For our history faculty and graduate students summer isn’t all fun in the sun. They scatter across the globe giving lectures, researching and writing about history. We’ll be posting about their travels (near and far) and research projects here during the coming months.
History PhD Student Joel DowlingSoka is spending the summer in Greece working on his dissertation project that focuses on the phenomenon of Soldier Saints in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean. In the 10th through 15th centuries there was a dramatic increase in the number of militarized religious images and religious practice dedicated to military figures in the Greek speaking Mediterranean. Joel is interested in why any particular region would choose to prioritize militarized religious imagery and on whether the phenomenon differs from region to region. This summer Joel has visited the regions of the Peloponnese, the city of Thessaloniki, and the island of Kythera.
Saint George Mounted. Byzantine Fresco from a small church in the southern Peloponnese. Photo by Joel DowlingSoka on June 14th 2015.
Professor Robin Judd writes, “My research project, ‘Love at the Zero Hour: European Jewish Brides, Soldier Husbands, and Strategies for Reconstruction, 1944-1955,’ took me to London, UK, where I researched the European Jewish Holocaust survivors who married British soldiers at the end of the Second World War. At the Imperial War Museum, London Metropolitan Archives, National Archives, and Wiener Library, I studied letters, chaplain reports, non-governmental agency memos, and military records that reported on the sites where these couples met, their betrothals, wedding ceremonies, immigration processes, and married lives. I also interviewed the daughter of a bride, and waded through a tremendous amount of immigration and naturalization paperwork. Later in the summer, I served as a visiting professor at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin (Conover, WI), where I taught workshops on ‘The Tension Between History and Vision in Modern Jewish Thought,’ ‘Early American Jewish Women Envision Home,’ and ‘Youth and Migration in Modern Jewish History,’ to over one hundred counselors and staff.”
London Metropolitan Archives
Open House in London
Camp Ramah in Wisconsin
Professor Katherine Marino writes, “I’ve been in Rio de Janeiro for nearly a month doing research for my book on the history of Pan-American feminism. I’ve found a wealth of terrific material at the Arquivo Nacional, Museu Nacional, Arquivo Histórico do Itamaraty, and Fundacão Getulio Vargas, and have loved being in Rio. It’s an amazing and beautiful city. I hope to visit Cristo Redentor and Pão de Açúcar before I leave. Até breve!”
agua de coco
At the Niemeyer Museum in Niteroi
Cristo Redentor
Dom Pedro the magnanimous in front of the Museu Nacional
Swans in the courtyard of the Archives at Itamaraty
While working with Aksumie coins at the American Numismatic Society, Graduate Student Felege-Selam Yirga wrote a short blog post for a popular audience about commodity currency in 1920’s Ethiopia. He states, “While it’s not technically in my field, I thought it might be worth sharing. It can be found here: http://www.anspocketchange.org/cartridges-as-coins-ethiopi…/.”
Research Assistants
Olmec head
Professor Alice Conklin was interviewed as a featured speaker for the Society for the Study of French History in the UK. The interview was about how she came to study French history.
She writes, “I gave the plenary address at the annual society meeting at the end of June in St. Andrews University, Scotland.”
You can read the interview at:
http://frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/blog/?p=446
Professor Alice Conklin