*Indicates a student co-author.
Bjornlie, Shane. Review of Beyond the river, under the eye of Rome, by Timothy C. Hart. Bryn Mawr Classical Review, March 2025.
Cody, Lisa Forman. “’Mice in a Barn’ or ‘Every Little Miss’?: Figurative Imagination and Demographic Narratives of the Long Eighteenth Century.” Histories of Science: Natural Philosophy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, edited by David Alff and Danielle Spratt. University of Virginia Press, 2025, pp. 188-208.
Abstract: This essay examines how population authors used metaphors not as embellishments but as arguments. Scholars across disciplines have shown how rhetorical tropes are not mere embellishments but essential to conveying meaning and making arguments. Philosophers, social scientists, and humanists have used metaphors and analogies as representational and cognitive tools to help make abstractions concrete, new theories comprehensible, and political policies seemingly natural. As Willard Quine observed, “Along the philosophical fringes of science we may find reasons to question basic conceptual structures and to grope for ways to refashion them. Old idioms are bound to fail us here, and only metaphor can begin to limn the new order.” Analysis of population growth and decline emerged in the seventeenth century, and though the basic claims may seem consistent across the centuries, an analysis of figurative language reveals surprising debates and disagreements.
Cody, Lisa Forman. Review of Being Single in Georgian England: Families, Households, and the Unmarried, by Amy Harris. American Historical Review, vol. 130, issue 2, June 2025, pp. 922-923.
Abstract: A book review about the Sharp family in Georgian England and the many siblings' commitment to supporting the work of brother Granville, an early abolitionist.
Ferguson, Heather “Letter from the Editor.” Review of Middle East Studies, April 25, 2025.
Cebul, Brent, and Lily Geismer, editors. Mastery and Drift: Professional-Class Liberals since the 1960s. University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Abstract: Since the 1960s, American liberalism and the Democratic Party have been remade along professional class lines, widening liberalism’s impact but narrowing its social and political vision. In Mastery and Drift, historians Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer have assembled a group of scholars to address the formation of “professional-class liberalism” and its central role in remaking electoral politics and the practice of governance. Across subjects as varied as philanthropy, consulting, health care, welfare, race, immigration, economics, and foreign conflicts, the authors examine not only the gaps between liberals’ egalitarian aspirations and their approaches to policymaking but also how the intricacies of contemporary governance have tended to bolster professional-class liberals’ power.
The contributors to Mastery and Drift all came of age amid the development of professional-class liberalism, giving them distinctive and important perspectives in understanding its internal limitations and its relationship to neoliberalism and the Right. With never-ending disputes over the meaning of liberalism, the content of its governance, and its relationship to a resurgent Left, now is the time to consider modern liberalism’s place in contemporary American life.
Geismer, Lily. “Big Money is Still Warping US Politics.” Jacobin, August 19, 2025.
Abstract: Though the issue has been put on the back burner in recent years, the influence of big money is still wreaking havoc on US politics. Zohran Mamdani’s grassroots-powered, publicly funded campaign for New York City mayor suggests a way out of this morass.
Geismer, Lily. “We Know How to Win, The Main Obstacle is the Democratic Party.” Boston Review, May 21, 2025.
Geismer, Lily. “It’s Time for the Democrats to Throw Off the Dead Hand of Clintonism.” The Nation, February 13, 2025.
Hamburg, Gary M., and Semion Lyandres, editors. Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography, vol. 18, issue 1, August 2025.
Livesay, Daniel. “Elder Protest in Jamaican Slavery: Navigating Paternalism Through Longevity.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 82, number 2, April 2025, pp. 177-204.
Abstract: This article analyzes the growing labor demands on elder enslaved Jamaicans at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the ways that those aging individuals resisted their enslavers' coercions. As England moved to abolish its slave trade in 1807, Jamaican planters drove enslaved elders harder than ever before to make up for labor shortfalls. This intensification produced a backlash, as those who had expected to "age out" of hard labor were forced to continue performing strenuous tasks. Elders resisted by running away from plantations, refusing to work, and bringing grievances before colonial courts—and also by recounting tales of extreme superannuation. Such tales were commonly recounted in obituaries of enslaved Jamaicans who died at incredibly advanced ages while claiming to have witnessed the Port Royal earthquake of 1692. That earthquake had become a key metaphor for Jamaica, representing a moment of transition toward a more "advanced" society of paternalistic plantation agriculture. Enslaved Jamaicans claiming extreme old age drew on that narrative to demand greater paternalistic restraint from masters as well as acknowledgment of their own authority on plantations.
Livesay, Daniel. Review of Beyond Jefferson: The Hemingses, the Randolphs, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America, by Christa Dierksheide. America Historical Review, vol. 130, issue 4, December 2025, pp. 1832-1833.
Livesay, Daniel. Review of The Textual Effects of David Walker’s “Appeal”: Print-Based Activism Against Slavery, Racism, and Discrimination, by Marcy J. Dinius. Reviews in American History, vol. 53, number 1, March 2025, p. 33-39.
Livesay, Daniel. Review of Boundaries of Belonging: English Jamaica and the Spanish Caribbean, 1655-1715, by April Lee Hatfield. New West Indian Guide, vol. 99, numbers 1-2, March 2025, pp. 165-166.
Petropoulos, Jonathan. “Unfinished Business: South America is Flush with Nazi-Looted Art.” The Spectator, November 18, 2025.
Abstract: An article about works looted by the Nazis that ended up in Latin America. It relates to the recent discovery of a painting in Argentina looted in the Netherlands by the father of the current owner.
Petropoulos, Jonathan. Support for Research, Croul Family Foundation, 2025.
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.
Sarzynski, Sarah. Review of Eyes on Amazonia: Transnational Perspectives on the Rubber Boom Frontier, by Jessica Carey-Webb. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 105, issue 1, February 2025, pp. 154-156.
Tisserant, Emmanuel Perez and TamaraVenit-Shelton, Tamara. 1905: Buffalo Bill et son Wild West Show sur la Prairie des Filtres. Éditions Midi-Pyrénéennes, Collection Cette Année-Là, 2025.
Abstract: On October 13, 1905, Buffalo Bill arrived in Toulouse to present his Wild West Show, featuring 800 performers, horses, and bison. The rapidly growing city of Toulouse was eager for equestrian and bullfighting entertainment. The audience at this exhibition, which alternated between circus acts and living tableaux depicting the conquest of the West, discovered an American civilization that was both colonial and remarkably modern. Beyond the show itself, a meeting along the banks of the Garonne River between Native American performers and an Occitan poet would influence the revival of Camargue culture, as well as the making of the first Western films.