Category Archives: Publications

Prof. Nana Osei-Opare’s article, “If “‘If You Trouble a Hungry Snake, You Will Force It to Bite You’: Rethinking Postcolonial African Archival Pessimism, Worker Discontent, and Petition Writing in Ghana, 1957-66,” is now out on via the Journal of African History.

Prof. Nana Osei-Opare’s article, “‘If You Trouble a Hungry Snake, You Will Force It to Bite You’: Rethinking Postcolonial African Archival Pessimism, Worker Discontent, and Petition Writing in Ghana, 1957-66,” is now available on the Journal of African History 62(1)(2021). Below is the article’s abstract:

My aim is twofold. Highlighting the value and importance of African archives in the construction of postcolonial African histories, I first reject what I call ‘postcolonial African archival pessimism’: the argument that postcolonial African archives are too disorganized or ill-kept to be of much, if any, value in configuring postcolonial African histories. Second, primarily through petition and complaint letters, I examine how Ghanaian workers protested racist and abusive workplace environments, government malfeasance, stagnating wages, and unfair dismissals in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana. These archival gems illuminate how workers made claims to and performances of citizenship and reminded the state of their importance, politically and practically, to building the Ghanaian project. From Ghanaian and British archives, I seek to complement histories that highlight the centrality of African workers — through their letters and feet — in articulating the contradictions and aspirations of postcolonial African states.

You can follow him on Twitter @NanaOseiOpare

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Prof. Saul Cornell, the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History, published “What today’s Second Amendment activists forget: The right to not bear arms” in The Washington Post.

On January 18, 2021, Prof. Saul Cornell, the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History, published “What today’s Second Amendment activists forget: The right to not bear arms” in The Washington Post.

Prof. Saul Cornell
Prof. Saul Cornell

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Prof. Christopher Dietrich publishes “Erasing the Marks of Domination: Economic Sovereignty, Decolonization, and International Lawmaking in the 1950s and 1960s” in Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’histoire du droit international.

Prof. Christopher Dietrich publishes “Erasing the Marks of Domination: Economic Sovereignty, Decolonization, and International Lawmaking in the 1950s and 1960s” in Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’histoire du droit international.

Below is the abstract:

This article tells a legal and intellectual history of oil and decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s through the projects of international institutions including the UN Permanent Sovereignty Commission and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the work of anti-colonial lawyers Hasan Zakariya and Nicolas Sarkis. It examines the ideas and infrastructure of decolonization as they related to the question of how international law could be used to win economic sovereignty.

Christopher Dietrich
Christopher Dietrich

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Prof. Asif Siddiqi publishes “Whose India? SITE and the origins of satellite television in India” in History and Technology: An International Journal.

Prof. Asif Siddiqi publishes “Whose India? SITE and the origins of satellite television in India” in History and Technology: An International Journal.

Below is the abstract:

This essay explores the origins of the Satellite Instructional Technology Experiment (SITE), a project that used a NASA satellite to beam educational programs to over two thousand villages in India in the mid-1970s. Touted as a major success in using advanced technology for the purposes of poverty alleviation, the results of the project remain contested. I argue that the causes of its ambiguous outcome can be traced to the late 1960s when Indian and American scientific elites mobilized support for this project by uniting a coalition of diverse actors that each imagined a different ‘India’. Although each of these ‘Indias’ represented a starkly different vision of the nation, they were consonant for a brief historical moment, thus enabling SITE to come to reality. Their ability to do so depended on framing as monolithic and passive, the one population central to the project, the ‘poor and illiterate’ of India.

Asif Siddiqi
Asif Siddiqi

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Graduate Student William Tanner Smoot Publishes “Sacred Memory and the Formation of Monastic Identity and Friendship in Eadmer of Canterbury’s Vita S. Oswaldi” in Revue Bénédictine.

Graduate Student William Tanner Smoot published “Sacred Memory and the Formation of Monastic Identity and Friendship in Eadmer of Canterbury’s Vita S. Oswaldi,” in Revue Bénédictine, Vol. 130, Issue 2 (2020).

Below is the Abstract:

Between the years of 1113-1116, Prior Nicholas and the monks of St. Mary’s, Worcester, petitioned Eadmer of Canterbury to re-write the vita of their monastic founder St. Oswald. The years preceding this request were a period of hardship for the community of St. Mary’s, as the brethren coped with the burning of their church, the death of monastic elders, and the installation of a royal clerk as bishop of Worcester. In the face of such trials, the monks of Worcester turned to St. Oswald to justify their continued existence and consolidate their corporate identity. Yet, their decision to solicit Eadmer raises questions about the devotional function of the new Vita S. Oswaldi for the brethren of Worcester. While Eadmer modelled his text on Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s eleventh-century biography, he altered the nature of St. Oswald’s sanctity by subordinating the saint’s virtuous development to the leadership of the archbishops Oda and Dunstan of Canterbury. Eadmer incorporated St. Oswald into a new sacred hierarchy, whereby the saint’s virtuous life served to support Canterbury’s contemporary claims to English episcopal primacy. The monks of Worcester had maintained an amiable relationship with Canterbury since the Norman conquest, and Nicholas’s decision to commission Eadmer likewise reflects how the chapter of St. Mary’s perceived itself in relation to Canterbury. Nicholas and the monks of Worcester hoped to benefit from Canterbury’s predominance in the English Church, especially regarding the preservation of their corporate rights and influence in future episcopal elections. This article explores the reception of sacred history in the community of St. Mary’s, Worcester, and the manner in which the brethren used the memory of their corporate past to reaffirm their place, identity, and continuity as a monastic body. It further argues that the episcopal priories of Worcester and Canterbury maintained a historical support network, in which members of each community recast information about St. Oswald and England’s ecclesiastical past to reaffirm bonds of monastic friendship and share in sacred prestige.

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William Tanner Smoot

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Prof. Asif Siddiqi Publishes Book Review, “Transcending Gravity: The View from Postcolonial Dhaka to Colonies in Space,” in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

On October 12, 2020, Prof. Asif Siddiqi published, “Transcending Gravity: The View from Postcolonial Dhaka to Colonies in Space,” in The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Asif Siddiqi

You can follow Prof. Asif Siddiqi on Twitter @historyasif.

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Graduate Student Rachel Podd Publishes “Reconsidering maternal mortality in medieval England: aristocratic Englishwomen, c. 1236–1503” in Continuity and Change.

History graduate student Rachel Podd published her first essay, “Reconsidering maternal mortality in medieval England: aristocratic Englishwomen, c. 1236–1503,” in Continuity and Change.

Below is an abstract of the article:

“The characterisation of medieval childbirth as profoundly dangerous is both long-standing and poorly supported by quantitative data. This article, based on a database tracking the reproductive lives of 102 late medieval aristocratic Englishwomen, allows not only for an evaluation of this trope but also an analysis of risk factors, including maternal youth and short birth intervals. Supplemented with evidence from medieval medical tracts and osteoarchaeological data related to pubertal development and nutrition, this study demonstrates that reproduction was hardly the main driver of mortality among elite women.”

You can find the full paper here.

Rachel Podd

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Professor Christopher Maginn Publishes “Teaching the World of Queen Elizabeth I in the Age of SARS CoV-19” in The Sixteenth Century Journal.

On July 7, 2020, Professor Christopher Maginn has just published an article in a special Early Modern Classroom supplement (2020) devoted to teaching in the era of COVID-19. Below is a link to the piece. Someone may find its discussion of pedagogy useful.

You can read the piece on this link: https://www.escj.org/blog/teaching-world-queen-elizabeth-i-age-sars-cov-19.html

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Professor Nana Osei-Opare published “When It Comes to America’s Race Issues, Russia Is a Bogeyman” in Foreign Policy Magazine.

On July 6, 2020, Fordham history Professor Nana Osei-Opare published an op-ed piece in Foreign Policy Magazine called, “When It Comes to America’s Race Issues, Russia Is a Bogeyman.”

You can read the piece on this link: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/06/when-it-comes-to-americas-race-issues-russia-is-a-bogeyman/

You can follow him on Twitter @NanaOseiOpare.

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Professor Nana Osei-Opare published “Around the world, the U.S. has long been a symbol of anti-black racism” in The Washington Post.

On June 5, 2020, Professor Nana Osei-Opare published, “Around the world, the U.S. has long been a symbol of anti-black racism,” in The Washington Post. You can read it by clicking the link below: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/05/around-world-us-has-long-been-symbol-anti-black-racism/

You can follow him on Twitter @NanaOseiOpare.

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