2017 History Publications and Grants

Ferguson, Heather. “Letter from the Editor.” Review of Middle East Studies, vol. 51, issue 2, 2017, pp. 167-170.

Abstract: I joined the Review of Middle East Studies’ editorial team in a disquieting time—one in which the world we study and inhabit is engulfed by political upheavals with traumatic human, material, and environmental consequences. Although every age has its crises, it is hard not to feel that we are in a moment of critical import for the future of domestic and global relations, as nation-states once again seek to assert and extend power through increasingly xenophobic means. How grateful, then, I have been that Richard Martin's brilliant stewardship and Ashleigh Breske's managerial acumen guided RoMES into a position primed to address our role as an academic community dedicated both to the MENA region and to the global dimensions of scholarship. Rich and Ashleigh planned and steered this Issue of RoMES through the editorial process, and generously offered their time and insight while waiting for me to assume the duties of Editor and transition the office to Claremont McKenna College. We are indebted to Rich for re-mapping the vision of RoMES while presumably retired, tirelessly working through a backlog of submissions, commuting to Virginia Tech after convincing the institution to house and support the Review, and for generally embodying a spirit of dedicated service to the field we can only hope to approximate. His willingness to walk me through the intricacies of the Review process while also navigating a cross-country move further illustrates a generosity of spirit that I hope will continue to suffuse RoMES in the future. Rich and Ashleigh together also streamlined the production process, and along with the team at Cambridge University Press, I look forward to building on their efforts and maintaining RoMES as a vibrant and consistent voice in an increasingly volatile climate.

Geismer, Lily. “Appreciating the Kennedy Credo of Courage, Judgment, and Dignity.” Review of JFK: A Vision for America, edited by Stephen Kennedy Smith and Douglas Brinkley. Washington Post, May 5, 2017.

Geismer, Lily. “Life After the Great Industrial Extinction.” Review of Remaking the Rust Belt: The Post-Industrial Transformation of North America, by Tracy Neumann, and From Steel to Slots: Casino Capitalism in the Postindustrial City, by Chloe Taft. New Labor Forum, April 28, 2017.

Geismer, Lily. Review of Limousine Liberal: How an Incendiary Image United the Right and Fractured America, by Steve Fraser. Journal of American History, vol. 104, issue 1, 2017, pp. 277-278.

Emmons, Terence, and Gary Hamburg. “Larisa Georgievna Zakharova.” The Russian Review, vol. 76, 2017, pp. 595-96.

Abstact: A posthumous tribute to Larisa Zakharova, who, at the time of her death, was the leading political historian of late imperial Russia and the head of the "Moscow school" of Russian historians.

Hamburg, Gary. "Terence Emmons and Russian Historiography." Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography, vol. 10, 2017, pp. 71 -111.

Abstract: An analysis of Terence Emmons forty-year involvement in the study of the writing of history in imperial Russia. The article looks at his graduate seminar on the "new school of Russian historians" and that school's suppression; at his articles on the "golden age" of Russian historical writing from 1880 to 1917; at his edition of Vladimir Got'e's diary; at his investigation of the Priiutino brotherhood and its impact on historical scholarship; at his contributions to the history of the Russian Revolution and to the history of the GULAG; to his projected book on Boris Syromiatnikov; to his analysis of Natan Eidel'man's "last book" on the Gorbachev reforms.

Kumar, Nita. "Education in the Indian Subcontinent.” The Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition, Part 2017-4, Brill, 2017.

Abstract: Islamic education (the intellectual and cultural formation of an individual) in the Indian subcontinent has been polymorphous and fluid since its introduction a millennium ago. In every period there has been negotiation with the political and ideological processes within the period's state formation. Most recently, Muslim efforts at negotiating with the immense power of the British colonial state after the 1850s were varied and in conflict over their aims and methods. This split has continued up to the present. Islamic education is nowadays looked upon as divided into "traditional," and "modern." In the view of the protagonists, each effort is characterized by its own version of the best balance between continuity and change, fundamentals and reform, the religious and the worldly. There is a clear difference between an external view of Islamic education as divided into traditional and modern, and an internal view of the categories of "traditional" and "modern" as not exclusive and of Islamic education as being competent to keep up with both in changing times.

Kumar, Nita. “The Performance of Friendship in Contemporary India.” Conceptualizing Friendship in Time and Place, edited by Carla Risseeuw and Marlein van Raalte. Brill, 2017, pp. 229-249.

Livesay, Daniel. Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race West Indians in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Abstract: This book traces the lives of more than three hundred mixed-race Jamaicans who left the Caribbean for Britain in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Born to free and enslaved women of color, and wealthy white men, these individuals fled Jamaica due to its lack of schools, legal restrictions, and colonial prejudice. In Britain they lived with paternal relatives, attended expensive boarding schools, and apprenticed with their father's extended networks. Many used this refined British upbringing as a launching pad for an eventual return to Jamaica, or venture to other parts of the British Empire, in order to establish themselves as elite members of colonial society. This study is the first to trace the group's migration back and forth across the Atlantic. It argues that family status played a central role in one's racial category, both the Americas as well as in Britain, during the long eighteenth century. Indeed, because of their kinship to wealthy and influential individuals, as well as their intermediate racial status, migrants of color were critical actors in the debates around race, family, and belonging in the British Empire. Using thousands of wills, hundreds of legal petitions, dozens of family correspondences, and a number of inheritance lawsuits, it shows the deeply complex evolution of Atlantic racial ideas, even in the most nakedly oppressive of slave societies.

Livesay, Daniel. Review of Africans in the Old South: Mapping Lives across the Atlantic World, by Randy Sparks. Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 2, May 2017, pp. 406-407.

Livesay, Daniel. Review of Legacies of British Slave-ownership Digital Humanities, edited by Nick Draper, Rachel Lang, Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, Katie, Donington, and Kristy Warren. Reviews in History, Sept. 2017.

Livesay, Daniel. "West Meets East: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in India, and the Avenues of Advancement in Imperial Britain." Atlantic Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, 2017, pp. 382-398.

Abstract: At the turn of the nineteenth century, small numbers of elite, mixed-race Jamaicans traveled to India in order to improve their financial and social statuses. They did so by joining the East India Company Army, or by working as lawyers and civil servants. This global movement - starting in Jamaica, continuing to Britain, on to India, and oftentimes back to Britain - allowed these individuals to reposition their identity as East Indian nabobs, rather than as West Indian elites. By divorcing themselves from an enslaved, African past, they could live more effectively as white Britons. But, as anti-black prejudice escalated at the end of the eighteenth century, it became much more difficult for Jamaicans of color to undertake this journey successfully, as well as to reframe their identities.

Christ, Michaela, Mary Fulbrook, and Wendy Lower. "Everyday Violence.” Ruptures in the Everyday: Views of Modern Germany from the Ground, edited by Andrew Stuart Bergerson and Leonard Schmieding, Berghahn Press, 2017, pp. 201-226.

Abstract: This volume looks at everyday history as a concept and integrated approach, and showcases themes, such as violence. Fulbrook is a top scholar of German political and social history, Christ recently published a book in Germany that applies Geertzian theory to violence in Ukraine. My contribution was a focus on gender as a factor in escalating and de-escalating the perpetration of genocide. The challenge here was to combine all of our approaches to case studies of the Holocaust in eastern Europe. In addition to the different gendered roles that influenced behavior, we discovered the influence of the time of day in which events occurred, emotions, familial pressures, and work routines, among other factors.

Lower, Wendy. "Partners in Crime: Moving Beyond Women's History to the Gendered Dynamics of the Holocaust." East Central Europe, vol. 44, issue 1, 2017, pp. 170-174.

Abstract: Leading authors were asked to ready my book Hitler's Furies, and submit critical reviews, to which I responded. Taking their praise and criticism as a starting point, I suggest new ways of analyzing sources in women's history, and stress the theme of sexism-- alongside nationalism, imperialism, racism and anti-semitism--as an under-appreciated "ism" in the historical causes of genocide and Hitler's regime.

Lower, Wendy, and Lauren Faulkner Rossi, eds. Lessons and Legacies XII: New Directions in Holocaust Research and Education. Northwestern University Press, 2017.

Abstract: This volume is the result of the leading biennial international conference on the Holocaust that was convened at Northwestern University in 2012. It contains 19 essays and an introduction authored by scholars in Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Israel, France, Canada, Argentina, and the USA. Featuring the most cutting-edge methods and topics shaping Holocaust studies today, the scholarship draws from a variety of disciplines: forensics, environmental history, cultural studies, religious studies, labor history, film studies, history of medicine, sociology, pedagogy, and public history. This rich compendium reveals how far Holocaust studies have reached into cultural studies, perpetrator history, and comparative genocide history.

Port, Andrew I. “Holocaust Scholarship and Politics in the Public Sphere: Reexamining the Causes, Consequences, and Controversy of the Historikerstreit and Goldhagen Debate: A Forum with Gerrit Dworok, Richard J. Evans, Mary Fulbrook, Wendy Lower, A. Dirk Moses, Jeffrey K. Olick, and Timothy D. Snyder.” Central European History, vol. 50, issue 3, 2017, pp. 375-403.

Abstract: Last year marked the thirtieth anniversary of the so-called Historikerstreit (historians’ quarrel), as well as the twentieth anniversary of the lively debate sparked by the publication in 1996 of Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. To mark the occasion, Central European History (CEH) has invited a group of seven specialists from Australia, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States to comment on the nature, stakes, and legacies of the two controversies, which attracted a great deal of both scholarly and popular attention at the time.

Park, Albert, contributing author. Cambridge Dictionary of Modern World History, edited by John Stevenson and Chris Cook, Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Dictionary entries on Modern Korean and East Asian History.

Park, Albert L. “The Parallax Visions of Economic Democracy--A Critique.” Polarization in Divided Societies: Korea in a Global Context, edited by Youngmi Kim, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 171-207.

Abstract: In the 2012 South Korean presidential election, "Economic Democratization (Economic Democracy)" became the most decisive issue that pushed politicians, intellectuals, social activists and citizens to debate passionately over the future course of South Korea's development as a democratic capitalist country. Though the most recent drives for economic democracy appeared to be the first time that this concept became part of the public lexicon for debating and envisioning the future of development, economic democracy first crystalized as an idea and a symbol of hope after 1988 when neoliberal reforms fundamentally shifted Korea from a state to a capital-centered path of capitalist development. In fact, past and current drives for economic democratization have been part of an overall process that has involved people designing alternative visions of the economy that would resolve the dislocations and contradictions caused by neoliberalism in the economic, social and cultural arenas. In order to understand better the origins of this process, this chapter traces and analyzes the intersection between economic democracy and neoliberalism in Korea. In so doing, this chapter not only shows the factors that have contributed to the rise of economic democracy and the pursuit of alternative economies, but also the limitations of the current conceptualization of economic democracy as an innovative tool for forging fundamental political, economic and social changes. In particular, this chapter explains the role of agricultural and rural matters in surmounting the limits of economic democracy and in determining the make-up and direction of drives for alternative economies. It especially focuses on a new food movement led by agricultural cooperatives, such as Hansalim and iCOOP Korea, who have influenced and expanded the debate on economic democracy and alternative economies through their narratives of ecological-based social renewal.

External Grant: Henry Luce Foundation’s LIASE (Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment) Program: “Environmental Infrastructure in Asia: Nature, Networks and People in the Anthropocene.” Albert Park (lead-PI), Branwen Williams, and Marc Los-Huertos (co-PIs). $1,400,000, 2017–2021.

EnviroLab Asia is a laboratory for cross-disciplinary research and experiential learning that links knowledge with practice. We aim to engage communities and explore what comes out of the intellectual exchange between the humanities and social sciences, environmental analysis, and various other fields to generate new scholarship about environmental issues in Asia. This is an initiative at the Claremont Colleges funded by the Henry Luce Foundation's LIASE (Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment) Program and is anchored at Claremont McKenna College. In May 2017, the Henry Luce Foundation awarded EnviroLab Asia a $1.4 million grant to expand its activities at the Claremont Colleges for the next four years.

Petropoulos, Jonathan. "Art Dealer Networks in the Third Reich and in the Postwar Period." Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 52, issue 3, 2017, pp. 546-565.

Abstract: This article discusses art dealers who trafficked in looted art during the Third Reich and how they re-established networks and continued their trade in the postwar period. I argue that these dealers worked within a series of overlapping networks. A primary network was centered in Munich, with dealers such as Dr. Bruno Lohse (Göring’s art agent in Paris during the war); Maria Almas Dietrich, Karl Haberstock, Walter Andreas Hofer, and Adolf Wüster. These individuals worked closely with colleagues in Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein (states contiguous with Bavaria) in the postwar years. Many of the individuals in outer appendages of the networks had not been complicit in the Nazis’ plundering program, yet they trafficked in looted works and formed dealer networks that extended to Paris, London, and New York. Both the recently discovered Gurlitt cache – over 1400 pictures located in Munich, Salzburg, and Kornwestheim – and the annotated Weinmüller auction catalogues help illuminate aspects of these networks. Art dealers played a key role in the looting operations during the Third Reich and in the transfer of non-restituted objects in the postwar period. The current generation of the profession may be the key to advancing our understanding of a still incomplete history.

Petropoulos, Jonathan. Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany, translated into Czech and Chinese. Yale University Press, 2017.

Abstract: “What are we to make of those cultural figures, many with significant international reputations, who tried to find accommodation with the Nazi regime?” Jonathan Petropoulos asks in this exploration of some of the most acute moral questions of the Third Reich. In his nuanced analysis of prominent German artists, architects, composers, film directors, painters, and writers who rejected exile, choosing instead to stay during Germany’s darkest period, Petropoulos shows how individuals variously dealt with the regime’s public opposition to modern art. His findings explode the myth that all modern artists were anti-Nazi and all Nazis anti-modernist. Artists Under Hitler closely examines cases of artists who failed in their attempts to find accommodation with the Nazi regime (Walter Gropius, Paul Hindemith, Gottfried Benn, Ernst Barlach, Emil Nolde) as well as others whose desire for official acceptance was realized (Richard Strauss, Gustaf Gründgens, Leni Riefenstahl, Arno Breker, Albert Speer). Collectively these ten figures illuminate the complex cultural history of Nazi Germany, while individually they provide haunting portraits of people facing excruciating choices and grave moral questions.

Petropoulos, Jonathan. "Five Uncomfortable and Difficult Topics Relating to the Restitution of Nazi Looted Art." New German Critique, vol. 44, no. 1 (130), 2017, pp. 125-42.

Abstract: Recent books and film treatments of the Allies' restitution efforts have tended toward the triumphalist. The recovery, safeguarding, and return of looted works has become a story of good overcoming evil. This paper seeks to complicate that narrative. The Monuments officers worked in challenging circumstances and sometimes fell short of certain ideals. The Allies' restitution policies evolved amidst difficult political realities. The role of art dealers in this complex of issues is also ripe for reassessment. And museum officials outside of Germany, both before and after 1945, behaved in ways that raise ethical questions. This paper argues for a more nuanced and balanced appraisal of those involved in the response to Nazi art looting--one that counters hagiographical tendencies in both the scholarly realm and in popular culture.

External Grant: Venit Shelton, Tamara. Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars, American Council of Learned Societies, 2017-2018.

The fellowships are named for the late Frederick Burkhardt, president of ACLS from 1957-74, whose decades of work on The Correspondence of Charles Darwin constitute a signal example of dedication to a demanding and ambitious scholarly enterprise. These fellowships support long-term, unusually ambitious projects in the humanities and related social sciences. The ultimate goal of the project should be a major piece of scholarly work by the applicant. ACLS does not fund creative work (e.g., novels or films), textbooks, straightforward translation, or pedagogical projects.