated with Chinese medicine in today’s medical marketplace, up until the 1970s, Chinese healers in the United States typically specialized in herbalism. Well before mass emigration from China to the United States began, Chinese material medica crossed the oceans, in both directions: Chinese medicinal teas and herbs came west while Appalachian ginseng went east. Beginning in the 1850s, Chinese immigrants came to the United States and transplanted their health practices, sometimes quite literally by propagating medicinal plants in their adopted home. Over time, Chinese doctors learned how to sell their services to non-Chinese patients by presenting herbalism as “nature’s remedies.”
External Grant: Wang, Chelsea. Early Career Fellowship in China Studies, American Council of Learned Scholars, 2023.
Abstract: Logistics of Empire studies how rulers and officials of Ming-dynasty China (1368-1644) managed the logistical challenges of governing a premodern bureaucratic empire. As a premodern bureaucratic empire, the Ming faced a triple challenge: it had to move many documents and officials within a territorially large state ('empire'), across hierarchically organized offices whose occupants were appointed by the central government ('bureaucracy'), and using preindustrial technologies of transportation and communication ('premodern'). This combination of size, organizational complexity, and technological limitation led the Ming state to adopt certain administrative practices that appear quite strange to the modern eye. Logistics of Empire examines some of these practices and explains the logic behind them. It argues that many seemingly counterintuitive practices can be explained by spatial friction, an inconspicuous but potent force that constrained the operation of premodern institutions.