Research

Paul S. Landau's new book, Spear: Mandela and the Revolutionaries has been published in the US by Ohio University Press. Reviewers have hailed the book as a "tour de force" which sheds much new light on the relationship between South African rebels against apartheid and violence. One reviewer wrote on the publisher's website: "Spear: Mandela and the Revolutionaries is one of the most important books on South Africa to appear in more than a generation. A masterpiece of analysis and careful historical reconstruction, Landau revisits a crucial moment in the country’s modern history, when a group of activists turned revolutionaries led by Nelson Mandela pursued the overthrow of the racist apartheid state."

See the publisher's website here.

Jeffrey Herf's new book, Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945 - 1949 has been published by the Cambridge University Press in April 2022. 

According to the Cambridge University Press website: " Jeffrey Herf exposes the political realities that underpinned support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In an unprecedented international account, he explores the role of the United States, the Arab States, the Palestine Arabs, the Zionists, and key European governments from Britain and France to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. His findings reveal a spectrum of support and opposition that stood in sharp contrast to the political coordinates that emerged during the Cold War, shedding new light on how and why the state of Israel was established in 1948 and challenging conventional associations of left and right, imperialism and anti-imperialism, and racism and anti-racism.

Order the book here.

Israel's Moment is a major new account of how a Jewish state came to be forged in the shadow of World War Two and the Holocaust and the onset of the Cold War. Drawing on new research in government, public and private archives, Jeffrey Herf exposes the political realities that underpinned support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In an unprecedented international account, he explores the role of the United States, the Arab States, the Palestine Arabs, the Zionists, and key European governments from Britain and France to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. His findings reveal a spectrum of support and opposition that stood in sharp contrast to the political coordinates that emerged during the Cold War, shedding new light on how and why the state of Israel was established in 1948 and challenging conventional associations of left and right, imperialism and anti-imperialism, and racism and anti-racism.

Writing Australian History On-screen: Television and Film Period Dramas "Down Under" reveals the depths of Australian history from convict times to the present day. The essays in this book are thematically driven and take a rounded historical-cultural-sociological-psychological approach in analyzing the various selected productions. In their analyses and interpretations of the topic, the contributors interrogate the intricacies in Australian history as represented in Australian filmic period drama, taken from an Australian perspective. Individually, and together as a body of authors, they highlight past issues that, despite the society’s changing attitudes over time, still have relevance for the Australia of today. In speaking to the subject, the contributing writers show a keen awareness that addressing new areas arising from the humanities is key to learning; and hence to developing an understanding of the Australian culture, the society, and sense of the ever-unfurling flag of an Australian something that is not yet a national identity.

Julie Taddeo is pleased to announce the publication of her latest book,  Writing Australian History On-screen:Television and Film Period Dramas “Down Under”, co-edited with Jo Parnell (University of Newcastle, Australia), published January 2023 by  Rowman and Littlefield. 

The book uses a historical-cultural-sociological-psychological approach in analyzing the various selected productions; the contributors interrogate the intricacies in Australian history as represented in Australian filmic period drama, taken from an Australian perspective. Individually, and together as a body of authors, they highlight past issues that, despite the society’s changing attitudes over time, still have relevance for the Australia of today. 

Paul S. Landau is interviewed about his new book, Spear: Mandela and the Revolutionaries (Ohio University Press, 2022) on H-Nets New Books Network. The moderator Rabrecus Toles says of the book: "Landau complicates the whitewashed “grandpa” figure so many of us have come to know Mandela to be. He gives us a detailed glimpse into the mind of the revolutionary and oftentimes violent Nelson Mandela that we so anxiously want to know." The book has been praised in many quarters as presenting a vital new view of Mandela's role in the end of apartheid.

Hear the full interview HERE.

Around the world, hundreds of millions of labor migrants endure exploitation, lack of basic rights, and institutionalized discrimination and marginalization. What dynamics and drivers have created a world in which such a huge--and rapidly growing--group toils as marginalized men and women, existing as a lower caste institutionally and juridically? In what ways did labor migrants shape their living and working conditions in the past, and what opportunities exist for them today?
 

Global Labor Migration presents new multidisciplinary, transregional perspectives on issues surrounding global labor migration. The essays go beyond disciplinary boundaries, with sociologists, ethnographers, legal scholars, and historians contributing research that extends comparison among and within world regions. Looking at migrant workers from the late nineteenth century to the present day, the contributors illustrate the need for broader perspectives that study labor migration over longer timeframes and from wider geographic areas. The result is a unique, much-needed collection that delves into one of the world’s most pressing issues, generates scholarly dialogue, and proposes cutting-edge research agendas and methods.

Thomas Zeller has published a new book, Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters with Johns Hopkins University Press. The book is available as  both a printed book and in an open access version, thanks to a grant from the University of Maryland libraries.

Link for the open access version is HERE.

See information about the book from the publisher's website HERE.

Julie Taddeo's most recent book, Diagnosing History: Medicine in Television Period Drama, coedited with Katherine Byrne and James Leggott (Manchester University Press, 2022) will be featured in a virtual book launch on September 23, 2022 at noon EST, 5pm in the UK, The launch is hosted by Moving Image, Popular Media & Culture Research Group at Northumbria University, UK .

From the publisher's website:

"This timely collection examines representations of medicine and medical practices in international period drama television. A preoccupation with medical plots and settings can be found across a range of important historical series, including Outlander, Poldark, The Knick, Call the Midwife, La Peste, and A Place to Call Home. Such shows offer a critique of medical history while demonstrating how contemporary viewers access and understand the past. Topics covered in this collection include the innovations and horrors of surgery; the intersection of gender, class, race, and medicine on the American frontier; psychiatry and the trauma of war; and the connections between past and present pandemics. Featuring original chapters on period television from the UK, the US, Spain, and Australia, Diagnosing History offers an accessible, global and multidisciplinary contribution to both televisual and medical history."

The Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the State of Israel have announced that Shay Hazkani's recent book, Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (Stanford University Press, 2021), is the recipient of the 2022 Korenblat Book Award in Israel Studies.

From the award letter:

“Dear Palestine marks a paradigm shift in the study of the relations between Jews and Arabs. In an engaging and literary style, Shay Hazkani orchestrates numerous letters and diaries of Jewish and Arab soldiers during the 1948 War, in addition to military journals, pamphlets, and radio broadcasts of the Israel Defense Forces and the Arab League’s volunteer army. This is a microhistory of the ordinary individuals who withstood indoctrination and cooptation, sometime against their best interests. It is a story that quietly defies monolithic and binary perceptions passed down by nationalist histories. In their stead, Hazkani offers a relational account that listens to a more nuanced human network which steers this commendable and unpretentiously radical book.”

The Korenblat Book Award in Israel Studies was established in 2021 by Dr. Phillip Korenblat to promote exceptional scholarly contribution in the field of Israel Studies, and honor each year a book of outstanding merit in either Hebrew or English by scholars at all stages of their career.