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Professor Mestyan Organizes Arabic Digital Humanities workshop

With the support of the History Department and many centres, Mestyan has organized (with Sean Swanick the Duke Middle East Librarian) this workshop on Arabic Digital Humanities, focusing on Arabic periodicals, on 12 November 2016 with great connecting events, like Prof. Hala Auji’s (AUB) talk on American missionaries printing Arabic books in 19th-century Beirut, 14 November 2016 (lunchtime talk). A link to the detailed program and participants can be seen here.   read more »

Franklin Gallery@History Exhibits Opening 19 October in Carr

John Hope Franklin was one of the best well-known and influential scholars of his era and broke countless professional barriers along the way. Franklin was also the definition of a public intellectual, continuously lending his scholarship and influence to causes beyond the walls of academia. This exhibition explores John Hope Franklin’s indelible imprint on the classroom, the institution, his public and private relationships, and his life’s work of utilizing history and knowledge to cultivate a better human society. The… read more »

Farren Yero Awarded Fulbright-Hays Fellowship

Farren Yero was awarded the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship for her project "Brazo-a-Brazo: Humanitarian Medicine and the Preservation of Empire, 1767-1871." Her dissertation examines the introduction and circulation of new medical technologies intended to manage epidemic disease between Spain, Cuba, and Mexico. By tracing the health campaigns as they unfolded throughout the empire's institutions of charity, it considers how religious and… read more »

Ashley Rose Young Curates Exhibit at the Rubenstein Library

Ashley Rose Young recently opened an exhibit, “A Delicate Balance: Understanding the Four Humors”, located in the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The exhibit details the medical philosophy of the four humors in which every person has a unique humoral composition that shapes her behavior, appearance, and interactions with the broader world. Young recently published a blog post providing a glimpse into the fascinating world of the four humors, which… read more »

Travis Knoll - Reflection on Summer Experience

Travis Knoll received a Graduate Student Training Enhancement Grant to serve as an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia this summer. He focused on issues ranging from Brazil’s internal political scene to the key role the country’s foreign policy plays in the region and beyond. Now back on campus, he shared this update. https://sites.duke.edu/interdisciplinary/2016/09/08/immersive-experience-in-brazilian-government-informs-history-dissertation/ read more »

Pioneers at Duke - Crystal Sanders

Crystal Sanders remembers Chris Paul calling her in the spring of her senior year in high school.  Chris, also a high school senior, met Crystal at a finalist weekend at Duke for the prestigious Robertson Scholarship.  He knew she was the “real deal.”  He also knew she had her heart set on attending Spelman College and took it upon himself to convince Crystal that her gifts were better suited to Duke.  And fortunately, his strategy worked! http://baldwinscholars.duke.edu/sfSimpleCMS/show/slug/pioneers/… read more »

Glymph's Book Honored As Among The Best Book on Slavery

"About Great Books," an increasingly influential site, has included Glymph's compelling and lyrical Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household, published by Cambridge University Press, among the best books on slavery. Out of the House of Bondage remains a revelation; it offers many important insights into the history of race and gender, slavery and freedom, and class in nineteenth-century America. If you haven't yet had a chance to read it, this is a… read more »

Sumathi Ramaswamy Publishes Husain's Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation

Husain’s Raj: Visions of Empire and Nation has just been published by the Marg Foundation of Mumbai. This work, aimed at a broad readership, focuses on a series of paintings by the Indian modernist Maqbool Fida Husain in which he, at times playfully, offered a postcolonial commentary on the Raj. Dr. Ramaswamy presents a new and intriguingly fresh reading of these important paintings, not only demonstrating how important visual evidence is for our understanding of the past but also offering new ways of thinking… read more »

In Memoriam Dr. Raymond Gavins

The History Department mourns the loss of our beloved colleague, friend, and mentor, Dr. Raymond Gavins. He passed away on Sunday, May 22, 2016 at Duke University Hospital. Dr. Gavins was a dedicated scholar and devoted his time to mentoring his students throughout a forty-five year career. He will be sorely missed.   Entombment:      Sunset Memorial Gardens                              3174 U.S. Hwy #158 Business (Old Oxford… read more »

The Duke History Department Congratulates its Honors Students!

KATHERINE CHERNOVA Histories and Historiographies of Juvenile Delinquency in Nineteenth-Century England Advisor: Prof. Susan Thorne STEVEN HEER The Effects of Western Land Speculation on the American Revolution Advisor: Prof. Vasant Kaiwar MARK HOLLINGSWORTH Media and the Creation of National Identity: East and West Germany and the Rebellion of 17 June 1953 Advisor: Prof. James Chappel REID MAXMIN British Double Agents and Operation Fortitude:  A New… read more »

Meaghan Kachadoorian’s essay Radical Aesthetics: Posters of the Chilean Solidarity Movement won the 2016 Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Prize

Integrating a rich array of images, interviews, contemporaneous news reports, and scholarly literature, “Radical Aesthetics” analyzes the visual content and political framing of protests against the 1973 US-backed coup against Salvador Allende’s government in Chile.  Although they shared a commitment to human rights and socialist ideals, the messages of posters in the USA, the Netherlands and East Germany varied according to the political systems endorsed by their respective governments. read more »

Cooper Awarded Mellon Research Fellowship at the Virginia Historical Society and Lewis P. Jones Fellowship at the South Carolinian Library

At the Virginia Historical Society, Mandy Cooper plan to continue research on her dissertation, "Cultures of Emotion: Families, Friends, and the Making of the United States," which focuses on the role of families in the larger project of nation building in the United States between 1800 and 1860. I'll be examining the business and personal correspondence, diaries, and account books of several members of a prominent family network centered in the South and spreading across both the U.S. and the Atlantic - the Coles… read more »