Research

The Russian and Kazakh-language translation of Sarah Cameron's book, The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (Cornell UP, 2018) were reissued in honor of Kazakhstan's Famine Remembrance Day on May 31, 2023. The book continues to be widely read in the region: this marks the second printing of the book in the Russian language and the third in the Kazakh-language. While in Almaty, Sarah held a Q&A about the book and signed books. 

The May 2023 issue of Commonweal magazine includes Piotr Kosicki's new article about the weaponization of historical memory of Pope John Paul II (and the suppression of research into his ties of clerical abuse) in Poland. The digital version is available HERE. 

Piotr Kosicki published a new article in The Atlantic titled "Poland Is Not Ready to Accept a New McCarthyism." The article explores the significance of a June 4, 2023 march celebrating the 34th anniversary of the 1989 elections that led Poland to abjure communism. Piotr argues that the march was also a protest against the current autocratic Polish government. Read the article HERE.

Marlene Mayo's essay is among seven which have been selected for publication in a recent e-book, a Project Muse issue published in October 2022 by University of Hawaii Press, entitled Celebrating 60+ Issues of "U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, edited by Alisa Freedman.

Her essay is "A Friend in Need:  Esther B. Rhoads, Quakers, and Humanitarian Relief in Allied Occupied Japan, 1946-1952," U.S.-Japan Women's Journal  50 (2016): 54. 

Find the e-book HERE.

Jim Gilbert's most recent novel, Murder at Amapas Beach (Atmosphere Press) was featured in the June 14 edition of MarylandToday. The book features Amanda Pennyworth, the American consul to the resort city of Puerto Vallarta. She finds herself trying to solve two murders, one of a close friend.

See the full article HERE

The English translation of Antoine Borrut's first book will be published by Brill in July 2023 (with a new preface) under the title Between Memory and Power: The Syrian Space under the Late Umayyads and Early Abbasids (c. 72-193/692-809). 

Antoine Borrut co-edited a volume entitled Mers et rivages d’Islam: de l’Atlantique à la Méditerranée. Mélanges offerts à Christophe Picard (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2023) which was published in May. The volume consists of 25 contributions gathered in a Festschrift dedicated to Prof. Christophe Picard. Antoine’s essay in the volume is entitled “Histoires astrologiques et construction du temps culturel dans les débuts de l’islam.” 

Karin Rosemblatt was awarded a Faculty-Student Research Award from the UMD Graduate School. The grant will support travel to Mexico during Summer 2023 for Karin and a graduate student to conduct research for a book project exploring how 20th century anthropologists, archaeologists, and ethnohistorians established truths regarding the pre-Columbian history of Mexico. This grant will support archival research for Karin's current book project, a book of essays examining public controversies in which archaeologists and anthropologists debated the contours of pre-Columbian history and the effects of the Spanish Conquest. The book seeks to understand the value of the past for the Mexican state and Mexicans more broadly.

Stefano Villani has won a UMD Graduate School Faculty-Student Research Award for a project with PhD student Jordan S. Sly. The project is titled "Narrating a massacre. Samuel Morland and the Waldensian slaughter of 1655 between propaganda, religion and diplomacy." The project investigates the 1655 massacre of the Protestant Waldensian minority in the Piedmontese valleys of Northern Italy by troops of the Duke of Savoy. These communities claimed a direct continuity with the Waldensians, a medieval heretical group. Still, the Dutch Republic, the Protestant Swiss cantons, and England reacted in defense of the persecuted Waldensians. Oliver Cromwell sent diplomat Samuel Morland to stop the massacres and re-establish toleration for these communities. After returning to England, Morland published the History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piemont in 1658, which served as a record of his diplomatic mission and a celebration of the Waldensian church's ancient history.

St efano Villani has published two book reviews: on Mathilde Monge and Natalia Muchnik's Early Modern Diasporas: A European History (Routledge, 2022), in Società e Storia 179 (2023): 176-177); and on Hannah Marcus's Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), in Rivista di Storia e letteratura religiosa, 58 (2022): 326-330.

Julie Taddeo edited a Special Issue of the Journal of Popular Television (April 2023) on the Netflix series, Bridgerton. She and her fellow contributors examine how the popular period TV series interrogates race, feminism, sexuality, and gender issues in Regency England, as well as the fandom culture that surrounds Bridgerton and how academics can use Bridgerton for public history purposes.