Nathan & Jeanette Miller Center

for

Historical Studies

2013-2014

University of Maryland, College

Park

College of Arts & Humanities

Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center

for

Historical Studies

Annual Report

2013-2014

University of Maryland,

2118 Taliaferro Hall

http://history.umd.edu/historicalstudies

301-405-4299

millercenter@umd.edu

Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical

Studies

Director

Bernard Cooperman

Administrative Graduate Assistant

Reid Gustafson

Board

Antoine Borrut

Holly Brewer

Sarah Cameron

Derek Leininger

David Sartorius

Robert Friedel

Phil Soergel

Office Staff

Star Angeloupolous

Paula Barriga Sanchez

Jodi Hall

Niya Rafari-Pearson

Catalina Toala

Introduction

2

Featured Guests

4

Graduate Student Programming and Workshops

6

Special Events & Film Series

12

Awards

14

Looking Forward

16

Contents

1

A Message from the Director

My first year as director of the Nathan and Jeannette Miller Center has been a real delight. I have been able to

host distinguished scholars from around the world and to discuss their work and their ideas with them. At the

same time, I have had the chance to interact with faculty and students in shaping our program and planning

individual events. This year’s theme of “Empire Revisited” proved remarkably suggestive, leading for exam-

ple to a day-long undergraduate symposium planned in conjunction with two other departments and bringing

together students in three campus courses with an internationally known distinguished keynote speaker.

Much of the intellectual life of our campus happens, of course, in the classroom, and the Miller Center puts

special effort into providing funds and coordination to help faculty members bring guest speakers into their

classes. This lets students meet, and interact directly with, those who were personally involved in great his-

torical events. And the chance to meet and debate with an author helps students better understand and inter-

nalize the books they are reading.

If the Center’s first task has been to bring scholars to the College Park campus, I have found that the Center

can also make a significant contribution to the educational experience of both graduate and undergraduate

students. Thus, we have hosted a regular meeting for Ph.D. candidates facing the rigors of writing a thesis,

we have sponsored seminars on teaching and writing, and we have begun to explore how the Center can help

improve undergraduate teaching in history under a special grant from the University. Through its prize pro-

gram for undergraduate papers, the Center has recognized the excellent work done by students in our Depart-

ment.

The Center aims also to provide an informal meeting place for faculty and students interested in history. For

example, we met to discuss a recent documentary movie about immigration into the US and a film about the

philosopher Hannah Arendt. The aim always is to encourage communication and discussion of the serious

issues that shape the study of history.

I look forward to new initiatives in the 2014-15 academic year, and invite everyone to stop by and make use

of the Center’s programs and services.

Bernard D. Cooperman

Director

2

2013-2014 in Review

Every year the Center focuses on a particular theme. The theme for this year's workshop

series was "Rethinking Empire." We invited leading scholars from a broad range of geo-

graphic and disciplinary sub-specialties to help us think through current scholarly debates

about the concepts of Empire and Imperialism.

Previous Themes

2000-2001: The Nation and Beyond

2001-2002: Political Violence

2002-2003: The Body and The Body Politics

2003-2004: Empire

2004-2005: Historians and the Visual

2005-2006: History of Globalization

2006-2007: Power of Belief

2007-2008: Facing Difficult Pasts—History and Memory

2008-2009: Facing Difficult Pasts—Memory, Justice, and Reconciliation

2011-2012: Crisis

2012-2013: Constructing Historical Knowledge—Historians Confront Categories of Discourse

3

John McNeill

September 30; “The Disease Defense: Yellow Fever, Malaria, and the Span-

ish Empire in the Americas, 1650-1830.” Professor McNeill’s (Georgetown

University) recent book, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater

Caribbean, 1640-1914 (Cambridge, 2010) shows how ecological changes

made the plantation zone of the Americas a more suitable habitat for mosqui-

toes that carry disease and examines how those diseases affected the outcome

of imperial rivalries.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam

October 21; “Early Modern Circulation and the Question of ‘Patriotism’ be-

tween India and Central Asia.” Dr. Subrahmanyam is Distinguished Profes-

sor of History and Doshi Chair in Indian History at UCLA. His recent book,

Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern

Eurasia (Harvard, 2012) investigates questions of cultural commensurability.

Anthony Pagden

December 5; co-sponsored with the Center for Literary and Comparative

Studies, the Miller Center for Historical Studies, and the Graduate Field Com-

mittee in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEM-UM). Professor Pagden

(UCLA) delivered a talk titled “That Peculiar Word ‘Imperium’: Defining

Empire from Rome to Washington.” His current research focuses on the po-

litical theory of empire.

Featured Guests

4

Peter Perdue

February 3; “Transnational History & Comparative Imperial History:

Ships Passing in the Night?” Peter Perdue (Yale University) focuses on

East Asian environmental and frontier history. He is the author of Ex-

hausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan, 1500-1850 A.D. (1987)

and China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (2005).

His research interests lie in modern Chinese and Japanese social and eco-

nomic history, history of frontiers, and world history.

Carla Pestana

April 28; Walter Rundell Lecture in American History, “Religion and

Empire in Early America Reconsidered.” Professor Pestana’s (UCLA)

most recent book, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the

British Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania: 2009), explored the

religious transformation brought by English expansion into the Atlantic

world. On the subject of empire, she authored The English Atlantic in an

Age of Revolution, 1640-1661 (2004), a study of the effects of revolution-

ary upheaval in England, Ireland and Scotland on England’s nascent em-

pire.

5

Graduate Student Programming

Part of the Miller Center’s mission is to contribute to the educational experience of Mary-

land’s History graduate-student community. Two groups of students currently working on

theses or dissertations met regularly over breakfast or lunch at the Center to discuss their

work, share notes, criticize drafts, and restore self-confidence in the face of this grueling

challenge. The Center also organizes workshops, lectures and special events aimed at the

newest part of our scholarly community.

6

Workshops and Lectures

Louis Galambos

October 10, “The Creative Society—Is the Price Still Right?” Louis Galambos

(Johns Hopkins University) researches American creativity and the role profes-

sionals have played in enabling the United States to solve (or not to solve) its

problems at home and abroad in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Alon Confino

November 5, “A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution

to Genocide.” Professor Confino’s (University of Virginia) most recent book,

Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding (Cambridge,

2012) seeks to rethink dominant interpretations of the Holocaust by examining

it as a problem in cultural history.

James Gilbert

April 8; “Writing History Seminar.” The workshop explored techniques that

students can use in their papers, dissertations, grant proposals, and letters of ap-

plication. Professor James Gilbert moderated the discussion. He is the author,

among other works, of Men in the Middle (University of Chicago Press, 2005 )

and Whose Fair?: Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis

Exposition (University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Justin Jacobs

April 16; “Publishing and the Field of Transnational History.” Professor Ja-

cobs (American University), a specialist in modern Chinese history, published

the lead article in the American Historical Review in 2010, while he was a grad-

uate student. He provided tips on publishing as a graduate student and the audi-

ence discussed the growing field of transnational history.

7

Barry Gilder

November 19, “South Africa from Revolution to Democracy: An Insider’s

Story.” In his new memoir, Songs and Secrets: South Africa from Libera-

tion to Governance (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2012), Mr. Gilder recounts

his experiences as student songwriter, guerilla insurgent, and government

official in South Africa.

Rebecca Kobrin

February 6, “Creative Destruction: Sender Jarmulowsky, Financial Fail-

ure and the Reshaping of American Banking, 1873-1914”.” Professor Ko-

brin (Columbia University) is currently investigating the relationship be-

tween Jews and money in twentieth-century America

Annette Gordon-Reed

February 27, co-sponsored with African American Studies, “A Conversa-

tion with Annette Gordon-Reed and Ira Berlin.” Professor Annette Gordon

-Reed (Harvard) is best known for her book The Hemingses of Monticello:

An American Family (W.W. Norton, 2008).

.

8

Camille Robcis

February 28, co-sponsored with LGBT Studies, “Colloquium.” Among

other topics, Professor Robcis (Cornell University) is currently research-

ing how the French right is intellectually and rhetorically responding to

the LGBT rights movement.

Colleen Ho

March 5, “The Mongols in Matthew Paris’ Chronica Majorca: A Mirror

of Medieval Europe.” Professor Ho (University of Maryland) examines

why medieval Europeans saw the Mongols as both threat and ally, allow-

ing ecclesiastics and kings to condemn the Mongols to Hell while court-

ing an alliance with them against mutual enemies.

Idesbald Goddeeris

March 27, “The Efficiency of Secret Services: Critical Reflections based

on Polish Archives.” Idesbald Goddeeris’ (University of Leuven) Spion-

eren voor het communism: Belgische prominenten en Poolse geheim

agenten [Spying for Communism: Polish Secret Agents and Belgian Im-

portant Personalities] (Lannoo Campus, 2013) reveals tales of the Polish

secret services’ inefficiency and even absurdity.

9

Gideon Avni

March 31, “The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archae-

ological Approach.” Dr. Avni is Head of the Archaeological Division

in the Israel Antiquities Authority and a lecturer at the Institute of Ar-

chaeology, in the Hebrew University. His branch of the Antiquities Au-

thority supervises the work of all the archaeological excavations in Is-

rael.

Claire Judde

March 31 & May 1, Professor Claire Judde presented “Who Were the

Venetian People?” and “The Inhabitants of Murano and Venice: Politi-

cal Actions, Reactions, & Revolts.” Professor Judde (Université de

Toulouse) is the author of Naviguer, commercer, gouverner. Économie

maritime et pouvoirs à Venise, XVe-XVIe siècles (Leiden and Boston:

Brill, 2008), a study of public and private commercial navigation in re-

lation to the evolution of forms and functions of the State.

Japanese Americans and World War II

April 11, Mary Tamaki Murakami and Terry Shima. Mary Tamaki Mu-

rakami was imprisoned at the Topaz, Utah Internment Camp. Terry

Shima served in the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segre-

gated unit composed of Japanese Americans that became one of the

most decorated units of its size in American history. Organized by Pro-

fessor Jon Sumida.

10

Michele Lamprakos

April 21, “Conflict, Conviviencia, and the Life of Buildings.” Professor

Lamprakos’ (School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation) looked at

the Great Mosque of Córdoba and the changing fabric and meaning of the

building through the centuries: as Catholic cathedral, historic monument,

and symbol of the Islamic past in Spain.

Olivier Wieviorka

April 24, “The French Memory of WWII.” Professor Olivier Wieviorka

(Ecole normale supérieure at Cachan) writes on WWII. Among his books

are Orphans of the Republic (Harvard, 2009); Surviving Hitler and Musso-

lini (Bloomsbury, 2006); Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of

Paris (Harvard, 2008); and Divided Memory: French Recollection of

World War II from the Liberation to the Present (Stanford, 2012).

Aaron O’Connell

May 2, “The War in Afghanistan: Lessons and Legacies.” Professor

O’Connell (U.S. Naval Academy) is a cultural historian of the U.S. mili-

tary. His recent publications include Underdogs: The Making of the Mod-

ern Marine Corps (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).

Millington Bergeson-Lockwood

May 7, “Black Boston and ‘The Beast’: Benjamin Butler and Conflicts

over African American Partisanship in 1880s Boston, Massachu-

setts.” Comments by Professor Robert Chiles. Dr. Bergeson-Lockwood’s

presentation today is drawn from his first book, A Union Among Our-

selves: African Americans and Urban Politics in Boston, Massachusetts,

1865-1903, currently in progress.

11

Special Events and Film Series

60s Radicalism in Black & White

March 26, co-sponsored with Dept. of African American Studies.

Organized by Professor Art Eckstein. There has been much study

of black radicalism in the 1960s, and much study of white radi-

calism in the 1960s. Three distinguished scholars (Nathan Con-

nolly, Johns Hopkins University; Thai Jones, Columbia Universi-

ty; and Mark Naison, Fordham University) explored these two

fundamental components of the 1960s Far Left, looking at intel-

lectual relationships, close political interactions, and perhaps con-

flicts between the two.

Ukrainian Unrest Panel

March 4, “What is a Maidan, and Why are People Protesting and

Getting Shot There? Today's Ukrainian Unrest in Historical Per-

spective.” Organized by Professor Piotr Kosicki. This panel

brought together top experts on Ukraine and Eastern European

revolution, with the goal of explaining to a broad audience what's

going on.

The Center’s programming aims at bringing the insights and methods of historical study to a

range of contemporary issues.

12

Hannah Arendt

February 26, remarks by Professor Jeffrey Herf. Starring Bar-

bara Sukowa and directed by Margarethe von Trotta, “Hannah

Arendt” examines the life of German-Jewish philosopher and

political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975). As a journalist,

Arendt covered the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eich-

mann and famously used the term “banality of evil” to describe

how many Germans, including leaders within the Jewish com-

munity, allowed totalitarianism to develop in Nazi Germany.

Crossing Arizona

April 23, remarks by Professor Chantel Rodriguez. Crossing

Arizona is a thought-provoking and insightful examination of

the hotly debated issues of border security and illegal immigra-

tion. Heightened security along the U.S./Mexico border has

funneled undocumented migrants through the brutal deserts of

Arizona and claimed thousands of lives. Through the eyes of

frustrated ranchers, border patrol agents, local politicians, farm-

ers dependent on an illegal workforce, humanitarian activists,

desperate immigrants, and the Minutemen, this powerful docu-

mentary unveils the surprising political stances people take

when immigration policy fails everyone.

13

Awards

Undergraduate

Each semester the Center sponsors cash awards for the best research papers written by un-

dergraduates in the History Department’s capstone course (408). Papers are nominated by

faculty in each section. Awards are presented at the Department’s annual award luncheon

for graduating seniors.

Ben Kramer

“Fractured Beyond Repair: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement’s Divergent

Approaches to the Revised Philadelphia Plan”

(HIST408B with Professor Robyn Muncy)

Matthew Cipollone

“Dignitatis Humanae and Catholic Tradition: A Development of Doctrine at the Second Vat-

ican Council”

(HIST408P with Professor Piotr Kosicki)

14

Graduate

In May, the Miller Center announced the winners of the History Department’s Best MA Pa-

per Award for 2013. Papers are nominated by the faculty. In 2013, the award went to

Justin Devris

“Thucydides and the Stasis at Corcyra: An Examination of Stasis in Classical Greece”

(HIST 619 with Professor Ken Hollum)

Prange Collection/20th Century Japan Research Award

This year three Twentieth Century Japan Research Awards were given out by the Miller

Center and the University of Maryland Libraries. Researchers use the stipend to conduct

research in UMD’s Gordon Prange Collection. The winners were:

Professor Julia Bullock (Emory University)-- “Coeducation in Japan under Allied Occupa-

tion”

Professor Deokyho Choi (University of Cambridge)-- “Crucible of the Post-Empire: Decol-

onization, Race, and Cold War Politics in U.S.-Japan-Korea Relations, 1945-1952”

Emer O’Dwyer (Oberlin College)-- “Searching for 'Truth' in Occupation-Era Magazines”

15

Moving Forward

The theme for 2014-2015 is “Defining Boundaries.” In her original pro-

posal, Professor Chantel Rodríguez pointed out the upsurge in recent

scholarly interest in border crossing, border identities and border culture as

foci for research and scholarly discussion. Special issues of journals, NEH

-sponsored conferences , and a flurry of books and articles have explained

issues related to sovereignty, citizenship, group interactions, human rights,

and many related topics. Among guest speakers for the coming year are

Professor Katherine Unterman of Texas A&M University (“Detectives

without Borders: The Supreme Court and the International Pursuit of Crim-

inals”), Joan Scott of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study

(“Secularism and Gender Equality Between East and West”), and Geoffrey

Parker of Ohio State University ("Incest, Blind Faith, and Con-

quest: defining boundaries the Habsburg way, 1500-1700" ).

For further information, please consult the Center’s website at http://

history.umd.edu/historicalstudies

16

17

Notes

Published by the Nathan & Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies

University of Maryland, College Park

2014

University of Maryland, 2118 Taliaferro Hall

http://history.umd.edu/historicalstudies

Phone: 301-405-4299

Fax: 301-314-9399

millercenter@umd.edu

Text, design, and layout by Reid Gustafson and Allison Gunn