From Resettlement to Revolution: The Comuneros of Peru Thursday, March 26, 3:20-4:40 TIL-246 Livingston Campus (Rutgers University)
In the sixteenth century, indigenous Andeans in the Viceroyalty of Peru were forcibly removed from their villages by Spanish colonizers and resettled in planned, self-governing towns. Rather than conforming to Spanish cultural and political norms, indigenous Andeans adopted and gradually refashioned the religious practices dedicated to Christian saints and the civil institutions imposed on them, in the process producing a new kind of civil society that merged their traditional understanding of collective life (the ayllu) with the Spanish notion of the común to demand participatory democracy. This hybrid concept of self-rule spurred the indigenous rebellions that erupted across the Andes against Spanish rulers and native hereditary nobility. Re-examining the era of the Great Rebellion through the letters and documents of the Andean people themselves, while eschewing a focus on well-known leaders such as Tupac Amaru, this presentation examines the community-based democracy that played a central role in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions and continues to galvanize indigenous movements in Bolivia today.
Sarah Elizabeth Penry, Assistant Professor of History and Latin American and Latinx Studies, Fordham University
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On Monday, February 10, 2020, Fordham’s History Department hosted its annual History Day celebration. The event brought together some fascinating research from Fordham undergraduate and graduate students and Fordham faculty. The day’s keynote speaker was Prof. Amanda Armstrong. Below is just a snippet of the fascinating work and images we heard from our participants. You will hear from Brian Chen, Hannah Gonzalez, Grace Campagna, Emma Budd, Christian Decker, and Kelli Finn.
Brian Chen discussed Henry Kissinger’s diplomacy during the South Asia Crisis of 1971. He argued that given the geopolitical constraints of the Cold War and the limits of U.S. influence in the region, his response to the genocide in East Pakistan was not unreasonable. Kissinger’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” improved the prospects of peace between the United States and the Communist world, while also providing necessary humanitarian relief to the Bengali people.
Hannah Gonzalez’s paper, “Natives, Naturalists, and Negotiated Access: William Bartram’s Navigation of the Eighteenth-Century Southeast,” examined how the naturalist William Bartram negotiated access to native territories and knowledge while constrained by colonial politics and a climate of cross-cultural hostilities. This navigation of the Southeast involved the utilization of imperial and colonial structures, from treaties to white traders. As recorded in Travels, Bartram’s journey demonstrates how naturalists negotiated the cultural landscape on levels beyond the scientific.
You can follow her on Twitter @hannahegonzalez.
Grace Campagna’s presentation, “The Quern: The Biography of a Medieval Object,” traced the lifecycle of an artifact, including its production, operation, and repurposing, using both historical and archaeological methods. The quernstones that archaeologists discovered in the Thames river came from a quarry in Germany in order to undergo the final stages of manufacturing in a London workshop. The presentation examined how communities assign value to everyday items and addressed the challenges of analyzing objects for which there are few primary sources. You can access the full link to her article here: https://medievallondon.ace.fordham.edu/exhibits/show/medieval-london-objects-3/quern
Emma Budd’s presentation analyzed intersecting power dynamics in colonization, humanitarian intervention, and sexual assault. Through the lens of the Algerian War of Independence, she argued that the three aforementioned phenomena are intrinsically connected by their roots in a desire for power without concern for humanity.
Christian Decker’s presentation talked about Polish immigrant networking from 1900 to 1945. It included discussion of family and labor networks, religious networks, all the way up to the formation of the Polish American Congress.
You can follow Christian Decker on Twitter @PCGamingFanatic
Kelli Finn’s presentation, “We survive. We’re Irish:” An Examination of Irish Immigration to the United States, 1840 -1890,” examined how the systemic poverty that Irish immigrants faced from the 1840s-1880s shaped their immigrant experience. It argued that the extreme poverty that the Irish faced lead to harsh stigmatism of Irish immigrants even in the workforce which in turn lead to poor living conditions for the Irish when they got to America and the highest mortality rates among immigrant groups at the time.
The Fordham History Department, through its O’Connell Initiative on the Global History of Capitalism, is accepting abstracts for its Graduate Student Workshop. The workshop will take place on Friday, April 3, 2020 at the Rose Hill Campus. The purpose of this workshop is to provide a space for graduate students to present, read, and receive valuable feedback from other graduate students and Fordham faculty on projects they are planning on publishing.
Our goal is to foster conversations across a wide variety of topics. Concepts such as power, politics, and society can be interpreted broadly across time periods and geographies. Submissions can include topics on race, gender, class, political and social structures as well as economic, cultural, and religious institutions from antiquity to the modern era. We especially welcome papers exploring the following questions: How are culture and political power intertwined? How did gender, race, or class shape involvement in political institutions? How have class and race intersected with political power? How has the authority of religion affected social relations? How did the power structures of trade and colonialism function? What is the relationship between knowledge and power in social domains such as education, science, and/or medicine? Papers can investigate, but are not limited to, the question of power and:
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Prof. Yuko Miki, the recent recipient of the American Historical Association’s Wesley-Logan Prize for the outstanding book in African diaspora history, discussed Race & Citizenship in Latin America alongside Fordham Law Professor Tanya Hernandez. The Maloney Library’s Behind the Book Series organized this event.
Yuko Miki
Prof. Saul Cornell and Dr. Nicole Hemmer discussed the history and politics of impeachment. In case you missed it or want re-watch it, you can re-catch their fascinating exchange here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPy_rDyLfow
You can follow Prof. Saul Cornell on Twitter @SaulCornell
Saul Cornell
Prof. Nana Osei-Opare was interviewed by Starr FM, a Ghanaian based radio station, about his thoughts on the historic Africa-Russia Summit in Sochi.
You can follow Prof. Nana Osei-Opare on Twitter @NanaOseiOpare
Professors Yuko Miki and Laurie Lambert have started a Faculty-Graduate working group called Narrating Slavery: Archives, Poetics, Politics.
The purpose of the group is to create a collaborative space for faculty and graduate students working on questions related to slavery to share work and receive feedback on their research-in-progress over the course of two meetings per semester.
The first meeting is on Thursday, October 3, from 12 pm – 1:30 pm, at Plaza View Room, Lowenstein, Lincoln Center Campus. Refreshments will be served.
We will be discussing the recent issue of the New York Times Magazine “The 1619 Project,” remembering the landing of the first Africans in Virginia. You can access the essays here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
Their second meeting will be on Thursday, November 14, from 12 pm – 1:30 pm at the Plaza View Room. They will discuss an article in progress by Prof. Miki.
Please feel free to share this with any colleagues or graduate students whom you think might be interested. All are welcome, including faculty from other institutions in the area.
Please RSVP to Prof. Laurie Lambert at llambert3@fordham.edu or Prof. Yuko Miki at ymiki1@fordham.edu.
Prof. Yuko Miki
Prof. Laurie Lambert
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On Tuesday, December 4th, graduate students and faculty members gathered to listen to Dr. Yuko Miki and Dr. Christopher Dietrich speak about their research funded by the O’Connell Initiative.
Stephen Lecesse, PhD candidate and head of HGSA, has given us the inside scoop on the events that HGSA has organized this semester and what’s coming up in the Spring! Read Below:
On October 9th Dr. Scott Bruce, who recently joined Fordham’s History Department, sat down with Dr. Richard Gyug, Professor Emeritus of History and Medieval Studies, to discuss Dr. Bruce’s forthcoming article in Speculum, titled “The Dark Age of Herodotus: Shards of a Fugitive History in Early Medieval Europe.”
