http://www.rhul.ac.uk/History Latest news from the Department of History, Royal Holloway University of London en-gb history-webmaster@rhul.ac.uk (History Webmaster) http://www.rhul.ac.uk/History/postgrad/grad_MA_public.html On 30 March 1-4pm Royal Holloway, University of London will be hosting an open day for prospective students for the new MA Public History. Speakers will include Lucy Worsley, chief curator of historic royal palaces, author and television presenter and Tristram Hunt, historian and broadcaster. To register for a place please email Dr Anna Whitelock anna.whitelock@rhul.ac.uk. http://www.thehawzaproject.net/index.html Professor Vanessa Martin is collaborating with Robert Gleave of Exeter University, the Director of the 'Hawza Project', or as it is officially known, 'Clerical Authority in Shiite Islam: Culture and Learning in the Seminaries of Iraq and Iran', in organising a workshop at Royal Holloway to take place on Tuesday 30th March. The project is funded by the British Academy and sponsored by the British Institute of Persian Studies, and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. It brings together both established and emerging scholars to examine the role of the Shi'i seminary system (known as the hawza) in the construction and maintenance of clerical authority in Shi'i Islam. There will be further workshops at Royal Holloway later in 2010 and in March 2011. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/people/tsai_w.html Weipin Tsai, Lecturer in Modern Chinese History, has received grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation to hold a conference in Royal Holloway on 1-2 September 2010. The title of the conference will be 'The power of information in shaping Chinese modernity: a historical investigation from the late Qing to early Republican'. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/people/ansari_h.html Professor Humayun Ansari will deliver his inaugural lecture, "The 'Muslim World' in British Historical Imaginations", on Monday, 8 February 2010, at 6pm in Windsor Auditorium. This lecture seeks to deepen our understanding of 21st century tensions by looking at the longer-term history of the problematic encounter between Britain and the Muslim world, exploring the place (or places) that Islam, Muslims, and Muslim societies have occupied over the centuries in the British historical discourse and the impact that these interactions have had on shaping the British imagination. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/BHM_09.pdf Royal Holloway has scheduled a number of events involving various departments in connection with Black History Month. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/Research/project_byzmedman.html On Saturday, 19th September a number of international scholars gathered at 2 Gower Street to discuss "Byzantine Medical Manuals in Context", at a conference sponsored by the Wellcome Trust and the History Department of Royal Holloway University of London. The eight presentations focused on topics such as the cultural exchange between Byzantium and the Arabic world in 12th and 13th century, the reception of Byzantine medicine in the early modern period and the centres of medical book production in the Greek middle ages. http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2009/08/from-subjects-to-citizens-society-and-the-everyday-state-in-india-and-pakistan-1947-1964/ The ongoing AHRC-funded research project "From Subjects to citizens: Society and Everyday State in India and Pakistan 1947-1964", a three-year collaboration between the History departments at Royal Holloway and the University of Leeds, explores the shift from colonial rule to independence in three sites on the subcontinent - Uttar Pradesh (formerly the United Provinces), Sindh, and the Princely State of Hyderabad (Deccan) - with the aim of unravelling the explicit meanings and relevance of 'independence' for the new citizens of India and Pakistan in the two decades immediately following 1947. A workshop of this research, which took place on 12 August 2009 at Royal Holloway, with Ornit Shani, Vazira Zaminda, William Gould, Ravinder Kaur, Sarah Ansari and others, has been recorded and is now available to listen to (and download) as a series of podcasts. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/09_september/03/private.shtml Domestic life is coming out of the closet in a new radio series which reveals the hidden history of private life in Britain. The thirty-part series launches 28th September on BBC Radio 4 and has come about thanks in part to funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Amanda Vickery says "My series unlocks the front door of the Englishman's castle to peer into the privacies and intimacies of life at home over the last 400 years, from the Tudor manor and the Palladian mansion, to the overcrowded urban terrace and dingy lodgings, to the imperial bungalow, suburban mock-Tudor and modern flat." Historian and prize-winning writer Amanda Vickery has won a knowledge transfer fellowship to collaborate with Loftus productions to relay scholarly research to a thinking audience far beyond the academy. "Working with Sony award-winning producer Elizabeth Burke, I am learning how to translate archival research into intelligent entertainment and written argument into spoken scripts" says Amanda. "It was thrilling to work with talented singers and actors,to breathe life into documents, to capture the mood and spirit of the past." http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/urra/350/conference2.pdf A one-day conference on "Byzantine Medical Manuals in Context" will be held on 19 September 2009. The conference is organized by Peregrine Horden and Barbara Zipser, with the support of the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Holloway Department of History. Venue: Conference room, 2 Gower Street, Central London. Registration fee: £5.00, includes refreshments. Please get in touch with p.horden@rhul.ac.uk or barbara.zipser@rhul.ac.uk if you would like to attend. Cheques should be made payable to 'RHUL' and sent to Prof. Peregrine Horden, Department of History, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, TW20 0EX, UK. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/Research/research_seminar.html#schedule Each year, the History Department sponsors a weekly series of research seminars featuring guest scholars from around the country and around the world, Royal Holloway faculty, and postgraduate students discussing the latest findings of their research. Recently, with the assistance of Dr. Rene Wolf, who completed his Ph.D. in history at RHUL in 2008 and now teaches and runs Backdoor Broadcasting Company, we are able to bring you recent seminars as podcasts, usually within a day or two of the event. See the link to the seminar webpage above to listen to the latest in historical research. http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org/ The public is invited to hear Professor Blair Worden lecture on "Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate" as part of the Royal Historical Society's spring programme. The lecture will be at 5:30 pm at the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, University College London. http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/whatson/special/ Choosing the Chintz, a special exhibition at the Geffrye Museum in East London, draws upon new research about the home to tell a surprising story about domestic decoration and furnishing. Choosing the Chintz has been co-curated by the Geffrye Museum and guest curators Dr Deborah Cohen from Brown University, Dr Jane Hamlett from the History Department at Royal Holloway and Lesley Hoskins from Queen Mary University of London. A range of evidence, including compelling personal testimonies such as diaries and other archival materials, paintings, furniture, decorative arts, photographs, film, and trade catalogues, will be employed to explore men's relationship with furnishing the home in the nineteenth century, illuminating the way in which they actively engaged with the look and feel of their homes. The exhibition will also focus on women and home decoration, highlighting the changes that took place to make them the prime marketing target for furnishings in the early twentieth century. Finally it asks how men and women go about choosing their furnishings today. Choosing the Chintz runs from Tuesday 14th October to Sunday 22nd February 2009. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/research/byzantiuminlondon.html Byzantium may seem remote from London both in time and space. This workshop will bring the two societies together by investigating the ways in which they interacted in the past and by exploring the reminders, remnants and reflections of Byzantium that can be found in London today. Byzantium in London is one of a series of public events in London connected with the exhibition Byzantium 330-1453 will be running at the Royal Academy from 25 October 2008 until 22 March 2009. The events are being organised by the Royal Academy and, with the support of the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise, by the Courtauld Institute of Art , King's College London (Centre for Hellenic Studies), Royal Holloway, University of London (Hellenic Institute), and the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/events/2008/11/12/2008-harpercollins-history-lecture Wednesday, 12 November 2008 - RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London W1, 5:30pm reception, 6:30pm lecture
Amanda Vickery, author of The Gentleman's Daughter, will give the 2008 HarperCollins History Lecture. The history of the home is as much a saga of power, labour, inequality and struggle as of sanctuary and comfort, colour and pleasure. The home provides the background to the history of power, gender, the family, privacy, consumerism, design and the decorative arts. In this lecture Amanda, a woman for whom lavender bags hold no terrors, will stake claim to the uncharted space between the histories of architecture, family and gender and economics. Domestic life comes out of the closet.
This is a free, open lecture sponsored by HarperCollins publishers and supported by Queen Mary, University of London. All are welcome. You are advised to contact info@livesandletters.ac.uk to reserve a place. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/Domestic_Exposure_symposium.pdf Saturday 27 September 2008 - Geffrye Museum, London, 10.00 - 17.00
This symposium will launch the Histories of the Home Subject Specialist Network events series led by the Geffrye Museum. Drawing together two thriving areas of interdisciplinary research, the history of the home and the history of photography, Domestic Exposure will explore the relationship between photography, home and home-making in innovative ways. Papers will examine how photographs represent 'home', the changing practices and technologies of photography within the home, and domestic photography and identity from 1850 to the present day. The symposium is co-organised by Jane Hamlett from the history department at Royal Holloway and Rebecca Preston from the Centre for Suburban Studies at Kingston University. The linked file gives further information on the aims and scope of the symposium and includes a full programme for the day and booking information. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/research/cultivatingbritons.html In collaboration with Oxford Brookes University, Royal Holloway's History Department is sponsoring a one-day conference on 19 September 2008 titled "Cultivating Britons: Culture and Identity in Britain, 1901 to 1936". Scholars have in recent years made much of the idea of a "long nineteenth century", and have investigated the twentieth-century remnants and legacies of Victorianism, yet the impact of the Edwardian era has largely been bypassed. The aim of this conference is to reassess British culture across the whole of this period in the light of the Edwardian inheritance. http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/civil/index.html In collaboration with Yale University, the History Department at Royal Holloway is organising a conference on 'Civil and Religious Liberty: Ideas of Rights and Tolerance in England c.1640-1800' in late July 2008 to bring together scholars from the two sides of the Atlantic to explore questions and issues surrounding the emergence of political rights and religious tolerance, and the evolution and legacy of their varying understanding of the concepts and practices of freedom. Participants from RHUL include Prof. Blair Worden, Prof. Justin Champion, and Prof. Martin Dzelzainis. http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2263298,00.html 'The bluestocking is the most odious character in society,' wrote Hazlitt. Yet circles of intellectual women used friendship, patronage and a talent for PR to overcome ridicule and subvert the restrictions placed on them. In this article from the Guardian, Amanda Vickery looks at how their achievements were celebrated in art. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/people/robinson_f.html Windsor Building Auditorium, 6:00 pm. This lecture examines the nature of religious authority in Muslim societies and how this authority has been undermined over the past two centuries by both Western dominance and Muslim responses to that dominance. Arguably, the outcome has been a crisis of authority. The lecture concludes by considering how this crisis has on the one hand permitted dangerous and threatening interpretations of Islam to flourish while on the other hand it has opened the door to positive understandings which bring the faith into harmony with democracy, pluralism and gender equality. Francis Robinson was awarded a CBE for services to Higher Education and his research into the History of Islam. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/Research/research_HayesRobinson.html Each year in March a distinguished international historian is invited to give the Hayes Robinson lecture, in celebration of History at Royal Holloway. The lecture series was re-launched in 1992/3, under a benefaction from the estate of Margaret Hayes Robinson. This year's lecture will be delivered by Professor David Sorkin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison on "Enlightenment and Faith: Debates among Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Eighteenth-Century Europe". http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/news.html#danstone_jan08 After World War II the stability of both western and eastern Europe rested on a consensual embargo on discussing many uncomfortable aspects of the war. The demise of this consesus after the end of the Cold War has allowed historical research to throw aside the mythical narratives that emerged during this period, leading to a volitile area in which a plethora of views are articulated. This lecture will examine the struggle to control the public memory of World War II across Europe and will argue that the years since 1989 are the real postwar years. Monday 28 January 2008, Windsor Building Auditorium, 6pm. Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:39:21 GMT