NEWS

New York Magazine: Intelligencer published an interview/discussion with Adam Tooze, read it here: “The Fed Might Just Break the Global Economy.”

Oct 6, 2022

New York Magazine: Intelligencer published an interview/discussion with Adam Tooze, read it here: “The Fed Might Just Break the Global Economy.”

Adam Tooze wrote “The first global deflation has begun” for The Straits Times.

Oct 6, 2022

Adam Tooze wrote “The first global deflation has begun” for The Straits Times.

James Stafford wrote “Do Sanctions Work?: A new history examines their use in the past and considers their effectiveness for the future” published by The Nation.

Oct 6, 2022

James Stafford wrote “Do Sanctions Work?: A new history examines their use in the past and considers their effectiveness for the future” published by The Nation.

Mae Ngai is featured in the PBS Series The Bigger Picture (with Vincent Brown) on Alfred Stieglitz’s 1907 photo, “The Steerage” — watch the episode here.

Oct 5, 2022

Mae Ngai is featured in the PBS Series The Bigger Picture (with Vincent Brown) on Alfred Stieglitz’s 1907 photo, “The Steerage” — watch the episode here.

Adam Tooze wrote the opinion guest essay “The All Too Real Risk of a Global Recession” published by The New York Times.

Oct 4, 2022

Adam Tooze wrote the opinion guest essay “The All Too Real Risk of a Global Recession” published by The New York Times.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

october 2022

7oct2:00 pm- 3:30 pmJosephine Baker's Cinematic Prism

7oct4:00 pm- 5:30 pmColumbia Latin American History Workshop | The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade

10oct12:30 pm- 2:00 pmSOF/Heyman | "Last Call at the Hotel Imperial": A Conversation between Deborah Cohen and Adam Tooze

12oct4:00 pm- 5:00 pmCAS: Talking Across the Divide: Communication in a Polarized Time

12oct4:30 pm- 6:00 pmThe Only Way to Survive Is By Taking Care of One Another: Reflections on Care Work (Premilla Nadasen)

Event Details

Join us for the inaugural Grace Lee Boggs ‘35 Lecture, “The Only Way To Survive Is By Taking Care of One Another: Reflections on Care Work,” given by keynote speaker Ai-jen Poo, President of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, followed by a conversation with Premilla Nadasen, Professor of History and co-Director of the Barnard Center for Research On Women.

The conversation will take place from 4:30-5:30 p.m., followed by a reception from 5:30-6:00 p.m.

Note: This event is in-person only. Please review our COVID safety guidelines.

About the Speakers

Ai-jen Poo is a next-generation labor leader, award-winning organizer, author, and a leading voice in the women’s movement. As President of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Director of Caring Across Generations, Co-Founder of SuperMajority and Trustee of the Ford Foundation, Ai-jen is a nationally recognized expert on elder and family care, the future of work, gender equality, immigration, narrative change, and grassroots organizing. She is the author of the celebrated book, The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America.

Premilla Nadasen has published extensively on the multiple meanings of feminism, alternative labor movements, and grass-roots community organizing and is most interested in visions of social change, and the ways in which poor and working-class women of color fought for social justice. Her most recent book, Household Workers Unite, examines how African American domestic workers in the U.S. strategically used storytelling to develop a political identity and through their organizing reshaped the landscape of labor organizing.

Accessibility

This event is free and open to all. RSVP is preferred.

This event is in-person only. Please review our COVID safety guidelines.

Time

(Wednesday) 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Location

Event Oval, Diana Center Barnard College 117th and Broadway New York, NY 10027

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13oct3:00 pm- 4:30 pmU of Toronto: Book Talk with Mae Ngai

Event Details

Book Talk with Mae Ngai (Columbia University) – The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics

Thu, 13 October 2022, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM EDT
*HYBRID EVENT* Please select an appropriate ticket type during check-out. REGISTER HERE!

Campbell Conference Facility (CCF), Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, U of T 1 Devonshire Place Toronto, ON M5S 3K7 Canada

Event description:

In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over “the Chinese Question”: would the United States and the settler colonies of the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration? Professor Ngai offers a new history of the Chinese diaspora in the West, situating it in the history of global capitalism, in which a feverish alchemy of race and money brought Chinese people to the West and reshaped the nineteenth-century world.

This talk is based on Professor Ngai’s recent book The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (W. W. Norton, 2022).

Speaker: Mae Ngai (Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies; Professor of History and Co-Director, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University)

Chair: Takashi Fujitani (Dr. David Chu Chair in Asia-Pacific Studies, Professor of History, and Director of the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies)

Organized by the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies and co-sponsored by the Department of History, University of Toronto

Time

(Thursday) 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Location

Campbell Conference Facility (CCF), Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, U of T 1 Devonshire Place Toronto, ON M5S 3K7 Canada

Calendar GoogleCal

13oct7:00 pm- 8:15 pmNYU: JAMES STAFFORD, “SOVEREIGNTY AND COMMERCE: THE CASE OF IRELAND.”

Event Details

James Stafford: Sovereignty and Commerce: The Case of Ireland

In-Person Event

October 13th • 7:00pm – 8:15pm
Glucksman Ireland House NYU
One Washington mews New York, NY 10003

REGISTER HERE

This lecture offers a new account of Irish thinking about the relationship between sovereignty and commerce during the global ‘age of revolutions’ (1770s-1840s). Considering key thinkers and politicians associated with the Volunteers, the United Irishmen, and Young Ireland, the lecture will explore how successive Irish national movements thought about Ireland’s place in Europe, the British Empire, and the world at large. Irish thinkers, it argues, were participants in a European debate about whether or not the apparent benefits of long-distance trade could be separated from the dangers of violence, luxury and corruption–in short, the excesses of the ‘mercantile system’ condemned by the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith.

James Stafford is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Columbia University, specialising in the political and intellectual history of Ireland, Britain and Europe since 1750. His book The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848 was published by Cambridge University Press this year. He also writes on contemporary British and European politics for outlets including Dissent, Political Quarterly, The Nation, The Guardian and OpenDemocracy, and is a contributing editor at Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy (Lawrence & Wishart, UK).

In accordance with University policy, all guests to Glucksman Ireland House in-person events must be fully vaccinated for COVID-19.

To attend in-person events, please follow the NYU Covid Safety Precautions:

All guests will be required to show proof of being fully vaccinated and boosted (or, if eligible, proof of exemption) at the door. Vaccine documentation must include your name, birthdate, vaccine name or manufacturer, and the dates of each dose. Excelsior passes are not valid.

Negative tests will not be accepted at the door.
Guests must show a valid government-issued photo ID.
Masks are optional (but please check for updates).

For more information on NYU’s COVID-19 vaccination protocol, please see here.

For assistance, please contact Glucksman Ireland House at ireland.house@nyu.edu or by phone at (212) 998-3955.

Time

(Thursday) 7:00 pm - 8:15 pm

Location

Glucksman Ireland House NYU One Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003

Calendar GoogleCal

november 2022

7nov4:30 pm- 6:00 pmColonial & Revolutionary Americas Workshop | Michael Witgen, Columbia University (Princeton University Event)

10nov5:00 pm- 6:30 pmCRIGHS: Alvin Baltrop's Voyeurism: Sexual Perversity, Race, and the Historical Uses of Photography

Event Details

Alvin Baltrop’s Voyeurism: Sexual Perversity, Race, and the Historical Uses of Photography

Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022 | 5:00–6:30 pm | 411 Fayerweather Hall

Since the 2019 solo exhibition The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop at the Bronx Museum, black gay photographer Alvin Baltrop, known for his portraits of the gay sexual subcultures and abandoned warehouses at New York’s West Side Piers, has received increased scholarly and popular attention. However, Baltrop has been primarily discussed as a gay artist who focused on gay subcultures. Though Baltrop’s race, class, gender, and sexuality shaped his artistry, few scholars have analyzed how these identity markers shaped his life and times. This talk explores how Baltrop’s identification as a black gay voyeur shaped his artistic practice and life experiences in the 1970s. Since Baltrop viewed his photography as historical documentation of a fleeting gay subculture, the talk also considers how his voyeuristic approach to photography might intervene in the practice of queer history.

Darius Bost is Associate Professor of Black Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the co-principal investigator of the Provost’s Initiative on the Racialized Body. He is also co-editor of Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. Bost is the author of the award-winning book, Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence (Chicago, 2019).

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Research in African American Studies

Time

(Thursday) 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Location

411 Fayerweather Hall

1180 Amsterdam Avenue

Calendar GoogleCal

15nov4:20 pm- 6:00 pmLH Workshop with Helen Kinsella (Minnesota) - "No Comfort in the Historical Context”: US-Native Wars and Unlawful Combatancy."

16nov4:30 pm- 6:00 pmEarly Modern History Workshop | Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University (Princeton University Event)

30nov6:15 pm- 7:30 pmFeaturedSOF/Heyman Center: Celebrating Recent Work by Hilary Hallett

Event Details

Celebrating Recent Work by Hilary Hallett

NEW BOOKS IN THE ARTS AND SCIENCES

November 30, 2022
Wednesday, 6:15pm–7:30pm EST, The Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room, Columbia University + Virtual Event

REGISTER FOR ZOOM LIVESTREAM HERE

Free and open to the public
Registration required. See details.

Inventing the It Girl: How Elinor Glyn Invented Modern Romance and Conquered Early Hollywood
by Hilary Hallett

The modern romance novel is elevated to a subject of serious study in this addictively readable biography of pioneering celebrity author Elinor Glyn (1864–1943). In elegant prose, Hilary A. Hallett traces Glyn’s meteoric rise from a depressed society darling to a world-renowned celebrity author who consorted with world leaders from St. Petersburg to Cairo to New York. After reporting from the trenches during World War I, the author was lured by American movie producers from Paris to Los Angeles for her remarkable third act. Weaving together years of deep archival research, Hallett movingly conveys how Glyn, more than any other individual during the Roaring Twenties, crafted early Hollywood’s glamorous romantic aesthetic. She taught the screen’s greatest leading men to make love in ways that set audiences aflame, and coined the term “It Girl,” which turned actress Clara Bow into the symbol of the first sexual revolution.

With Inventing the It Girl, Hallett has done nothing less than elevate the origins of the modern romance genre to a subject of serious study. In doing so, she has also reclaimed the enormous influence of one of Anglo-America’s most significant cultural tastemakers while revealing Glyn’s life to have been as sensational as any of the characters she created on the page or screen. The result is a groundbreaking portrait of a courageous icon of independence who encouraged future generations to chase their desires wherever they might lead.

This event will be in person at the Heyman Center and livestreamed online. Please register for both in-person and virtual attendance via the link. Registration is mandatory for in-person attendance.

Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.

About the Author:

Hilary Hallett is the Mendelson Family Professor and Director of American Studies, and Associate Professor of History where she teaches modern American cultural and social history. Her areas of specialization include women and gender history; histories of popular and mass culture from a transatlantic perspective; and histories of American culture industries, particularly theater, music, film, and Hollywood’s history. She is interested in mass media’s relationship to social change and to the big stories they tell about America and Americans over time.

About the Speakers:

Farran Smith Nehme has written about film and film history for the New York Post, Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, Film Comment, the Village Voice, and Sight & Sound, as well as for her blog, Self-Styled Siren. Her novel, Missing Reels, was published in 2014.

Sharon Marcus teaches at Columbia University, where she is the Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature, specializing in nineteenth-century British and French culture. Her scholarship analyzes the cultural assignment of value in domains as diverse as architecture, social relationships, literary criticism, and performance culture. Her most recent book is The Drama of Celebrity (Princeton University Press 2019).

Pablo Piccato is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of History at Columbia University. His research and teaching focus on modern Mexico, particularly on crime, politics, and culture. He has taught as visiting faculty in universities in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and France, and has been director of Columbia’s Institute of Latin American Studies, Vice Chair of the Department of History, and University Senator.

Alice Kessler-Harris is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History at Columbia University, and former president of the Organization of American Historians. She is a specialist in American labor and comparative and interdisciplinary explorations of women and gender. Her most recent book is A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (Bloomsbury Press 2012).

Time

(Wednesday) 6:15 pm - 7:30 pm

Location

The Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room, Columbia University

Calendar GoogleCal

View Past Events >>

FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

Pamela H. Smith. From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World. 2022: University of Chicago Press.

Hilary A. Hallett. Inventing the It Girl: How Elinor Glyn Created the Modern Romance and Conquered Early Hollywood. 2022: Liveright.

Pablo Piccato. Historia mínima de la violencia en México. 2022: El Colegio de México.

Merlin Chowkwanyun. All Health Politics Is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health. 2022: University of North Carolina Press.

Marc Van De Mieroop. The Practice of Ancient Near Eastern History – Opera Minora. 2022: Ugarit-Verlag.

Rebecca Kobrin, editor. Salo Baron: The Past and Future of Jewish Studies in America. 2022: Columbia University Press.

Michael John Witgen. Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America. 2022: Omohundro Institute.

James Stafford. The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750–1848. 2022: Cambridge University Press.

View More Publications >>

FEATURED RESOURCES

Confluence: A History of North American Rivers

Rivers have always been the lifeblood of the continent, yet their human histories have remained largely hidden from public view. Our goal is to create a publicly accessible digital platform for mapping and narrating lived history along North American rivers.

Columbia Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities

The Columbia Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities fosters collaborative transnational research on the global history of sexualities and supports such research at Columbia.

History in Action

History in Action is one of four pilot programs comprising the Career Diversity for Historians Initiative, funded by the American Historical Association and the Mellon Foundation.

Mapping Historical New York City

Mapping Historical New York City is a collaboration to map immigration and neighborhood change in New York City during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Columbia University Historical Justice Initiative

The Columbia University Historical Justice Initiative offers a self-guided, interactive walking tour of CU's Morningside campus through an iOS app and eventually an Android one as well.

Featured Podcasts

FACULTY HOSTED PODCASTS: Global Thought Podcast (co-hosted by Carol Gluck) People Doing Interesting Stuff (hosted by Samuel Roberts) STUDENT HOSTED PODCASTS: New Books in Middle Eastern Studies (co-hosted by Joshua Donovan) The Sounds of Caliban (hosted by Mariana Katz) New Books in Latin American Studies (co-hosted by Rachel Newman) FACULTY FEATURED PODCASTS: Manan Ahmed discussed his path to historian academia in The Dean’s Table podcast. Frank Guridy discussed how he came to study history and his research on popular sports in The Dean's Table podcast.

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Michael Witgen, Columbia University

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Alvin Baltrop’s Voyeurism: Sexual Perversity, Race, and the Historical Uses of Photography

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Thursday, November 16

4:30 p.m. | 211 Dickinson Hall & Zoom

“Making and Knowing in Sixteenth-Century Europe”

Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University

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