New Report on Jobs for Historians

Posted on September 8, 2014 by briansandberg

The American Historical Association (AHA) has released a new report on jobs for historians. The AHA normally issues its job reports in January each year, but has decided to shift the annual report to September, at the beginning of the hiring cycle.

The AHA reports that “The number of positions advertised with the American Historical Association during academic year 2013–14 was 7 percent lower than it was in 2012–13. This is the second year in a row that the number of jobs has fallen. The 2013–14 total of 638 is still higher than the nadir of 569 jobs reached in 2009–10, but is still far from the pre-recession peak of 1,064 positions advertised in 2007–08.”

The distribution of job openings by geographic field is always important.

CareerOpenings

This data is based on the AHA’s own job ads and those posted on H-Net. 

The data for the 2013-2014 hiring cycle shows 82 tenure-track Assistant Professor openings in European history, along with 28 Visiting Assistant Professorships, and 23 lectureships.

The full jobs report is available at the AHA Perspectives online.

Posted in Careers in History, Humanities Education, Jobs and Positions | Leave a comment

Marc Bloch Prize

Posted on August 26, 2014 by briansandberg

EUI-logo

Marc Bloch Prize in Early Modern and Modern European History

The Department of History and Civilization of the European University Institute is welcoming submissions for the Marc Bloch Prize in Early Modern and Modern European History (15th-21st centuries) to the author of the best new MA thesis (awarded in 2013 or 2014) in early modern or modern European history and in the history of Europe in the world.

We would be grateful if you could kindly bring the attached announcement to the attention of any recent graduate who might be interested in participating in the competition. More information can be found on the Marc Bloch Prize webpage.

Current MA candidates and recent MA recipients in European history at Northern Illinois University may want to apply for this prestigious prize, which carries a monetary award.

The deadline for this year’s competition is 1 November 2014.

Posted in Early Modern Europe, European History, Graduate Work in History, Grants and Fellowships | Leave a comment

Seventeenth-Century Imperialism and New York

Posted on August 25, 2014 by briansandberg

New York is apparently not celebrating its 350th anniversary this week.

Farris-FallofNewAmsterdam

According to an article in The New York Times, “On August 26, 1664, 350 years ago Tuesday, a flotilla of four British frigates led by the Guinea, which was manned by 150 sailors and conveying 300 redcoats, anchored ominously in Gravesend Bay off Brooklyn, between Coney Island and the Narrows. Over the next 13 days, the soldiers would disembark and muster at a ferry landing located roughly where the River Café is moored today, and two of the warships would sail to the Battery and train their cannon on Fort Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan. Finally, on Sept. 8, the largely defenseless settlement tolerated a swift and bloodless regime change: New Amsterdam was immediately renamed New York.”

This transition resulted from the colonial competition between the Dutch and British empires in the Americas. Although the Dutch Republic and Britain both promoted Protestant versions of Christianity, their competing maritime commerce and naval policies resulted in several wars during the mid-seventeenth century.

Dutch settlers established New Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century, but the town remained small. The heart of the Dutch maritime empire was in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. There were numerous other larger Dutch colonial holdings in the Atlantic World, but  New Amsterdam’s position as an important North American harbor placed it conflict between the two rival maritime empires.

New York official celebrates its founding by the Dutch in 1625, but choosing this date had to do with late twentieth-century politics.

The New York Times reports on the anniversary.

Posted in Atlantic World, Early Modern Europe, Early Modern World, Empires and Imperialism, European History, European Wars of Religion, Maritime History, War, Culture, and Society, Warfare in the Early Modern World | Leave a comment

Word and Image Graduate Workshop

Posted on August 22, 2014 by briansandberg

Graduate Research Methods Workshop for Early-Career Graduate Students

Word and Image in the Renaissance
Led by James A. Knapp, Loyola University Chicago; and Jennifer Waldron, University of Pittsburgh

Application deadline: September 22
Workshop: 9 am to 5 pm Friday, October 24
Open to graduate students in a terminal master’s program and those who have not yet completed comprehensive exams in a PhD program. No language prerequisites.

Download a PDF flyer to post and distribute: http://www.newberry.org/sites/default/files/calendar-attachments/WordAndImageFlyer.pdf.

“All media are mixed media,” claims theorist W. J. T.  Mitchell. This workshop will examine several key issues in the long history of “mixed” media by focusing on interrelations between text and image in Renaissance Europe.

The workshop will explore broadsides, pamphlets, frontispieces, emblem books, maps, atlases, and other items from the Newberry Library collections.  In addition to broadly framing the historical and theoretical issues raised by word-image relations in the Renaissance, the workshop leaders will present specific examples of how changing technological and cultural conditions have influenced text-image relations, including the role of visual techniques in the organization and production of knowledge, particularly the production of world maps and universal histories in an era of nascent globalization; the impact of Reformation iconoclasm on visual and print culture, from Lutheran satire to Foxe’s book of martyrs and beyond; and the challenges and opportunities surrounding digitization of early modern printed books and images, from Early English Books Online to the Folger’s digital Shakespeare texts for iPad.

Students with concentrations in literature (of any European language), history, art history, manuscript studies, history of the book, and other relevant disciplines are encouraged to apply. Limited enrollment is by competitive application; students from Center for Renaissance Studies consortium schools (http://www.newberry.org/center-renaissance-studies-consortium-members) have priority, in accordance with the consortium agreement. Fees are waived for students from consortium institutions. Such students  may be eligible to apply for travel funds to attend (http://www.newberry.org/newberry-renaissance-consortium-grants). Each member university sets its own policies and deadlines; contact your Representative Council member in advance for details.

For more information on the workshop, see the Newberry Library website.

Posted in Archival Research, Early Modern Europe, Early Modern World, European History, Graduate Work in History, History of the Book, Lectures and Seminars | Leave a comment

Friendship and Sociability in Premodern Europe

Posted on August 5, 2014 by briansandberg

A new collective volume on Friendship and Sociability in Premodern Europe: Contexts, Concepts, and Expressions, ed. Amyrose McCue Gill and Sarah Rolfe Prodan (Toronto, 2014) has just been released.

McCueGillProdan-Friendship

The book description reads: “Friendship and Sociability in Premodern Europe explores ideas and instances of friendship in premodern Europe through a series of investigations into amity in discrete social and cultural contexts related to some of the most salient moments and expressions of European history and civilization: the courtly love tradition, Renaissance humanism; the spread of syphilis; the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation (and the attendant confessionalization and wars of religion); Jesuit missions; the colonization of America; and, lastly, expanding trade patterns in the Age of Discovery. The essays progress thematically as well as logically with the goal of providing a panoramic view of friendship and sociability in premodern Europe rather than a comprehensive history or unified theory of premodern friendship. Each paper presents an element of novelty – a revised or adapted concept, tradition, or strategy of social and interpersonal relating in the premodern world.”

I wrote an essay entitled “‘Accompanied by a Great Number of Their Friends’: Warrior Nobles and Amitié during the French Wars of Religion,” for this volume, which grew out of a fascinating conference on friendship in medieval and early modern Europe at the University of Toronto.

For a full description see the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies website at the University of Toronto.

Download the book order form if you are interested in ordering a copy for yourself or your library. The book lists for the very reasonable price of $39.95.

Readers interested in Renaissance culture and early modern European history will be interested in this book.

Posted in Early Modern Europe, Early Modern World, European Wars of Religion, French Wars of Religion, Italian History, Reformation History, Renaissance Art and History | Leave a comment

First World War in Film

Posted on July 31, 2014 by briansandberg

This week marks the centennial of the outbreak of the First World War. Numerous new books and articles are remembering the war and its terrible destruction. I was recently conducting research in France and was impressed by the crowded window displays dedicated to la guerre de 1914-1918 at bookstores across the country.

LaGrandeIllusion

As part of the WWI commemoration in the United States, a newspaper article in the Wall Street Journal takes a look back at portrayals of the First World War in film.

See the Wall Street Journal for this article.

Northern Illinois University students in HIST 390 History and Film: War in Film will be interested in this piece.

 

Posted in Historical Film, History of Violence, War in Film, War, Culture, and Society | Leave a comment

Dissertation Writing

Posted on July 30, 2014 by briansandberg

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a piece on dissertation writing with some simple, straightforward advice: Write!

The advice piece suggests that “there is only one fail-safe method, one secret, one guaranteed trick that you need in order to finish your dissertation: Write.”

No secrets here, just sound advice for dissertation candidates.

See the full piece at the Chronicle of Higher Education online.

Posted in Academic Publishing, Graduate Work in History, Humanities Education, Writing Methods | Leave a comment

Tanks in World War II Films

Posted on July 30, 2014 by briansandberg

Fury, a new World War II film, will be released this fall, presenting the perspective of United States tank crews fighting in Germany toward the end of the war in Europe. The film focuses on a Sherman tank named Fury and its crew, members of the famous U.S. Third Armored Division.

Fury-Sherman

The film stars Brad Pitt and apparently portrays the war as brutal and gritty rather than the “Good War” of nostalgia.

Fury-Pitt

The New York Times offers an early review of the film.

Northern Illinois University students of HIST 390 History and Film: War in Film will be interested in this review and the forthcoming film.

I will update this post once I am able to see the film.

 

Posted in European History, Historical Film, History of Violence, War in Film, War, Culture, and Society | Leave a comment

Reconsidering Anti-War Films

Posted on July 15, 2014 by briansandberg

As the centennial of the outbreak of the First World War approaches, films about the conflict are being re-examined.  Perhaps the most famous film about the First World War is Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, which is often hailed as the quintessential anti-war film because of its depiction of the brutality and horror of trench warfare.

Tom Brook has published a new article on anti-war films in the BBC. “The World War I centenary is giving films that oppose conflict a renewed currency,” he writes. “In London this week an anti-war classic, Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 picture Paths of Glory set in the trenches of World War I, is being screened at a special film season curated by Sir Peter Jackson. In the US this summer several anti-war classics are being shown in a special series at the American Film Institute , including Jean Renoir’s 1937 picture Grand Illusion, which conveys the view that war is futile.”

PathsofGlory

Image: a still from Stanley Kubrick, Paths of Glory (1957).

The French film director François Truffaut once allegedly remarked that “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film.” Other filmmakers have expressed similar sentiments on the difficulty or impossibility of creating a film that truly opposes war. Brook argues that “There are different ways to interpret this remark but it’s widely agreed that Truffaut was suggesting that movies will inevitably glorify combat when they portray the adventure and thrill of conflict – and the camaraderie between soldiers.”

Tom Brook’s “Is There any Such Thing as an ‘Anti-War Film’?” appears in the BBC online.

Northern Illinois University students in HIST 390 History and Film: War in Film will find this article useful.

 

Posted in Atrocities, Historical Film, History in the Media, History of Violence, Human Rights, War in Film, War, Culture, and Society | Leave a comment

Summit on Sexual Violence

Posted on June 11, 2014 by briansandberg

A global summit is currently being held in London on the problem of sexual violence in warfare. The summit, entitled “The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict,” is sponsored by the government of the United Kingdom.

“For a long time, wartime rape was treated with a shrug. But now, the U.N. has begun to document the problem, to understand just how widespread it is,” according to a report by NPR. “Last year, many countries signed on to a commitment to end sexual violence in conflict. And groups like Physicians for Human Rights are training local doctors in war zones how to take evidence of sexual violence for later use in trials.”

NigerianWomenProtest

The UK government website has the summit program. NPR reports on the sexual violence summit online.

Researchers and students working on issues of gender and violence in history and society will be interested in this summit’s findings.

 

Posted in Atrocities, Civil Conflict, Civilians and Refugees in War, Gender and Warfare, History of Violence, Human Rights, Laws of War, War, Culture, and Society, Women and Gender History | 1 Comment