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Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Jane Hamlett awarded grant to study interiors of residential institutions
Dr Jane Hamlett has been awarded £229,792 from the Economic and Social Research Council to conduct the first ever comparative historical study of the interiors of residential institutions – including "lunatic asylums", as they were once known, lodging houses and public schools. She will explore how these places used interior decoration to construct their institutional identities, and how this influenced the lives of their inmates during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As part of her research, Dr Hamlett will be exploring the Holloway Sanitorium at Virginia Water, which was established by Thomas Holloway, the founder of Royal Holloway in 1879. Dr Hamlett's research tackles issues that are directly relevant to Britain today, with the Government unveiling plans to rebuild the Broadmoor Secure Mental Health Unit in response to appeals to improve the privacy and dignity of its inmates.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Anna Whitelock book shortlisted for biography prize
Dr Anna Whitelock's first book, Mary Tudor, has been shortlisted for the Biographers' Club's Best First Biography prize. The judges, Philip Ziegler, Rebecca Fraser and Brian MacArthur, were extremely impressed with the quality of the submissions, and look forward to announcing the winner at the Prize Dinner on Thursday 22 October at Banqueting House, Whitehall.
Friday, 25 September 2009
Professor Gregory Claeys in New Zealand
Professor Greg Claeys recently spent two weeks as Hood Fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he delivered the annual Chapman Lecture on "The Global Financial Crisis and the Modern Theory of the State". He also gave papers to the Departments of History and Political Studies, a Post-graduate seminar on research and presentation methods, and a radio interview to the "Sundays with Chris Laidlaw" programme. A recording of the lecture is available here
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
After Slavery project website launched
The After Slavery Project, a transatlantic research collaboration involving Bruce Baker at RHUL and historians at Queen's University Belfast, the University of Memphis, and The Citadel, and funded by a multi-year grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, launched its 'Online Classroom' -- a set of ten online units that explore the aftermath of emancipation in the Carolinas. The teaching units, organized thematically to cover a range of compelling topics, offer students and educators a unique new online resource–accessible, attractive, and attuned to the best of recent scholarship, richly illustrated and with an array of compelling primary source materials from dozens of archival collections. According to Eric Foner, "This engaging website combines the most up-to-date scholarship on the aftermath of slavery with a set of provocative and fascinating documents and other materials ideal for classroom use. It will allow a broad online readership to understand where our thinking now stands on this pivotal moment in American history."
Thursday, 4 June 2009
RHUL postdoc wins Newton International Fellowship
The Newton International Fellowships are extremely prestigious and highly competitive, selecting the very best post-doctoral researchers from all over the world and offering support for two years at top UK research institutions. Only 50 Fellowships are awarded each year, and this year two have been granted to Royal Holloway, University of London – cementing the institutions’ world-class reputation for original research. Researcher Dr Ali Usman Qasmi will be joining the Department of History in September 2009 under the guidance of Professor Francis Robinson, one of the best-known authorities on South Asian Islam. The project will explore pluralism in Islamic traditions, focusing on the Shia Muslims of Punjab. Professor Justin Champion, Head of the Department of History, says, 'This is a remarkable achievement: only small minority of the Fellowships are awarded in the Arts and Humanities each year. This is yet further evidence of the world-leading reputation and esteem Francis Robinson attracts to the Department, Faculty and College'.
Monday, 4 May 2009
Anna Whitelock publishes book on Mary Tudor
Anna Whitelock, Lecturer in Early Modern History, has just published Mary Tudor: England's First Queen with Bloomsbury. It tells the remarkable story of a woman who was a princess one minute, feted by the courts of Europe, and a disinherited bastard the next. It tells of her Spanish heritage, the unbreakable bond between Mary and her mother, Katherine of Aragon; of her childhood, adolescence, rivalry with her sister Elizabeth, and finally her womanhood. It explores the formative experiences that made Mary the determined and single-minded queen she became. She had fought to survive, fought to preserve her integrity and her right to hear the Catholic mass, and finally she fought for the throne. As Queen of England, Mary retained her tenacity. She married Philip of Spain against much opposition and struggled passionately to restore Catholicism, the religion to which she had remained true all her life. Yet whilst she was brave as a queen, as a woman she was dependent and prone to anxiety. In an age when marriages were made for political and diplomatic advantage, Mary married a man she truly loved but whom did not share her passion. It is this tension between Mary's dominance as queen and her tragedy as a woman that is crucial to understanding her reign. Her private traumas of phantom pregnancies, debilitating illnesses and unrequited love were played out in the public glare of the fickle Tudor court. The Mary that emerges is not the weak-willed failure of traditional narratives, but a complex figure of immense courage, determination and humanity.
Monday, 27 April 2009
Greg Claeys lectures in China
Greg Claeys recently gave an 18-hour set of lectures on "Victorian Social and Political Thought" at the University of Beijing, and an additional lecture on "Mill and Liberalism" at the University of Xi'an in central China.
Tuesday, 17th January 2009
Healthy Homes, Healthy Bodies in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy
Professor Sandra Cavallo has been awarded a three-year research grant by the Wellcome Trust to deveolop the project “Healthy Homes, Healthy Bodies in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy”. The project, run in collaboration with material culture expert Dr Marta Ajmar-Wollheim (Victoria and Albert Museum) and with gender historian Dr Tessa Storey, aims to uncover the place that the maintenance of health occupied in the domestic culture of sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy. Through an in-depth analysis of vernacular health advice literature and the study of sources such as architect treatises, household inventories, visual representations of the home and museum artefacts the team will explore how medical ideas and health concerns influenced the physical appearance and material culture of the home, and its daily management. The study thus extends to the past current concerns about the quality of the environment by exploring contemporary understandings of what constituted a healthy domestic interior. More details can be found on the project website.
Professor Greg Claeys at University of Hanoi
During the month of December 2008, Professor Greg Claeys taught a short course to 110 students on "Modern European Political Thought" at the Faculty of International Studies, University of Hanoi, Vietnam, concentrating on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill. He also lectured at the Vietnam Academy of the Social Sciences, Hanoi, on the world financial crisis and changing conceptions of state intervention, and was interviewed on Channel VTV6 of Vietnam television. During his visit he was able to visit the site of the 1954 French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, and in early 2009 will give an illustrated lecture at Royal Holloway on aspects of the Vietnamese national liberation struggle against France and the US from 1858 to 1975.
Susan Macgregor Award Supports Student Essay on Ismaili History
by Naadim-Khan A. Shamji: The decision to focus my Independent Essay on an aspect of Ismaili history was to a large extent inspired by the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of the Imamate of H.H. the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims this year. Ismailism, a sub-sect within Shia Islam, is the religion of 15-25 million Muslims worldwide. To the outside world it is perhaps one of the least well known or understood of the Islamic sects, but this status belies the very eventful history of the Ismaili Muslims, and their continuing presence in the modern age. The apex of Ismaili history was in the Fatimid period (10th-12th century) when the Ismailis had actual political control over territory in the Islamic world. Such was the influence and intellectual contributions of this community that the French Orientalist Louis Massignon would call the 10th century the ‘Ismaili Century’ of Islam. However, the essay I have written concerns the nadir in their history, when the Ismailis were reduced from being one of the predominant Muslim forces at this time, to one almost completely obliterated from history on the command of the Mongols in their onslaughts of the 13th century. The guiding thought of this essay then has been about how a community, whose fame was once unrivalled in the Islamic world, and which was subsequently reduced to relative obscurity only centuries later, managed to recover from such an onslaught. The Susan Macgregor Award was of immense benefit in the completion of this essay. Given the specialist nature of the subject, it was necessary to travel to the Institute of Ismaili Studies in Victoria, London. This allowed me to access a vast library of specialist material on this topic, including essential primary sources which the library housed. The History of the World Conqueror by Ata-Malik Juwayni and the Counsels of Chivalry by Mustansir bi’llah were such rare primary sources, only publicly available at specialist institutions such as these. The Susan Macgregor Award therefore provided me with the funding to complete my research, and to visit the library on several occasions, for which I am very grateful.
The full essay is available here.
Leverhulme Trust Bursaries Available
The Leverhulme Trust has announced a scheme to provide bursaries to provide support for students in hardship who are (or are the spouses or children of) a commercial traveller, chemist or grocer. The bursaries are available to both undergraduate and postgraduate students and can be up to £3000. For more information, see the website for the Leverhulme Trade Charities Trust.
Reading List for Incoming First-Year Students
If you will be joining us as an undergraduate in autumn 2008, please take a look at this in order to get an early start on some of the reading for the beginning of your university career. Brief lists of suggested readings for all first-year courses have been compiled by the tutors and are available here.
Teaching Fellows Recruitment
The Department of History is seeking to attract Teaching Fellows to undertake tutorial supervision in the areas of ancient, early modern, and modern history for 2008-2009. Any postgraduate or post-doctoral candidates should email Professor Justin Champion (j.champion@rhul.ac.uk) with a letter indicating their teaching experience and a CV and expressing an interest.
"At Home in Renaissance Italy" Has Significant Public Impact
The Arts and Humanities Research Council, major funders for the Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior and the affiliated exhibition at the V&A Museum, have published an impact case study on "At Home in Renaissance Italy", a project driven by the research of RHUL historians Amanda Vickery, Sandra Cavallo, and Hugo Blake. The exhibtion stimulated creativity, encouraged lifelong learning, deepened social identity, and strengthened social cohesion while bringing as much as L1.33 million in economic benefits to the United Kingdom. For the full study, see http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/images/AHRC_Renaissance_Italy.pdf
Professor Pauline Croft Named to 2011 Trust
A trust to celebrate the impact the King James Bible has had on the cultural life of Britain, and on the wider English speaking world, was launched in Poets Corner last week. Professor Pauline Croft of Royal Holloway was invited to join the 2011 Trust.
The 2011 Trust will stimulate and co-ordinate a wide-ranging celebration of the 400th anniversary of this landmark publication, involving museums, galleries and libraries, the media and publishers and of course the Church.
The Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, said that King James I had decided that for the purposes of his new translation the Bible should be divided into six sections. Each section was to be the responsibility of a different ‘company’ of seven or eight scholars, selected in 1604 by the king himself. Two companies were based at Westminster Abbey, one of them chaired by the Dean at the time, Lancelot Andrewes. They would have met in Jerusalem Chamber. ‘The first company,’ said the Dean, ‘was responsible for the Old Testament from Genesis to II Kings. The second was responsible for the New Testament epistles.’ Each company also included an Abbey Prebendary (an honorary canon.) The work was completed in 1611.
For further information, see http://www.westminster-abbey.org/press/news/33434.
Inaugural Lecture - Professor Dan Stone - "When was Postwar Europe?"
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.
For more details please contact 01784 443004
Historians Win Fellowships
Two of RHUL's faculty members have won prestigious fellowships at American institutions. Dr. Jonathan Harris was a Stanley J. Seeger Fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University in 2007-8, and Prof. David Cesarani will spend 2008-9 as Shapiro Senior Research Scholar at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D. C.
The spring programme for the History Department Research Seminar series has been announced and is available online at http://www.rhul.ac.uk/history/Research/research_seminar.html
Professor Justin Champion appears on Radio 4's "In Our Time"
Professor Justin Champion will appear on Radio 4's "In Our Time" on Thursday 11th October 2007 to discuss "Divine Right Monarchy" with Lord Bragg at 9.00am and 9.30pm. For more details, and to listen online please see http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/index.shtml
All-New Website for History Department
After several months of work, the History Department has been completely redesigned with a new style and, more importantly, clearer navigation and structure. If you spot any errors or have any questions about the site, please contact the History Department Webmaster. A few features and pages are not complete but will be going up over the next month or so.
Postgraduate Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Courts
On Friday, 2 March, Royal Holloway will host a postgraduate conference on Medieval and Renaissance courts, entitled The court is on earth an ymage infernall". Funded by the AHRC and organised by PhD students Catherine Fletcher and Jessica Lutkin, the event features exciting new research from graduate students in Britain and Europe, and promises to be both educational and entertaining. Papers, grouped around five topics, will include:
- Royalty and remembrance:
- Three Kings: Royal Commemoration at Windsor and Westminster 1471-1515
- Charity at the Court of Henry VII
- A Reassessment of the Wall Painting in the Sainte-Chapelle at Châteaudun
- Abandoning the court: Sovereignty and abdication in early modern European culture
- Fashion:
- The fashion of hats in the court of Ferdinando I dei Medici
- Purple Locks and the Beard of Judas: Towards a history of Tudor Hair
- Gifts and exchanges:
- ‘Artichokes, peas and flowers’: food as gifts in the 16th- century Italian court
- A European source for a sixteenth-century Mughal hunting picture in the Victoria and Albert Museum
- Courtiers:
- A ‘Florentine Gentleman’: the Courtier Bernardo Vecchietti (1514-1590)
- The Artist and the Duke: Barocci’s Self-Portrait as a Narrative of Friendship
- Spectacle:
- Relationship Between the Performer and the Stage Picture in the Stuart Masque
- ‘Terrestrial Thunder’: Fireworks and the English Court 1660-1697
22 January 2007
Akil Awan, the Research Councils UK Fellow in Faith, Power, and Terror, published an article entitled 'Transitional Religiosity Experiences: Contextual Disjuncture and Political Radicalism' in T. Abbas (ed.) Islamic Political Radicalism: A European comparative perspective (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2007). The book was launched by Baroness Kishwar Falkner of Margravine at the Moses Room, House of Lords on Monday 22 January 2007 at 7pm. Awan gave a short presentation, and this was then followed by an engaging Q&A session and lively debate. The event was attended by academics, government ministers, civil servants and journalists. The details of the book are on the publisher's website at http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/edition_details.aspx?id=12571.Tel/Fax : +44 (0)1784 443314 /433032