In this spotlight interview, the Department of History caught up with Ph.D. Candidate Ebru Erginbas to learn more about her dissertation research in the U.S. and Europe and paper presentations on hydrotherapy.

Get to know Amanda Valdés Sánchez and Josef Řídký!

The Department of History is thrilled to welcome a new graduate cohort to Brown! Get acquainted with each new member and learn more about their research interests.

Tara Nummedal, John Nickoll Provost’s Professor of History and Professor of Italian Studies recently began her three-year tenure as the new Faculty Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS).

In mid-July, the Choices Program, affiliated with the Department of History, hosted a Summer Institute for K-12 educators from across the U.S. called "American Soldiers in American Wars: History and Memory." In this interview, Dr. Kerry Dunne, History and Social Studies Department Head at Lexington High School in Massachusetts, discusses her experience as a participant in the Institute.

Imagine living without sight. In this alumni spotlight, Selina (St Clair) Mills B.A. '93 tells the personal story of how her education at Brown fostered her ability, and desire, to report on the history of blindness.

On Saturday, April 29th, friends, family, and colleagues of Professor Howard P. Chudacoff gathered at Brown’s Faculty Club in Providence, RI to celebrate his retirement after 53 years of teaching.

On April 19th, HIST 0286 A: History of Medicine I: Medical Traditions in the Old World Before 1700, taught by Professor Harold J. Cook, visited the special collections at John Hay Library. The archive contains more than 3,000,000 items, over half the library’s total resources.

The Choices Program, affiliated with the Department of History, will be hosting a one-week Institute for K-12 educators taking place in summer 2023 called "American Soldiers in American Wars: History and Memory."

René Cordero was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic but raised in the heart of Spanish Harlem. His research chronicles the unexplored history of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) in the Dominican Republic and how it offers exciting analytical and empirical terrain to scholarship on Afro-Latin American studies.

Linford Fisher recently co-authored a paper published by Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies titled, "The Persistence of Indigenous Unfreedom in Early American Newspaper Advertisements, 1704–1804."

Phoebe Labat is a 3rd-year Ph.D. Candidate currently working on a dissertation around natural disasters in the French Atlantic world. She recently received a Fulbright Award for France 2023-2024. In this spotlight, Phoebe delves into what she looks forward to gaining from the experience.

Congratulations to Françoise N. Hamlin on the publication of "The Struggle of Struggles" — a new edition of an autobiography chronicling the everyday conflicts, losses, and triumphs of the civil rights struggle.

Tsay details the basis of her paper, "Sweetening the Empire: Japanese Western-style Confectionery in Colonial Taiwan and Beyond," in this spotlight.

Omer Bartov, Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, discusses his new novel, "The Butterfly and the Axe," which was inspired by his own tragic family history.

In this brief interview, Peder delves into his senior thesis topic: the Burning of the Gaspee.

In November 2022, History and Africana Studies Professor Françoise Hamlin was named an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.

Over the course of Summer 2022, Amienne Spencer-Blume '23, an International and Public Affairs Concentrator, conducted research for Omer Bartov's upcoming publication "Remaking the Past: Israel, Palestine, a Personal Political History." In this spotlight, she discusses her experience and what she learned from documenting stories of the past.

Zoe Zimmermann '22.5, a History and Early Modern World concentrator, began working with Professor Linford Fisher the summer after her second year at Brown.

Brown University researchers have been approved for a $350,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant to support Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas.

Professor Michael Steinberg, Barnaby Conrad and Mary Critchfield Keeney Professor of History, spent two months of the 2020 Fall Semester as a returning fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study Berlin), despite the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and the displacement of most of its seminars to Zoom.

Meet TESS! The Environmental Storytelling Studio is a new initiative to help scholars, postdocs, faculty, and graduate students in the environmental sciences, social sciences, and humanities who want to marry scholarship with literary storytelling to engage a broad audience for their work. Brown history professor Bathsheba Demuth is working with book critic and author Kerri Arsenault to launch the course in 2023.

Rita Slaoui '23.5 is double concentrating in History and Middle East Studies. She was recently named the 2022-2023 Undergraduate Fellow for the Center for Middle East Studies. In this student spotlight, she delves into her academic journey at Brown.

In the winter of 2021, Akshaan Parikh '22, a history and computer science concentrator, traveled to Mumbai to conduct archival research for his thesis on the bubonic plague epidemic. In this archival research spotlight, he tells the Department of History about his time at the Maharashtra State Archives.

The Department of History caught up with Jo Fisher, Communications and Marketing Specialist for the Choices Program at Brown University

The Department of History caught up with Leah Burgin, Digital Sales Manager for the Choices Program at Brown University

The Department of History caught up with Kevin Hoskins, Curriculum Developer for the Choices Program at Brown University. Kevin earned a PhD in History at Brown in 2012 and previously taught at UMass Boston before joining the Choices team. Continuing reading for more

The New Direction Lecture Series foregrounds the relationship between histories of systemic racism and knowledge formation; the recognition that some groups of people have not only been excluded from institutions of higher education, but that disciplinary knowledge formations have often provided the institutional mechanisms and intellectual justifications for those acts of exclusion.

Congratulations to Sarah Christensen who was recently awarded a Fulbright! Sarah is a 3rd-year PhD student working on a dissertation on female captivity/slavery between the North Atlantic and the Middle East in the early middle ages. In this spotlight interview she explains how the grant will impact her future research.

Congratulations to PhD student Devon Newhouse who was recently awarded a Fulbright! Devon's research interests include 20th century India, migration, gender. In this spotlight interview she explains how the grant will impact her future research.

The Department of History caught up with Guta to learn more about her research interests and PhD work at Brown.

In January 2022, Morgan De Lancy '22, a history concentrator with a focus on human rights and displacement, traveled to London to conduct archival research for her thesis on the Black Supplementary School Movement. In this spotlight interview, Morgan tells the History Department what it was like to transition from conducting research remotely to studying archival material first-hand at the George Padmore Institute.

My dissertation, "Imagining the Loss: Maps and State-Building in Modern China, 1910s-1940s."

Winning this award not only validates the importance of Atlantic world studies, slavery studies and studies centered on women and children, but also the need for an interdisciplinary methodology with other fields, like Africana Studies, Religious Studies, Islamic Studies and Trauma Studies.

Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Bathsheba Demuth is currently on leave in the Arctic.

Professor Wulf joined the History Department and the John Carter Brown Library as Director and Librarian in October 2021. She previously taught and directed at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture at William & Mary.

February 2022 marked the two-year anniversary of merging the historic Sharpe and Peter Green houses. The 19th-century buildings are unified by two modern glass bridges and boast renovated interiors, more classroom space and full accessibility to individuals with physical disabilities. The BDH reported exclusively on the expansion in 2020. PC: Nick Dentamaro

Many rich stories about the complex history of New England remain hidden, oftentimes erased in the conventional dominant narrative histories which are told. A new project aims to foreground the silenced stories of Indigenous and African American experiences of New England. In collaboration with the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) at Brown.

Christopher Grasso joined the History Department in January 2022 as a historian of American culture, religion, and politics. Continue reading to learn more about his past work and what he's looking forward to as a new faculty member at Brown University.

Seth Rockman recently published, "Der alte und der neue Materialismus in der Geschichte der Sklaverei" (in German), a volume derived from his previous talk which considers the implications of 'new materialism' for the history of slavery and the field of general labor history.

In 2021, Cynthia Brokaw delivered three talks as part of the Panizzi Lectures at the British Library in London, England. Her first talk titled, "Spreading Culture Throughout the Land: Woodblock Publishing and Chinese Book Culture in the Early Modern Era" explored why woodblock printing or xylography, remained, throughout China’s pre-modern history, the major print technology.

Danny Loss completed his PhD in the Brown University History Department in 2013, specializing in the history Modern Britain and its empire.

Tom Devaney completed his PhD in history at Brown University in 2011, specializing in the history of medieval and early modern Europe. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rochester, and he has previously taught at the University of Indiana South-Bend, and the University of Puget Sound.