April Masten, Associate Professor of American History at SUNY Stony Brook, has been awarded a highly competitive resident fellowship at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University for the Spring 2008 semester.

The Davis Center was named in honor of an alumnus who provided a generous gift to ensure the continuance of excellence in scholarship and the teaching of history at Princeton.  Each year, about a half-dozen scholars are chosen to participate in the seminar and pursue research related to a particular theme.

The Center’s focus for the academic years 2008-09 and 2009-10 is the problem of “Cultures and Institutions in Motion.” Issues to be studied include the diffusion of religious and cultural practices; the migration of technologies and objects; the circulation of ideas, traditions and aesthetic forms; the transfer of policies and legal practices; and the dynamics of traveling social movements.

The title of Masten’s project is “The Challenge Dance: Transatlantic Exchange in Early American Popular Culture,” which explores the form, content, and context of challenge dancing in Antebellum America to show how the aesthetic and global movements of people contributed to the formation of national identities.  Part theatre, part sport, challenge dances were jigging contests among white and black men, and sometimes women.  They took place on street corners and plantations, in halls and taverns, and in theatres and circuses as part of blackface minstrel shows. Challenge dances drew large, raucous crowds and were viewed, judged, and bet on like boxing matches.  These matches were the product of decades of exchange among Irish, English, African and Dutch sailors, slaves, and immigrants throughout the Atlantic world. 

Masten, who has taught at Stony Brook since 2001, specializes in the relationship between culture and political economies. For this project, she has received a John M. Ward Fellowship in Dance and Music for the Theatre from Harvard University’s Houghton Library, a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society, and a John Hope Franklin Fellowship from the American Philosophical Society for research travel to Ireland and England.

Since its inception, the Davis Center’s primary role has been to conduct a weekly seminar in which members of the faculty, visitors from other institutions, graduate students and selected undergraduates participate. For a period of two years, the Center focuses on a specific theme or aspect of history. Emphasis is placed on interdisciplinary approaches and subjects that span different geographical areas or periods.

The new director of the Davis Center Daniel Rodgers has been a member of the Princeton faculty since 1980.  His specialty is American ideas and culture, about which he has written several books.  Rogers has also held several fellowships, been a Fulbright lecturer in Germany and Japan, taught at Cambridge University, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007 for his project entitled, “Transformation in Social Thought in 1980s America.”

CURRICULUM VITÆ

Herman Lebovics

Department of History

Stony Brook University

Stony Brook, N.Y. 11794-4348

E-mail hglebovics@aol.com

Herman.Lebovics@stonybrook.edu

Home

105 Grant Street

Port Jefferson, NY 11777

(631) 476-9598

EDUCATION

B.A., 1956 University of Connecticut, Storrs

M.A., 1957 Yale University

Freie Universität Berlin 1959-1960

Ph.D., 1965 Yale University

POSITIONS

Instructor, Brooklyn College, 1962‑65

Visiting Assistant Professor, Oberlin College, 1965‑66

Visiting Associate Professor, Columbia University, 1972

Assistant, Associate, Professor, State University of New York at Stony Brook,

1966‑pre­sent

Maître de conférence invité (Spring 2000), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris)

SUNY Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, appointed November 2006

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

Imperialism and the Corruption of Democracies (Duke University Press, Jan. 2006)

Bringing the Empire Back Home: France in the Global Age (Duke University Press), 2004.

Mona Lisa’s Escort: André Malraux and the Reinvention of French Culture (Cornell University Press, July 1999.)

—-translation La Misión de Malraux (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, March 2001)

True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945

(Cornell University Press, 1992)

—-paperbound, Cornell, June 1994

—-trans. La Vraie France (Paris: Editions Belin, 1995)

The Alliance of Iron and Wheat: Origins of the New Conservatism of the Third Republic, 1860‑1914 (Louisiana State University Press, 1988)

Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany,

1914‑1933 (Princeton University Press, 1969)

ARTICLES

“La culture métissé: le temps des échanges, in Pascal Blanchard, Sandrine Lemaire, Nicolas Bancel, eds., Culture coloniale en France : De la Révolution française à nos jours new edition (Paris : CNRS Ēditions./Autrement, 2008), 481-93.

“Two Paths to Postmodernity: the American Indian Museum in Washington and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris,” Cahiers Parisien/Parisian Notebooks (of the University of Chicago Center in Paris), No. 3 (2007), 887-95

“Echoes of the ‘Primitive’ in France’s Move to Postcoloniality: The Musée du Quai Branly,” Globality Studies Journal, No. 4, February 5, 2007, online journal of the Institute for Global Studies at Stony Brook, http://www.stonybrook.edu/globality/Articles/no4.html

“The Musée du Quai Branly: Art? Artifact? Spectacle!” French Politics, Society, and Culture, Winter Vol. 24, No. 3, 2006, 96-110.

“Tough Love for France,” in Laura Lee Downs and Stéphane Gerson, eds., Why France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

“On the Origins of the Mission du Patrimoine Ethnologique,” Ethnologies Comparées, 8 (Spring, 2005), 34 pp. Online journal: http://alor.univ-montp3.fr/cerce/r8/n.8.htm

“L’Opération Joconde: Malraux séduit les Etats-Unis,” Charles-Louis Foulon, ed., André Malraux et le Rayonnement culturel de la France (Paris: Editions Complexe, 2004)

“Culture Métissée : Le temps des échanges, “ in Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, eds., Culture Impériale (Paris : Ed. Autrement, March 2004)

Article based on paper at the conference on the Musée national des Arts et des Traditions populaires, solicited for publication (will appear 2007?)

“Les Zoos humaines et les zoos des bêtes sauvages dans les Expositions coloniales” in Pascal Blanchard, et al., Les Zoos humaines (Paris : Editions La Découverte), 2002

“Malraux y la construcción del Dandy-Űbermensch,” Taller : Revista de Sociedad, Cultura y Política. ( Buenos Aires, 5, July 2000), 49-73.

“Washington et New York aiment la Joconde, “François Cochet, Marie Claude Genet-Delacroix, Hélène Trochmé, eds., Les Américains et la France (1917-1947: Engagements et Répresentations (Paris, 1999), 148-57

“André Malraux: A Hero for France’s Unheroic Age,” French Politics and Society, Center for European Studies (Harvard), 15 (Winter 1997), 58-69

“Malraux’s Mission,” Wilson Quarterly, Winter 1997, 78-87.

“Open the Gates… Break Down the Barriers: The French Revolution, The Popular Front, and Jean Renoir,” Persistence of Vision, special number on Jean Renoir, 12/13 (1996), 9-28.

“Transatlantic Conversations: Dialogues between United States and French Historians on French History,” (edited work of commissioned essays) (scheduled 2009)

—As well as various articles underway for edited volumes.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

Rapporteur, Mai 68 s’exporte-t-il? “Mai 68 : 40 Ans Après,” Colloque International, Institut de l’Université de Londres, Paris, 17-18 May 2008

Rapporteur, jury de thèse, Angéline Escarfé-Dublet, “Etat, culture, immigration: la dimension culturelle des politiques française d’immigration, 1958-1991,” 24 June 2008, Ecole doctorale de Sciences Po, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.

Rapporteur, jury de thèse, Reine-Claude Grondin, “La colonie en province : Diffusion et réception du fait colonial en Corrèze et en Haut-Vienne,” 23 November 2007 Université de Paris 1—Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Principle critic/commentator, workshop on Michelle Warren’s book ms. “Creole Medievalism” The John Sloan Dickey Center, Dartmouth College, 5 October 2007

Rapporteur, doctoral thesis defense, Anna Pondopoulo, Paris VII, May 2004

Rapporteur, Habilitation de Nicolas Bancel, Université de Paris (Orsay) December 2003

Speaker on French colonialism on “La Fabrique de l’histoire,” radio France Culture, Paris, 20 June 2000 (2.5 hour program)

Comité d’honneur, Association pour le Développement de l’Histoire Culturelle, France.

Co-Chair International Conference on the State and the Arts held at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. April 1997.

Board of Editors, HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS/REFLECTIONS HISTORIQUES, 1995-

Co-Chair, Conference, “Making Culture,” CUNY Graduate Center, New York, April 1994

Chair, New York Area French History Seminar, 1992-

Editorial Board, The Old Westbury Review, 1984‑1987

Sometime Member of Lehrman Institute Seminars

Co‑chair Conference on the end of the Weimar Republic, Stony Brook, 1983

MEMBERSHIP IN SCHOLARLY SOCIETIES

Founding Member, International Society for Cultural History (2007)

Fellow (elected), Royal Historical Society

American Historical Association

Society for French Historical Studies

Western Society for French History

French Colonial History Society

New York Area French History Seminar, Chair

New York European History Seminar

Council for European Studies (in New York)

College Art Association (US national art historian professional society)

Association pour le Développement de l’Histoire Culturelle, France, Université de Versailles-St.-Quentin, 2000–

Groupe de Travail en Histoire Culturelle, Centre d’Histoire de l’Europe du Vingtième Siècle, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 2001–

Fellowships and Grants

Fellow, Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall, Paris, 2008-2009

Chercheur Associé (2002), Centre d’Histoire, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris)

Fellow, Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall, Paris, 2001.

Project Director, Florence Gould Foundation Grant for five year series (1997-2003) of conversations between French and American historians, “Transatlantic Encounters”

Project Director, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant for Conference on “The Arts of Democracy: Culture, Civil Society, and the State,” held at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C. April 1997

Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., 1995-96

American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 1994-95

SUNY-UUP Faculty Development Fellowship, 1989, 1993 (declined), 1994, 1998, 2000, 2006

DAAD Conference Grant, 1993

Project Director, Florence Gould Foundation Grant for program of New York Area French History Seminar, 1993-1996

Fellow, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Spring, 1991

National Endowment for the Humanities Travel Grants, 1981, 1984

]]> http://history.sunysb.edu/2008/10/22/curriculum-vitae/feed/ http://history.sunysb.edu/2008/10/21/228/ http://history.sunysb.edu/2008/10/21/228/#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:58:58 +0000 Larry Frohman http://history.sunysb.edu/?p=228 The Social Studies Education web site has moved!  The new URL is http://history.sunysb.edu/graduate/masters/sse. Pass the word on to your students. ]]>

The Social Studies Education web site has moved!  The new URL is http://history.sunysb.edu/graduate/masters/sse. Pass the word on to your students.

This seminar takes legal systems and the criminalization of social groups as lenses on modern states’ techniques for disciplining populations, reproducing structures of privilege, and articulating nationalist ideologies. In addition to looking from the perspective of states, we consider the ways subjects and citizens manipulate, modify and evade legal regimes. Moving from the early modern period through the contemporary, the course takes on themes ranging from legal pluralism, social banditry, law and cultural difference under colonial regimes, prisons and rehabilitation, ethnic profiling and criminalization, and the place of outlaws in nationalist rhetoric. The course will be interdisciplinary, incorporating comparative and monographic historical and anthropological studies, theoretical works and literary texts; and transregional, with units examining particular themes in South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, the US, and other other locations. Readings may include books or articles by scholars Lauren Benton, Michel Foucault, Carlo Ginzburg, Ranajit Guha, Eric Hobsbawm, Eric Tagliacozzo, Richard L. Roberts, Nicolas Shumway, Radhika Singha, and some selections from literary or historical primary sources.

Colonial South Asia comprised much of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and was dubbed ‘the jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire at its height. The Subcontinent’s status as the most populous and lucrative colony of the world’s largest empire profoundly shaped the world of both colonized and colonizer there. This course will consider the political, social, economic and cultural effects of Britain’s rule in the South Asia from about 1700 to 1950. We will examine in detail key themes such as the rise of the colonial state and changes in sovereignty, the formation of the colonial economy, the remaking of social categories (caste, religious community, gender relations), anti-colonial and nationalist movements, and decolonization. Overall, the course seeks to develop a narrative about South Asia that is attentive to both the profound violence and change wrought by colonialism and the agency of South Asians in the making of their own modernity.

The South Asia region – contemporary India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan – has been a crossroads of diverse people, ideas and commodities for millennia. This course covers key themes and developments in South Asia between about 1000 and 1750. British colonial rule from the late eighteenth century remade South Asia, and contemporary understandings of pre-modern history have been shaped in large part by colonial knowledge. The course seeks to understand the way colonialism has effected knowledge of the past, and to reconstruct key developments and trends in light of recent scholarship. We will begin by covering major issues in early South Asia, then proceed to consider closely the medieval and early modern periods. Central themes include pre-modern dimensions of the Hindu-Muslim encounter, emergence of South Asian regions, the subcontinent in global networks, and early presence of European powers. In addition to surveying diverse political, socio-economic and cultural developments across South Asia, the course also raises methodological questions about how different sources provide different perspectives on history. Accordingly, we consider material evidence alongside various narrative primary sources, as well as scholarly writings. The course also highlights the importance of historical memory and the continuing relevance of the pre-colonial period in contemporary South Asia. Overall, the course seeks to provide students with scholarly tools and sources to better understand the formation of religious, ethnic and linguistic communities in South Asia before colonialism.

Taking oceans, rather than nations or empires, as key units for historical study focuses attention on the movement of people, ideas and commodities across space, and the political and cultural formations that emerge from these circulations. This course will accordingly consider several different stages of globalization from antiquity to the present along the Indian Ocean littoral. We will focus on South and Southeast Asia, eastern and southern Africa, and West Asia (commonly known as the Middle East). A methodological section on oceanic history, and examples of concrete connections with other locations will take us, on occasion, beyond the limits of the Indian Ocean itself. The course will consider, both in minute detail and from a bird’s eye view, inter-regional connections spanning the Indian Ocean world forged by religious solidarities, far-flung trade networks, labor migration, imperial domination, and anti-colonial nationalism.

Check out the following coverage of a joint effort by Stony Brook faculty and leaders and residents of the small suburban town of Port Jefferson, NY, to “Green Port Jefferson.” Page 12 details an effort to study Port Jefferson’s carbon footprint, led by Chris Sellers of the History Department, and Jessica Gurevitch, of the Department of Ecology and Evolution.

Please click here for this fall’s schedule of papers and speakers in this initiative. The series is a collaborative effort of the History and Sociology Departments at Stony Brook.

Please feel free to visit the website for the conference I recently convened at Stony Brook, along with University of Exeter’s Joseph Melling, December 13-15, 2008, on “Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard Across a Globalizing World.”

Among the results of the conference are a planned edited volume, as well as a proposal for a Code of Sustainable Practice for Multinational Corporations, which appeared in the July 2008 International Journal for Occupational and Environmental Health.