newsletter: swarthmore department of · alejandro sills ‘13, amy dipierro ’15, and tara zahra...

Dear Friends:

For us, the year begins in September and closes in June, so we’re right in the middle of a year’s journey right now. But we have plenty of beginnings and endings in front of us right now: this is a year full of change. We have been graced by the dynamic teaching and scholarship of new colleagues: Farid Azfar, our early modern specialist, is in his second year of teaching in the department, and BuYun Chen and Rosie Bsheer, specialists in T’ang China and the modern Middle East respectively, have just completed their first semester teaching at Swarthmore. We’ve been saddened by the departure of our treasured colleague Pieter Judson, who has accepted a position at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (though we’re ecstatic for his sake at the opportunity). And I (somewhat regretfully) have stepped into the role of department chair.

If you have any news to share, questions for us, or suggestions for features in this newsletter, please contact us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

Timothy J. Burke Professor of History and Chair

Newsletter: Swarthmore

College Department of

History Fall 2013

Letter from the Chair INSIDE:

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Alejandro Sills ‘13, Amy

DiPierro ’15, and Tara Zahra

'98 are featured in Student

and Alumni News. Professors

Armus, Azfar, Allison Dorsey,

Judson, and Weinberg are

featured in Faculty News.

We introduce you to our new

Assistant Professor, BuYun

Chen, in an interview with

Tyler Becker ‘14.

4, 5 Learn about Mellon Creative

Resident Michael W. Twitty.

6, 7 Professor Burke shares his

sabbatical story. We highlight

recent events and tell you

about upcoming events,

including 2014’s Beik Lecture.

8, 9 Where in the world are our

faculty when they’re not on

campus? Find out in the

Faculty Talks section.

2 Newsletter: Swarthmore College Department of History [Fall 2013]

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Diego Armus’ Swarthmore in Buenos Aires program provides many students the opportunity to study abroad in Latin America. Recently, students participated in The Chaco Initiative, which pulls the students out of the more cosmopolitan experience of Buenos Aires, and has them teaching students at a poor, rural school skills such as researching in libraries, English, and computer skills. The Swarthmore in Buenos Aires program has paired with a particular school and, in addition to the workshops, has helped establish a library and coordinated donations of teaching supplies.

Professor Armus also helped organize a symposium with Swarthmore and the University of Pennsylvania. About 95 students attended “Memory, Oral History, and Documentary Filmmaking in Latin America” last March. The department sponsored the event, which included two film screenings and a number of talks by scholars from the US and Latin America.

The Ministry of Sciences in Argentina also honored Professor Armus with the R.A.I.C.E.S. award, which celebrates Argentines pursuing science abroad while maintaining connections with the research communities in Argentina. Professor Armus’ work about the history of medicine and disease garnered him the recognition by the Ministry.

More recently, Diego Armus was invited to speak at the International Workshop on Global Health by Academia: The Contribution of Northern Universities and Research after 1945 hosted by the Institute for the History, Theory, and Ethics of Medicine at TWTH Aachen University in Aaachen, Germany and at

Faculty News

Alejandro Sills ’13 participated in the first annual AgoraTalks at Swarthmore

prior to graduation last year. Sills’ DuPlessis Prize-‐winning senior research

paper, titled, “The Writings of John of Damascus During the First Iconoclast

Controversy,” was among seven senior theses selected to be a part of this

event.

Buoyed by the knowledge gained in Professor Armus’ disease course, History

66: Disease, Culture, and Society in the Modern World: Comparative

Perspectives, and the skills from Professor Armus’ research course on

smoking, History 84: Modern Addiction: Cigarette Smoking in the 20th Century,

Amy DiPierro ’15 was chosen to present at the fourth annual Undergraduate

Research Conference on Health and Society at Providence College. She

presented her paper, “How Sweet Freedom Can Be: Philip Morris, The Bill of

Rights, and the Vietnam War Hero,” as part of a panel on “Health and War.”

Tara Zahra ’98’s recent contribution to The Nation is titled “Behind the Storm”

and can be read here: http://www.thenation.com/article/177134/behind-‐

storm#. Tara is professor of history at the University of Chicago and can often

be found in our halls of Trotter again during honors exams on the other side of

the table. w

continued on page 6…

Student & Alumni News


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up to my prospective advisor, she was less than enthused about the project. I took it as a hint to be more creative in how I

conceive of the history and then, I decided to read more about premodern China.

TB: What are you currently researching or writing?

BC: I am in the early stages of organizing a collaborative workshop centered on the topic of women’s work as not only an ideological construct produced through historical formation but as a category for historical analysis. The project tries to understand the material conditions of women who labored either inside or outside the home in premodern China. I am trying to understand how women worked, with what skills and tools, and under what conditions. My research questions have always been formed by my desire to write a history about non-‐elite women, meaning women who did not produce texts. The way to go about that study, I have found, is to look at the material world and try to access how they lived through their work.

TB: How might you characterize the current Swarthmore students?

BC: The students are very bright, intellectually curious, and hard working!

TB: Is there a class you are really excited to teach?

BC: Yes! I am going to teach a course on China and Capitalism in Spring 2015 that brings together classical texts on political economy, primary sources, and recent scholarship to think through the question of China’s economic development from a historical perspective.

TB: What kind of students should take your classes?

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Tyler Becker: Why did you decide to pursue a career in History?

BuYun Chen: Well, I always liked History as a subject. In college I decided to be a History major primarily because I was drawn to the questions and approaches of the discipline. History seemed to offer a lot more flexibility as a discipline than fields like Anthropology or Political Science. I was never really interested in the social sciences because there was an assumption made by social scientists that made me uncomfortable: the fact that we can know everything through numbers, statistics, models, or paradigms. I have never subscribed to the conviction that everything is somehow knowable and that there exists specific methods by which we can know everything about the world. History opens up the possibility of thinking about basic epistemological questions like “how do we know what we know?” and “why do we know it?” So, it was this line of inquiry that drew me to History.

TB: How did you become interested in premodern Chinese History?

BC: The reason that I picked premodern history was totally random. There wasn’t really much of a thought process except that I had a conversation with my undergraduate advisor and she dissuaded me from pursuing modern history. As a college student, I took a Modern China course my sophomore year. We learned about revolutions, political transformations, and intellectuals. All of this was exciting to a prospective history major, so I thought I wanted to write my senior thesis on feminist movements in modern China. When I brought this

Introducing: BuYun Chen

Tyler Becker ‘14

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BC: Students who are comfortable with uncertainty. My classes are probably best suited for students who are interested in delving into the messy side of history – exploring the incoherent and perhaps, inaccessible experiences of the past.

TB: What has been your favorite lecture/class discussion so far?

BC: At the beginning of the semester in my Modern China course, we read a late-‐nineteenth century text Chinese Characteristics, written by the missionary Arthur Smith. I assigned pairs of students different chapter titles to formulate, without having read the text, a description of the “Chinese characteristic.” Each pair, more or less, correctly guessed the content of the Smith’s descriptions. We then discussed how cultural biases and perceptions of “the Chinese” have been perpetuated throughout history. The activity intended to show how the nineteenth-‐century notion of “national characteristics” that had been embraced by Europeans – and specifically, the image of “the Chinese” produced in this text – contributed to a discourse on what constituted a distinctive Chinese national identity both within China and abroad. And the discussion forced us to reflect on the tremendous staying power of these ideas about the “unique” characteristics of other nationalities. w


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Dr. Allison Dorsey conceived a plan to have her food course first years actively engage with the material, the history of food, by inviting someone who is revisiting the past through food: Michael W. Twitty. Michael has recreated the recipes of enslaved peoples and has brought to light the family tree of Southern cuisine.

Michael spent a week on campus cooking with us, and for us, and speaking with our classes from October 6-‐11, while he was here on a Mellon Creative Residency.

On October 6, a small dinner was hosted at the Black Cultural Center for first year students only. Seven students cooked from noon until mealtime for the group of twenty-‐five enjoying the fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, greens, sweet potatoes (pictured, with Sara Blazevic and Ortiz working on preparation), apple cobbler, and iced tea.

Michael spoke with Professor Dorsey’s first year seminar, History of Food in North America, on October 7, and then to Professor Mark Wallace’s Radical Jesus course in the Religion Department on October 8. His large lecture took place to a standing-‐room-‐only crowd on October 8, “Dining From A Haunted Plate.” People came from all over the area to hear Michael deliver his entertaining and informative talk.

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Michael then had a panel on food justice with Tina Johnson, founder of the Chester Co-‐op, on October 9, and finally prepared a “Kosher Soul Feast” at the Swarthmore Presbyterian Church for 80 people on October 10. With the help of nearly twenty students, faculty, and staff – including Tom Bonner, the coordinator of the Mellon Creative Residencies – A Kosher Soul Feast included Kosher Soul Spring Rolls which had collard greens and pastrami among the ingredients; southern vegetarian sukkot soup; matzo ball soup; challah; West African brisket; watermelon salad; roasted fall vegetables; and fried apple kugel.

The students especially enjoyed Michael’s visit. There was a great feeling of cooperation and community in the kitchens as we prepared food together.

The following page also contains additional images taken during Michael W. Twitty’s Mellon Creative Residency. Pictures appear courtesy of Timothy Burke, Jacob W. Dillow, and Allison Dorsey.

Mellon Creative Residency: Michael W. Twitty

Michael brings out the challah just before serving the meal. Photo

by Allison Dorsey.

Olivia Ortiz peels apples for the cobbler, Sara Blazevic cuts sweet

potatoes, and Michael looks over the recipes. Photo by Jacob W.

Dillow.


Above: The assembly line for the Kosher Soul Spring Rolls. Clockwise: Peggy Seiden, College Librarian; Tim Burke, Professor and Chair of History; Rose Pozos-‐Brewer, Sociology & Anthropology junior; Kathleen Naccarato, honors Political Science junior; and Lara Cohen, Assistant Professor of English Literature. Michael W. Twitty stands with his back to us, next to Paul Bierman, a junior double major in Computer Science and Sociology & Anthropology, frying up the Kosher Soul Spring Rolls. Photo by Allison Dorsey.

Below: The end result of the above group’s toils: Kosher Soul Spring Rolls. Photo by Tim Burke.

Right: Fried chicken cooking on the stove at the BCC. Photo by Jacob W. Dillow.

Left: First year student Haley Gerardi slices tomatoes for the watermelon salad. Photo by Allison Dorsey.

Right: Students at the Kosher Soul Feast. Photo by Allison Dorsey.


During my semester’s leave in the last academic year, I spent a fairly substantial amount of my time continuing my work developing Swarthmore’s embryonic Institute for the Liberal Arts. I’m really excited about how the Institute has taken shape and about its continuing possibilities, so that alone largely adds up to a leave well spent as far as I’m concerned.

When I took time for my own research, I was largely devoted to my new project on the cultural history of the Cold War in Africa. I’m interested in breaking out of some of the usual contours of Cold War historiography: I would like to “indigenize” the presence of U.S., European and Soviet actors within Africa during the Cold War, and to look at the way national sovereignty and superpower status were imagined and practiced through fractured dialogues between Cold War participants. I’m also hoping to trace how the reigning ideologies and beliefs of the Cold War circulated within African societies, how they were repurposed and interpreted. In the last year, I’ve spent time at the National Archives in both the United Kingdom and the United States as well as time in the Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. I’ll be working at the Nixon Library this winter for a week or so, and then I hope to visit the Kennedy Library in March 2014. A bit further down the road, I’m hoping to continue my research in a number of African archives and through oral testimonies, particularly in Ghana, Tanzania and South Africa.

I’ve also put some more work into finishing a book prospectus on the history of “virtual worlds” as a form of digital culture, with particular attention to the aesthetic and commercial decline of the form after the launch of the game World of Warcraft. I’m planning to submit the prospectus to a publisher in January: fingers crossed! w

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number of talks outside of the department.

We hosted our annual Chocolates party early in September. Students and faculty mix and mingle while enjoying various chocolates prepared or brought by department faculty. Allegra Pocinki won the gift certificate to Capogiro by answering the most right in our chocolates quiz.

On September 19th, we cosponsored an International Peace Day Lecture with Peace & Conflict Studies given by Mary Walton. Walton spoke of Alice Paul ’05 and Mabel Vernon ‘06’s contributions to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. This event was also part of the series of events taking place around Swarthmore’s sesquicentennial celebration.

The month of October saw us co-‐sponsoring Latin@Heritage Month. Professor Fermin Herrera of California State University – Northridge spoke about the Nahautl and Professor Martha Escobar of California State University – Northridge spoke about undocumented women and the prison-‐industrial complex.

Near the end of October, we hosted Eric Foner for our James A. Field Lecture. A standing-‐room-‐only audience heard Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, deliver his talk entitled, “The Significance of Reconstruction in American History.” Professor Foner has won the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Lincoln Prizes for his book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2011).

In early November, Swarthmore co-‐sponsored Princeton Professor Serguei Oushakine’s visit and talk with Sociology and Anthropology. The title of the talk was “Managing Russian History Affectively.”

On November 20th, Josh Landis ’79 spoke on the current situation in Syria. Josh is currently the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. The Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine group and our department co-‐sponsored the event.w

Recent Events

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Aside from the Field Lecture and Michael W. Twitty’s Mellon Creative Residency, we cosponsored a

Professors Diego Armus and Pieter Judson at the Chocolates party.

Photo by Tim Burke.

Sabbatical Story: Tim Burke


continued from “Faculty News,” page 2…

We had a very busy fall semester, and our plans for the spring slow it

down a bit. We are working on putting together a regular

presentation of student scholarship in the department that may

take place around reading days, and we are still looking to schedule a History with a Future event in the spring.

On April 18, Pieter Judson ‘78 will return to campus, along with other alumni historians, to take part in the

“Queering Swarthmore History: Three Glimpses of the Past by Alumni Historians.” Professor Farid Azfar has

organized the panel as part of Swarthmore’s sesquicentennial celebrations.

Monday, October 27th, Thomas Laqueur ’67 will deliver the Paul H. Beik Lecture in European history. Details in an

upcoming newsletter.w

Upcoming Events

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the Seminario Internacional sobre Cuidad, Salud y Enfermedad en México at Benemérita Universidad de Puebla in Puebla, México. The title of his talks, respectively, are “Global and Local Actors in the Remaking of Anti-‐smoking Campaigns in Buenos Aires” and “Historia / Historia de la Enfermedad / Historia de la Salud.”

Farid Azfar is bringing different generations of Swarthmore Alumni back to campus to discuss Swarthmore’s queer history this April as part of the sesquicentennial celebrations.

continued from Faculty page 6…

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Professor Azfar will also be presenting at the “Framing Premodern Desires” conference in Turku, Finland in April.

BuYun Chen is our new historian on China. Her first semester saw her teach Modern China and Women’s Work in Premodern China. In the spring, Professor Chen will be teaching Fashion in East Asia and a first year seminar on the Silk Road, entitled The Golden Age of Portability: The Silk Road. You can read more about Professor Chen in Tyler Becker ‘14’s interview on page 3.

Allison Dorsey lent her historical expertise to an article commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Somehow, she also found time to plan

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and execute the Mellon Creative Residency of Michael W. Twitty this fall (see article and pictures on pages 4 and 5).

Professor Dorsey also delivered the Last Collection speech for the graduating class of 2013. You can find text and audio of that speech on Professor Dorsey’s profile page on our department website.

Pieter Judson, as you may have heard by now, is joining the faculty at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In the spring semester, 2014, Pieter will be the Chair in 19th and 20th Century History in the Department of History and Civilization at EUI.

Professor Judson is also joining the

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Advisory Board of the Institute for Historical Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

Bob Weinberg has been on leave in fall 2013, so he has traveled to speak on his most recent project, the Beilis murder and trial. He spoke at the Conference on the Blood Libel in History, Politics, Theology, and Literature on the Centenary of the Trial of Mendel Beilis at Dartmouth College, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the International Conference on Antisemitism in Kiev, the Conference on Religion and Mass Politics in the Late Russian Empire at NYU, and the Researching New York Conference at SUNY-‐Albany. w


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February

Robert Weinberg “Religion, Antisemitism, and the Beilis Affair” Yale University

March

April

May

June

Faculty Talks, 2014

3/13-‐15 Pieter Judson Keynote speaker @ “Urban Space and Multilingualism in the

Late Habsburg Monarchy”

The Institute for East European

History, University of Vienna

3/28-‐29 Diego Armus “Diseases in the modern city: approaches, topics, and

analytical frameworks” at Rethinking Space in Latin American

History International Conference

Yale University

4/4-‐4/5 Farid Azfar “Strange Flows: The Eighteenth Century Indus in the History

of Sensuality” at Framing Premodern Desires. Between

Sexuality, Sin, and Crime

University of Turku, Finland

4/18 Pieter Judson “Queering Swarthmore History: Three Glimpses of the Past

by Alumni Historians”

Swarthmore College

5/4 Diego Armus “Power and culture on borderland spaces” at Programa de

Pós-‐graduação em História da Universidade Federal de Santa

Maria

Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

5/7 Pieter Judson “Wilson versus Lenin. Europe in the context of Global

Politics” at A Past Mastered? National and International

Historiography on the Fall of the Habsburg Monarchy in the

First World War

Austrian Academy of the

Sciences, Commission for the

History of the Habsburg

Monarchy, Vienna

6/4 Diego Armus “Hygiene in the modern peripheral city. Buenos Aires, 1870-‐

1930” at the Watson Seminar in History of Science: How to

write an urban history of science: new approaches and case

studies.

Barcelona, Spain

6/11 Pieter Judson “Imperial Patriotisms in Austria-‐Hungary” at Patriotic

Cultures During the First World War

European University St.

Petersburg, Russia

6/16-‐18 Robert Weinberg “Memories of Mass Violence: Pogroms in Odessa in the

Twentieth Century” at the Conference on Narratives of

Violence

Central European University,

Budapest, Hungary


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July

September

October

7/10-‐12 Diego Armus “The remaking of anti-‐smoking state policies in late 20th

century Argentina” at Disease, Health, and the State

Conference

The Centre for Health, Medicine,

and Society: Past and Present at

Oxford Brookes University and

Wellcome Unit for the History of

Medicine at the University of

Oxford, England

7/17-‐19 Farid Azfar “The World of the Page: The London News and the Open

Secrets of the South Sea Company” at London and the

Americas, 1492-‐1812

Kingston University, London,

England

9/9-‐13 Diego Armus “On visual imagery and smoking: Adventures of the

Marlboro man in Buenos Aires” at the XVII International

Congress of the European Association of Latin American

History

Freie Universität Berlin

Germany

10/15-‐17 Diego Armus “On the social history of smoking” at the VI International

Workshop on Social History of Health and Disease

Universidad Nacional de Rosario

Rosario, Argentina

You can “Like” us on Facebook for more regular updates about the Department:

https://www.facebook.com/swathistory

As always, you can find more information on our department website:

http://www.swarthmore.edu/academics/history.xml

newsletter: swarthmore department of · alejandro sills ‘13, amy dipierro ’15, and tara zahra...

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