Tag Archives: social history

Grad Student Publications, A Summer Series: Pt. 3 Louisa Foroughi

Students in Fordham’s MA and PhD programs produce original research of the highest quality, and are encouraged to publish this work when and where it is appropriate during their time in the program. The academic year 2016-2017 saw the appearance of articles by a number of our students in different peer-reviewed volumes and journals. We asked our students who published their work to tell us a little bit about the articles and the writing process and we’ll feature these students and their publications in a short blog series.

Doctoral candidate Louisa Foroughi

This week we highlight the work of Louisa Foroughi, a PhD candidate mentored by Dr. Maryanne Kowaleski. Louisa recently published a book chapter entitled “‘If yt be a nacion’: Vernacular Scripture and English Nationhood in Columbia University Library, Plimpton MS 259.” The chapter was published in the collection Europe After Wyclif, edited by  J. Patrick Hornbeck II and Michael van Dussen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), pp. 265-287. .

Louisa’s work puts two heretical tracts from fifteenth-century England into their social and religious context. These two tracts were likely written as part of a series of debates over bible translation that took place at Oxford in the late fourteenth century, sparked by the reformer John Wyclif. His ideas and the English bible produced by his followers were both condemned as heretical by Archbishop Arundel in 1407, but, as Louisa’s work shows, interest in and desire for an English bible continued through the end of the fifteenth century.

The story of how Louisa came to write this piece is a tale of true interdisciplinarity, and it underscores the dynamic nature of medieval studies at Fordham. Louisa found these tracts, one of them previously unknown to scholars, during a manuscript studies class led by Dr. Susanne Hafner that she took in the first semester of her master’s degree at Fordham’s Center for Medieval Studies. She subsequently presented a talk about the tracts at a conference organized at Fordham by J. Patrick Hornbeck II of Fordham’s Department of Theology and Michael van Dussen of McGill University, and her work was published in the peer-reviewed edited collection of papers that developed out of that conference. Louisa’s archival research on the owners of the tracts during summer 2014 led her to develop a dissertation project that explores the tastes and self-construction of yeomen in late medieval England, a project that has been generously funded by Fordham’s History Department and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Congrats, Louisa! We look forward to reading about more exciting discoveries from the archives.
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Graduate Courses in History, Fall 2016

The History Department is excited to announce our lineup of Fall Courses for 2016. As always, the courses reflect the depth of expertise of our faculty and the rich variety of themes and perspectives on offer in our program. The full complement of six courses in Medieval, Early Modern, Modern European, and US history (with one course offering a global perspective on US history) is designed to provide all of our students with opportunities to pursue periods, areas, and subjects of interest to them. Medievalists can begin their year-long proseminar/seminar sequence, while other students identify topics and mentors for their final research papers.

 

Students should remember to contact the director of graduate studies before making their selections.

HIST 5411 Gender and Sexuality in Early America (Mondays, 5:30-7:20)

From Professor Doron Ben-Atar,  author of the recent book, Taming Lust: Crimes Against Nature in the Early Republic, comes this new course offering, encompassing “readings in the history of gender and sexuality discourse in Early America and the British Atlantic world of the 17th and 18th centuries.” Students of US History and the history of gender and sexuality

HIST 5506 European Nationalisms and Early Modern (Jewish) History (Mondays, 3:30-5:20)

One of our newest faculty members, and the department’s first Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies and director of Jewish Studies at Fordham, Magda Teter presents her first graduate course at Fodham in Fall 2016.

From the course description:

Modern historiography, including Jewish historiography, and history as an academic discipline are products of modern national movements. The narratives they produced provide tools for shaping national and ethnic identities in the modern era, and had long lasting ramifications not only for the study of history but also for the inclusion or exclusion of specific groups in modern European societies. This course will explore how the writing of history has been linked to the larger questions of national identity, and nationalism, and to questions of political inclusion and exclusions. We will read the early Jewish historians of Germany, Poland, and Palestine/Israel and explore how their visions of premodern Jewish history were shaped by larger questions that were also occupying other European historians and intellectuals.

HIST 5915 US and Latin American Borderlands (Wednesdays 3:30-7:20)

Professor Salvador Acosta is another history faculty member with a new book out:  Sanctioning Marriage: Interethnic Marriage in the Arizona Borderlands. As the title implies, Professor Acosta is a leading authority on the history of the US and its borders, especially with Latin America. As the description of his course explains,

This course explores the concept of the borderlands, i.e., the political and geographic spaces where groups of people meet and interact. Individuals enter these areas with acquired cultural and ideological backgrounds that undergo transformations as they encounter different customs and worldviews. The course focuses on United States and Latin American history, in particular, on the roles of nation building and its concomitant identity construction. It uses various categories of analysis, such as race, gender, and hegemony, to discuss the interaction among groups of people as they meet along political and geographic borders.

HIST 6530 The European City 1700-2000 (Thursdays 5:30-7:20)

Professor Rosemary Wakeman is the director of Urban Studies at Fordham, who has published on the history of French cities, including books on the cities of Toulouse and Paris and is currently working on the history of the New Town Movement.

From the course description:

This course concentrates on theoretical and interpretive approaches to the study of the city and urban life. It considers the transformation of urban space and culture from the eighteenth century to the present during which commercial capitalism, industrialization, and massive human migration remade basic social and cultural relationships. Among the key factors of investigation are class and mass culture, gender, production and consumption, accumulation and cultural display, architecture and planning, and the evolution of urban space and topography.

HIST 6152 Medieval Women and the Family (Tuesdays, 3;30-5:20)

Professor Maryanne Kowaleski is the former director of Medieval Studies at Fordham and former President of the Medieval Academy of America. Fresh from a year’s research leave at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Professor Kowaleski will offer the medieval elective course covering the critical areas of social, economic, and gender history.

From the course description:

This course surveys recent historiography on the roles and status of women in medieval society, as well as the structures and dynamics of medieval families.  Among the debates to be explored are the effect on medieval society of the Christian Church’s teachings on virginity, sex, and marriage, and the influence of geography (northern vs Mediterranean Europe), environment (village, town, and convent), and status (noble, bourgeois, or peasant) on the work, family role, and authority of women. Chronologically the course will range from the early Christian period to the Renaissance. Recent scholarly work on nuns, mystics, and beguines will be examined, and readings will also cover different approaches to the study of women and family, including the methodologies of literary scholars, demographers, feminists, and legal historians.

HIST 7056 Proseminar: Medieval Political Cultures (Wednesdays 5-7:20PM) 

When he is not wearing the hat of Director of Graduate Studies in the History Department, Professor Nicholas Paul is a historian of the medieval aristocracy, the crusades, and medieval political culture. In 2016-7 he will offer the Proseminar/Seminar sequence, a year long course that allows medievalists a full semester to master the historiography on a given topic. With the topic and extensive background reading in hand, students will spend the Spring semester conducting research and writing their final papers. The course description explains:

This course, the first part of a two-semester proseminar/seminar sequence will introduce students to recent debates and different approaches to cultures of power and political processes in western Europe in the central middle ages. Among the many topics we might consider are: lordship, status and the sources of political authority; the origins and significance of consultative assemblies; the rituals and rhetoric of courtliness and persuasion; the relationship between rulership and sanctity; and the rise of accountability. Through in-class presentations and discussions, students will become familiar with a wide range of source material, from diplomatic and documentary collections to historical narratives and courtly literature.

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New Directions in Early Modern and Modern History: The 2015 Fordham Graduate Colloquium Conference, May 8 4PM

The History Department is pleased to announce the schedule for the 2015 Graduate Colloquium Conference “New Directions in Early Modern and Modern History”. The conference will take place on Friday May 8 at 4PM in Walsh Library 040.Presentations cover evenly almost the whole period from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, with presenters addressing topics as diverse as royal succession and government in Tudor England, torture and public disorder in Colonial America, and mass consumption, labor justice, and education in the modern US. Read on for the conference schedule and paper abstracts…

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Durba Mitra wins Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Penn Humanities Forum, 2015-6

DMitraThe History Department is proud to announce that in 2015-16, Dr. Durba Mitra will be the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral fellow at the Penn Humanities Forum and the University of Pennsylvania. The theme for the 2015-16 Penn Humanities Forum is “Sex.” Mitra will be working on her book manuscript, tentatively entitled “Sex and The New Science of Society in Colonial Eastern India.” In her book, she explores the significance of female sexuality to the making of social thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in eastern India. The book explores how colonial authorities and Bengali intellectuals invoked claims to “scientificity” about female sex in the constitution of new legal codes, modes of evidence, and social theories about Indian society. You can read more about her research plans here. Congratulations on this exciting fellowship, Dr. Mitra! 

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Inaugural HGSA Research Seminar: Lucy Barnhouse, Sept 25

Lucy presentationThursday, September 25 the History Graduate Student Association (HGSA) will launch their new Research Seminar with a presentation by PhD candidate Lucy Barnhouse entitled “Nuns, Lepers and Archivists: Designing (and Redesigning) a Dissertation”. The presentation will be held at 6 pm in Dealy 202. Read on for details of the talk and the new seminar series.

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New Book Confronts Bestiality, Society, and the Law in Early American History

tamingLustimageThe Fordham History Department celebrate the publication of an exciting new book by one of our most distinguished faculty, Professor Doron S. Ben-Atar. Taming Lust:  Crimes Against Nature in the Early Republic, which Professor Ben-Atar wrote together with Richard D. Brown, begins as an inquiry into two separate cases of bestiality brought before the courts in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the 1790s.  Continue reading

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