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Faculty Bookshelf
Recent books and new works in progress from our faculty鈥攑lease see the听Faculty Updates section below for recent bulletins.
Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century
Laura Beers (W. W. Norton & Company, 2024)
滨苍听Orwell鈥檚 Ghosts, historian Laura Beers considers Orwell鈥檚 full body of work鈥昲is six novels, three nonfiction works, and brilliant essays on politics, language, and the class system鈥晅o examine what 鈥淥rwellian鈥 truly means and reveal the misconstrued thinker in all his complexity. She explores how Orwell鈥檚 writing on free speech addresses the proliferation of 鈥渇ake news鈥 and the emergence of cancel culture, highlights his vivid critiques of capitalism and the oppressive nature of the British Empire, and, in contrast, analyzes his failure to understand feminism.
Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA
Theresa Runstedtler (Bold Type Books, 2023)
听How Black ballplayers of the 1970s and '80s set the once-troubled NBA up for success. Theresa sheds new light on what she has termed the 鈥渄ark ages鈥 of the league. She argues that the much-maligned era 鈥渨hen pro basketball was becoming both demographically and stylistically Black鈥 was pivotal to the emergence of the 鈥渄azzling, star-laden NBA we know today.鈥
Three Cities after Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction across Cold War Borders
Andrew Demshuk (Pittsburgh, 2021)
In West and East Germany, and communist Poland, city planners pursued what Demshuk calls "redemptive reconstruction,"听a selective mix of modernist architecture and historicist renovation to shape new cityscapes for a new era.
The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures
Justin听Jacobs (Chicago, 2020)
Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite.
Bowling for Communism:
Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany
Andrew Demshuk (Cornell, 2020)
听Illuminates civic life in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve of the 1989 revolution by exploring acts of "urban ingenuity" such as local communist officials who, with the help of scores of volunteers, constructed a palatial bowling alley without Berlin's knowledge or approval. Hardly detached or inept, local officials worked around centralized failings to build a more humane city.
America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today
Pamela Nadell (Norton, 2019)
Winner of the 2019 National Jewish Book Award. 鈥America鈥檚 Jewish Women is a thoughtful history of a group of diverse, passionate, contemplative, vocal and dynamic women, and is a welcome addition to the American historical canon鈥 (New York Times.)听
In Search of Israel:
The History of an Idea
Michael Brenner (Princeton, 2018)
Finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in History. "A rare history that compels the reader to think constantly about the present and even about the future" (David K. Shipler, Moment).
Popular Iranian Cinema before the Revolution: Family and Nation in F墨lmf膩rs墨
Pedram Partovi (Routledge, 2017)
"Partovi suggests that films can constitute and shape the world, not merely chase after the wake in order to represent it....Even in their exaggerations, excesses, and melodrama, these films ... are rich sources for understanding the complex desires, anxieties, and social negotiations of Iranians in the mid-century"(Journal of Religion and Film).
Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist
Laura Beers (Harvard, 2016)
Wilkinson is best remembered as the leader of the Jarrow Crusade, the 300-mile march of two hundred unemployed shipwrights and steelworkers to petition the British government for assistance. But this was just one small part of Red Ellen鈥檚 larger transnational fight for social justice. 鈥淕ives readers a vivid insight into the life of one of the most important figures in the history of the British radical left,鈥 (Katherine Williams,听LSE Review of Books).
National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the Amercan State
Gautham Rao (Chicago, 2016)
鈥淏rilliantly researched and smartly argued,听National Duties听deploys prodigious research to construct a social history of governance in the early Republic....Rao鈥檚 approach yields a major substantive payoff. He argues persuasively that the great centralizer, Alexander Hamilton, was in fact instrumental in replicating a decentralized financial regime and it was Jefferson and Madison, so often portrayed as the protectors of state鈥檚 rights who shored up the plenary power of the national government" (Brian Balogh, University of Virginia).
A Caribbean Enlightenment: Intellectual Life in the British and French Colonial Worlds, 1750鈥1792
Prof. Emerita April Shelford (Cambridge, 2023)
A Caribbean Enlightenment recovers a neglected aspect of the region鈥檚 history by exploring the intersection of Enlightenment ideas and colonial realities among White, male colonists in the eighteenth-century French and British Caribbean. Shelford ultimately argues that becoming 鈥渆nlightened鈥 was a colonial identity that pushed back against metropolitan stereotypes of Caribbean degeneracy while attempting to validate the power to enslave on a cultural basis.
Recipient of 2024 Louis Gottschalk Prize and 2024 Kenshur Prize听
In Hitler's Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism
Michael Brenner听(Princeton, 2022)
From acclaimed historian Michael Brenner, a mesmerizing portrait of Munich in the early years of Hitler's quest for power.
Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920鈥1963
Rebecca DeWolf (Lincoln, 2021)
By engaging deeply with American legal and political history as well as the increasingly rich material on gender history, Gendered Citizenship illuminates the ideological contours of the original struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920 to 1963.
How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs
Elizabeth F. Thompson (Grove, 2020)
鈥淚n a book sure to interest students of Middle Eastern history, particularly in the 20th century, Thompson fashions an original, authoritative study, laying out the process of the 鈥榯heft鈥 of Syrian democracy鈥 (Kirkus Reviews).
Repeal the Second Amendment: The Case for a Safer America
Allan Lichtman (St. Martin's, 2020)
Explores both the true history and current interpretation of the Second Amendment to expose the NRA鈥檚 blatant historical manipulations and irresponsible fake news releases. Lichtman looks at the history of firearms and gun regulations from colonial times to the present to explain how a historically forgotten sentence in the Constitution has become a flash point.
The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany from Within
Richard Breitman (Hachette, 2019)
While US ambassadors and consuls general cycled in and out, the indispensable Geist remained in Berlin for a decade. An invaluable analyst and problem solver, he was the first American official to warn explicitly that what lay ahead for Germany鈥檚 Jews was what would become known as the Holocaust.
History Comes Alive:
Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s
M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska (UNC, 2017)
For the majority of the twentieth century, Americans thought of the past as foundational to, but separate from, the present, and they learned and thought about history in informational terms. But Rymsza-Pawlowska argues that the popular culture of the 1970s reflected an emerging desire to engage and enact the past on a more emotional level.
The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust
Lisa Leff (Oxford, 2015)
"How the chaos, needs, and rivalries of post-Second World War Jewish collectors and institutions played into [Szajkowski's] hands, is the subject of Leff's engrossing and painstakingly documented book. Her research was made all the more demanding by the fact that there is no way of knowing all that is actually missing from collections. It is the wider context of her book that is so fascinating, for it raises important questions about the very nature of archives themselves, particularly what she calls 'archives of catastrophe'" (Times Literary Supplement).
2016 Sami Rohr Prize Winner.
More Faculty Books
Selected notable works from previous years:
- Laura Beers, Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party
鈥淭his is a very original and important book. Beers argues strongly against the conventional view that the Labour Party was reluctant to exploit the modern media.... She makes the convincing case that Labour was quick to take up modern media, (...) which was an essential element in the creation of the broad-based democratic electorate that gave the Party victory in 1945.鈥 鈥擱oss McKibbin, University of Oxford - Michael Brenner, Prophets of the Past:听Interpreters of Jewish History
In its scope it is unprecedented.听Brenner听has made a stellar contribution to Jewish intellectual history that should be of equal interest to all who would explore the nexus between historiography and ideology."鈥擸osef Hayim Yerushalmi, Columbia University听 - Andrew Demshuk, Demolition on Karl Marx Square: Cultural Barbarism and the People's State in 1968
Demshuk's book suggests that histories of urban space and public monuments should be more central to our understanding of a society at a particular historical moment, as they鈥攚hen treated rigorously鈥攈ave the potential to concatenate all of the complex social, political, and economic forces that impinged on people's lives into a cogent and compelling portrait.鈥擲amuel L. Sadow, 小蓝视频听 - Anton Fedyashin, Liberals under Autocracy: Modernization and Civil Society in Russia, 1866鈥1904
鈥淎n original and valuable contribution to illuminating another of those groups in imperial Russia who lost out in the game of history, but whose legacy is strikingly apropos at present in Russia鈥檚 shaky democracy. A major contribution.鈥濃擱ichard Stites, Georgetown University - Eileen Findlay, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870鈥1920
鈥淸A] welcome addition to the emerging field of gender studies in Latin American societies and to the recent studies challenging the presentation of these societies as racial democracies. . . . Findlay has produced a challenging work on the moral values and struggles of working women and men.鈥 鈥擜line Helg,听American Historical Review - Max Paul Friedman, Rethinking Anti-Americanism: The History of an Exceptional Concept in American Foreign Relations
"Highly original, and excellent, investigation of anti-Americanism cast in a brand new light 鈥 This remarkable book, fluidly written and very enjoyable to read, is based on thorough historical research in United States, Latin American, and Western European archives."鈥擲ophie Meunier, Political Science Quarterly - Mary Frances Giandrea, Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England
There is much to be grateful for here.... An accessible synthesis of material not easily available and provides the first systematic, wider conclusions from those studies.( .English Historical Reiiew) - Kate Haulman, The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America
"Haulman's terrific examination of the gendered implications of fashion is magnificently subtle and detailed, particularly as she insists on linking them to political changes over the course of this era . . . important reading for scholars of gender, revolutionary political culture, and early American studies." 鈥 Carolyn Eastman, American Historical Review - Dan Kerr, Derelict Paradise: Homelessness and Urban Development in Cleveland, Ohio"
A tightly argued, effectively researched, and well-written book. Kerr successfully brings the voices of the unhoused and unemployed into his story at every turn, making a convincing case for their role in altering, if rarely determining, policy."鈥擬ark E. Santow, coauthor of Social Security and the Middle Class Squeeze - Alan Kraut, Silent Travellers
"Mr. Kraut's narrative shows that it has always been easier to blame immigrants for epidemics than to attack the infrastructure of disease .A troubling theme underlying ilent Travelers is that when shoddy science is married to unenlightened political leadership, bad medical things will happen, and they will almost always happen to the disenfranchised鈥攆rom the surgical removal of adenoids to disquieting associations made between ethnic origin and mental performance."" (New York Times) - Peter Kuznick (with Oliver Stone), The Untold History of the United States
鈥淎s riveting, eye-opening, and thought-provoking as any history book you will ever read...Can鈥檛 recommend it highly enough.鈥 鈥擥lenn Greenwald,听The Guardian - Lisa Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France
"This is the story Lisa Moses Leff has to tell, a story of emancipation and religious fellow feeling, and she tells it with lucidity and a deep sympathy for her subject matter...She has recounted a tale of hope and optimism, of a community energized by the prospect of its own emancipation and mobilized to make its contribution to a France itself in the process of transformation."鈥擩ournal of Modern History - Allan Lichtman, The Embattled Vote in America: From the Founding to the Present
鈥淟ichtman鈥檚 important book emphasizes the founders鈥 great blunder: They failed to enshrine a right to vote in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights鈥μ齌he Embattled Vote in America听traces the consequences through American history鈥 [Lichtman] uses history to contextualize the fix we鈥檙e in today鈥 Growing outrage, he thinks, could ignite demands for change. With luck, this fine history might just help to fan the flame.鈥濃擩ames A. Morone,听New York Times Book Review - Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award鈥淎llan Lichtman鈥檚 new book breaks important ground. Based on an extraordinary range of archival sources, he reminds us that conservatism is not the recent product of Ronald Reagan or Karl Rove, but is deeply embedded in more than a century of American politics and culture.鈥 鈥擱obert Griffith - Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union
鈥淎n extremely rich and thought-provoking book.听Lohr鈥檚 work will have a powerful impact upon the field of Russian history, and its arguments will feed into broader debates about citizenship, globalization, and the way in which Russian conceptions of membership in the state were or were not similar to those found across Europe. To my mind,听Russian Citizenship听is unique: there is nothing like it any language.鈥濃擠ominic Lieven, London School of Economics - Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I
鈥淟ohr has mined unique and wide-ranging materials to make this invaluable contribution to one of the most crucial and unexplored periods of modern Russian history鈥攖he transformation of the Russian Empire into a modern nation.鈥濃擜.V. Isaenko, Choice - Pamela Nadell, Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women鈥檚 Ordination, 1889-1985
"In a lucid, accessible book on the long struggle for women's ordination to the rabbinate, Nadell brings to life figures, such as Regina Jonas and Ray Frank, who have been obscured by accounts that began with the 1972 ordination of Sally Priesand. Nadell makes clear that that event neither began the history of women's ordination in Judaism nor ended controversy about it. (鈥) She attends to each strand of US Judaism鈥擱eform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Orthodox鈥攁nd sets her subject in the context of the concurrent US women's rights struggle" (Library Journal). - Theresa Runstedtler, Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line
鈥淩unstedtler presents an unexpected yet wholly authentic take on the great African American boxer, Jack Johnson; namely, that his impact extended beyond the US to such far-flung nations as Australia, South Africa, the Philippines, even India and Sri Lanka, where indigenous dark populations were finding one black man鈥檚 success against his white opponents empowering in their own resistance to their dominant white populations.鈥濃擜lan Moores, Booklist - April Shelford, Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre-Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life, 1650-1720
Transforming the Republic of Letters is a formidable book about a formidable man: Pierre-Daniel Huet. A deft and vivid narrator, April Shelford recreates Huet's career, his friendships with learned men and women, his projects and his quarrels with erudition, tenacity and deep historical insight.... This finely observed biography is also an original and striking work of cultural history. 鈥擜nthony Grafton, Princeton University - Elke Stockreiter, Islamic Law, Gender, and Social Change in Post-Abolition Zanzibar
鈥楾his captivating history establishes that Islamic courts contributed significantly to reconfiguring social relationships in post-abolition Zanzibar. Elke Stockreiter deftly explores rarely studied topics, such as women鈥檚 control of property, men鈥檚 material gains from divorce, and former slaves鈥 claims to inheritance, and reveals how the courts enabled these forms of individual agency while also constraining their social impact.鈥欌擲usan F. Hirsch, George Mason University听 - Katharina Vester, A Taste of Power: Food and American Identities
"Through a series of zesty readings, A Taste of Power teaches us how to parse the politics of cooking and eating. A keen cultural analyst, Vester shows how the salt of normativity and the pepper of resistance have infused the recipes we live by and thus every bite we eat.鈥 鈥擪ristin Hoganson
Faculty Updates
Brief notes on faculty work in progress, recent articles, fellowships, and more:
Laura Beers
Laura Beers published Orwell鈥檚 Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century with W.W. Norton in June, 2024. The book, which the New Yorker called 鈥渓ucid and engaging,鈥 considers the ongoing relevance of Orwell鈥檚 writing on truth, liberty, totalitarianism, and social inequality for our contemporary political moment. She argues that Orwell鈥檚 work offers a valuable blueprint for modern progressive politics, even as the author fails to consider the importance of feminism for social change. This book grew out of Prof. Beers鈥 experience teaching the 小蓝视频 Core course, HIST 235: The West in Crisis: George Orwell and the Making of the Modern World.
Michael Brenner
Michael Brenner gave numerous book talks on his听In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea听(Princeton University, 2019), which will appear in paperback in 2020. Together with the President of Germany, he was the keynote speaker at the anniversary of the College for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg in June 2019. His latest book on the rise of the Nazi Movement in Munich, which appeared in German in 2019, will be published in English by Princeton University Press in 2020. He served as consultant and is featured in a new CNN six-part series on Jerusalem to be screened later this year. He published a scholarly article "The Ever-Dying People? Prophets of Doom and the Survival of European Jewry" in The Future of the German-Jewish Past.
Andrew Demshuk
Andrew Demshuk received a 1-month grant from the Leibniz Association for July 2024 to conduct research in Germany for his next book project, Cold War Coal Pits: The Politics of Devastation in East and West Germany. He has applied for several other grants to support futher research. Demshuk鈥檚 new monograph, The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany, will soon be under contract with Cornell University Press for publication in 2025 or 2026. He was featured in a new documentary on the political and cultural effects of the bombardment of European cities during World War II. Finally, he published articles in Journal of Contemporary History, Urban History, and German Studies Review.
Anton Fedyashin
Anton Fedyashin is currently writing his book, Superpower Subconscious: The Cold War and the Spy Novel. Over the past year, he has published multiple book reviews, opinion pieces on current affairs, and given dozens of media interviews. He has also taken students and fellow academics on multiple Russian- and Soviet- themed museum trips to the National Gallery of Art, the National Air & Space Museum, Hillwood Estate, the Woodrow Wilson House, Dumbarton House Museum, and more. in December and June, he facilitated a course trip to Istanbul, Turkiye entitled 鈥淭he Culture of Eastern Orthodoxy: From Constantinople to Eurasia.鈥 He looks forward to continuing his service as the co-director of undergraduate studies for the department.
Eileen Findlay
Eileen鈥檚 article 鈥淐ien por Cientos Cubanos: National Identity, Master Narratives, and Si-lencing Moves in a Transnational Caribbean Family History鈥 was approved for publica-tion in the Latin American Research Review. She also delivered a paper at an interna-tional conference on Caribbean History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This year, Eileen Findlay also stepped down as the History Department鈥檚 Director of Under-graduate Studies and became the Chair of a new interdisciplinary teaching unit鈥攖he Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies Collaborative. Eileen retains her appointment in the History Department while serving as Chair of the CRGC. She also has begun a 4-year term as the External Examiner for the Women and Gender Studies Programme at The University of Hong Kong.听
Kathleen Franz
Kathy Franz continues to teach at 小蓝视频 in addition to working as a Supervisory Museum Curator at the Smithsonian鈥檚 National Museum of American History. She will serve as the Public History Program Director for the coming academic year, 2024-25.
Max Paul Friedman
Max Paul Friedman published 鈥淎 Latin American Third Way? Juan Jos茅 Ar茅valo鈥檚 Spiritual Socialism, 1916-1963" in The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History and 鈥淟a doctrine Monroe. Plus 莽a change, plus c鈥檈st la m锚me chose鈥 in Id茅es d鈥橝m茅riques. He and Prof. N煤ria Vilanova received a book contract for their edited collection, Transnational Humans and Transnationalism in the Humanities: Crossing Boundaries in the Americas with University of New Mexico Press. Friedman gave a paper He gave a paper, 鈥淧romises and Limits of the Good Neighbor Policy,鈥 to the conference Washington et l鈥橝m茅rique Latine entre h茅g茅monie et partenariat, Aix-en-Provence, France, 2024 (via Zoom). He received an American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant and did six commentaries on Germany鈥檚 national public radio network on the Israel-Gaza conflict, U.S. foreign policy, and U.S. political culture.
Mary Frances Giandrea
Mary Frances Giandrea has been busy on several committees as 小蓝视频 seeks to reconfigure its core curriculum. A key feature of the new vision is to develop stu-dent鈥檚 intellectual capabilities, while expanding their perspective and their ways of know-ing a complex world. This year, Dr. Giandrea has been teaching courses on the History of Britain, the Crusades, the Vikings, Medieval Europe, Ancient Greece and Religion and Con-flict in History.听
Kate Haulman
Kate Haulman鈥檚 co-curated exhibit, 鈥淎ll Work, No Pay: The History of Women鈥檚 Invisible Labor,鈥 which opened in 2019 at the National Museum of American History, will run through March of 2021. She consulted on the exhibit 鈥淕irlhood: It鈥檚 Complicated,鈥 to open in June 2020, and received a grant from the Smithsonian鈥檚 Women鈥檚 History Initia-tive for the project 鈥淚n Her Own Words: Audience Centric Metadata for Women鈥檚 History Objects,鈥 funds from which supported a student workshop that informed the production of enhanced records for objects in the NMAH鈥檚 digital catalog.听
Justin Jacobs
Justin Jacobs published his fourth book, (Reaktion Books, 2024) and released his second Great Courses series, "." He is also overseeing a Chinese translation for Peking University Press of his last research monograph, (University of Chicago Press, 2020).
Anna Kaplan
Anna Kaplan joined the Department of History as a fully time faculty member for AY 2023-24. She is a recipient of the History Makers Digital Archive鈥檚 . In February 2024, she published an article in Study the South, titled 鈥.鈥 She is also continuing her work on a manuscript focusing on Black women鈥檚 contributions to early institutional oral history projects in the United States.
Julie Keresztes
Julie Keresztes鈥檚 first book, , will be published by Cornell University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Daniel Kerr
Dan Kerr focused much of his attention on the Humanities Truck, which is now moving into its third year of operations. In 2019 the project received a major grant from the Mellon Foundation. The three year grant funds six faculty and six graduate fellowships to work with and use the truck for community engaged projects, a speaker series, a commu-nity advisory board, and an exhibit production workshop. The truck project was as active as ever when it needed to shut down in person events as a result of the pandemic. As a result, Kerr initiated the From Me to You: A Covid-19 Oral History Project. In the summer, the truck resumed operations and worked with community partners to deliver food to people in need. In 2020-21 the truck will focus on the theme of Food and Communities.听
Alan Kraut
Alan Kraut chairs the History Advisory Committee of the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation. They are currently revising the exhibitry in the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. He is also the current president of the National Coalition for History, the lobbying group for the nation鈥檚 historians and archivists. He has been engaged with the current health crisis and its influence on migration. His article on anti-Asian nativism and the COVID-19 pandemic, 鈥淭he Other Pandemic,鈥 was published by the听History News Net-work听in April 2020. He was a panelist on a webinar sponsored by the Migration Policy In-stitute, 鈥淢igration & Coronavirus: A Complicated Nexus Between Migration Management and Public Health.鈥 He has also been interviewed on the history of the 1918 Influenza epidemic on National Public Radio, Kojo Nnamdi鈥檚 program on WAMU, and the BBC News. He has been quoted by the Russia News & Information Agency, Ha鈥檃retz in Israel, Spain鈥檚 International News Agency (EFE), and the Britain鈥檚听New Statesman.听He has been consulting with the American Civil Liberties Union to support the rights of asylees who have been denied hearings on public health grounds during the pandemic.听They also gave a presentation on a panel, "The Natural World and the Border," at "Geography 2050: Borders & a Borderless World, a conference sponsored by the American Geographical Society at Columbia University on November 22, 2019. He chaired a panel, "In the Hands of the People: Negotiating US Immigration Policy from Below," at the American Historical Association's Annual Meeting in New York, January 3, 2020.
Peter Kuznik
Dr. Kuznick had another busy year plus with speaking and media tours in India (twice), Sin-gapore, Russia, Spain, Belgium, Canada, mainland Japan, and Okinawa, where he received the Ikemiyagushiku Award on behalf of the international support for the anti-base movement in Okinawa from the Okinawan newspaper Ryukyu Shimpo, as well as several talks in the United States. He brought 26 participants (mostly 小蓝视频 students) to attend Victory Day commemorations in Moscow, recognizing the end of World War II. He conducted a couple hundred interviews, mostly with international television, newspapers, and radio, plus a couple major press conferences. He and Oliver Stone wrote a 160-page chapter 鈥淗ow the Unthinkable Became Thinkable Again鈥 on the years 2012-2019 for the new edition of听The Untold History of the United States, which came out in April. The new chapter was pub-lished as a stand-alone book in many countries. He also worked on the second volume of the young readers edition of听Untold History, which came out in January 2019. He and Oliver Stone recorded a day-long symposium with former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoya-ma, which was published as a co-authored book in Japan in spring 2020. He was also very active with scores of talks, interviews, and op-eds around the end of the European War and the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.听
Lisa Leff
Lisa Leff is still serving as the Director of the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, alongside her work with students and colleagues in the 小蓝视频 Department of History.
Allan Lichtman
Allan Lichtman is an active commentator on the upcoming presidential election, including conducting hundreds of interviews with news outlets. In July, he published the 2024 edition of . Lichtman was also the lead author in an amicus brief filed by 25 historians on the Supreme Court Colorado ballot disqualification case.
Eric Lohr
Eric Lohr听is in his fourth year as chair of the department. He published 鈥淭he Bolshevik Revolution is Over鈥 in the听Journal of Modern History听in September 2020 and is working on听a book titled "Russia's World War I and Revolution: From Total Mobilization to Total听Demobilization."听
Pamela Nadell
Pamela Nadell spent her sabbatical year writing her upcoming book, Antisemitism: An American Tradition and actively engaging with the public and media on the rising antisemitism crisis in the United States. In November, 2023, she testified in the widely publicized Other speaking engagements included , meetings with MIT students, faculty, and presidents cabinet, and participating in a panel discussion with Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council of Education, for the NYU Board of Trustees.
Pedram Partovi
Pedram Partovi published a chapter in in January 2024. He contributed to the Cinema Iranica Digital Compendium, generously supported by the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. He has also been named to the editorial board. He has continued his work on a book manuscript about youth mobilization in Modern Iran, which he hopes to complete in the coming academic year.
Gautham Rao
Gautham Rao was appointed Editor-In-Chief for the Oxford Bibliography of Legal History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024-). He has also been appointed to a program committee, 鈥100 Years Later: J. Franklin Jameson and Revolutions on the Eve of the 250th鈥 with the John W. Kludge Center, the Library of Congress, and McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Rao participated to the with the American Historical Association. He co-authored a historian鈥檚 amicus brief in , and served as a plenary speaker at the American Political History Conference at Vanderbilt University, June 6, 2024. Finally, Rao secured a book contract with Hodding Carter Books for White Power: Policing American Slavery.
Theresa Runstedtler
Theresa Runstedlter published ; Black Ball made the shortlist for Museum of African AMerican History鈥檚 2023 Stone Book Award. She gave book talks at a variety of venues, including the University of Iowa, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Shippensburg University, the Schomburg Center, Humanities North Dakota, the Enoch Pratt Library, the Gilder Lehrman Center, and the Gaithersburg Book Festival. She has two forthcoming articles: 鈥淯nnecessary Roughness: The NFL鈥檚 War on Drugs in the 1970s鈥 in Modern American History and 鈥淪elf-Care is an Act of Athletic Activism鈥 in Get in the Game: Sports and Contemporary Culture.
M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska
MJ Rymsza-Pawlowska completed a scholar residency at Heurich House Museum. Over the summer, she has been working with the Humanities Truck on a project entitled Visitor: Information? with help from Public History MA students Marie, Bennett, and Emma, and Humanities Truck Fellows Daiki and Inaya. She has also finished two chapters of her book entitled Our Nation鈥檚 Capital: How Visitors, Newcomers, and Outsiders Came to Dominate Washington, D.C. For AY 2024-25, Rymsza-Pawlowska has been selected for a Us@250 fellowship with New America to support her research, as well as a longform article on local and federal efforts for Bicentennial planning in D.C.
Elke Stockreiter
To pursue her research interests in former French West Africa, Elke Stockreiter took up learning Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali. Thanks to a Mellon Faculty Development Fund, she has obtained elementary proficiency in speaking and reading Bambara. She worked on articles in English and French that are forthcoming and further contributed to 小蓝视频 Core by designing two new courses: a first-year Complex Problems Seminar titled 鈥淪ex, Power, Human Trafficking鈥 and HIST-120 Empires Past & Present, in which she offers an introduction to colonial Africa through mostly primary sources.听
Elizabeth Thompson
Prof. Elizabeth F. Thompson announces the publication of her new book,听How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Arab Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of Its Liberal-Islamic Coalition.听Using new Arabic sources, Thompson locates the origins of modern Islamism in the Paris Peace Conference鈥檚 exclusion of Arabs from the family of civilized nations accorded rights under international law. The book will appear in April from Atlantic Monthly Press.听
Katharina Vester
Katharina Vester won a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers that will grant her 14 months of research in Germany. Also this year her 鈥溾楶OISE, Miss Lane!鈥櫶齋uper-Femininity in U.S. Comic Books in the 1940s and 50s鈥 was published in听Bodies in Flux: Embodiments at the End of Anthropocentrism,听edited by Barbara Braid and听Hanan Muzaffar. She was invited to talk about 鈥淐leaning up the American Mess with Mari Kondo鈥 in the DuBois Lecture Series at Humboldt University in Berlin and on "Diet Manuals from the 1920s as Proto-Feminist Literature鈥 at the Ruhr-Universitaet Bo-chum.听