Fordham History’s Professor Kirsten Swinth was quoted in a recent article at The Wrap on youth culture, feminism, and the response to the Manchester suicide bombing attack at an Ariana Grande concert on May 22. The article, which you can read here, was written by Ashley Boucher and published on May 25.
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Filed under Faculty News, Public History
The History Department congratulates our 2017 graduates! We’re sad to see you go, but proud of all you have accomplished. Good luck historians!
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Filed under Alumni News, Events, Grad Student News
The History Department is Proud to Announce our 2017 History Colloquium Conference, to be held on Tuesday May 16 from 4-8PM in the McNally Amphitheater, Lincoln Center Campus.
The schedule will be as follows:
Panel 1: Twentieth Century Transnational Human Rights & Migration (4:00-5:00)
Lisa Betty, “‘Jamaiquinos en Cuba’: The Transregional Migration of Jamaicans to Cuba in the 20th Century”
William Hogue, “Proxy-Wars of Religion: US Neoliberal Theology and Central American Revolutions”
Nicholas DeAntonis, “The International Struggle to End the Saudi Arabian Slave Trade: The British Anti-Slavery Society, the United Nations, and the African-American Press, 1953-1960”
Panel II: Culture and Politics in Twentieth Century New York (5:00-5:45)
Jordyn May, “Votes for Women: The Visual Culture of the Suffrage Movement in New York”
Nicole Siegel, “God of Vengeance: Indecent?”
Break: 5:45-6:00
Panel III: State & Society (6:00-7:00)
Thomas Schellhammer, “The Evolution of the Third Republic and its Army: French Military Reforms and Society, 1871-1914”
Patrick Nolan, “Crimes and Punishments: Hanjian Trials After the Second Sino-Japanese War.”
Scott Brevda, “In the Eyes of My Father: Germany, Armenia, and the Morgenthau Plan”
Panel IV: Eighteenth-Century Politics and Culture (7:00:7:45)
Micheal Wootton, “French Perceptions of the American Revolution and Early Republic.”
Glauco Schettini, “Between Reform and Revolution: Jews, Public Utility, and National Belonging in Late Eighteenth-Century Italy.”
Reception to follow.
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Filed under Department Events, Grad Student News
My time at Harvard has been absolutely fabulous. I have had the chance to work with amazing colleagues, students, and have taken advantage of all the resources available to faculty members. While the contract was renewable for up to three years, I decided to jump at the opportunity at Texas State.My book, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture: Clashing with Fascism, is under contract with Bloomsbury Academic, and will be published in 2018 (the cover of my book and a photo is here: http://scholar.harvard.edu/valencia/about). I’m particularly excited to start moving my own research to a focus on knowledge creation, youth culture, and activism in the digital age by researching HIV/AIDS research and knowledge distribution in Europe in the 1980s/90s. Currently, I am also a Research Editor for the new monthly digital journal of the Council for European Studies at Columbia University, EuropeNow (europenowjournal.org). I am expecting articles to be published in Contemporary European History and European Comic Art, amongst others. I am also contributing an article to Asif Siddiqi and Simon Reynold’s upcoming volume, One-Track Mind.
Louie Valencia-García’s new book, forthcoming from Bloomsbury.
The new job means a lot to Louie: he graduated from Texas State University in 2007 with degrees in the European Studies and Spanish Literature, as well as minors in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and International Studies. He was the student commencement speaker, and he is “beyond excited to come home.” Of course we’re beyond excited too, and proud of our graduate. Way to go Louie!
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Filed under Alumni News, Grad Student News
On Friday, May 5 students of the Medieval Political Cultures Conference staged a successful half-day conference presenting the research conducted over the 2016-7 academic year. The students had organized the conference over the past weeks, putting together a program of four panels of papers that drew out common themes across their respective research projects. Each panel consisted of three papers, with ample time for questions at the end of each. They addressed a large audience of their peers from Fordham’s medieval graduate programs, Fordham faculty, distinguished visitors, and their friends and family. For pictures from the conference and commentary that was posted on social media, you can read the storify here or follow it below.
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Filed under Uncategorized
Each year the Seminar course in Medieval History holds a mini-conference to exhibit the works of our medieval history students. This year’s conference will take place on Friday, May from 9:30AM until 2PM in the Campbell Multipurpose Room, Campbell Hall on the Rose Hill Campus. Snacks and refreshments will be served. Come along, all are welcome!
Sessions and papers are as follows:
Panel I: From East to West 9:30-10:30
Meghan Kase – Conditrix Augusta: The Architectural Patronage of the Empress Theophano
Hannah Graham – Space and Demonstrations of Power in the Architecture of the Principality of Achaia
Andrew Kayaian – “Fullness of Power”: The Ecclesiology of Innocent III and Papal Relations with the Armenian Church and State
Panel II: Locality and the Sacred 10:30-11:30
Michael Lipari – “Where the Word of God Does Not Have Root”: The Archbishop of Reims and the Nobility of Champagne in the 13th Century
Jake Prescott – Neither North nor South: The Limousin as a Distinct Cultural Space c. 1220
Martin Nelson – “Such a Splendor of Brightness:” The Establishment of Knud Lavard’s Cult at Ringsted in Religious Narrative
Panel III: Locality and the Secular 12:00-1:00
Stephen Powell – The Pen is Mightier than the Earl’s Sword: The De Laude Cestrie and the Formation of an Independent Cestrian Political Identity
Andrew Thornbrooke – “A Power Above You”: Concepts of Autonomy in the Letters of Pope Innocent III and Guilhem VIII of Montpellier
Sally Gordon – Win the War – Buy Bonds! City-States, Princes, and Sovereign Debt in the Age of Edward I
Panel IV: Borders and Frontiers 1:00-2:00
Michael J. Sanders – Forgotten Roads to Jerusalem: The Iter per Hispaniam According to Ramon Llull and Garcías de Ayerbe
Joseph McKenna – On the Stage of Acre: The Players and Their Roles during the Siege
Rebecca Katharine-Fionna Bartels – Remembering the Truth: The Political Sacrality of Aleppo in 12th Century Islamic Historiography
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Filed under Department Events, Events, Grad Student News
Congratulations to Fordham alumnus Dr. Ryan Keating for his recent award as “Outstanding Junior Faculty Member.” Dr. Keating received his Ph.D from Fordham in 2013 for his dissertation, “’Give Us War in Our Time’: America’s Irish Communities in the Civil War Era.” He is an assistant professor at California State University San Bernardino in sunny southern California where he received the annual award.
On top of showing his Fordham trained teaching chops, Dr. Keating has become an administrative asset for CSUSB. He was named Dean’s Fellow and charged with coordinating the college’s assessment policies. He also co-chairs the University’s Graduation Initiative.
This does little to detract form his own research it seems, as Dr. Keating has found time to publish two forthcoming books on top of his other projects. The first book, Shades of Green: Irish Reginments, American Soldiers, and Local Communities in the Civil War Era is a social history that traces the soldiers who served in three Irish regiments from Connecticut, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and moves the historical discussion of 19th century Irish immigration away from major urban centers to illustrate ways in which immigrants across the nation understood their place in 19th century America and the meaning of their service in the Civil War. 
His second book, The Greatest Trial I Ever Had: The Civil War Letters of Margaret and Thomas Cahill will be an edited collection of letters written by Thomas Cahill, Colonel of the 9th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, and his wife, Margaret, during the Civil War. This collection represents the largest corpus of letters written by an Irish-American woman during this period to ever be published. The collection also shows the unique perspective on the war from the 9th Connecticut, an Irish regiment that was stationed in the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana throughout the war, during occupational duty in the south. With these two soon-to-be-published works in his rearview mirror, Dr. Keating has focused on an upcoming study of 500 union veterans who relocated to southern California after their muster out of northern armies.
Once again, congratulations to Dr. Keating on his outstanding award and we will all be looking forward to his future publications!
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Filed under Alumni News, Publications, Teaching
(l-r) Wolfgang Mueller, Kristin Uscinski, David Myers and Maryanne Kowaleski
This past week Kristin Uscinski successfully defended her dissertation, entitled “Recipes for Women’s Healthcare in Medieval England”. Kristin’s mentor was Professor Maryanne Kowaleski, her readers were Professors Wolfgang Mueller and David Myers and Examiners were Professors Claire Gherini and Nicholas Paul.
In addition to defending, Kristin’s research also got a great write-up in Fordham News– go check it out!
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Filed under Doctoral Defenses, Grad Student News
GSAS Award Winners 2016: (l-r) Jonathan Wood (Alumni Dissertation Fellowship), Sal Cipriano (Senior Teaching Fellowship), Melissa Arredia (GSAS Summer Fellowship), Jeffrey Doolittle (Research Fellowship), Michael Sanders (ACHA Assistantship), Elizabeth Stack (Higher Education Learning Junior Fellow), Christopher Rose (Vice President, Graduate Student Association)
Last week the Fordham Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) held their annual award ceremony for winners of fellowships and prizes administered internally at Fordham. This year’s was a special ceremony, as the GSAS also celebrated its Centennial. GSAS Dean Eva Badowska spoke about the history of the Graduate School and unveiled a digital timeline of its history. Read on to find out more about our award winners in 2016 & 2017.
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Filed under Grad Student News, Student Awards
This last year, the department’s own Professor Rosemary Wakeman published her examination of the twentieth-century new town movement with the University of Chicago Press. Practicing Utopia: An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement tracks the global phenomenon as it ignored traditional political and geographic boundaries as each location strived for its own vision of an idealized city.
Discussing another historian’s work, from its inception to completion and the problems they encounter along the way, personally helps me realize my own research may be more fantastic reality rather than realistic fantasy (you mean I’m not the only one who feels like they spend more time than necessary getting archival permission?). Thankfully, Dr. Wakeman was able to take some time away from her schedule to discuss with me the process and problems for Practicing Utopia.
History Department: So how did the research for this book begin?
Rosemary Wakeman: Like many projects, I begin research while writing on Paris and its postwar development. The housing crisis and new towns in the Paris region led to the overwhelming sources on new towns in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia. It was impossible not to follow the trail.
HD: So what began in Paris developed into a worldwide study? How long did it take then to write the book?
RM: The book was written during a year-long fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Wassenaar, the Netherlands. Another 8+ months followed hunting for images and permissions, working with the editors at the University of Chicago Press to put together the final version.
HD: As a book that developed from Paris into a worldwide study, where does this fit into your overall research?
RM: My longstanding interest is in European urban history, especially the second half of the 20th century. The new towns book gave me the chance to explore urban history, architecture and urban planning in central and eastern Europe.
HD: Did exploring these topics then lead you into any new avenues of research?
RM: This has led to a new project on An Urban History of Europe, 1815 to the Present, which will be published by Bloomsbury Press. Another upcoming project speaks to my interest in continuing a global perspective and will examine the connections between Bombay, London, and Shanghai in the mid-20th century.
HD: It sounds like the trail hasn’t ended then. Have there been any bumps in that trail, such as problems that kept you awake at night dreading some aspect of the project?
RM: What kept me up at night was the choice of which new towns and architect-planners to include in the book and how to organize them around an intellectual history. Finding images and permissions was also difficult. Nonetheless, the project was an opportunity to be in contact with archivists and researchers in new towns literally all over the world. This was an immense pleasure and one of the great benefits of doing historical research.
Thanks so much to Professor Wakeman for taking the time to answer our questions.
When she is not away writing wonderful books, Professor Wakeman teaches frequently in the History graduate program and has served as Director of the O’Connell Initiative in the History of Global Capitalism.
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Filed under Faculty News, Faculty Profiles, Publications
