2006-2008
The Question of the West

The idea of "the West" animates contemporary public discourse. Politicians and journalists deploy it for polemical purposes, calling up a "clash of civilizations" occurring along an East-West divide. The purpose of this seminar was to restore critical consciousness to current debates by exploring the epistemological status of "the West" from a variety of perspectives. We recognize that from many historical, geographical, and cultural vantages, "the West" may not exist at all as a meaningful referent, or it may exist as a popular fantasy or ideological construction. Yet however evanescent "the West" may be as a geographical location, however spurious its claims to constitute "civilization" or to be the source of "universal" values, the consequences of the idea of the West have been profound and lasting. Imperial fictions demand sustained critical attention, especially when their impact is more than merely fictional.

In 2006-2007, the seminar addressed historical issues—the origins of an East-West divide in early modern thought, ideological uses of universalist claims, relationships between narratives of civilization and imperial policies, non-Western alternatives to Western metaphorical mapping, and related topics. In 2007-2008, the seminar considered contemporary questions. Seminar participants worked through the related terms that characterize writings on the subject: rise and fall; tradition and modernity; civilization and barbarism; the local and the global, the secular and the sacred, Orientalism and Occidentalism; consumption, corruption, empire and globalization. They entertained challenges to the history of the East/West divide, took up the still puzzling mix of hope, promise and mechanistic excess tangled inside the heart of the West, and offered insights into the nature of the stakes of a divided world.

2006/2007
Senior Fellows:
Bethel Saler, Department of History, Haverford College
Kathleen Wilson, Department of History, SUNY, Stony Brook
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Carla Nappi, PhD: Department of History, Princeton University
Nancy Khalek, PhD: Department of History, Princeton University

2007/2008
Senior Fellows:
Alastair Bonnett, Department of Geography, University of New Castle, UK
Steven Stoll, Department of History, Fordham University
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Naomi Davidson, PhD: Department of History, University of Chicago
Dejan Lukic, PhD: Department of Anthroplogy, Columbia University

2005-2006
Planetary Perspectives: Approaching World History in an Era of Globalization

In recent decades world history emerged as one of the most visible and dynamic subfields of historical inquiry, and demonstrated a strong appeal to a broader educated public in societies across the globe. The current prominence of this subfield generated wide-ranging debates over methodologies, periodization, and ways of conceptualizing global perspectives. Scholars critiqued established modes of geographical representation as well as highly charged core concepts of historical discourse, such as civilization, primitive, native, progressive, and modern. Even concepts key to the subfield, such as world, global, globalization, and globalism, proved sources of considerable contention. But however contested the terrain of world history has been, it is clear that most practitioners of this approach to disciplinary inquiry share the conviction that it is essential for the education of an informed, cosmopolitan, and engaged citizenry in an age when the processes of globalization are forging a world community with a depth and intensity never before achieved in the human experience. This project focused on ways of conceiving, researching, writing, and teaching global history.

Distinguished Visiting Fellows:
Jerry H. Bentley, Department of History, University of Hawaii; Editor, Journal of World History
Juan Cole, Department of History, University of Michigan
Ross Dunn, Department of History, San Diego State University
Mrinalini Sinha, Departments of History and Women’s Studies, Penn State University
Howard Spodek, Departments of History and Geography/Urban Studies, Temple University

2004-2005
Gendered Passages in Historical Perspective: The Gendering of Children

Our purpose was to encourage interdisciplinary research, conversation, and theoretical synthesis of two fields – the study of children and the study of gender. The juxtaposition of the two fields created a fertile site for developing new approaches to gender, childhood, and the gendering of children. We wished to understand how various analytic levels of gender analysis – the personal, individual, social, and symbolic – relate in the varied historical, geographical, ethnic and racial contexts within which children live.

Senior Fellow:
Michelle A. Massé, Dept. of English, Louisiana State University
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Chantal Tetreault, Ph.D: Dept. of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin
Erica M. Windler, Ph.D: Dept. of History, University of Miami, Coral Gables

2003-2004
Gendered Passages in Historical Perspective: Single Women

This project focused on the experiences of single women — past and present, American and global, rich and poor, educated and illiterate – with the goal of developing educational tools to encourage future policymakers to make the lives of these women more productive, safe, and personally satisfying. The larger concept of this project was the idea of “gendered passages.” Much of people’s lives are dependent on certain socially accepted/constructed markers in life – marriage, parenthood, perhaps educational degree, career. These passages are gendered, occurring at different times and holding different meanings for women than for men. One of the major goals of the project was to complicate these passages within the context of specific biological and social events with particular emphasis on the material culture and historical context surrounding them. Another goal of the RCHA project participants was be to construct an inclusive category of “singleness,” one defined positively to incorporate the diverse situations of women never married, and those once married but then divorced or widowed, yet one that goes beyond defining singleness as “not” married. Singleness was recognized, for many women at least, as a status of choice, not as a marginal or liminal moment of transition from one to another socially approved, politically supported, male-connected designation: daughter, wife, mother, and eventually in good circumstances, desexualized grandmother.

Senior Fellows:
Anne Byrne, Dept. of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland
Amy Froide, Dept. of History. Clark University
Jochen Hellbeck, Dept. of History, Rutgers University
Allyson Poska, Dept. of History, Mary Washington College

2001-2003
Industrial Environments: Creativity and Consequences

Starting with the assumption that the industrial environment is to a remarkable the same as the national environment and encompasses essential characteristics of modern American life, this project has been exploring the relevance of the term "industrial environments" to familiar contexts, as well as to contexts further removed in time and space, beyond factory walls and outside the boundaries of early industrializing Western nations into post-colonial societies. The project had two central objectives: first, to open dialogues among scholars working in the fields of the history of technology, environment, and medicine, and secondly, to carry the dialogues across international boundaries, allowing scholars studying any geography implicated in industrialization an opportunity to contribute.

Looking Back at Indrustrial Environments
2001/2002
Senior Fellow:
Greg Hise, University of Southern California
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Susan Smith-Peter, PhD University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;
Sandra M. Sufian, PhD New York University;
Lynn Swartley, PhD University of Pittsburgh

2002/2003
Senior Fellow:
Kavita Philip, Georgia Institute of Technology
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Erin Elizabeth Clune, PhD New York University;
Jacob Eyferth, PhD Leiden University, the Netherlands;
Lynn Swartley, PhD University of Pittsburgh

1999 – 2001
Utopia, Violence, Resistance: Remaking and Unmaking Humanity

This project explored how different periods and cultures have used utopian visions to advance social and political programs, dedicated to creating “new” humanities, with a focus on the particular links between utopia, violence, and resistance. The purpose of the project was to discover why some utopians employ violence to serve political practice and to examine the cultural and historical roots to such practices. Specific themes included how and why utopias engender boundaries, construct plans, relate to memory and seek total solutions.

1999/2000
Senior Fellows:
Michael Burleigh, University of Wales (Wallenberg);
Scott Spector, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Frank Biess, PhD Brown University;
Jeremy Varon, PhD Cornell University

2000/2001
Senior Fellows:
Glennys Young University of Washington;
Alastair Davidson, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia (Wallenberg)
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Zvi Ben-Dor, PhD University of California, Los Angeles;
Irina Carlota Silber, PhD New York University

1997 – 1999
The Black Atlantic: Race, Nation, and Gender

This project traced the globalization of African culture and the formation of the Black Atlantic since the beginning of the modern slave trade. It aimed to chart a new comparative history of the modern black experience. In mapping the distinctive cultural and political traditions that have shaped the Black Atlantic world, this project put particular emphasis on three broad themes that criss-cross through the history of the Black Atlantic: race, nation, and gender.

1997/1998
Senior Fellow:
David Brown, Emory University
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Michele Mitchell, PhD Northwestern University;
Anne Bailey, PhD University of Pennsylvania

1998/1999
Senior Fellow:
Clair Cone Robertson, Ohio State University
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Christopher Brown, PhD Oxford University, England;
Jason McGill, PhD Loyola University

1995 – 1997
Varieties of Religious Experience

This project aimed to chart a new, comparative history of the varieties of spiritual experience. Specifically, the project sought to address the relation between self-expression and self-transcendence, and the relation between religion as a doctrine of universal love and redemption and as the basis of exclusivity and aggression.

1995/1996
Senior Fellow:
James Gilbert, University of Maryland
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Elizabeth McAlister, PhD Yale University;
Jacob Meskin, PhD Princeton University
1996/1997
Senior Fellow:
Marcia K. Hermansen, San Diego State University
Postdoctoral Fellow:
Elizabeth Castelli, PhD Barnard College, Columbia University

1993 – 1995
War, Peace, and Society in Historical Perspective

This project encouraged comparative studies of socio-cultural relationships between war and society, more particularly the impact of war, preparation for war, and preparation for peace upon various aspects of society and culture including cultural attitudes, conditions of class, race, ethnicity, and gender, and the process of state-building.

1993/1994
Senior Fellows:
Stephen Ambrose, Univ. of New Orleans;
Ronald Spector, George Washington Univ.
Postdoctoral Fellow:
Pamela S. Haag, PhD Yale University

1994/1995
Senior Fellows:
Carole Fink, Ohio State University;
Barbara Engel, University of Colorado;
Jay M. Winter, Cambridge University, England
Postdoctoral Fellow:
Heide Fehrenbach, PhD Colgate University

1991 – 1993
Consumer Cultures in Historical Perspectives

This project moved beyond the conventional debates about mass consumption as a site alternatively of domination or resistance, manipulation or opposition. This project was concerned with how the differing nature of consumption under diverse regimes – whether private or public, individualistic or collectively planned – affects people’s expectations about what they are entitled to, the means they use to organize, and the ways political elites cast their appeal.

1991/1992
Senior Fellows:
Avner Offer, University of York;
Kathy Peiss, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Postdoctoral Fellows:
David Kuchta, PhD University of California, Berkeley;
Richard Smith, PhD East-West Center, Honolulu

1992/1993
Senior Fellows:
Rachel Bowlby, Sussex University, England; Ellen Furlough, Kenyon College
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Timothy Burke,PhD Johns Hopkins University;
Belinda Davis, PhD University of Michigan

1989 – 1991
The Historical Constructions of Identities

The purpose of this project was to explore the way identity formation is shaped by the peculiarities of particular cultures, situations, and historical dynamics. The aim was to create an understanding of the way historically constructed individual and collective identities shape the current discussions of domestic and international issues. The ultimate goal of this project was to provide new approaches to the study of identities, and demonstrate how history and other disciplines can benefit by incorporating a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of identities.

1989/1990
Senior Fellows:
Roger Bartra, Mexico’s Institute of Social Research;
Tamás Hofer, Hungarian Academy of Sciences;
Robert Nye, Professor of History at Oklahoma University, E.P. Thompson
Postdoctoral Fellows:
George Chauncey, PhD Yale University;
Jacqueline Urla, PhD University of California, Berkeley

1990/1991
Senior Fellows:
Rhys Isaac, Professor of History, La Trobe University, Australia;
Robert Thornton, Professor of Anthropology, University of Cape Town, South Africa;
Philip Nord, Princeton University
Postdoctoral Fellows:
Marjorie Beale, PhD University of California, Berkeley;
John Burdick, PhD CUNY Graduate Center