Other RCHA Projects
2008-2010 Vernacular Epistemologies Project Directors: Indrani Chatterjee and Julie Livingston This two-year interdisciplinary project sought to get beyond the implicit homogenization of thought, performance and subjectivities implied by the contemporary ethos of development and globalization. It refocused attention on practices and forms of knowledge that diverge from, challenge, entangle with, and complicate fundamental categories or apparatuses identifiable with Enlightenment. In thinking of and with ‘vernacular’ practices and epistemes, this seminar remained mindful of the processes by which particular categories and performances were rendered ‘parochial’ or ‘local’ by taxonomic projects of others. Implicated in contest, incorporation, translation, vernacular categories also shifted shape. This project considered as broadly as possible the ways in which the vernaculars were formed, change, shift and inform other practices and concerns, and remain visible, even discordant, thereafter. The intent was to foreground histories that bring such discrepant, ‘narrow’, secreted categories to bear on an interrogation of current disciplinary norms and debates. The first year (2008-2009) engaged discussions around vernacular categories of Time and Value. The seminar studied these pluralities in their specific articulations – as art, music, in narrations of ritual and social import, in economic transactions and calculations. Participants explored processes through which such categories co-constituted each other, or structured relationships between ethics and economics, political and social exchanges and distribution, between facticity, numeracy and regimes of truth. The second year (2009-2010) discussed Body and Soul/Mind. Taking the cue from experiential and analytic categories from the global south as well as early modern European scholarship that tracks the emergence and gap between intellectual modeling and daily experience of bodily and spiritual life, the project sought to better understand these overdetermined rubrics and the binaries in which they are posited. 2008/2009 Senior Fellows: Leslie Witz (University of the Western Cape, Capetown) (Spring 2009) Postdoctoral Fellows: Moses Chikowero (Ph.D.: Dalhousie University, Halifax, 2008) Prista Ratanapruck (Ph.D.: Harvard, 2008) 2009/2010 Senior Fellow: Lila Ellen Gray (Department of Music, Columbia University) Postdoctoral Fellows: Karen Lisa Greene (Ph.D.: Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley) Perundevi Srinivasan (Ph.D.: Human Sciences Program, The George Washington University) 2006-2008 The Question of the West Project Directors: Ann Fabian and T.J. Jackson Lears 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 Project Director: Michael Adas 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 2003-2005 Gendered Passages in Historical Perspective Project Directors: Rudolph M. Bell and Virginia Yans The first year of 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. In its second year, this project encouraged 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. 2003/2004 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 2004/2005 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 2001-2003 Industrial Environments: Creativity and Consequences Project Directors: Susan R. Schrepfer and Philip Scranton 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. 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 Project Directors: Omer Bartov and Matt Matsuda 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 Project Directors: Deborah Gray White and Mia Bay 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 Project Director: Phyllis Mack 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 Project Director: John W. Chambers 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 Project Director: Victoria de Grazia 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 Project Director: John Gillis 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