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2010Faculty News continuedRegina Grafe returned to Chicago inAugust after an intense twelve monthsat the Institute for Advanced Studies inPrinceton and has been enjoying quiet citylife even more since she escaped the stressof the New Jersey woods. Her sabbaticalwas almost entirely devoted to her newbook Distant Tyranny: Markets, Powerand Backwardness in Spain, 1650-1800,which is now in the final stages. That isjust as well, since after almost five years oftrying to figure out why Spain never quitebecame a nation state or a national marketin the early modern period, she is lookingforward to her next project, which willcross the Spanish Atlantic and possiblyeven make a stopover in Manila.Peter Hayes spent 2008-09 preparingfor his term as department chair bybeing on academic leave. He finishedco-editing a mammoth compendium,The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies,and co-writing an almost equally largemanuscript, entitled Das Amt und dieVergangenheit: Die Deutsche Diplomaten imNationalsozialismus und in der Bundesrepublik,both of which will appear in 2010.He also wrote a new introduction for therepublication of Franz Neumann’s famousbook, Behemoth: The Structure and Practiceof National Socialism (Chicago: Ivan Dee,2009); presented lectures at SoutheastMissouri State, the German HistoricalInstitute in Washington, the University ofSouthern California, Colby College, Yale,Northwestern, and the Annual Conventionof the Association of Jewish Libraries;and served as director and chief instructorof the Silberman Seminar for College andUniversity Teachers at the U.S. HolocaustMemorial Museum. In 2009-10, his handswere full with administrative duties, but hecontinued to teach his large lecture courseon the history of the Holocaust and toco-teach a multinational and multilingualseminar with Michael Loriaux, this yearon The Future of the University in France,Germany, and the US.Laura Hein and her co-editor, RebeccaJennison, delivered a book about acontemporary Japanese visual artist whodeals with themes of war and remembranceto the Center for Japanese Studies,The University of Michigan Press, forpublication this fall. Imagination WithoutBorders: Feminist Artist TomiyamaTaeko and Social Responsibility will bepreceded by a gorgeous website, courtesyof the Academic Technologies group atNorthwestern University. Check it outat http://www.library.northwestern.edu/imaginationwithoutborders/ . She spentsix months in Japan in 2009, courtesy of aFulbright Senior Research award, happilyenjoying the illusion of living alone in atiny downtown Tokyo apartment until theweather warmed up and she discoveredthe hordes of cockroaches who thoughtthe place belonged to them. One of herrecent essays, “The Cultural Career of theJapanese Economy” was published in ThirdWorld Quarterly (no, Japan does not fit thatcategory), and, in abridged form, at AsiaPacific Journal: Japan Focus, an innovativeweb-based, peer-reviewed journal, whichshe helps coordinate.Rajeev Kinra spent several weeks in thespring of 2009 as one of two Virani Lecturersin Islamic Studies at the Universityof British Columbia. Soon after, he wasawarded a National Endowment for theHumanities research fellowship, whichwill support him during the 2010-11academic year, as he works to completehis a book tentatively titled Writing Self,Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahmanand the Cultural World of the Indo-PersianState Secretary. In the fall, he had an articlepublished in the Journal of PersianateStudies, and another article is forthcomingin a volume called Language, Culture,and Power: New Directions in South AsianStudies. Rajeev also led two seminars forhigh school teachers on various aspects ofmedieval and early modern South Asiancultural history through the NewberryLibrary Teachers’ Consortium, and he contributedin November to the Department’s“History behind the Headlines” round-tableon escalation in Afghanistan. In March2010, he was the guest lecturer at a benefitorganized by the Chicago chapter of IraqVeterans against the War, where he didhis best not to dampen the other presenters’humor and pathos by addressing theevent’s theme — “What the Hell do YouKnow about Afghanistan?” — from a deephistorical perspective.Henri Lauzière gathered all his belongings,which were scattered over threecities in Canada and the US, and officiallymoved to the Chicago area in the fall of2009. After a few mishaps, including anintentional short drive backwards on I-294during rush hour, he was able to settledown, to locate his office, and to startworking as the newest member of the historydepartment. Since then, he has taughtclasses on the Arabian Peninsula and theMiddle East in general. He also completedan article entitled “The Construction ofSalafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism from thePerspective of Conceptual History,” whichwill appear in the August 2010 issue of theInternational Journal of Middle East Studies.Tessie Liu is serving as Director ofGraduate Studies in the Gender StudiesProgram for academic years 2009-10 and2010-11. Her article on “Beauty” was publishedin The Palgrave Dictionary of TransnationalHistory, edited by Akira Iriye andPierre Yves Saunier (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009). Another article, “TheSecret Beyond White Patriarchal Power:Race, Gender, and Freedom in the LastDays of Colonial Saint-Domingue” willbe published in French Historical Studieslater this year. Tessie spent December 2009in Paris doing final research for her bookwhich is provisionally entitled Failure ofEnlightenment, Not of Darkness: Race, Freedomand Citizenship Between the French andHaitian Revolutions.Robert Lerner (Emeritus 2008) wasintrigued when one of his former graduatestudents called in early May 2008to say: “word has it that you’re retiring,no?” Since he couldn’t deny that, theconversation soon revealed that many ofhis former students had been planning aretirement festivity for two years and allhad kept mum until then. So a “Lernerpalooza”was held on the last weekend ofMay, including two magnificent banquetsand a daylong conference, including fourspeakers flown in from Europe, several ofLerner’s research colleagues from the U.S.,and a good number of his former graduatestudents. Despite some wildly erroneouscomments to the effect that he was ataskmaster, he could not have been moregratified and touched. In 2008-09, Lernerspoke at conferences in Modena, Milan,8 The Newsletter of the Department of History at Northwestern University
Faculty news continuedMunich, Budapest, Erlangen, and Girona;a second volume of his collected essayswas published in Italian translation asScrutare il futuro; Cornell University Pressput out a new paperback edition of his ThePowers of Prophecy (originally publishedin 1983; Amazon sales rank: #4,780,779);and essays by him appeared in the Journalof the Historical Society, Mediaeval Studies,Oliviana, and Utopies i alternatives de vidaa l’edat mitjana.Melissa Macauley spent the 2008-2009year as a member of the Institute for AdvancedStudy, where she managed to writea good portion of her next book in spiteof spending an inordinate amount of timedodging herds of wild beasts who insistedon wandering out of their assigned forest.An article appeared in the journal, LateImperial China, in 2009, as did a chapter inShared Histories of Modernity: China, India,and the Ottoman Empire (edited by HuriIslamoglu and Peter Perdue and publishedby Routledge) and a translation of a pieceshe published in 2001 in a collection of essaysby American, European, and Japanesescholars of traditional Chinese law (editedby Zhang Shiming, et al. and publishedby the Legal Press of China in 2010). Shepresented research on a range of topics inChinese and Southeast Asian history—smuggling, the transnational repercussionsof rural counterinsurgency campaigns inthe seventeenth and nineteenth centuries,the Chinese commercial mastery over theirBritish running dogs in the late nineteenthcentury—to audiences at Columbia,Princeton, Yale, Chicago, Northwestern,the Institute for Advanced Study, andthe Association for Asian Studies. Inrecent years, she has also emerged as a petcrank of the editorial board of the NewYork Times, which regularly publishes herletters-to-the-editor concerning politicalshenanigans of which she thoroughlydisapproves.Nancy MacLean is taking up a positionat Duke University in the fall of 2010, after20 wonderful years at Northwestern. She isdeeply grateful to colleagues and studentsfor filling those years with learning andlaughter. With all the exciting things happeninghere, leaving was difficult–-but lifewithout Chicago winters and in a homein the woods beckoned. Blame it all on aleave at the National Humanities Centerin 2008-2009, which led to involvementwith Durham for Obama, weekend tripsto the mountains and the ocean, andmore. When not hand-wringing withspouse Bruce Orenstein over how to makethe most of life after 50, she managed tolaunch a new project on the segregationistsources of American neo-liberalism andpublish two books designed for classroomuse: The American Women’s Movement,1945-2000: A Brief History withDocuments, and, with Donald Critchlow,Debating the American Conservative Movement,1945 to the Present.Kate Masur spent much of the last yearfinishing her book, An Example for All theLand: Emancipation and the Struggle overEquality in Washington, D.C., which theUniversity of North Carolina Press willpublish in the fall. She wrote an essay onthe meanings of social, civil, and politicalequality that will come out this summerin the Marquette Law Review, and her articleon a famous meeting between AbrahamLincoln and a delegation of blackWashingtonians will soon be publishedin Civil War History. Kate returned toher American Studies roots this year, coteachingwith English professor Ivy Wilsonan interdisciplinary graduate courseon antebellum black political culture. Thetwo hosted a symposium on the sametopic at Northwestern this spring. Shereceived a Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowshipfrom the ACLS to conduct research in2010-11 on her next book, which will lookat the social and political history of AfricanAmerican federal employees from theCivil War to the Wilson administration. Inher spare time (?), Kate has been workingwith other parents on getting healthierfoods into the Evanston public schools.Since the last newsletter, Sarah Mazaspent an idyllic year (2008-09) at theCenter for Advanced Study in the BehavioralSciences at Stanford, then a less idyllicyear (2009-10) as interim chair of thedepartment presiding over the move fromHarris Hall into our temporary quartersin downtown Evanston. (She can’t claimmuch credit for the smoothness of themove, which was entirely handled by Paulaand the rest of our amazing staff.) She isnow happily retired from “power” and hasfaculty BookshelfMOKYR(ed., with David s. landesand william J. Baumol)The Invention of Enterprise:Entrepreneurshipfrom Ancient Mesopotamiato Modern Times.Princeton: Princetonuniversity Press, 2010.PETROVSKY-SHTERNJews in the Russian Army,1827–1917: Drafted intoModernity. new york:cambridge universityPress, 2008.PETROVSKY-SHTERNThe Anti-Imperial Choice:The Making of the UkrainianJew. new haven: yaleuniversity Press, 2009.WILLSBomb Power: The ModernPresidency and the NationalSecurity State. newyork: Penguin Press, 2010recently completed a new book tentativelyentitled The Crime of Violette Noziere: AMurder in 1930s Paris, a hair-raising storyof parricide and incest (plus some socialand cultural history), which the Universityof California Press will publish in thespring of 2011.9
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