Research

Julie Taddeo's new book has now been published by Lexington Books, co-edited with Jo Parnell. According to the publisher, 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."

See the publisher's website here for more information.

Thomas Zeller's new book, Consuming Landscapes, was recently released by Johns Hopkins University Press. It is available both as  a printed book and in an open access version, thanks to a grant from the University of Maryland libraries. 

According to the publisher's website, "What we see through our windshields reflects ideas about our national identity, consumerism, and infrastructure.

For better or worse, windshields have become a major frame for viewing the nonhuman world. The view from the road is one of the main ways in which we experience our environments. These vistas are the result of deliberate historical forces, and humans have shaped them as they simultaneously sought to be transformed by them. In Consuming Landscapes, Thomas Zeller explores how what we see while driving reflects how we view our societies and ourselves, the role that consumerism plays in our infrastructure, and ideas about reshaping the environment in the twentieth century."

See the publisher's website here.

Hayim Lapin, with Shaye J.D. Cohen and Robert Goldenberg has published The Oxford Annotated Mishna, the first translation of that work, in three volumes.

The Mishnah is the foundational document of rabbinic law and, one could say, of rabbinic Judaism itself. It is overwhelmingly technical and focused on matters of practice, custom, and law. An expert group of translators and annotators have assemble da version of the Mishnah that can be read without specialist knowledge.

See the publisher's website HERE.

Ting Zhang's recent book Circulating the Code: Print Media and Legal Knowledge in Qing China (University of Washington Press, 2020) has been published May 2022 in Chinese. New Books in Law wrote that the English edition is: "a beautiful combination of legal history and print culture history....Wonderfully detailed, lucidly written, and packed full of fascinating books, this is a must-read for anyone interested in legal history, the history of the book, and in thinking about comparative histories of print culture and commercial publishing." According to China Review International, the book is "a must-read for scholars interested in the production and circulation of legal knowledge, popular reading culture, and commercial publishing history in late imperial China. Through the lens of legal culture and book history, Circulating the Code challenges an “orientalist” view on Chinese history and demonstrates that legal consciousness existed and thrived among various groups in late imperial China."

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.