To study cultural history at Duke is to question methodological orthodoxies and engage the challenge of writing history in vibrant and multi-faceted ways. Coursework in method, theory, and interpretation explore the impact of Critical and Social Theory, Cultural Anthropology, and Literary analysis on the making of Cultural History and its methodology. Learning different analytical frameworks and interpretive skills, applying them to different mediums (text, image, film), and historicizing the formation of cultural history constitute crucial vectors in students’ training. The conversation about pressing methodological and interpretive questions continues virtually in all courses offered by the department when students critically explore limits and possibilities of novel and established categories of historical analysis as well as academic discourses on power, knowledge, empire, nation, state, race, citizenship, womanhood, and manhood. The rich corpus of interpretive tools that cultural historians have produced over past few decades thus serves as an effective languages of intellectual exchange and inquiry and brings together an active scholarly community that works across a broad range of geographical areas and thematic subfields, such as gender history, legal history, military history, history of race and ethnicity, labor history, intellectual history, transnational and comparative colonial history.
Cultural History
People
Nicole Elizabeth Barnes, Assistant Professor of History
Office: 114 Campus Drive, 226 Carr Building, Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708-0719
Phone: (919) 684-8102
I research public health and medicine in twentieth-century China from a gendered perspective, incorporating the changing life stories of men and women into my analysis of how health regulations and medical practices reflect Chinese society's principal values as well as the assumptions and political... full profile »
Juliana Barr, Associate Professor of History
Associate Professor Juliana Barr received her M.A. and Ph.D. (1999) in American women’s history from the University of Wisconsin Madison and her B.A. (1988) from the University of Texas at Austin. She joined the Duke University Department of History in 2015 after teaching at Rutgers University and... full profile »
Dirk Bonker, Associate Professor in the Department of History
Office: 208 Classroom Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-3930
I am a historian of the United States and Germany, who focuses on questions of militarism, warfare, and empire in the long twentieth century. In my work, I also address larger questions about how best to "globalize" and "internationalize" U.S and German histories in the modern age. full profile »
Prasenjit Duara, Oscar L. Tang Family Distinguished Professor of East Asian Studies
Prasenjit Duara is the Oscar Tang Chair of East Asian Studies at Duke University. He was born and educated in India and received his PhD in Chinese history from Harvard University. He was previously Professor and Chair of the Dept of History and Chair of the Committee on Chinese Studies at the... full profile »
Laurent Dubois, Professor of History
Office: 213 Language Center, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 660-3112
I am a specialist on the history and culture of the Atlantic world, with a focus on the Caribbean and particularly Haiti. I am the faculty director of the Forum for Scholars and Publics at Duke University, and write for magazines including the New Republic, Sports Illustrated, and the New Yorker. I... full profile »
Anna Krylova, Associate Professor in the Department of History
Office: 209 Carr Bldg, Durham, NC 27710
Phone: (919) 684-3871
Anna Krylova is Associate Professor of Modern Russian History at Duke University. She works on twentieth-century Russia and the challenges posed in envisioning and building a socialist alternative in the age of industrial and post-industrial modernity and globalization. Questions of historical... full profile »
Jehangir Malegam, Associate Professor of History
Office: 319 Carr Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Cecilia Marquez, Assistant Professor of History
Cecilia Márquez is an Assistant Professor in History and previously taught Latino/a Studies at New York University. She earned her MA and PhD in American History at the University of Virginia. She also holds a BA in Black Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies from Swarthmore College. Her first... full profile »
Adam Mestyan, Assistant Professor of History
Office: Office 318; 114 Campus Drive, Carr Building (East Campus), Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-2343
Adam Mestyan is a historian of the modern Arab world, whose research and teaching focus on the global social history of nation-state building, nationalism, and sovereignty in the region from the late Ottoman period until today. He was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and recipient... full profile »
Martin A. Miller, Professor of History
Office: 337 Carr Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-3575
Professor Miller's interests are in Modern Russian history, the history of psychoanalysis in Russia, and comparative and international terrorist movements. full profile »
Kristen Neuschel, Associate Professor of History
Office: 233 Carr Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-2437
Dr. Neuschel concentrates on late medieval and early modern France and Europe. Her current research focuses on war and culture in northern Europe between 1400 and 1600. She teaches courses in the history of war, of gender relations and surveys of the history of medieval and early modern Europe. full profile »
Simon Partner, Professor of History
Office: 303 Classroom Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-5464
Late 19th and 20th-century Japanese history Focusing on: growth of consumer markets; technology and social change; Japanese rural society full profile »
Sumathi Ramaswamy, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History
Office: Dept of History, 325 Carr Bldg, Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-5764
I am a cultural historian of South Asia and the British Empire and my research over the last few years has been largely in the areas of visual studies, the history of cartography, and gender. My recent publications in this area include The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India (Duke... full profile »
William M. Reddy, William T. Laprade Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History
Office: 314 Classroom Bldg, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 684-2497
Most recent book-- The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900-1200 CE (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Awarded the Pinkney Prize for best book in French History, 2012, by... full profile »
Thomas Robisheaux, Professor of History
Office: 202 Carr Bldg, Department of History, Durham, NC 27708-0719
Phone: (919) 684-5979
As an historian of early modern Europe Dr. Robisheaux has particular interests in social and cultural history, German-speaking Central Europe, Renaissance culture, religious reform, popular religion and culture, and microhistory. Author of The Last Witch of Langenburg and Rural Society and the... full profile »
Peter Sigal, Professor in the Department of History
Office: 234 Classroom Building, Durham, NC 27708
The relationships between gender, sexuality, and colonialism have intrigued me since I began my first book on Maya sexuality. I recently completed a study on the interaction of writing and sexual representation in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Nahua societies--The Flower and the Scorpion:... full profile »
Philip J. Stern, Gilhuly Family Professor
Office: History Dept, Durham, NC 27708
Phone: (919) 668-1695
My work focuses on the history of Britain and the British Empire, particularly in the early modern period (loosely defined). My first book, The Company-State, is a political and intellectual history of the English East India Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I am currently... full profile »