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    Spring 2024 -Special Event, Tuesday, April 2, 2024

    "Dina Pronicheva, Actress and Holocaust Surviver - Rethinking Ukrainian Studies and the Embodied Experience of War" 

    Tuesday, April 2, 2024 @ 4:30PM in PAC101

    Dina Pronicheva is well-known as one of the few survivors of Babyn Iar, when the Nazis murdered over 30,000 Jews in two days in 1941. Her testimony has served scholars and courts for describing Nazi atrocities. Rarely discussed, however, is her work in theater. After Babyn Iar, it was her skills as an actress that helped her survive for over two years until liberation, passing as a non-Jew working in Ukrainian theatre. This lecture shows the importance of the Jewish experience that forms an inextricable part of the Ukrainian history, and the importance of Ukraine as a place in Jewish culture. Finally, Dina Pronicheva’s story suggests the embodied nature of theater and survival and offers much to consider in our understanding of life in wartime Ukraine today.

    Dr. Mayhill C. Fowler is an associate professor in the Department of History at Stetson University. She has published widely on culture in Ukraine, including her book Beau Monde on Empire's Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine (Toronto, 2017). She is currently finishing a book on women in theater in Ukraine across the long 20th century and re-thinking a project on Soviet military theater. She has held fellowships at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, the University of Toronto, and she was a Fulbright scholar to Ukraine 2019-2020. She is an affiliated researcher with the Center for Urban History in Lviv and affiliated faculty in the Program in Theater Studies at Ivan Franko National University. She is also a former actress.

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    Spring 2024 -Special Event, Wednesday, March 27, 2024

    "The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects." 

    Wednesday, March 27, 2024 @ 4:30PM in Allbritton 311

    We welcome guest lecturer Brandon Schechter, who will be talking about the Red Army through objects. The Red Army was the largest force assembled in human history, defeating fascism in the course of the most destructive war humanity has known. Millions of diverse people – men and women, peasants and workers, Muslims and atheists – came together to defeat an enemy who wanted to enslave or annihilate them. A common set of objects was often all that separated these soldiers from civilians and the only thing uniting very different people in the ranks. This talk will look at how ordinary things can tell the story of an epic event and attempt to humanize the people who defeated fascism through looking at their everyday lives. In this talk Dr. Schechter discusses his award-winning book The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Cornell University Press, 2019) which won the American Historical Association’s Paul Birdsall Prize in 2020. 

    Brandon Schechter is the author of The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (2019). He’s a consultant at the Blavatnik Archive and has taught at Columbia, NYU, NYU Shanghai, Brown, and UC Berkley, where he recieved his Ph.D. Schechter received his B.A. in Russian Studies at Vassar College.

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    Spring 2024 -Special Event, Friday, February 23, 2024

    "The Missionary Zeal: Liberal Arts Education and the Transformation of US-China Relations" 

    Friday, February 23, 2024 

    On Friday, February 23, 2024, scholars from nine liberal arts colleges across the nation will convene at Wesleyan University to explore how liberal arts education reshaped US-China relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by exploring the rich repositories of historical materials from their respective institutions. 

    The workshop titled "The Missionary Zeal: Liberal Arts Education and the Transformation of US-China Relations" is funded by the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and the New England Humanities Consortium. 
     
    The workshop begins at 9am with presentations by faculty from Amherst, Carleton, Davidson, Colby, Grinnell, Smith, and Oberlin at the Smith Reading Room (Olin 114) in the Olin Library. Members of the Wesleyan community are welcome to attend the presentations. This workshop is organized by Dr. Ying Jia Tan. 
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    Spring 2024 -Special Event, Thursday, February 15, 2024

    "Chivalry and Alterity at the Rennaissance Tournament" 

    Thursday, February 15, 2024 @ 4:30PM in PAC 101

    In sixteenth-century Europe, princes and nobles donned costumes and masks to impersonate warriors and kings from foreign lands. During this age of overseas expansion, equestrian tournaments became an activity for imagining and experiencing human difference, both cultural and embodied. If early masked tournaments focused especially on the rivalry between Christians and Muslims, later ones also represented participants from the Americas, Africa, and South Asia, seeking eventually to evoke the entire world. At this moment of intensified global interaction, the tournament—a festivity of medieval origin at which the old military elite celebrated its martial values—proved a remarkably flexible medium for interpreting the newly expanded world. It also, perhaps inevitably, served to assert European superiority. By expressing their understanding of human difference through equestrian exercises and masquerades, princes and nobles not only asserted their claim to rule but also shaped early European ideas about the world's people.

    Alexander Bevilacqua is Associate Professor of History at Williams College. He studies the cultural and intellectual consequences of European expansion in the first global era, ca. 1500-1800. His book The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment (Harvard, 2018) won the Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association. His scholarship has appeared in journals including Past and Present, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, and Journal of Modern History.

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    CANCELLED Fall 2023-Special Event, Tuesday, December 5

    "The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects." 

    Tuesday, December 5, 2023 @ 4:30PM in Allbritton 311

    We welcome guest lecturer Brandon Schechter, who will be talking about the Red Army through objects. The Red Army was the largest force assembled in human history, defeating fascism in the course of the most destructive war humanity has known. Millions of diverse people – men and women, peasants and workers, Muslims and atheists – came together to defeat an enemy who wanted to enslave or annihilate them. A common set of objects was often all that separated these soldiers from civilians and the only thing uniting very different people in the ranks. This talk will look at how ordinary things can tell the story of an epic event and attempt to humanize the people who defeated fascism through looking at their everyday lives. In this talk Dr. Schechter discusses his award-winning book The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Cornell University Press, 2019) which won the American Historical Association’s Paul Birdsall Prize in 2020. 

    Brandon Schechter is the author of The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (2019). He’s a consultant at the Blavatnik Archive and has taught at Columbia, NYU, NYU Shanghai, Brown, and UC Berkley, where he recieved his Ph.D. Schechter received his B.A. in Russian Studies at Vassar College.

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    Fall 2023-Special Event, Tuesday, November 7

    "The Liberatory Power of Guilt: How a Sikh Holy Town Shaped Utopian Dreams of Pakistan"

    Tuesday, November 7th at 4:30 pm Judd 116

    We welcome guest lecturer, Priya Satia. In this talk, Prof. Satia will explain how, in the era of British colonialism, environmental transformation of a Sikh holy site in a semi-arid region of Punjab became crucial to securing legitimacy in local political contests. The emerging town's particular spiritual culture went on to water various struggles for autonomy--including a vision of Pakistan as a state-sized "dera" (socio-religious residence of a spiritual leader) offering refuge and relief from colonial and casteist orders.

    Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of History at Stanford University. She is the author of three award-winning books: Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (OUP, 2008); Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Duckworth, 2018); Time's Monster: History, Conscience and Britain's Empire (Penguin, 2020). Her work can also be found in the American Historical Review, Past & Present, Technology & Culture, Humanity, and other scholarly journals and edited volumes. Prof. Satia writes frequently for popular media, such as the Washington Post, Time Magazine, The New Republic, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and other outlets.

    Sponsored by the History Department, Fall 2023

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    Fall 2023-Special Event, Tuesday, October 3

    "You Can Never Rest, Because They Keep Coming": On America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created

    Tuesday, October 3 at 4:30 pm Boger 114

    We welcome guest lecturer, Nick Tabor. Nick Tabor is the author of Africatown:  America's Last Slave Ship and the Community it Created.

    Nick Tabor is the author of Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created, a blend of history and investigative journalism that traces the development of a neighborhood established by survivors of the last slave voyage to the US. He was a historical consultant on the documentary Descendant, which was presented on Netflix by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company in 2022. He previously worked at daily newspapers and on the editorial staff of New York Magazine. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.

    Sponored by Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, The African American Studies Department, The History Department and the CSS 

    Talk Description
    The Africatown neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama, was established by survivors of the last slave ship to the US. It is the only community in the country created by West Africans who had personally been through the Middle Passage. More than 150 years after its founding, it’s still intact—but it’s inundated by industrial pollution, and many residents believe there’s a cancer epidemic. Activists from the community are trying to save it from extinction by transforming it into a destination for heritage tourism. Their efforts got a boost when the wreckage of the ship was identified in 2019.

    Africatown’s long history of resistance and survival gives us a rare chance to study how systemic racism—and especially environmental racism—have played out across the decades, and how communities can seize the levers of change.
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    Fall 2023-Special Lecture, Tuesday, September 26

    "A Madman in the White House?  On Sigmund Freud's Unknown Diagnosis of Woodrow Wilson" 

    Tuesday, September 26 at 4:30 pm Allbritton 311 

    Join us for a talk by a well-known French Historian, Patrick Weil

    Patrick Weil is a Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a senior research fellow at the French National Research Center in the University of Paris1, Pantheon-Sorbonne. Professor Weil's work focuses on comparative immigration, citizenship, and church-state law and policy. His most recent books are The Madman in the White House. Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Harvard University Press, 2023) and De La Laïcité en France (Grasset, 2021).

    Patrick Weil is also, since 2006, the founder and the chairman of the NGO Libraries Without Borders (Bibliothèques Sans Frontières).

    Sponsored by History Department, CSS and the Romance Languages and Literatures Department 

     

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    2023 MEIGS LECTURE - Tuesday, April 11 at 4:30 pm

    Elizabeth Hinton, Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University, will deliver the annual Meigs Lecture in US History.

    Tuesday, April 11 at 4:30 pm in Boger 114.

    Elizabeth Hinton is a historian of American inequality who is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on policing and mass incarceration. Hinton’s past and current scholarship provides a deeper grasp of the persistence of poverty, urban violence, and racial inequality in the United States. She is a Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University.

    Sponsored by the History Department, the Albritton Center for Public Life, the Department of African American Studies, the Center for African American Studies, and the American Studies Department.

    See Talk Abstract Here
    Talk Abstract: The decades since the civil rights movement are considered by many to be a story of progress toward equal rights and greater inclusiveness. Elizabeth Hinton uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Dr. Hinton offers a critical corrective: the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions--explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order. Challenging the optimistic story of the post-Jim Crow United States, Hinton's discussion will present a new framework for understanding our nation's enduring racial strife. As her history suggests, rebellions will likely continue until police are no longer called on to manage the consequences of dismal conditions beyond their control, and until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principle of justice and equality.
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    Guest Lecturer Gregory Conti gives talk "How to think about Mill's On Liberty"

    On Monday, April 10 at 4:30 pm in Boger 114, guest speaker Gregory Conti will give the talk:

    "How to think about Mill's On Liberty"

    Gregory Conti is assistant professor of politics at Princeton. His research focuses on the history of modern political thought, especially in Britain and France, and on the lessons that can be drawn from that history for contemporary debates in political philosophy. His primary research interests include the relationship between ideas of democracy, liberalism, and representative government; toleration and freedom of speech; Enlightenment political philosophy; the thought of John Stuart Mill and its reception; and modern French political theory. He has published widely in political philosophy and the history of political thought.

    Sponsored by the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, the Government Department, the History Department, and the College of Social Studies.

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    Guest Lecturer Felipe Arturo gives talk "The Migration of Plants"

    On Thursday, April 6 at 4:30 pm in FISK 201, we welcome Felipe Arturo, who will give the talk:

    "The Migration of Plants"

    Felipe Arturo presents a selection of artistic works that span a 15-year period of artistic practice based on the migration of plants in recent history and their impact in contemporary cultural practices.

    Co-sponsored by Wesleyan's Center for the Arts Creative Campus Initiative, College of the Environment, Fries Center for Global Studies, Latin American Studies, History Department, and Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

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    Peter Molin - "Word Wars: Literature, Combat, and the Veteran Voice"

    Wednesday, April 5 at 4:30 pm in Allbritton 103

    Guest Speaker Peter Molin will give the talk "Word Wars: Literature, Combat, and the Veteran Voice".

    Peter Molin is a retired US Army infantry officer who currently teaches in the English Department Writing Program at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He has written extensively on the art, film, and literature of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most prominently on his blog Time Now, as well as in other media and scholarly outlets. 

    See additional information here.
    Peter Molin currently writes a monthly column on war, military, and veteran art-andculture for the online journal The Wrath-Bearing Tree. In 2008-2009,Molin served as an advisor to Afghan National Army forces in Khost and Paktya provinces in Afghanistan. He holds a doctorate in American literature from Indiana University.
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    Mauricio Tenorio Trillo Talk: On the Useful Pointlessness of History

    We welcome guest speaker Mauricio Tenorio Trillo who will give the talk:

    "On the Useful Pointlessness of History"

    Thursday, March 2 at 4:30 pm in Russell House, 350 High Street

    Mauricio Tenorio Trillo is the Samuel N. Harper Professor of History at the University of Chicago and associate professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico City.

    Event is sponsored by the Allbritton Center for Public Life, History Department, and Latin American Studies (LAST).

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    Panel Discussion on Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming A Space

    Zora Neale Hurston: CLAIMING A SPACE: A PANEL DISCUSSION ON FILMMAKING, BIOGRAPHY, AND HISTORY

    Wednesday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. in Daniel Family Commons

    Panelists include: Tracey Heather Strain, Randall Maclowry, Daphne Lamothe.

    Moderated by Crystal Feimster and Thomas Allen Harris

    Co-Chaired by Jennifer Tucker and Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon

    Hosted by History Dept with FGSS, CHUM, AFAM, AMST, ANTHRO, CSS, ENG, REL, & SISP

     

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    Talk by Glory M. Liu: "Adam Smith's America"

    "Adam Smith's America" 

    Wednesday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. in the Woodhead Lounge, Exley 184

    Glory M. Liu is a lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard and author of Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton: 2022). A political theorist and intellectual historian, she received her PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2018 and also holds an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from Cambridge University. Her works have appeared in journals such as Modern Intellectual History and History of European Ideas and she has also written for outlets such as The Nation, The Washington Post, and Aeon Magazine.

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    A Virtual Conversation with Writer Patrick Radden Keefe

    Thursday, February 9, 4:30-5:30 p.m., online only

    Co-Sponsored by The College of Letters, Shapiro Writing Center, The History Department, The Science in Society Program, and the Department of American Studies

    Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the New York Times bestsellers Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, as well as two earlier nonfiction books: The Snakehead and Chatter. His most recent book is Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks.

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    History 300 Distinguished Lecture Fall 2022

    The Fall 2022 History 300 Lecture features Helge Jordheim.

    "Changing the World One Word at a Time: From Flag to Climate Emergency"

    Thursday, November 10 at 4:30 p.m. in Tishler Hall

    Helge Jordheim is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, Norway, and a Visiting Professor at Wesleyan. He has published books and articles on 18th-century Germany, concepts of civilization and the world, universal history, the cultural history of time, and topics related to the theory of history, especially the work of Reinhart Koselleck.

    Read More
    “Man gave name to all the animals”, Bob Dylan sings – and to plenty of other things, we could add, from pieces of cloth that flutter in the wind to rising temperatures in the atmosphere. Drawing on concept history, speech act theory, and other forms of discourse analysis, this talk will discuss the role of definitions, declarations, and other naming practices in history, which explicitly set out to change the world, both temporally and spatially. Examples will range from “flag” to Anthropocene”, from Enlightenment to the Covid pandemic.
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    Co-Sponsponsored Event: How Queer Were the Greeks? How Queer Are We?

    A talk by University of Michigan Professor David Halperin

    Thursday, November 3 at 4:30 p.m. at Russell House.

    Sponsored by Classical Studies, History, College of Letters, & Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

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    Special Event: A Conversation with Historian and Filmmaker Christian Delage

    "Confronting the violence of images and the pain of others: from the experience of war to the projection of images as judicial evidence"

    Wednesday, September 21, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. in Boger Hall 112

    See more information here.

    Title: "Confronting the violence of images and the pain of others: from the experience of war to the projection of images as judicial evidence"

    Chair: Prof. Jennifer Tucker (History Department; Director, Center for the Study of Guns & Society)

    Moderators: 

    Prof. Lisa Dombrowski (East Asian Studies & Film Studies)

    Prof. Avner Shavit (Center for Jewish Studies)

    Prof. Christian Delage (University of Paris 8) is a historian and film director. From 2014–2021, he directed the Institute for the History of the Present in Paris. He has frequently been a visiting professor at Cardozo Law School. He has recently completed a new film, 13 November: Their Lives Were Never Ordinary (Zadig Productions, 2022, 52 minutes) and will soon publish Filming, Judging: From Nuremberg to the Invasion of Ukraine (Gallimard, 2023). His film on the Nuremberg trial was distributed in the United States under the title: Nuremberg. The Nazis Facing Their Crimes (Lions Gate, 2007). With Peter Goodrich, he has edited two collective works: The Scene of the Mass Crime (Routledge, 2012) and Law and New Media (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

     

     

    Refreshments will be served.

     

    Co-sponsored by the History Department and the Center for the Study of Guns & Society.

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    History Matters Event: BUSTING MYTHS ABOUT CHINA AND CHINESE POWER

    Thursday, April 14, 2022, 12:00 - 1:00 pm in Allbritton 311. Lunch will be provided.

    For more information click here.

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    Strong Bodies for the Revolution: Pursuing Health and Power in the People's Republic of China

    CEAS Gallery Exhibition

    February 16 - May 13, 2022

    This exhibit opens Wednesday, February 16 at 12:15 p.m. at the College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center starting with a reception starting in the gallery, and then moving to the Seminar Room for remarks by Collections Assistant Sam Smith '20, Assistant Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Ying Jia Tan, and special guest Mark Sidel, son of Ruth and Victor Sidel and donor of the propaganda posters.

    The exhibit is co-curated by Ying Jia Tan, Rosemary Lennox, Ben Chaffee, Wendi Field Murray, and Christina Lu '22.

    Regular gallery hours during the exhibition are Tuesday through Friday, noon - 4:00 p.m.

    See More Exhibit Information Here

    How did the government of the People's Republic of China mobilize its people to implement public health campaigns and improve the health of hundreds of millions of people? The College of East Asian Studies presents an exhibition featuring a collection of propaganda posters donated by the family of Ruth and Victor Sidel. During their travels to China, the Sidels acquired more than 55 posters, most of which illustrated the underlying principles that governed Chinese public health policy during tumultuous years of revolution. This exhibition, curated by Wesleyan faculty and students, showcases common themes in the posters that contribute to a larger narrative on modern health practices in China. Co-sponsored by the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life; the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program; the Fries Center for Global Studies; the Department of Government; the History Department; the Science in Society Program and Black Box Labs; and the Wesleyan University Library.

    Regular gallery hours during the exhibition are Tueday through Friday, Noon-4pm. The gallery also welcomes class visits and curator tours by appointment. Please feel free to be in touch for more information on the exhibition and/or to arrange a class visit.

    We hope that you'll join us to celebrate this special occasion!

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    Save the Date - May 5, 2022 - Talk by Sam Perry

    Visiting Professor Joe Slaughter is organizing events on campus on Wednesday, May 4 with noted sociologist of religion, Sam Perry (U of Oklahoma). There will be a talk at noon for faculty and students on Christian Nationalism and additional informal gatherings with majors that day. Sam Perry Visit
    Sam's book with Andrew Whitehead garnered a great deal of attention nationally, and his next book with Philip Gorski comes out in April.
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    "Benedetta" Film Screening and Discussion

    • On Sunday, December 5, 2021 - the film "Benedetta" was shown at Metro Middletown Cinemas (140 Main Street_ at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. 

    • On Monday, December 6, 2021, the leading film director, Paul Verhoeven, joined the Wesleyan community  for a discussion of his latest film, "Benedetta" (2021) with Wesleyan Profs. Lisa Dombrowski and Jennifer Tucker. Click here to access the recording of this event.

    • On Tuesday, December 7, 2021, Author and historian Judith Brown joined the Wesleyan comminity for a discussion at Russell House, 5:00 - 6:00 p.m.
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    "Benedetta" (2021) is a drama inspired by true events set in 17th century Italy: the subject of the book, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (1986), by historian and former Wesleyan provost, Judith Brown. The story is about a nun, Benedetta Carlini, who becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with another nun, and whose religious and erotic visions shock the church.

    Read Wes Connection's story about the event: https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2022/01/24/browns-book-on-lesbian-nun-inspires-the-creation-of-benedetta/

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    History 362 Distinguished Lecture Fall 2021

    Thursday, November 11 at 4:30 p.m. in Shanklin 107 (Kerr Lecture Hall):

    Annual HISTORY 362 Distinguished Lecture featuring Professor Kenda Mutongi, Professor of History at MIT, "MATATU: Oral History and Popular Transportation in Nairobi"

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    Book Talk by Ying Jia Tan

    Friday, November 5, 12:30 - 2:00 p.m.

    Ying Jia Tan is giving a virtual book talk at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Click here to register.

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    History Department Open House for Prospective History Majors

    Meet faculty and students, and learn more about the precarious perch between visions of the past and hopes for the future.

    Read More
    TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2020
    4:15 PM
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    The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free

    Book Talk Featuring Writer, Historian, and Wesleyan Alumna: Paulina Bren

    Thursday, October 14, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. in Allbritton 311

    Sponsored by the History Department, the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

    Read More
    Paulina Bren (BA ‘87) is an award-winning writer and historian who teaches at Vassar College. She attended Wesleyan University as an undergraduate majoring in the College of Letters, later receiving an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in History from New York University. She has held a host of research grants and fellowships, including residencies in Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Atlanta.

  • Writing Empire: Late 19th Century Ottoman Configurations

    Meltem Toksoz, Visiting Associate Professor of History

     

    Read More

    April 27, 2021 l 4:30 P.M.

    Join Zoom Meeting:  https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/93406886963

    In the tumultuous last quarter of the 19th century, many Ottomans produced universal history narratives for the reading public, as textbooks for the newly established universities, as column series in the prolific medium of the age, newspapers, and as print books.

    This was after all the century of reform in the empire, which meant the formation of the modern state, in the name of saving the empire. I situate Ottoman Turkish universal history writing in this age as a new genre for recasting empire in history in general, and for rescripting Ottoman history in world history in particular. The ways in which Ottoman Turkish universal history narratives situate the changing Ottoman Empire, in a world where 19th century Western historical discourse of ‘progress’ was already engrained in the idea that history was European, reveal an intellectual milieu far more complicated than the very problematic positionalities of ‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’. Indeed, the universal history oeuvre of Ahmed Midhat (1844-1912), a well-known literati of the age, circumvents the binary narratives of reformist versus Islamic, of constitutionalist versus Pan-Islamic despotic, of Turkish nationalist versus Ottoman imperial. His three different and voluminous universal histories published in the 1880s and 1890s have never been studied. Yet they point, I argue, to a particular construction of empire distinct from both its own past version and European colonial empire.

    Sponsored by the History Department

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    History Department Open House

    Meet faculty and students, and learn more about the precarious perch between visions of the past and hopes for the future.
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    The Travelers Lab

    Don’t Miss the Opportunity to Participate in Faculty Research in a Collaborative Digital Humanities Lab…

    Data Generation, Analysis, and Vizualization in the Historical Analysis of Travel & Communications.

    Apply (& learn!) digital techniques of analysis and visualisation to the study of historical travel and communication in a collaborative lab with Gary Shaw (HIST) & Jesse Torgerson (COL).

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    Peruse our interests & current projects at the Travelers Lab website (travelerslab.wesleyan.edu).

    Students with interests and/or abilities in … history, texts, languages, data analysis, mapping, data visualization or any combination of those will find an application for their interests in our international, multi-campus collaborative historical data lab.

    Interested?
    Please email Prof. Shaw or Prof. Torgerson gshaw@wesleyan.edu / jtorgerson@wesleyan.edu

    How do I actually “join”?
    Join for Credit or apply to be a Research Assistant: Fa 2020 Associated Course: HISTORY 423 (for 0.5 or 1.0 credits).

    Participation in the lab and the course is open to all majors and all class years.  Admission by permission of instructor; enrollment requires academic advisor's approval.

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    What is “CLAC”? The Communist Experience in Russian

    We at Wesleyan are now entering the third year of offering “Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum” (or CLAC) courses. These are courses taught in languages other than English, all of which provide students and faculty across the campus with opportunities to deepen their engagement with their subjects through the use and further development of their language and intercultural skills. A list of all the CLAC courses we have offered so far, including those being offered this academic year, is on the Fries Center website.

     

    Read More

    Link to page:  http://wesandtheworld.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2020/08/31/what-is-clac-the-communist-experience-in-russian/?utm_source=&utm_medium=EMLET&utm_campaign=Wes+and+the+World+Newsletter+17(2210812

    One great example of a CLAC course was Prof. Victoria Smolkin’s course “The Communist Experience in the Soviet Union” (see here for the WesMaps listing). The student language background appropriate for this class was listed as “(preferably advanced) intermediate to native,” and the eight students enrolled in the class had a range of linguistic backgrounds, with some speaking Russian to varying degrees before coming to college, and others learning it entirely while at Wesleyan. Prof. Smolkin asked her students to comment on how the CLAC course differed from a language class and from a conventional history class. Here are some of the responses:

    It differed from a language class in that the emphasis was on speaking and getting one’s message across, instead of on having correct syntax or grammar. We were also able to discuss the material in its original language, which helped in understanding certain cultural nuances that we wouldn’t typically have time to go over in a conventional history class.

    I think it was also different in that we had a mixture of Russian language learners and native Russian speakers, so we could all learn from each other. I don’t think that so many Russian speakers [of different language levels] would typically find themselves in the same classroom, unless through a CLAC.

    The CLAC class has its focus on “using language” (with native speakers) and gave me opportunities to actively engage with the language. But the same time, it has been a challenge for me to keep up with the speed and contents in class as my Russian level is not high enough to jump into the discussions happening in a class all the time. So that bitter experience encourages me to study harder the language itself as well.

    As the CLAC class opened up a greater variety of ways to interact with Russian language and culture other than literature, I feel more motivated to take on my tasks to study harder the language.

    Literature is heavy and not the strongest academic interest of mine, though I enjoy reading literature. Therefore, I appreciated the CLAC class as an alternative opportunity to learn and interact with Russian language and culture.

    This class wasn’t focused on grammar; that fact made me spend more time outside of class brushing up on my grammar and practicing certain expressions so that I could better articulate myself in class.

    Asked about aspects of the class that really captured what it was like, students said:

    The class presentations by my classmates were helpful and reassured me of my understanding of the materials. I was scared when my turn came up, but my fluent presentation buddy always helped me to understand the class materials and reassured me that I was on the right track. I am thankful for their help and I was able to do the presentation on the complex historical materials with more confidence.

    I liked the podcast assignments every week: to listen to a podcast of our choice and write a diary on it. It trained us to get used to the language and actively and regularly engage with the language itself and the cultural learning we aimed to do in class. And we were able to explore the topic of ourselves, so it was easier for us to continue as well.

    One anecdote that I think captures the sentiments expressed above is one class during which we were discussing the meaning of the Russian word byt’. The word refers—more or less—to the static, humdrum rituals of everyday life. We had a long discussion about its meaning because it doesn’t translate perfectly into English. It was productive to try and untangle the meaning of the word in Russian along with other Russian learners and native speakers of Russian.

    As you can see, CLAC courses can expand the opportunities we have on campus as well as further motivate people to study languages. They are not exactly language classes, but complement our formal language instruction. Try one out!

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    More than Victims: Medicine, Terror, and Healing in the Atlantic Slave Trade

    A talk by Carolyn Roberts

    The transatlantic slave trade was the largest, forced oceanic migration in human history. This talk explores the little-known role of medicine in the violent trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans and its legacies today.

     

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    Carolyn Roberts is an historian of medicine at Yale University with a joint appointment in the departments of History/History of Science and Medicine and African American Studies. Professor Roberts’ research interests concern early modern medicine where she explores themes of race and slavery, natural history and botany, and African indigenous knowledge in the Atlantic world.

    February 26, 2020
    4:30 PM
    PAC 001

    Co-Sponsored by Academic Affairs, SiSP, CAAS & History

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    2020 MEIGS LECTURE: REAGAN, GORBACHEV, AND THE END OF THE COLD WAR

    MELVYN P. LEFFLER is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia

    This lecture on Reagan, Gorbachev, and the end of the Cold War will assess Reagan’s unique role in ending the forty-year conflict with the “Evil Empire.” Leffler’s assessment is a radical reinterpretation of Reagan’s contributions.

    THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2020 | 4:30 P.M., PAC 001

    Sponsored by the History Department

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    MELVYN P. LEFFLER is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of several books on the Cold War and on U.S. relations with Europe, including For the Soul of Mankind (2007), which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power (1993), which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. In 2010, he and Odd Arne Westad co-edited the three volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. Along with Jeff Legro and Will Hitchcock, he is co-editor of Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World (Harvard University Press, 2016). Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Nationalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (Princeton, 2017). He has served as president of the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at The University of Virginia. He is now writing about the foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration.
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    White Collar, and Blue Collar Gig Workers: What is the future of American Labor?

    Steven Greenhouse '73

    Long time New York Journalist and author of Beaten Down, and Worked Up:  the Past, Present, and Future of American Labor.

     

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    Tuesday, October 29, 2019
    4:30PM
    College of Letters Library
    Boger Hall, Third Floor

    Sponsored by the College of Letters and the History Department

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    Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse

    Ethan Pollock is Associate Professor of History and Russian Studies at Brown University

    For over a thousand years the banya (or Russian bathhouse) has been a crucial institution to a wide variety of people: men and women, rich and poor, straight and gay, religious and atheist. The omnipresence of the banya makes it a lens through which to view many aspects of Russia history—hygiene, intimacy, sociability, the relationship of Russia to the West. The banya is full of contradictions. It can clean bodies and spread disease. It can purify and befoul. It can create community and provide a means of excluding others. Taken together, thousands of sources ranging from archival documents and municipal regulations to idioms, films, art, cartoons, memoirs, diaries, songs, novels, poems, and plays provide the basis for this unprecedented portrait of the institution of the banya and for a whole new way of seeing the history of Russia.

     

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    Ethan Pollock is Associate Professor of History and Russian Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, 2006.) His work on the Russian banya has been funded by the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, a Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Fernand Braudel Fellowship from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His book, Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse, is coming out with Oxford University Press in September 2019.

    Sponsored by the History Department, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and Russian and East European Studies Program.

    Wednesday, October 30, 2019
    4:30 pm
    PAC 001

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    The Theory and Practice of History

    The 2019-20 seminar series will meet four times across the year, usually on Thursdays, and will feature an exciting international and interdisciplinary line up of scholars.

    For further information or a copy of the papers once they become available, contact Gary Shaw at gshaw@wesleyan.edu. Here are the dates and current topics. Seminars will be in Boger Hall.

    Starting time for all sessions is 4:30.

    • November 14: Stefka Eriksen, Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage, “The Archaeology and Allegory of the Settlement of Iceland: Reflections on the Theory and Method of Interdisciplinary Environmental History.”  Boger Hall 115
    • February 6:  Heather Keenleyside, University of Chicago: “The Literary History of the History of Ideas,”  Boger Hall 113
    • March 5: Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, University of Oulu, “How to Get it Wrong: Historiography, Normativity and the Holocaust Debate,”  Boger Hall 113
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    Current Series–2019-20

    The Theory and Practice of History at Wesleyan University provides information about a seminar series, talks, and other local endeavors connected to the theory and philosophy of history as well as issues of historiography and its history, including the methodology, style, and form of historical research and writing. Its aim is to stimulate reflection on these subjects within the university and the region and to help to channel and accelerate wider discussion of these topics.

    First, however, it is the home of the Wesleyan Seminar on the Theory and Practice of History, supported by Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities and the Department of History.

  • A Walk into Winter: The 1795 Dutch Embassy to Qing China

    Tonio Andrade is professor of history at Emory University. His core geographical area of expertise is China, but his research focuses on interconnections in the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) and on comparative history. He is author of The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History; Lost Colony: The Untold Story of Europe's First War with China and How Taiwan became Chinese. Honors include the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and Gutenberg e-Prize.

     

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    The historiography of Sino-European relations has been dominated by a narrative of conflict. Chinese and Europeans, the narrative suggests, were unable to interface diplomatically because they had opposing views on how states should interact. The Chinese believed that China’s emperor was superior to all other monarchs, with foreign delegates considered to be supplicants. The Europeans, on the other hand, believed that states should relate to one another on the basis of de jure equality, and that the natural state of geopolitics was a sort of Westphalian “anarchic” system, with diplomats and ambassadors representing their sovereigns to negotiate treaties and alliances. The result, the story goes, was conflict, epitomized in the bitter Sino-European wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This narrative, however, is based on the experience of the British, whose failed embassies to China overwhelmingly dominate the literature. My project, in contrast, focuses on a key non-British embassy to China: the Dutch mission of 1794–95. Using a global microhistorical approach, it investigates the mission from the various perspectives available in the rich (and largely untapped) sources: Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Chinese, Manchu, and Korean. It shows that this Dutch mission, which occurred just a year after the most notorious of the failed British missions, was smooth and successful, with the people on each side quite easily able to understand their counterparts. British failures are certainly an important part of the story of Sino-Western interaction, but they must be placed in a deeper context.

    Thursday, October 10, 4.30pm, CEAS Seminar Room (343 Washington Terrace)

    Post-Lecture colloquium on Friday, October 11, 10.30am, CEAS Seminar Room (343 Washington Terrace)

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    The Ethical Choices of Whales: Bowheads, Hunters, and Mutual Adaptations in the Bering Strait, 1848-1968

    Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History at Brown University

    Bowhead whales have been known by three distinct groups of hunters along the Bering Strait over the past two centuries: indigenous Yupik and Inupiaq whalers, capitalist commercial whalers, and communist industrial whalers. This talk looks at how whales became known through the labor of their killing, examining the cosmologies each of these three kinds of whaling practitioners composed around the animals they hunted. How where whales, particularly bowheads, imagined and treated, and how did this change across economic systems?  What kind of emotional relationships were possible? And what kinds of relationships were considered ethical between humans and whales? Did whales make ethical judgments of their hunters? What does including whale behavior in our analysis of human-whale interactions provoke in our historical understanding, and how should we situate non-human actions in human narratives of the past?

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    Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, is a fellow at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and Assistant Director of HistoricalClimatology.com. Her work on the Environmental History of the Bering Straits and on whaling is a comparative history of indigenous, capitalist and communist whalers and their ethics. Her work was recently featured in The New Yorker magazine. Her book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, was published in September 2019 with Norton.

    Tuesday, October 15, 2019
    4:30PM
    PAC 001

    Sponsored by the History Department, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and College of the Environment

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    Spring 2024 -Special Event,

    "The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects." 

    Wednesday, March 27, 2024 @ 4:30PM in Allbritton 311

    We welcome guest lecturer Brandon Schechter, who will be talking about the Red Army through objects. The Red Army was the largest force assembled in human history, defeating fascism in the course of the most destructive war humanity has known. Millions of diverse people – men and women, peasants and workers, Muslims and atheists – came together to defeat an enemy who wanted to enslave or annihilate them. A common set of objects was often all that separated these soldiers from civilians and the only thing uniting very different people in the ranks. This talk will look at how ordinary things can tell the story of an epic event and attempt to humanize the people who defeated fascism through looking at their everyday lives. In this talk Dr. Schechter discusses his award-winning book The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Cornell University Press, 2019) which won the American Historical Association’s Paul Birdsall Prize in 2020. 

    Brandon Schechter is the author of The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (2019). He’s a consultant at the Blavatnik Archive and has taught at Columbia, NYU, NYU Shanghai, Brown, and UC Berkley, where he recieved his Ph.D. Schechter received his B.A. in Russian Studies at Vassar College.

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    Spring 2024 -Special Event, Thursday, February 15, 2024

    "Chivalry and Alterity at the Rennaissance Tournament" 

    Thursday, February 15, 2024 @ 4:30PM in PAC 101

    In sixteenth-century Europe, princes and nobles donned costumes and masks to impersonate warriors and kings from foreign lands. During this age of overseas expansion, equestrian tournaments became an activity for imagining and experiencing human difference, both cultural and embodied. If early masked tournaments focused especially on the rivalry between Christians and Muslims, later ones also represented participants from the Americas, Africa, and South Asia, seeking eventually to evoke the entire world. At this moment of intensified global interaction, the tournament—a festivity of medieval origin at which the old military elite celebrated its martial values—proved a remarkably flexible medium for interpreting the newly expanded world. It also, perhaps inevitably, served to assert European superiority. By expressing their understanding of human difference through equestrian exercises and masquerades, princes and nobles not only asserted their claim to rule but also shaped early European ideas about the world's people.

    Alexander Bevilacqua is Associate Professor of History at Williams College. He studies the cultural and intellectual consequences of European expansion in the first global era, ca. 1500-1800. His book The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment (Harvard, 2018) won the Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association. His scholarship has appeared in journals including Past and Present, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, and Journal of Modern History.

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    CANCELLED Fall 2023-Special Event, Tuesday, December 5

    "The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects." 

    Tuesday, December 5, 2023 @ 4:30PM in Allbritton 311

    We welcome guest lecturer Brandon Schechter, who will be talking about the Red Army through objects. The Red Army was the largest force assembled in human history, defeating fascism in the course of the most destructive war humanity has known. Millions of diverse people – men and women, peasants and workers, Muslims and atheists – came together to defeat an enemy who wanted to enslave or annihilate them. A common set of objects was often all that separated these soldiers from civilians and the only thing uniting very different people in the ranks. This talk will look at how ordinary things can tell the story of an epic event and attempt to humanize the people who defeated fascism through looking at their everyday lives. In this talk Dr. Schechter discusses his award-winning book The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Cornell University Press, 2019) which won the American Historical Association’s Paul Birdsall Prize in 2020. 

    Brandon Schechter is the author of The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (2019). He’s a consultant at the Blavatnik Archive and has taught at Columbia, NYU, NYU Shanghai, Brown, and UC Berkley, where he recieved his Ph.D. Schechter received his B.A. in Russian Studies at Vassar College.

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    Fall 2023-Special Event, Tuesday, November 7

    "The Liberatory Power of Guilt: How a Sikh Holy Town Shaped Utopian Dreams of Pakistan"

    Tuesday, November 7th at 4:30 pm Judd 116

    We welcome guest lecturer, Priya Satia. In this talk, Prof. Satia will explain how, in the era of British colonialism, environmental transformation of a Sikh holy site in a semi-arid region of Punjab became crucial to securing legitimacy in local political contests. The emerging town's particular spiritual culture went on to water various struggles for autonomy--including a vision of Pakistan as a state-sized "dera" (socio-religious residence of a spiritual leader) offering refuge and relief from colonial and casteist orders.

    Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of History at Stanford University. She is the author of three award-winning books: Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (OUP, 2008); Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Duckworth, 2018); Time's Monster: History, Conscience and Britain's Empire (Penguin, 2020). Her work can also be found in the American Historical Review, Past & Present, Technology & Culture, Humanity, and other scholarly journals and edited volumes. Prof. Satia writes frequently for popular media, such as the Washington Post, Time Magazine, The New Republic, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and other outlets.

    Sponsored by the History Department, Fall 2023

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    Fall 2023-Special Event, Tuesday, October 3

    "You Can Never Rest, Because They Keep Coming": On America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created

    Tuesday, October 3 at 4:30 pm Boger 114

    We welcome guest lecturer, Nick Tabor. Nick Tabor is the author of Africatown:  America's Last Slave Ship and the Community it Created.

    Nick Tabor is the author of Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created, a blend of history and investigative journalism that traces the development of a neighborhood established by survivors of the last slave voyage to the US. He was a historical consultant on the documentary Descendant, which was presented on Netflix by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company in 2022. He previously worked at daily newspapers and on the editorial staff of New York Magazine. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.

    Sponored by Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, The African American Studies Department, The History Department and the CSS 

    Talk Description
    The Africatown neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama, was established by survivors of the last slave ship to the US. It is the only community in the country created by West Africans who had personally been through the Middle Passage. More than 150 years after its founding, it’s still intact—but it’s inundated by industrial pollution, and many residents believe there’s a cancer epidemic. Activists from the community are trying to save it from extinction by transforming it into a destination for heritage tourism. Their efforts got a boost when the wreckage of the ship was identified in 2019.

    Africatown’s long history of resistance and survival gives us a rare chance to study how systemic racism—and especially environmental racism—have played out across the decades, and how communities can seize the levers of change.
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    Fall 2023-Special Lecture, Tuesday, September 26

    "A Madman in the White House?  On Sigmund Freud's Unknown Diagnosis of Woodrow Wilson" 

    Tuesday, September 26 at 4:30 pm Allbritton 311 

    Join us for a talk by a well-known French Historian, Patrick Weil

    Patrick Weil is a Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a senior research fellow at the French National Research Center in the University of Paris1, Pantheon-Sorbonne. Professor Weil's work focuses on comparative immigration, citizenship, and church-state law and policy. His most recent books are The Madman in the White House. Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Harvard University Press, 2023) and De La Laïcité en France (Grasset, 2021).

    Patrick Weil is also, since 2006, the founder and the chairman of the NGO Libraries Without Borders (Bibliothèques Sans Frontières).

    Sponsored by History Department, CSS and the Romance Languages and Literatures Department 

     

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    2023 MEIGS LECTURE - Tuesday, April 11 at 4:30 pm

    Elizabeth Hinton, Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University, will deliver the annual Meigs Lecture in US History.

    Tuesday, April 11 at 4:30 pm in Boger 114.

    Elizabeth Hinton is a historian of American inequality who is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on policing and mass incarceration. Hinton’s past and current scholarship provides a deeper grasp of the persistence of poverty, urban violence, and racial inequality in the United States. She is a Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University.

    Sponsored by the History Department, the Albritton Center for Public Life, the Department of African American Studies, the Center for African American Studies, and the American Studies Department.

    See Talk Abstract Here
    Talk Abstract: The decades since the civil rights movement are considered by many to be a story of progress toward equal rights and greater inclusiveness. Elizabeth Hinton uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Dr. Hinton offers a critical corrective: the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions--explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order. Challenging the optimistic story of the post-Jim Crow United States, Hinton's discussion will present a new framework for understanding our nation's enduring racial strife. As her history suggests, rebellions will likely continue until police are no longer called on to manage the consequences of dismal conditions beyond their control, and until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principle of justice and equality.
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    Guest Lecturer Gregory Conti gives talk "How to think about Mill's On Liberty"

    On Monday, April 10 at 4:30 pm in Boger 114, guest speaker Gregory Conti will give the talk:

    "How to think about Mill's On Liberty"

    Gregory Conti is assistant professor of politics at Princeton. His research focuses on the history of modern political thought, especially in Britain and France, and on the lessons that can be drawn from that history for contemporary debates in political philosophy. His primary research interests include the relationship between ideas of democracy, liberalism, and representative government; toleration and freedom of speech; Enlightenment political philosophy; the thought of John Stuart Mill and its reception; and modern French political theory. He has published widely in political philosophy and the history of political thought.

    Sponsored by the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, the Government Department, the History Department, and the College of Social Studies.

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    Guest Lecturer Felipe Arturo gives talk "The Migration of Plants"

    On Thursday, April 6 at 4:30 pm in FISK 201, we welcome Felipe Arturo, who will give the talk:

    "The Migration of Plants"

    Felipe Arturo presents a selection of artistic works that span a 15-year period of artistic practice based on the migration of plants in recent history and their impact in contemporary cultural practices.

    Co-sponsored by Wesleyan's Center for the Arts Creative Campus Initiative, College of the Environment, Fries Center for Global Studies, Latin American Studies, History Department, and Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

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    Peter Molin - "Word Wars: Literature, Combat, and the Veteran Voice"

    Wednesday, April 5 at 4:30 pm in Allbritton 103

    Guest Speaker Peter Molin will give the talk "Word Wars: Literature, Combat, and the Veteran Voice".

    Peter Molin is a retired US Army infantry officer who currently teaches in the English Department Writing Program at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He has written extensively on the art, film, and literature of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most prominently on his blog Time Now, as well as in other media and scholarly outlets. 

    See additional information here.
    Peter Molin currently writes a monthly column on war, military, and veteran art-andculture for the online journal The Wrath-Bearing Tree. In 2008-2009,Molin served as an advisor to Afghan National Army forces in Khost and Paktya provinces in Afghanistan. He holds a doctorate in American literature from Indiana University.
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    Mauricio Tenorio Trillo Talk: On the Useful Pointlessness of History

    We welcome guest speaker Mauricio Tenorio Trillo who will give the talk:

    "On the Useful Pointlessness of History"

    Thursday, March 2 at 4:30 pm in Russell House, 350 High Street

    Mauricio Tenorio Trillo is the Samuel N. Harper Professor of History at the University of Chicago and associate professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico City.

    Event is sponsored by the Allbritton Center for Public Life, History Department, and Latin American Studies (LAST).

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    Panel Discussion on Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming A Space

    Zora Neale Hurston: CLAIMING A SPACE: A PANEL DISCUSSION ON FILMMAKING, BIOGRAPHY, AND HISTORY

    Wednesday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. in Daniel Family Commons

    Panelists include: Tracey Heather Strain, Randall Maclowry, Daphne Lamothe.

    Moderated by Crystal Feimster and Thomas Allen Harris

    Co-Chaired by Jennifer Tucker and Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon

    Hosted by History Dept with FGSS, CHUM, AFAM, AMST, ANTHRO, CSS, ENG, REL, & SISP

     

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    Talk by Glory M. Liu: "Adam Smith's America"

    "Adam Smith's America" 

    Wednesday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. in the Woodhead Lounge, Exley 184

    Glory M. Liu is a lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard and author of Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton: 2022). A political theorist and intellectual historian, she received her PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2018 and also holds an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from Cambridge University. Her works have appeared in journals such as Modern Intellectual History and History of European Ideas and she has also written for outlets such as The Nation, The Washington Post, and Aeon Magazine.

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    A Virtual Conversation with Writer Patrick Radden Keefe

    Thursday, February 9, 4:30-5:30 p.m., online only

    Co-Sponsored by The College of Letters, Shapiro Writing Center, The History Department, The Science in Society Program, and the Department of American Studies

    Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the New York Times bestsellers Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, as well as two earlier nonfiction books: The Snakehead and Chatter. His most recent book is Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks.

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    History 300 Distinguished Lecture Fall 2022

    The Fall 2022 History 300 Lecture features Helge Jordheim.

    "Changing the World One Word at a Time: From Flag to Climate Emergency"

    Thursday, November 10 at 4:30 p.m. in Tishler Hall

    Helge Jordheim is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, Norway, and a Visiting Professor at Wesleyan. He has published books and articles on 18th-century Germany, concepts of civilization and the world, universal history, the cultural history of time, and topics related to the theory of history, especially the work of Reinhart Koselleck.

    Read More
    “Man gave name to all the animals”, Bob Dylan sings – and to plenty of other things, we could add, from pieces of cloth that flutter in the wind to rising temperatures in the atmosphere. Drawing on concept history, speech act theory, and other forms of discourse analysis, this talk will discuss the role of definitions, declarations, and other naming practices in history, which explicitly set out to change the world, both temporally and spatially. Examples will range from “flag” to Anthropocene”, from Enlightenment to the Covid pandemic.
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    Co-Sponsponsored Event: How Queer Were the Greeks? How Queer Are We?

    A talk by University of Michigan Professor David Halperin

    Thursday, November 3 at 4:30 p.m. at Russell House.

    Sponsored by Classical Studies, History, College of Letters, & Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

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    Special Event: A Conversation with Historian and Filmmaker Christian Delage

    "Confronting the violence of images and the pain of others: from the experience of war to the projection of images as judicial evidence"

    Wednesday, September 21, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. in Boger Hall 112

    See more information here.

    Title: "Confronting the violence of images and the pain of others: from the experience of war to the projection of images as judicial evidence"

    Chair: Prof. Jennifer Tucker (History Department; Director, Center for the Study of Guns & Society)

    Moderators: 

    Prof. Lisa Dombrowski (East Asian Studies & Film Studies)

    Prof. Avner Shavit (Center for Jewish Studies)

    Prof. Christian Delage (University of Paris 8) is a historian and film director. From 2014–2021, he directed the Institute for the History of the Present in Paris. He has frequently been a visiting professor at Cardozo Law School. He has recently completed a new film, 13 November: Their Lives Were Never Ordinary (Zadig Productions, 2022, 52 minutes) and will soon publish Filming, Judging: From Nuremberg to the Invasion of Ukraine (Gallimard, 2023). His film on the Nuremberg trial was distributed in the United States under the title: Nuremberg. The Nazis Facing Their Crimes (Lions Gate, 2007). With Peter Goodrich, he has edited two collective works: The Scene of the Mass Crime (Routledge, 2012) and Law and New Media (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

     

     

    Refreshments will be served.

     

    Co-sponsored by the History Department and the Center for the Study of Guns & Society.

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    History Matters Event: BUSTING MYTHS ABOUT CHINA AND CHINESE POWER

    Thursday, April 14, 2022, 12:00 - 1:00 pm in Allbritton 311. Lunch will be provided.

    For more information click here.

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    Strong Bodies for the Revolution: Pursuing Health and Power in the People's Republic of China

    CEAS Gallery Exhibition

    February 16 - May 13, 2022

    This exhibit opens Wednesday, February 16 at 12:15 p.m. at the College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center starting with a reception starting in the gallery, and then moving to the Seminar Room for remarks by Collections Assistant Sam Smith '20, Assistant Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Ying Jia Tan, and special guest Mark Sidel, son of Ruth and Victor Sidel and donor of the propaganda posters.

    The exhibit is co-curated by Ying Jia Tan, Rosemary Lennox, Ben Chaffee, Wendi Field Murray, and Christina Lu '22.

    Regular gallery hours during the exhibition are Tuesday through Friday, noon - 4:00 p.m.

    See More Exhibit Information Here

    How did the government of the People's Republic of China mobilize its people to implement public health campaigns and improve the health of hundreds of millions of people? The College of East Asian Studies presents an exhibition featuring a collection of propaganda posters donated by the family of Ruth and Victor Sidel. During their travels to China, the Sidels acquired more than 55 posters, most of which illustrated the underlying principles that governed Chinese public health policy during tumultuous years of revolution. This exhibition, curated by Wesleyan faculty and students, showcases common themes in the posters that contribute to a larger narrative on modern health practices in China. Co-sponsored by the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life; the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program; the Fries Center for Global Studies; the Department of Government; the History Department; the Science in Society Program and Black Box Labs; and the Wesleyan University Library.

    Regular gallery hours during the exhibition are Tueday through Friday, Noon-4pm. The gallery also welcomes class visits and curator tours by appointment. Please feel free to be in touch for more information on the exhibition and/or to arrange a class visit.

    We hope that you'll join us to celebrate this special occasion!

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    Save the Date - May 5, 2022 - Talk by Sam Perry

    Visiting Professor Joe Slaughter is organizing events on campus on Wednesday, May 4 with noted sociologist of religion, Sam Perry (U of Oklahoma). There will be a talk at noon for faculty and students on Christian Nationalism and additional informal gatherings with majors that day. Sam Perry Visit
    Sam's book with Andrew Whitehead garnered a great deal of attention nationally, and his next book with Philip Gorski comes out in April.
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    "Benedetta" Film Screening and Discussion

    • On Sunday, December 5, 2021 - the film "Benedetta" was shown at Metro Middletown Cinemas (140 Main Street_ at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. 

    • On Monday, December 6, 2021, the leading film director, Paul Verhoeven, joined the Wesleyan community  for a discussion of his latest film, "Benedetta" (2021) with Wesleyan Profs. Lisa Dombrowski and Jennifer Tucker. Click here to access the recording of this event.

    • On Tuesday, December 7, 2021, Author and historian Judith Brown joined the Wesleyan comminity for a discussion at Russell House, 5:00 - 6:00 p.m.
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    "Benedetta" (2021) is a drama inspired by true events set in 17th century Italy: the subject of the book, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (1986), by historian and former Wesleyan provost, Judith Brown. The story is about a nun, Benedetta Carlini, who becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with another nun, and whose religious and erotic visions shock the church.

    Read Wes Connection's story about the event: https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2022/01/24/browns-book-on-lesbian-nun-inspires-the-creation-of-benedetta/

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    History 362 Distinguished Lecture Fall 2021

    Thursday, November 11 at 4:30 p.m. in Shanklin 107 (Kerr Lecture Hall):

    Annual HISTORY 362 Distinguished Lecture featuring Professor Kenda Mutongi, Professor of History at MIT, "MATATU: Oral History and Popular Transportation in Nairobi"

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    Book Talk by Ying Jia Tan

    Friday, November 5, 12:30 - 2:00 p.m.

    Ying Jia Tan is giving a virtual book talk at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Click here to register.

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    History Department Open House for Prospective History Majors

    Meet faculty and students, and learn more about the precarious perch between visions of the past and hopes for the future.

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    TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2020
    4:15 PM
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    The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free

    Book Talk Featuring Writer, Historian, and Wesleyan Alumna: Paulina Bren

    Thursday, October 14, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. in Allbritton 311

    Sponsored by the History Department, the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

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    Paulina Bren (BA ‘87) is an award-winning writer and historian who teaches at Vassar College. She attended Wesleyan University as an undergraduate majoring in the College of Letters, later receiving an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in History from New York University. She has held a host of research grants and fellowships, including residencies in Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Atlanta.

  • Writing Empire: Late 19th Century Ottoman Configurations

    Meltem Toksoz, Visiting Associate Professor of History

     

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    April 27, 2021 l 4:30 P.M.

    Join Zoom Meeting:  https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/93406886963

    In the tumultuous last quarter of the 19th century, many Ottomans produced universal history narratives for the reading public, as textbooks for the newly established universities, as column series in the prolific medium of the age, newspapers, and as print books.

    This was after all the century of reform in the empire, which meant the formation of the modern state, in the name of saving the empire. I situate Ottoman Turkish universal history writing in this age as a new genre for recasting empire in history in general, and for rescripting Ottoman history in world history in particular. The ways in which Ottoman Turkish universal history narratives situate the changing Ottoman Empire, in a world where 19th century Western historical discourse of ‘progress’ was already engrained in the idea that history was European, reveal an intellectual milieu far more complicated than the very problematic positionalities of ‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’. Indeed, the universal history oeuvre of Ahmed Midhat (1844-1912), a well-known literati of the age, circumvents the binary narratives of reformist versus Islamic, of constitutionalist versus Pan-Islamic despotic, of Turkish nationalist versus Ottoman imperial. His three different and voluminous universal histories published in the 1880s and 1890s have never been studied. Yet they point, I argue, to a particular construction of empire distinct from both its own past version and European colonial empire.

    Sponsored by the History Department

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    History Department Open House

    Meet faculty and students, and learn more about the precarious perch between visions of the past and hopes for the future.
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    The Travelers Lab

    Don’t Miss the Opportunity to Participate in Faculty Research in a Collaborative Digital Humanities Lab…

    Data Generation, Analysis, and Vizualization in the Historical Analysis of Travel & Communications.

    Apply (& learn!) digital techniques of analysis and visualisation to the study of historical travel and communication in a collaborative lab with Gary Shaw (HIST) & Jesse Torgerson (COL).

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    Peruse our interests & current projects at the Travelers Lab website (travelerslab.wesleyan.edu).

    Students with interests and/or abilities in … history, texts, languages, data analysis, mapping, data visualization or any combination of those will find an application for their interests in our international, multi-campus collaborative historical data lab.

    Interested?
    Please email Prof. Shaw or Prof. Torgerson gshaw@wesleyan.edu / jtorgerson@wesleyan.edu

    How do I actually “join”?
    Join for Credit or apply to be a Research Assistant: Fa 2020 Associated Course: HISTORY 423 (for 0.5 or 1.0 credits).

    Participation in the lab and the course is open to all majors and all class years.  Admission by permission of instructor; enrollment requires academic advisor's approval.

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    What is “CLAC”? The Communist Experience in Russian

    We at Wesleyan are now entering the third year of offering “Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum” (or CLAC) courses. These are courses taught in languages other than English, all of which provide students and faculty across the campus with opportunities to deepen their engagement with their subjects through the use and further development of their language and intercultural skills. A list of all the CLAC courses we have offered so far, including those being offered this academic year, is on the Fries Center website.

     

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    Link to page:  http://wesandtheworld.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2020/08/31/what-is-clac-the-communist-experience-in-russian/?utm_source=&utm_medium=EMLET&utm_campaign=Wes+and+the+World+Newsletter+17(2210812

    One great example of a CLAC course was Prof. Victoria Smolkin’s course “The Communist Experience in the Soviet Union” (see here for the WesMaps listing). The student language background appropriate for this class was listed as “(preferably advanced) intermediate to native,” and the eight students enrolled in the class had a range of linguistic backgrounds, with some speaking Russian to varying degrees before coming to college, and others learning it entirely while at Wesleyan. Prof. Smolkin asked her students to comment on how the CLAC course differed from a language class and from a conventional history class. Here are some of the responses:

    It differed from a language class in that the emphasis was on speaking and getting one’s message across, instead of on having correct syntax or grammar. We were also able to discuss the material in its original language, which helped in understanding certain cultural nuances that we wouldn’t typically have time to go over in a conventional history class.

    I think it was also different in that we had a mixture of Russian language learners and native Russian speakers, so we could all learn from each other. I don’t think that so many Russian speakers [of different language levels] would typically find themselves in the same classroom, unless through a CLAC.

    The CLAC class has its focus on “using language” (with native speakers) and gave me opportunities to actively engage with the language. But the same time, it has been a challenge for me to keep up with the speed and contents in class as my Russian level is not high enough to jump into the discussions happening in a class all the time. So that bitter experience encourages me to study harder the language itself as well.

    As the CLAC class opened up a greater variety of ways to interact with Russian language and culture other than literature, I feel more motivated to take on my tasks to study harder the language.

    Literature is heavy and not the strongest academic interest of mine, though I enjoy reading literature. Therefore, I appreciated the CLAC class as an alternative opportunity to learn and interact with Russian language and culture.

    This class wasn’t focused on grammar; that fact made me spend more time outside of class brushing up on my grammar and practicing certain expressions so that I could better articulate myself in class.

    Asked about aspects of the class that really captured what it was like, students said:

    The class presentations by my classmates were helpful and reassured me of my understanding of the materials. I was scared when my turn came up, but my fluent presentation buddy always helped me to understand the class materials and reassured me that I was on the right track. I am thankful for their help and I was able to do the presentation on the complex historical materials with more confidence.

    I liked the podcast assignments every week: to listen to a podcast of our choice and write a diary on it. It trained us to get used to the language and actively and regularly engage with the language itself and the cultural learning we aimed to do in class. And we were able to explore the topic of ourselves, so it was easier for us to continue as well.

    One anecdote that I think captures the sentiments expressed above is one class during which we were discussing the meaning of the Russian word byt’. The word refers—more or less—to the static, humdrum rituals of everyday life. We had a long discussion about its meaning because it doesn’t translate perfectly into English. It was productive to try and untangle the meaning of the word in Russian along with other Russian learners and native speakers of Russian.

    As you can see, CLAC courses can expand the opportunities we have on campus as well as further motivate people to study languages. They are not exactly language classes, but complement our formal language instruction. Try one out!

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    More than Victims: Medicine, Terror, and Healing in the Atlantic Slave Trade

    A talk by Carolyn Roberts

    The transatlantic slave trade was the largest, forced oceanic migration in human history. This talk explores the little-known role of medicine in the violent trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans and its legacies today.

     

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    Carolyn Roberts is an historian of medicine at Yale University with a joint appointment in the departments of History/History of Science and Medicine and African American Studies. Professor Roberts’ research interests concern early modern medicine where she explores themes of race and slavery, natural history and botany, and African indigenous knowledge in the Atlantic world.

    February 26, 2020
    4:30 PM
    PAC 001

    Co-Sponsored by Academic Affairs, SiSP, CAAS & History

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    2020 MEIGS LECTURE: REAGAN, GORBACHEV, AND THE END OF THE COLD WAR

    MELVYN P. LEFFLER is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia

    This lecture on Reagan, Gorbachev, and the end of the Cold War will assess Reagan’s unique role in ending the forty-year conflict with the “Evil Empire.” Leffler’s assessment is a radical reinterpretation of Reagan’s contributions.

    THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2020 | 4:30 P.M., PAC 001

    Sponsored by the History Department

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    MELVYN P. LEFFLER is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of several books on the Cold War and on U.S. relations with Europe, including For the Soul of Mankind (2007), which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power (1993), which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. In 2010, he and Odd Arne Westad co-edited the three volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. Along with Jeff Legro and Will Hitchcock, he is co-editor of Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World (Harvard University Press, 2016). Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Nationalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (Princeton, 2017). He has served as president of the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at The University of Virginia. He is now writing about the foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration.
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    White Collar, and Blue Collar Gig Workers: What is the future of American Labor?

    Steven Greenhouse '73

    Long time New York Journalist and author of Beaten Down, and Worked Up:  the Past, Present, and Future of American Labor.

     

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    Tuesday, October 29, 2019
    4:30PM
    College of Letters Library
    Boger Hall, Third Floor

    Sponsored by the College of Letters and the History Department

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    Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse

    Ethan Pollock is Associate Professor of History and Russian Studies at Brown University

    For over a thousand years the banya (or Russian bathhouse) has been a crucial institution to a wide variety of people: men and women, rich and poor, straight and gay, religious and atheist. The omnipresence of the banya makes it a lens through which to view many aspects of Russia history—hygiene, intimacy, sociability, the relationship of Russia to the West. The banya is full of contradictions. It can clean bodies and spread disease. It can purify and befoul. It can create community and provide a means of excluding others. Taken together, thousands of sources ranging from archival documents and municipal regulations to idioms, films, art, cartoons, memoirs, diaries, songs, novels, poems, and plays provide the basis for this unprecedented portrait of the institution of the banya and for a whole new way of seeing the history of Russia.

     

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    Ethan Pollock is Associate Professor of History and Russian Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, 2006.) His work on the Russian banya has been funded by the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, a Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Fernand Braudel Fellowship from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His book, Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse, is coming out with Oxford University Press in September 2019.

    Sponsored by the History Department, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and Russian and East European Studies Program.

    Wednesday, October 30, 2019
    4:30 pm
    PAC 001

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    The Theory and Practice of History

    The 2019-20 seminar series will meet four times across the year, usually on Thursdays, and will feature an exciting international and interdisciplinary line up of scholars.

    For further information or a copy of the papers once they become available, contact Gary Shaw at gshaw@wesleyan.edu. Here are the dates and current topics. Seminars will be in Boger Hall.

    Starting time for all sessions is 4:30.

    • November 14: Stefka Eriksen, Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage, “The Archaeology and Allegory of the Settlement of Iceland: Reflections on the Theory and Method of Interdisciplinary Environmental History.”  Boger Hall 115
    • February 6:  Heather Keenleyside, University of Chicago: “The Literary History of the History of Ideas,”  Boger Hall 113
    • March 5: Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, University of Oulu, “How to Get it Wrong: Historiography, Normativity and the Holocaust Debate,”  Boger Hall 113
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    Current Series–2019-20

    The Theory and Practice of History at Wesleyan University provides information about a seminar series, talks, and other local endeavors connected to the theory and philosophy of history as well as issues of historiography and its history, including the methodology, style, and form of historical research and writing. Its aim is to stimulate reflection on these subjects within the university and the region and to help to channel and accelerate wider discussion of these topics.

    First, however, it is the home of the Wesleyan Seminar on the Theory and Practice of History, supported by Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities and the Department of History.

  • A Walk into Winter: The 1795 Dutch Embassy to Qing China

    Tonio Andrade is professor of history at Emory University. His core geographical area of expertise is China, but his research focuses on interconnections in the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) and on comparative history. He is author of The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History; Lost Colony: The Untold Story of Europe's First War with China and How Taiwan became Chinese. Honors include the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and Gutenberg e-Prize.

     

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    The historiography of Sino-European relations has been dominated by a narrative of conflict. Chinese and Europeans, the narrative suggests, were unable to interface diplomatically because they had opposing views on how states should interact. The Chinese believed that China’s emperor was superior to all other monarchs, with foreign delegates considered to be supplicants. The Europeans, on the other hand, believed that states should relate to one another on the basis of de jure equality, and that the natural state of geopolitics was a sort of Westphalian “anarchic” system, with diplomats and ambassadors representing their sovereigns to negotiate treaties and alliances. The result, the story goes, was conflict, epitomized in the bitter Sino-European wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This narrative, however, is based on the experience of the British, whose failed embassies to China overwhelmingly dominate the literature. My project, in contrast, focuses on a key non-British embassy to China: the Dutch mission of 1794–95. Using a global microhistorical approach, it investigates the mission from the various perspectives available in the rich (and largely untapped) sources: Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Chinese, Manchu, and Korean. It shows that this Dutch mission, which occurred just a year after the most notorious of the failed British missions, was smooth and successful, with the people on each side quite easily able to understand their counterparts. British failures are certainly an important part of the story of Sino-Western interaction, but they must be placed in a deeper context.

    Thursday, October 10, 4.30pm, CEAS Seminar Room (343 Washington Terrace)

    Post-Lecture colloquium on Friday, October 11, 10.30am, CEAS Seminar Room (343 Washington Terrace)

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    The Ethical Choices of Whales: Bowheads, Hunters, and Mutual Adaptations in the Bering Strait, 1848-1968

    Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History at Brown University

    Bowhead whales have been known by three distinct groups of hunters along the Bering Strait over the past two centuries: indigenous Yupik and Inupiaq whalers, capitalist commercial whalers, and communist industrial whalers. This talk looks at how whales became known through the labor of their killing, examining the cosmologies each of these three kinds of whaling practitioners composed around the animals they hunted. How where whales, particularly bowheads, imagined and treated, and how did this change across economic systems?  What kind of emotional relationships were possible? And what kinds of relationships were considered ethical between humans and whales? Did whales make ethical judgments of their hunters? What does including whale behavior in our analysis of human-whale interactions provoke in our historical understanding, and how should we situate non-human actions in human narratives of the past?

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    Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, is a fellow at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and Assistant Director of HistoricalClimatology.com. Her work on the Environmental History of the Bering Straits and on whaling is a comparative history of indigenous, capitalist and communist whalers and their ethics. Her work was recently featured in The New Yorker magazine. Her book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, was published in September 2019 with Norton.

    Tuesday, October 15, 2019
    4:30PM
    PAC 001

    Sponsored by the History Department, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and College of the Environment

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    Fall 2023-Special Event, Tuesday, November 7

    "The Liberatory Power of Guilt: How a Sikh Holy Town Shaped Utopian Dreams of Pakistan"

    Tuesday, November 7th at 4:30 pm Judd 116

    We welcome guest lecturer, Priya Satia. In this talk, Prof. Satia will explain how, in the era of British colonialism, environmental transformation of a Sikh holy site in a semi-arid region of Punjab became crucial to securing legitimacy in local political contests. The emerging town's particular spiritual culture went on to water various struggles for autonomy--including a vision of Pakistan as a state-sized "dera" (socio-religious residence of a spiritual leader) offering refuge and relief from colonial and casteist orders.

    Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of History at Stanford University. She is the author of three award-winning books: Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (OUP, 2008); Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Duckworth, 2018); Time's Monster: History, Conscience and Britain's Empire (Penguin, 2020). Her work can also be found in the American Historical Review, Past & Present, Technology & Culture, Humanity, and other scholarly journals and edited volumes. Prof. Satia writes frequently for popular media, such as the Washington Post, Time Magazine, The New Republic, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and other outlets.

    Sponsored by the History Department, Fall 2023

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    Fall 2023-Special Event, Tuesday, October 3

    "You Can Never Rest, Because They Keep Coming": On America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created

    Tuesday, October 3 at 4:30 pm Boger 114

    We welcome guest lecturer, Nick Tabor. Nick Tabor is the author of Africatown:  America's Last Slave Ship and the Community it Created.

    Nick Tabor is the author of Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created, a blend of history and investigative journalism that traces the development of a neighborhood established by survivors of the last slave voyage to the US. He was a historical consultant on the documentary Descendant, which was presented on Netflix by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company in 2022. He previously worked at daily newspapers and on the editorial staff of New York Magazine. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.

    Sponored by Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, The African American Studies Department, The History Department and the CSS 

    Talk Description
    The Africatown neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama, was established by survivors of the last slave ship to the US. It is the only community in the country created by West Africans who had personally been through the Middle Passage. More than 150 years after its founding, it’s still intact—but it’s inundated by industrial pollution, and many residents believe there’s a cancer epidemic. Activists from the community are trying to save it from extinction by transforming it into a destination for heritage tourism. Their efforts got a boost when the wreckage of the ship was identified in 2019.

    Africatown’s long history of resistance and survival gives us a rare chance to study how systemic racism—and especially environmental racism—have played out across the decades, and how communities can seize the levers of change.
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    Fall 2023-Special Lecture, Tuesday, September 26

    "A Madman in the White House?  On Sigmund Freud's Unknown Diagnosis of Woodrow Wilson" 

    Tuesday, September 26 at 4:30 pm Allbritton 311 

    Join us for a talk by a well-known French Historian, Patrick Weil

    Patrick Weil is a Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and a senior research fellow at the French National Research Center in the University of Paris1, Pantheon-Sorbonne. Professor Weil's work focuses on comparative immigration, citizenship, and church-state law and policy. His most recent books are The Madman in the White House. Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson (Harvard University Press, 2023) and De La Laïcité en France (Grasset, 2021).

    Patrick Weil is also, since 2006, the founder and the chairman of the NGO Libraries Without Borders (Bibliothèques Sans Frontières).

    Sponsored by History Department, CSS and the Romance Languages and Literatures Department 

     

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    2023 MEIGS LECTURE - Tuesday, April 11 at 4:30 pm

    Elizabeth Hinton, Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University, will deliver the annual Meigs Lecture in US History.

    Tuesday, April 11 at 4:30 pm in Boger 114.

    Elizabeth Hinton is a historian of American inequality who is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on policing and mass incarceration. Hinton’s past and current scholarship provides a deeper grasp of the persistence of poverty, urban violence, and racial inequality in the United States. She is a Professor of History, African American Studies, and Law at Yale University.

    Sponsored by the History Department, the Albritton Center for Public Life, the Department of African American Studies, the Center for African American Studies, and the American Studies Department.

    See Talk Abstract Here
    Talk Abstract: The decades since the civil rights movement are considered by many to be a story of progress toward equal rights and greater inclusiveness. Elizabeth Hinton uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Dr. Hinton offers a critical corrective: the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions--explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order. Challenging the optimistic story of the post-Jim Crow United States, Hinton's discussion will present a new framework for understanding our nation's enduring racial strife. As her history suggests, rebellions will likely continue until police are no longer called on to manage the consequences of dismal conditions beyond their control, and until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principle of justice and equality.
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    Guest Lecturer Gregory Conti gives talk "How to think about Mill's On Liberty"

    On Monday, April 10 at 4:30 pm in Boger 114, guest speaker Gregory Conti will give the talk:

    "How to think about Mill's On Liberty"

    Gregory Conti is assistant professor of politics at Princeton. His research focuses on the history of modern political thought, especially in Britain and France, and on the lessons that can be drawn from that history for contemporary debates in political philosophy. His primary research interests include the relationship between ideas of democracy, liberalism, and representative government; toleration and freedom of speech; Enlightenment political philosophy; the thought of John Stuart Mill and its reception; and modern French political theory. He has published widely in political philosophy and the history of political thought.

    Sponsored by the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, the Government Department, the History Department, and the College of Social Studies.

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    Guest Lecturer Felipe Arturo gives talk "The Migration of Plants"

    On Thursday, April 6 at 4:30 pm in FISK 201, we welcome Felipe Arturo, who will give the talk:

    "The Migration of Plants"

    Felipe Arturo presents a selection of artistic works that span a 15-year period of artistic practice based on the migration of plants in recent history and their impact in contemporary cultural practices.

    Co-sponsored by Wesleyan's Center for the Arts Creative Campus Initiative, College of the Environment, Fries Center for Global Studies, Latin American Studies, History Department, and Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

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    Peter Molin - "Word Wars: Literature, Combat, and the Veteran Voice"

    Wednesday, April 5 at 4:30 pm in Allbritton 103

    Guest Speaker Peter Molin will give the talk "Word Wars: Literature, Combat, and the Veteran Voice".

    Peter Molin is a retired US Army infantry officer who currently teaches in the English Department Writing Program at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. He has written extensively on the art, film, and literature of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most prominently on his blog Time Now, as well as in other media and scholarly outlets. 

    See additional information here.
    Peter Molin currently writes a monthly column on war, military, and veteran art-andculture for the online journal The Wrath-Bearing Tree. In 2008-2009,Molin served as an advisor to Afghan National Army forces in Khost and Paktya provinces in Afghanistan. He holds a doctorate in American literature from Indiana University.
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    Mauricio Tenorio Trillo Talk: On the Useful Pointlessness of History

    We welcome guest speaker Mauricio Tenorio Trillo who will give the talk:

    "On the Useful Pointlessness of History"

    Thursday, March 2 at 4:30 pm in Russell House, 350 High Street

    Mauricio Tenorio Trillo is the Samuel N. Harper Professor of History at the University of Chicago and associate professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico City.

    Event is sponsored by the Allbritton Center for Public Life, History Department, and Latin American Studies (LAST).

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    Panel Discussion on Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming A Space

    Zora Neale Hurston: CLAIMING A SPACE: A PANEL DISCUSSION ON FILMMAKING, BIOGRAPHY, AND HISTORY

    Wednesday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. in Daniel Family Commons

    Panelists include: Tracey Heather Strain, Randall Maclowry, Daphne Lamothe.

    Moderated by Crystal Feimster and Thomas Allen Harris

    Co-Chaired by Jennifer Tucker and Rashida Z. Shaw McMahon

    Hosted by History Dept with FGSS, CHUM, AFAM, AMST, ANTHRO, CSS, ENG, REL, & SISP

     

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    Talk by Glory M. Liu: "Adam Smith's America"

    "Adam Smith's America" 

    Wednesday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. in the Woodhead Lounge, Exley 184

    Glory M. Liu is a lecturer in Social Studies at Harvard and author of Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism (Princeton: 2022). A political theorist and intellectual historian, she received her PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2018 and also holds an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from Cambridge University. Her works have appeared in journals such as Modern Intellectual History and History of European Ideas and she has also written for outlets such as The Nation, The Washington Post, and Aeon Magazine.

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    A Virtual Conversation with Writer Patrick Radden Keefe

    Thursday, February 9, 4:30-5:30 p.m., online only

    Co-Sponsored by The College of Letters, Shapiro Writing Center, The History Department, The Science in Society Program, and the Department of American Studies

    Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of the New York Times bestsellers Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, as well as two earlier nonfiction books: The Snakehead and Chatter. His most recent book is Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks.

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    History 300 Distinguished Lecture Fall 2022

    The Fall 2022 History 300 Lecture features Helge Jordheim.

    "Changing the World One Word at a Time: From Flag to Climate Emergency"

    Thursday, November 10 at 4:30 p.m. in Tishler Hall

    Helge Jordheim is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, Norway, and a Visiting Professor at Wesleyan. He has published books and articles on 18th-century Germany, concepts of civilization and the world, universal history, the cultural history of time, and topics related to the theory of history, especially the work of Reinhart Koselleck.

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    “Man gave name to all the animals”, Bob Dylan sings – and to plenty of other things, we could add, from pieces of cloth that flutter in the wind to rising temperatures in the atmosphere. Drawing on concept history, speech act theory, and other forms of discourse analysis, this talk will discuss the role of definitions, declarations, and other naming practices in history, which explicitly set out to change the world, both temporally and spatially. Examples will range from “flag” to Anthropocene”, from Enlightenment to the Covid pandemic.
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    Co-Sponsponsored Event: How Queer Were the Greeks? How Queer Are We?

    A talk by University of Michigan Professor David Halperin

    Thursday, November 3 at 4:30 p.m. at Russell House.

    Sponsored by Classical Studies, History, College of Letters, & Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

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    Special Event: A Conversation with Historian and Filmmaker Christian Delage

    "Confronting the violence of images and the pain of others: from the experience of war to the projection of images as judicial evidence"

    Wednesday, September 21, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. in Boger Hall 112

    See more information here.

    Title: "Confronting the violence of images and the pain of others: from the experience of war to the projection of images as judicial evidence"

    Chair: Prof. Jennifer Tucker (History Department; Director, Center for the Study of Guns & Society)

    Moderators: 

    Prof. Lisa Dombrowski (East Asian Studies & Film Studies)

    Prof. Avner Shavit (Center for Jewish Studies)

    Prof. Christian Delage (University of Paris 8) is a historian and film director. From 2014–2021, he directed the Institute for the History of the Present in Paris. He has frequently been a visiting professor at Cardozo Law School. He has recently completed a new film, 13 November: Their Lives Were Never Ordinary (Zadig Productions, 2022, 52 minutes) and will soon publish Filming, Judging: From Nuremberg to the Invasion of Ukraine (Gallimard, 2023). His film on the Nuremberg trial was distributed in the United States under the title: Nuremberg. The Nazis Facing Their Crimes (Lions Gate, 2007). With Peter Goodrich, he has edited two collective works: The Scene of the Mass Crime (Routledge, 2012) and Law and New Media (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

     

     

    Refreshments will be served.

     

    Co-sponsored by the History Department and the Center for the Study of Guns & Society.

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    History Matters Event: BUSTING MYTHS ABOUT CHINA AND CHINESE POWER

    Thursday, April 14, 2022, 12:00 - 1:00 pm in Allbritton 311. Lunch will be provided.

    For more information click here.

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    Strong Bodies for the Revolution: Pursuing Health and Power in the People's Republic of China

    CEAS Gallery Exhibition

    February 16 - May 13, 2022

    This exhibit opens Wednesday, February 16 at 12:15 p.m. at the College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center starting with a reception starting in the gallery, and then moving to the Seminar Room for remarks by Collections Assistant Sam Smith '20, Assistant Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Ying Jia Tan, and special guest Mark Sidel, son of Ruth and Victor Sidel and donor of the propaganda posters.

    The exhibit is co-curated by Ying Jia Tan, Rosemary Lennox, Ben Chaffee, Wendi Field Murray, and Christina Lu '22.

    Regular gallery hours during the exhibition are Tuesday through Friday, noon - 4:00 p.m.

    See More Exhibit Information Here

    How did the government of the People's Republic of China mobilize its people to implement public health campaigns and improve the health of hundreds of millions of people? The College of East Asian Studies presents an exhibition featuring a collection of propaganda posters donated by the family of Ruth and Victor Sidel. During their travels to China, the Sidels acquired more than 55 posters, most of which illustrated the underlying principles that governed Chinese public health policy during tumultuous years of revolution. This exhibition, curated by Wesleyan faculty and students, showcases common themes in the posters that contribute to a larger narrative on modern health practices in China. Co-sponsored by the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life; the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program; the Fries Center for Global Studies; the Department of Government; the History Department; the Science in Society Program and Black Box Labs; and the Wesleyan University Library.

    Regular gallery hours during the exhibition are Tueday through Friday, Noon-4pm. The gallery also welcomes class visits and curator tours by appointment. Please feel free to be in touch for more information on the exhibition and/or to arrange a class visit.

    We hope that you'll join us to celebrate this special occasion!

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    Save the Date - May 5, 2022 - Talk by Sam Perry

    Visiting Professor Joe Slaughter is organizing events on campus on Wednesday, May 4 with noted sociologist of religion, Sam Perry (U of Oklahoma). There will be a talk at noon for faculty and students on Christian Nationalism and additional informal gatherings with majors that day. Sam Perry Visit
    Sam's book with Andrew Whitehead garnered a great deal of attention nationally, and his next book with Philip Gorski comes out in April.
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    "Benedetta" Film Screening and Discussion

    • On Sunday, December 5, 2021 - the film "Benedetta" was shown at Metro Middletown Cinemas (140 Main Street_ at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. 

    • On Monday, December 6, 2021, the leading film director, Paul Verhoeven, joined the Wesleyan community  for a discussion of his latest film, "Benedetta" (2021) with Wesleyan Profs. Lisa Dombrowski and Jennifer Tucker. Click here to access the recording of this event.

    • On Tuesday, December 7, 2021, Author and historian Judith Brown joined the Wesleyan comminity for a discussion at Russell House, 5:00 - 6:00 p.m.
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    "Benedetta" (2021) is a drama inspired by true events set in 17th century Italy: the subject of the book, Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (1986), by historian and former Wesleyan provost, Judith Brown. The story is about a nun, Benedetta Carlini, who becomes entangled in a forbidden lesbian affair with another nun, and whose religious and erotic visions shock the church.

    Read Wes Connection's story about the event: https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2022/01/24/browns-book-on-lesbian-nun-inspires-the-creation-of-benedetta/

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    History 362 Distinguished Lecture Fall 2021

    Thursday, November 11 at 4:30 p.m. in Shanklin 107 (Kerr Lecture Hall):

    Annual HISTORY 362 Distinguished Lecture featuring Professor Kenda Mutongi, Professor of History at MIT, "MATATU: Oral History and Popular Transportation in Nairobi"

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    Book Talk by Ying Jia Tan

    Friday, November 5, 12:30 - 2:00 p.m.

    Ying Jia Tan is giving a virtual book talk at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Click here to register.

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    History Department Open House for Prospective History Majors

    Meet faculty and students, and learn more about the precarious perch between visions of the past and hopes for the future.

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    TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2020
    4:15 PM
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    The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free

    Book Talk Featuring Writer, Historian, and Wesleyan Alumna: Paulina Bren

    Thursday, October 14, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. in Allbritton 311

    Sponsored by the History Department, the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

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    Paulina Bren (BA ‘87) is an award-winning writer and historian who teaches at Vassar College. She attended Wesleyan University as an undergraduate majoring in the College of Letters, later receiving an M.A. in International Studies from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in History from New York University. She has held a host of research grants and fellowships, including residencies in Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Atlanta.

  • Writing Empire: Late 19th Century Ottoman Configurations

    Meltem Toksoz, Visiting Associate Professor of History

     

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    April 27, 2021 l 4:30 P.M.

    Join Zoom Meeting:  https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/93406886963

    In the tumultuous last quarter of the 19th century, many Ottomans produced universal history narratives for the reading public, as textbooks for the newly established universities, as column series in the prolific medium of the age, newspapers, and as print books.

    This was after all the century of reform in the empire, which meant the formation of the modern state, in the name of saving the empire. I situate Ottoman Turkish universal history writing in this age as a new genre for recasting empire in history in general, and for rescripting Ottoman history in world history in particular. The ways in which Ottoman Turkish universal history narratives situate the changing Ottoman Empire, in a world where 19th century Western historical discourse of ‘progress’ was already engrained in the idea that history was European, reveal an intellectual milieu far more complicated than the very problematic positionalities of ‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’. Indeed, the universal history oeuvre of Ahmed Midhat (1844-1912), a well-known literati of the age, circumvents the binary narratives of reformist versus Islamic, of constitutionalist versus Pan-Islamic despotic, of Turkish nationalist versus Ottoman imperial. His three different and voluminous universal histories published in the 1880s and 1890s have never been studied. Yet they point, I argue, to a particular construction of empire distinct from both its own past version and European colonial empire.

    Sponsored by the History Department

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    History Department Open House

    Meet faculty and students, and learn more about the precarious perch between visions of the past and hopes for the future.
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    The Travelers Lab

    Don’t Miss the Opportunity to Participate in Faculty Research in a Collaborative Digital Humanities Lab…

    Data Generation, Analysis, and Vizualization in the Historical Analysis of Travel & Communications.

    Apply (& learn!) digital techniques of analysis and visualisation to the study of historical travel and communication in a collaborative lab with Gary Shaw (HIST) & Jesse Torgerson (COL).

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    Peruse our interests & current projects at the Travelers Lab website (travelerslab.wesleyan.edu).

    Students with interests and/or abilities in … history, texts, languages, data analysis, mapping, data visualization or any combination of those will find an application for their interests in our international, multi-campus collaborative historical data lab.

    Interested?
    Please email Prof. Shaw or Prof. Torgerson gshaw@wesleyan.edu / jtorgerson@wesleyan.edu

    How do I actually “join”?
    Join for Credit or apply to be a Research Assistant: Fa 2020 Associated Course: HISTORY 423 (for 0.5 or 1.0 credits).

    Participation in the lab and the course is open to all majors and all class years.  Admission by permission of instructor; enrollment requires academic advisor's approval.

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    What is “CLAC”? The Communist Experience in Russian

    We at Wesleyan are now entering the third year of offering “Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum” (or CLAC) courses. These are courses taught in languages other than English, all of which provide students and faculty across the campus with opportunities to deepen their engagement with their subjects through the use and further development of their language and intercultural skills. A list of all the CLAC courses we have offered so far, including those being offered this academic year, is on the Fries Center website.

     

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    Link to page:  http://wesandtheworld.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2020/08/31/what-is-clac-the-communist-experience-in-russian/?utm_source=&utm_medium=EMLET&utm_campaign=Wes+and+the+World+Newsletter+17(2210812

    One great example of a CLAC course was Prof. Victoria Smolkin’s course “The Communist Experience in the Soviet Union” (see here for the WesMaps listing). The student language background appropriate for this class was listed as “(preferably advanced) intermediate to native,” and the eight students enrolled in the class had a range of linguistic backgrounds, with some speaking Russian to varying degrees before coming to college, and others learning it entirely while at Wesleyan. Prof. Smolkin asked her students to comment on how the CLAC course differed from a language class and from a conventional history class. Here are some of the responses:

    It differed from a language class in that the emphasis was on speaking and getting one’s message across, instead of on having correct syntax or grammar. We were also able to discuss the material in its original language, which helped in understanding certain cultural nuances that we wouldn’t typically have time to go over in a conventional history class.

    I think it was also different in that we had a mixture of Russian language learners and native Russian speakers, so we could all learn from each other. I don’t think that so many Russian speakers [of different language levels] would typically find themselves in the same classroom, unless through a CLAC.

    The CLAC class has its focus on “using language” (with native speakers) and gave me opportunities to actively engage with the language. But the same time, it has been a challenge for me to keep up with the speed and contents in class as my Russian level is not high enough to jump into the discussions happening in a class all the time. So that bitter experience encourages me to study harder the language itself as well.

    As the CLAC class opened up a greater variety of ways to interact with Russian language and culture other than literature, I feel more motivated to take on my tasks to study harder the language.

    Literature is heavy and not the strongest academic interest of mine, though I enjoy reading literature. Therefore, I appreciated the CLAC class as an alternative opportunity to learn and interact with Russian language and culture.

    This class wasn’t focused on grammar; that fact made me spend more time outside of class brushing up on my grammar and practicing certain expressions so that I could better articulate myself in class.

    Asked about aspects of the class that really captured what it was like, students said:

    The class presentations by my classmates were helpful and reassured me of my understanding of the materials. I was scared when my turn came up, but my fluent presentation buddy always helped me to understand the class materials and reassured me that I was on the right track. I am thankful for their help and I was able to do the presentation on the complex historical materials with more confidence.

    I liked the podcast assignments every week: to listen to a podcast of our choice and write a diary on it. It trained us to get used to the language and actively and regularly engage with the language itself and the cultural learning we aimed to do in class. And we were able to explore the topic of ourselves, so it was easier for us to continue as well.

    One anecdote that I think captures the sentiments expressed above is one class during which we were discussing the meaning of the Russian word byt’. The word refers—more or less—to the static, humdrum rituals of everyday life. We had a long discussion about its meaning because it doesn’t translate perfectly into English. It was productive to try and untangle the meaning of the word in Russian along with other Russian learners and native speakers of Russian.

    As you can see, CLAC courses can expand the opportunities we have on campus as well as further motivate people to study languages. They are not exactly language classes, but complement our formal language instruction. Try one out!

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    More than Victims: Medicine, Terror, and Healing in the Atlantic Slave Trade

    A talk by Carolyn Roberts

    The transatlantic slave trade was the largest, forced oceanic migration in human history. This talk explores the little-known role of medicine in the violent trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans and its legacies today.

     

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    Carolyn Roberts is an historian of medicine at Yale University with a joint appointment in the departments of History/History of Science and Medicine and African American Studies. Professor Roberts’ research interests concern early modern medicine where she explores themes of race and slavery, natural history and botany, and African indigenous knowledge in the Atlantic world.

    February 26, 2020
    4:30 PM
    PAC 001

    Co-Sponsored by Academic Affairs, SiSP, CAAS & History

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    2020 MEIGS LECTURE: REAGAN, GORBACHEV, AND THE END OF THE COLD WAR

    MELVYN P. LEFFLER is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia

    This lecture on Reagan, Gorbachev, and the end of the Cold War will assess Reagan’s unique role in ending the forty-year conflict with the “Evil Empire.” Leffler’s assessment is a radical reinterpretation of Reagan’s contributions.

    THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2020 | 4:30 P.M., PAC 001

    Sponsored by the History Department

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    MELVYN P. LEFFLER is Emeritus Professor of American History at The University of Virginia. He is the author of several books on the Cold War and on U.S. relations with Europe, including For the Soul of Mankind (2007), which won the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association, and A Preponderance of Power (1993), which won the Bancroft, Hoover, and Ferrell Prizes. In 2010, he and Odd Arne Westad co-edited the three volume Cambridge History of the Cold War. Along with Jeff Legro and Will Hitchcock, he is co-editor of Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World (Harvard University Press, 2016). Most recently, he published Safeguarding Democratic Nationalism: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security, 1920-2015 (Princeton, 2017). He has served as president of the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at The University of Virginia. He is now writing about the foreign policies of the George W. Bush administration.
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    White Collar, and Blue Collar Gig Workers: What is the future of American Labor?

    Steven Greenhouse '73

    Long time New York Journalist and author of Beaten Down, and Worked Up:  the Past, Present, and Future of American Labor.

     

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    Tuesday, October 29, 2019
    4:30PM
    College of Letters Library
    Boger Hall, Third Floor

    Sponsored by the College of Letters and the History Department

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    Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse

    Ethan Pollock is Associate Professor of History and Russian Studies at Brown University

    For over a thousand years the banya (or Russian bathhouse) has been a crucial institution to a wide variety of people: men and women, rich and poor, straight and gay, religious and atheist. The omnipresence of the banya makes it a lens through which to view many aspects of Russia history—hygiene, intimacy, sociability, the relationship of Russia to the West. The banya is full of contradictions. It can clean bodies and spread disease. It can purify and befoul. It can create community and provide a means of excluding others. Taken together, thousands of sources ranging from archival documents and municipal regulations to idioms, films, art, cartoons, memoirs, diaries, songs, novels, poems, and plays provide the basis for this unprecedented portrait of the institution of the banya and for a whole new way of seeing the history of Russia.

     

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    Ethan Pollock is Associate Professor of History and Russian Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, 2006.) His work on the Russian banya has been funded by the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, a Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Fernand Braudel Fellowship from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His book, Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse, is coming out with Oxford University Press in September 2019.

    Sponsored by the History Department, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and Russian and East European Studies Program.

    Wednesday, October 30, 2019
    4:30 pm
    PAC 001

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    The Theory and Practice of History

    The 2019-20 seminar series will meet four times across the year, usually on Thursdays, and will feature an exciting international and interdisciplinary line up of scholars.

    For further information or a copy of the papers once they become available, contact Gary Shaw at gshaw@wesleyan.edu. Here are the dates and current topics. Seminars will be in Boger Hall.

    Starting time for all sessions is 4:30.

    • November 14: Stefka Eriksen, Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage, “The Archaeology and Allegory of the Settlement of Iceland: Reflections on the Theory and Method of Interdisciplinary Environmental History.”  Boger Hall 115
    • February 6:  Heather Keenleyside, University of Chicago: “The Literary History of the History of Ideas,”  Boger Hall 113
    • March 5: Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, University of Oulu, “How to Get it Wrong: Historiography, Normativity and the Holocaust Debate,”  Boger Hall 113
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    Current Series–2019-20

    The Theory and Practice of History at Wesleyan University provides information about a seminar series, talks, and other local endeavors connected to the theory and philosophy of history as well as issues of historiography and its history, including the methodology, style, and form of historical research and writing. Its aim is to stimulate reflection on these subjects within the university and the region and to help to channel and accelerate wider discussion of these topics.

    First, however, it is the home of the Wesleyan Seminar on the Theory and Practice of History, supported by Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities and the Department of History.

  • A Walk into Winter: The 1795 Dutch Embassy to Qing China

    Tonio Andrade is professor of history at Emory University. His core geographical area of expertise is China, but his research focuses on interconnections in the Early Modern Period (1500-1800) and on comparative history. He is author of The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History; Lost Colony: The Untold Story of Europe's First War with China and How Taiwan became Chinese. Honors include the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and Gutenberg e-Prize.

     

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    The historiography of Sino-European relations has been dominated by a narrative of conflict. Chinese and Europeans, the narrative suggests, were unable to interface diplomatically because they had opposing views on how states should interact. The Chinese believed that China’s emperor was superior to all other monarchs, with foreign delegates considered to be supplicants. The Europeans, on the other hand, believed that states should relate to one another on the basis of de jure equality, and that the natural state of geopolitics was a sort of Westphalian “anarchic” system, with diplomats and ambassadors representing their sovereigns to negotiate treaties and alliances. The result, the story goes, was conflict, epitomized in the bitter Sino-European wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This narrative, however, is based on the experience of the British, whose failed embassies to China overwhelmingly dominate the literature. My project, in contrast, focuses on a key non-British embassy to China: the Dutch mission of 1794–95. Using a global microhistorical approach, it investigates the mission from the various perspectives available in the rich (and largely untapped) sources: Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Chinese, Manchu, and Korean. It shows that this Dutch mission, which occurred just a year after the most notorious of the failed British missions, was smooth and successful, with the people on each side quite easily able to understand their counterparts. British failures are certainly an important part of the story of Sino-Western interaction, but they must be placed in a deeper context.

    Thursday, October 10, 4.30pm, CEAS Seminar Room (343 Washington Terrace)

    Post-Lecture colloquium on Friday, October 11, 10.30am, CEAS Seminar Room (343 Washington Terrace)

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    The Ethical Choices of Whales: Bowheads, Hunters, and Mutual Adaptations in the Bering Strait, 1848-1968

    Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History at Brown University

    Bowhead whales have been known by three distinct groups of hunters along the Bering Strait over the past two centuries: indigenous Yupik and Inupiaq whalers, capitalist commercial whalers, and communist industrial whalers. This talk looks at how whales became known through the labor of their killing, examining the cosmologies each of these three kinds of whaling practitioners composed around the animals they hunted. How where whales, particularly bowheads, imagined and treated, and how did this change across economic systems?  What kind of emotional relationships were possible? And what kinds of relationships were considered ethical between humans and whales? Did whales make ethical judgments of their hunters? What does including whale behavior in our analysis of human-whale interactions provoke in our historical understanding, and how should we situate non-human actions in human narratives of the past?

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    Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, is a fellow at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and Assistant Director of HistoricalClimatology.com. Her work on the Environmental History of the Bering Straits and on whaling is a comparative history of indigenous, capitalist and communist whalers and their ethics. Her work was recently featured in The New Yorker magazine. Her book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, was published in September 2019 with Norton.

    Tuesday, October 15, 2019
    4:30PM
    PAC 001

    Sponsored by the History Department, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and College of the Environment