1356 Campus Drive, East Campus, 224 Classroom Bldg., Box 90719, Durham, NC  27708-0719 | (919) 684-3014 | history.duke.edu                            vol. 4, May 2024

Highlighting the accomplishments of our faculty, graduate students, and alumni, as well as events and other noteworthy topics.  Suggestions and submissions are welcome at history@duke.edu.  Submission is no guarantee of inclusion.

Dear Friends of Duke History,
We have just wrapped up a very busy and intense year at the end of which I am so delighted to announce—and welcome—several new members to our faculty ranks. Alika Bourgette, who has just completed his doctoral work at the University of Washington in Seattle, will be joining us as Assistant Professor in July 2025 as our first hire in Native American & Indigenous History. As a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) historian of the late nineteenth... (continue reading)

An NCCU-Duke-Brazilian Collaboration co-directed by John French has been awarded $40,000 in new funding for AY2024-25 by the Duke Bass Connections program to work in the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro on Activism, Culture and Education for Citizenship in Brazil and the U.S. (2024-2025),  The new grant came in the wake of a successful 2023-24 year project on Hip-Hop Pedagogies that  included a successful ten day visit from Rio rapper and community leader Dudu de Morro Agudo to classrooms in Durham, Asheville, and Athens, GA. A history of this decades-long international collaboration may be found here.  For more on the educational and anti-racist work of Dudu and the Instituto Enraizados, see the short film they shot during fieldwork in August 2023 (captions available).

In March, James Chappel published an op-ed in The New York Times, on aging and the 2024 election. It is in support of his forthcoming book on the topic, entitled Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age, which is coming out from Basic Books in November.

Cecilia Marquez was interviewed on NPR Atlanta WABE's "Closer Look with Rose Scott" podcast in support of her recent book, Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation (UNC Press, 2023).

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William T. Laprade Professor Emeritus of History William Reddy's latest publication, "To Fly the Plane: Language Games, Historical Narratives and Emotions," may be found in History and Theory, 62 (2023): 1-32, available here in Open Access (Supplementary Materials).  The article, part of a new project on the emotions of modernity, was downloaded over 1,000 times by 31 December 2023.

Nancy MacLean is a participant in two multi-year grant projects to address the escalating attacks from the political right on education at all levels. Both were awarded support over the last month.  The Mellon Foundation has funded the creation of a sizable Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, which will be housed in the AAUP’s Department of Research and Public Policy. MacLean will serve as a Fellow over the grant’s first two years. The Spencer Foundation awarded a Vision Grant to "Connecting Interdisciplinary Experts: A Strategic Network Alliance to Leverage Countermeasures to Misinformation in Education” to support a team that will work to combat manufactured crises, protect equitable K-12 education, encourage teachers to stay in the profession, and thereby help defend democracy writ large. On March 22, MacLean was a featured speaker at the Freedom to Learn/ Right to Learn Strategic Convening hosted by the African American Policy Forum at Columbia Law School. Late in 2023, she gave keynotes at the annual national Summit of the Law Firm Antiracism Alliance (along with Stacey Abrams and Professor Carol Anderson) and at the inaugural national conference of the Critical Legal Collective (along with Jobs with Justice executive director Erica Smiley and NC Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls).  Two invited articles, The Right is Prepared For This Moment. Are We? (In These Times) and Constitution in the Crosshairs: The Far Right's Plan for a New Confederacy (Progressive.org) were published on 12/11/23.

Peter H. Wood has published a new, expanded edition of Black Majority, his 1974 study of enslavement in colonial South Carolina. This 50th-anniversary book (from W.W. Norton, with a foreword by Harvard’s Imani Perry) was the focus of an AHA session in January entitled “Black Majority in the Age of Black Lives Matter.” In New Orleans in April, at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Wood presented a paper, co-authored with Virginia M. Richards, entitled “How Dugouts (and Digging) Transformed the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1720.”  Dr. Wood also discussed his book on panel at the American Historical Association conference in San Francisco on January 7.

Ed Balleisen’s co-authored essay, “America's Anti-Fraud Ecosystem and the Problem of Social Trust: Perspectives from Legal Practitioners, appeared in the Northwestern University Law Review.  In February, he provided the keynote address for a Washington University in Saint Louis conference, “Making Transdisciplinarity Work.”  This spring, Bass Connections, a signature Duke research program overseen by Balleisen as Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, received a Presidential Team Award, the highest honor that the university bestows on collaborative undertakings. Along with Mary Pat McMahon and Jenny Wood Crowley (an alum of the department), he is also co-leading a Bass Connections team this year that is conducting oral histories about the evolution of research, learning, student experience, and community relations at Duke, as part of the university’s centennial.  In July, he will begin a two-year term as chair of the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association Board.

John Martin is the co-editor, with Manuela Bragagnolo, of a special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies: Physiognomy and Visual Judgment in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. The volume brings together an international group of scholars whose contributions highlight the centrality of the physiognomic imagination in the long Renaissance.

The illustration, taken from Christian Moldenarius’s Exercitationes physiognomicae (1616) shows the contemporary fascination with metoposcopy, the science of reading the face. Here, the marks of the seven planets on the forehead are interpreted as “wisdom shining on the prudent man’s face.”

Also Martin’s review of Dennis Romano’s Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City (Oxford) recently appeared in the Washington Post.

The first Roundtable on John French's Lula biography in Brazil: “Biografia, Lula e a História Social do Trabalho: debates em torno de “Lula e a Política da Astúcia" de John French,” Revista Mundos do Trabalho, volume 15 (2023) with extended comments by anthropologist José Sergio Leite Lopes (UFRRJ) and historians Murilo Leal Pereira Neto (USP), and Maud Chirio (Universite Gustave Eifel, France) with a reply by the author.  Portuguese   English

On April 3rd, Claudia Koonz participated in a colloquium paying tribute to the work of historian Francoise Basch, who died last year. Dr. Koonz's talk, entitled “Victor, Ernestine et Françoise : l'ambivalence de l'outsider et la solidité des principes.," was presented at the University of Paris, Nanterre.

Simon Miles published an article in International Security which uses Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian archives to reconstruct Eastern European diplomacy at the end of the Cold War and show that it was not just the superpowers that shaped events during this pivotal period: the non-Soviet members of the Warsaw Pact also had agency. The article frames NATO’s eastward expansion during the 1990s as less of an American project, but rather one of the Eastern Europeans themselves.  It is available open-access here, thanks to the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy.

Matthew Shutzer has published a new book chapter, "Fossil Fuels: From Extraction to Emissions," co-authored with Antoine Acker, Elizabeth Chatterjee, Lukas Becker, and Nathalia Cappelini in the Routledge Handbook of Environmental History. He was also recently awarded an NEH Fellowship from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers that will support research towards his second manuscript project with a focus on environmentalism in the era of structural adjustment. In May, Matthew will speak at the second annual conference of the University of Chicago's Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization on "Past and Future Commons."

Thavolia Glymph, currently on leave but keeping quite busy as president of the American Historical Association, has been out speaking to the masses:  “Women and Children in the American Civil War: Refugees and the Law of War,” The Huntington Library Distinguished Fellow Lecture, March 20, 2024; “Playing ‘Dixie’ in Egypt: A Transnational Transcript of Race, Nation, Empire and Citizenship,” Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lectures, April 28, 19, and 20, 2024, George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, Penn State University; “Departures to Serve: The Traffic in Women and Children in the Civil War,” UCLA Department of History, April 25, 2024; Co-convene with Ari Kelman (UC, Davis), “Contested Commemorations in the South and West” Workshop) Autry Museum, Los Angeles, April 26-28, 2024; and “Confederate Veterans in the Egyptian Army, 1868-1878,” Pasadena Civil War Roundtable, May 28, 2024.  Finally, but most certainly not least, Dr. Glymph has just been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Congratulations to Phil Stern, currently serving as our Graduation with Distinction Program Director, who has earned the rank of Full Professor, effective July 1.

Way back in January, Diana McGinty joined the History staff as Assistant to the Chair.  Diana has extensive administrative experience, most recently from Piedmont Community College and NC Cooperative Extension, and her presence has been most welcome in the department.  By the time you read this, Diana will have received her MBA degree from UNC-Greensboro!

Congratulations to our Classes of 2024!  Undergraduates and Graduates alike, we hope you take tremendous pride and treasured memories from your time here at Duke.  You are not just a name on a spreadsheet to us; you will forever be a member of the Duke History family!  So keep in touch, and make us proud!

The latest volume of Historia Nova: The Duke Historical Review has just been published online.  You can see it here.  Physical copies may (for the first time!) be located in the History department offices.

The History Graduate Student Association has produced a small zine highlighting the creative output of some of its members.  See it here.

In light of the over 500 anti-trans, anti-queer, and anti-DEI bills that have been introduced into legislation this year alone, the History Graduate Student Association and the History Department organized to host an event built around advocacy, education, and fun. “Stop Anti-Trans Legislation: A Drag Performance,” featured professional drag performers, Stormie Daie, Mx. Princexx Peritwinkle, and G-Clef for a spectacular event, open to the public. Music was provided by DJ Webbie, with speakers Pete Sigal, Raleigh-based trans-activist, Jessica Alegre, Stormie Date, and Cris Culton sharing the history and importance of queer identity to an intersectional project of freedom and creative expression for all. Despite the thunderstorms that forced the event into the second floor of the Classroom Building, our event was well attended, with over 70 people from Duke and the Durham community. The performance was a dazzling success, and we had countless people thank the History Department and its co-sponsors for such a fun and educational event. Special thank you to Cultural Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, and International Comparative Studies, for their co-sponsorship. (Pictured: Mx Princexx Peritwinkle, Stormie Daie, G-Clef. Photo by Jessi Cruger)

On January 25th, the History Department hosted the launch of "Our History, Our Voice: Latinés at Duke," a curated exhibit highlighting the history of the Latiné experience at our university from the earliest days to the present. The video above (Trinity Communications), is an excellent introduction, and we invite you to visit the exhibit in person, beautifying the first and second floors of Classroom Building through December 2025.  The launch itself was a wonderful event, calling attention to Duke's year-long Centennial celebration with remarks from Trinity College Dean Gary Bennett, Duke Provost Alec Gallimore, and Duke University President Vincent Price, among others.

On March 28, the History Hub sponsored "Picture This! History in the Age of the Photograph," a workshop highlighting six photographs selected by- and used in the research of- six panelists who discussed their work and its integration of the photographic medium. The panelists were Avrati Bhatnagar, Hannah Conway, John French, Marty Miller, Sumathi Ramaswamy, and Matt Shutzer. A creative writing contest, soliciting imaginative fiction based on any one of the discussed photos, was sponsored by the department; two winners were announced: Karina Lu and Emily Maceda.

Lesa Redmond has been awarded the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Dissertation Completion Grant, administered by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. The grant supports MMUF alumni nearing the completion of their dissertation and will aid Redmond in completing her project, tentatively titled "Roots to Routes: African American Intellectual Production and the Politics of Higher Education in North Carolina." In addition to support from MMUF, Redmond has also been announced as a semi-finalist for the Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program, administered by the National Academy of Education. 

Finally, this summer, Redmond will complete her remaining dissertation research with help from Duke's Summer Research Fellowship for Research on Racism and Systemic Inequalities.

On 27 April, Devin Creed, who is currently in India doing his dissertation research, delivered a lecture at an International Seminar at Patrasayer Mahavidyalaya (an arts college in Bankura District, West Bengal) entitled "The History of Food and Famine in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, 19th c. Present" in front of several hundred students and faculty. He used this lecture to talk about some of his major archival findings at the West Bengal State Archives in the last 4 months. He also taught an impromptu "class," during which he talked about a historical connection between the US, India, and food: the rise and decline of Punjabi-Mexican food in early 20th c. California.  The photo shows him being feted during the event!

Vivien Tejada will soon be an Assistant Professor of 19th-Century U.S. History at UCLA.

Martha Liliana Espinosa will join DePauw University as an assistant professor in Latin American History starting in August 2024.

In the Fall of 2024, Meghan Wooley (PhD, '22) will be joining the History Department at Idaho State University as an Assistant Professor of Pre-Modern History to 1500.

Tom Robisheaux (pictured here with wife, Dr. Angelique Droessaert) attended his 50th class reunion, April 12-14th.  The event- part of Duke's Centennial Spring Reunions Celebration- incorporated multiple years and departments, bringing together a host of alumni to share stories from their times at Duke, and fondly recall their Duke professors and classes.

Travis Knoll (PhD, '22) published a Boston Review piece on the 50th anniversary of A Theology of Liberation (1971)'s English translation, in which he took stock of how liberation theology formed in the 1960s and which currents are still teaching the left important lessons today. He also published an article in The Americas, detailing the history of the Quilombos Mass (1981). A collaboration between socially-minded bishops, Black activists, and political dissidents, the text represents the culmination of a forgotten alliance between progressive Catholics and Black movements in dictatorial Brazil.

In addition to his academic work, Knoll has received a Sustainability and Climate Risk certificate from the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). Lastly, he co-founded Commonweal Advisors LLC, a company providing sustainability services and connecting international capital to renewable energy projects in emerging markets.

Kena Wani (PhD, '20) has recently joined the National Law School of India (NLSIU) in Bangalore as an assistant professor of History.  Currently working on her monograph project, Kena has also published two peer reviewed articles since receiving her doctorate:  “Pedagogies of Development, Conceptions of Efficiency: Modern Managerialism in Industrial Ahmedabad, 1950s–1960s” (Enterprise &  Society, 1–34 (2023)) and “Trustees of the Nation? Business, Philanthropy and Changing Modes of Legitimacy in Colonial and Postcolonial Western India” (The Indian Economic & Social History Review 59 (1): 5–36 (2022).

In a recent article published in Diplomatic History, Garrett McKinnon (PhD, '22) writes about the May 1, 1960 incident when a CIA spy plane was shot down overflying and photographing Soviet military bases. Capture of the spy plane’s pilot alive, despite his possession of a lethal injection, sparked a global scandal about U.S. covert operations and military masculinity that helped usher in the “unmanning” of U.S. airpower through drones and satellites.

Vanessa Freije's (PhD, '15) 2020 book, Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico (Duke University Press) was recently translated into Spanish and received a glowing review in the Mexican magazine, Nexos, which described the book as “fundamental for understanding journalism in Mexico.”  Freije is an Associate Professor of International Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

Robert Franco (PhD, '20), Assistant Professor of History at Kenyon College, recently won a prestigious ACLS fellowship for outstanding scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.  The work is entitled "Revolution in the Sheets: Sexuality and Tolerance in the Mexican Left."