What Can Taylor Swift Tell Us About the Global Early American Republic?

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Cool Lady Liberty

Dael Norwood
Binghamton University, SUNY
Follow on Twitter @DaelNorwood

What does Taylor Swift have to tell us about the nature of imperial crisis? How can DJ Khaled inform our understanding of revolutionary consolidation? We know Beyoncé can shed light on current events – that’s clear – but what can Queen Bey explain about the human rights consequences of nineteenth-century transatlantic religious reform movements?

More than you might expect. I teach the history of the early United States in the world, and over the last few years I’ve adopted a pop-flavored shtick to help my students and I as we investigate America’s transnational, global, and imperial history. I pair each class meeting with a piece of modern popular music, creating a playlist as the semester goes along, so that by the end students have a set of sonic references for the course’s topics. The result is a historical mix-tape that, given a friendly hearing, helps the big histories make more sense – or at least draws a cathartic chuckle at the end of an intense lecture.

I started doing this just for fun. It was my attempt at emulating my colleagues teaching 20th-century history, whose use of period-appropriate music I saw enrich their classrooms. Now, I’m all for including a hearty Whig Party campaign song or a sea chanty – but they have a tendency to kill momentum in an undergraduate crowd. So I chose an easier path, loosely tying themes of globalized American history to top 40 hits. To my surprise, what began as a self-indulgent experiment in dubious musical taste has steadily become a pedagogically useful crowd-pleaser (though still dubious and self-indulgent).

The main problem the tunes help solve is one of orientation. American students, in particular, often come to my classes expecting an encounter with a national history they know well (sometimes far too well) already. They find some familiar people and events in my classroom, but in startlingly unfamiliar, and much more complex, contexts. That defamiliarization is intentional – a primary benefit of taking transnational perspective is the critical thought it provokes – but widening the field to situate Americans’ stories within the entire world can also overwhelm at times. The pop songs provide a friendly opening for discussions on difficult topics, as well as a potential hook on which to hang unraveled course themes, keeping the threads slack and untangled as we fly through decades of revolution, slavery, revival, and frenetic capitalist development. Continue reading “What Can Taylor Swift Tell Us About the Global Early American Republic?” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

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Mujahedeen rebels fighting Soviet troops, Afghanistan, 1980. Credit: Associated Press
Mujahedeen rebels fighting Soviet troops, Afghanistan, 1980. Credit: Associated Press

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From the failings of the CIA’s covert military aid, to the World Bank’s role in a bloody land war in Honduras, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

Call For Papers – Alternative Global Geographies, Imagining and Re-Imagining the World

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Global-South-America-Brazil-and-Argentina

Call for Papers

Alternative Global Geographies, Imagining and Re-Imagining the World

Late 19th century – Present Day

Conference of the Research Network “Socialism Goes Global”

In contrast to public claims of the early 1990s, space and geographies have not lost their central role in defining an ever more globalized world. We still live in territorialized spaces: not only in the narrow sense of states and societies that reside within their borders, but also geographies and spatial formats on regional and world scales. Research in the aftermath of the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences is increasingly drawing our attention to the importance of understanding large-scale spatial dynamics for global history. Continue reading “Call For Papers – Alternative Global Geographies, Imagining and Re-Imagining the World” →

The Non-Western Origins of Human Rights in East Germany

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Stamp commemorating International Human Rights Year 1968. The tree and globe represent the right to life.
Stamp commemorating International Human Rights Year 1968. The tree and globe represent the right to life.

David Spreen
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Cross-Posted from Dissertation Reviews

A review of Between dictatorship and dissent: Ideology, legitimacy, and human rights in East Germany, 1945-1990, by Ned Richardson-Little.

[Editor’s note: Dr. Richardson-Little is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Exeter. His dissertation was awarded the Fritz Stern Prize by the German Historical Institute.]

Ned Richardson-Little’s well-argued and well-researched dissertation challenges the idea that human rights gained importance in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) only after the signing of the Helsinki accords in 1975 – in other words, that the language of human rights was a gift from the West. The problem with this narrative is that it cannot explain why the Socialist Unity Party (SED) signed a document that was so obviously contrary to its own interests. Richardson-Little’s dissertation traces the evolution of the SED’s human rights policies through several stages between 1945 and the 1980s and shows how human rights rhetoric became mobilized by East German citizens as early as 1968. Rather than presenting a narrative of liberal triumphalism from Helsinki to 1989, he demonstrates that human rights discourses existed in the GDR before the 1970s while insisting that these discourses were unstable and contested. Continue reading “The Non-Western Origins of Human Rights in East Germany” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

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Mozambican women in a building that used to serve as slave housing. Photo: Joao Silva, New York Times.
Mozambican women in a building that used to serve as slave housing. Photo: Joao Silva, New York Times.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From the grim history of a sunken African slave ship to Canada’s cultural genocide, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

In Wilson’s Shadow: Why the 1975 Europe Referendum Still Matters

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Margaret Thatcher, William Whitelaw and Peter Kirk, at a referendum conference. June 1975. Photo: Keystone/Getty Images
Margaret Thatcher, William Whitelaw and Peter Kirk, at a referendum conference. June 1975. Photo: Keystone/Getty Images

Richard Toye and David Thackeray
University of Exeter

Forty years ago today Britain went to the polls to decide a crucial question: would the country remain in the European Economic Community (EEC)? It had only joined the EEC, the EU forerunner organisation, two years previously, and this was the first UK-wide referendum. When the votes were counted the results were emphatic. The nation had voted ‘yes’ to Europe by a two to one margin. The Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson hailed the result, noting that no one in Britain or the wider world could be in doubt about its meaning. Margaret Thatcher, the recently-chosen Tory leader, observed that the ‘massive “Yes” vote could not have come about without a massive Conservative “Yes”.’ Today, as the British people prepare for a new European plebiscite, what lessons can be learned from the experience of 1975? Continue reading “In Wilson’s Shadow: Why the 1975 Europe Referendum Still Matters” →

Richard Toye Reviews Blair Inc: The Man Behind the Mask for the Guardian

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Screen Shot 2015-06-02 at 17.30.20

Richard Toye
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @RichardToye

Cross-Posted from the Guardian

During the early stages of the recent election campaign, Tony Blair emerged to deliver a speech in support of the Labour party’s European policy and to declare that he was backing Ed Miliband “100%”. The decision to make use of his predecessor in this way cannot have been easy for Miliband, as Blair remains potentially toxic, not least to many in the party itself, but doubtless he could not risk offering a rebuff. Blair’s motivation remains more obscure: previously he had done little to conceal his dislike of Miliband’s political approach, and he probably feels more than a little vindicated by Labour’s defeat. Certainly, a lot of people would reject with a laugh the idea that he said what he did because he genuinely believed it. Continue reading “Richard Toye Reviews Blair Inc: The Man Behind the Mask for the Guardian” →

Framing Disease in Development: From Local to Global Narratives

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This AIDS poster by the Bombay Hilltop Lions Club (a voluntary community needs and humanitarian organization) and the HIV/AIDS Information and Guidance Centre of Bombay was probably released around 1996 if not earlier. The inset shows a doctor wearing a mask saying “Sorry no”, highlighting the issue of physicians refusing to treat AIDS patients for moral reasons or fear of infection.
AIDS poster, Bombay Hilltop Lions Club (a voluntary community needs and humanitarian organization) and the HIV/AIDS Information and Guidance Centre of Bombay, c. 1996. The inset shows a doctor wearing a mask saying “Sorry no”, highlighting the issue of physicians refusing to treat AIDS patients for moral reasons or fear of infection.

Meg Kanazawa
University of Exeter

How do narratives of national AIDS epidemics draw from global discourses of health and development? In my own study of AIDS reportage in Indian medical journals, I argue that in the early years of the disease crisis, doctors initially made sense of the social and cultural dimensions of AIDS as it existed in India locally, through episodes of their individual interactions with HIV positive patients. They also gathered information on AIDS in a variety of cross-cultural settings to translate to an Indian context. However, as the epidemic progressed, the story of AIDS in India became increasingly politicized. Particularly around 1998, doctors began to critically engage with debates concerning the politics of unequal access to standard treatments in developing countries. Thus, by tracing the narrative of AIDS in Indian medical journals, we can see the moment of transition when the ‘global became problematic’.[1]

In the early years of the epidemic, doctors focused on episodic local cases relating to a variety of medical ethics issues. Articles focused on problems such as the appropriate attitudes of medical professionals when delivering diagnoses, whether HIV status should be determined in an arranged marriage, and how to obtain consent for collecting blood samples. Typically, the particulars of an AIDS related incident or news story in Delhi, Chennai or Pune is reported, then analyzed for what it illuminates about the medical profession and the delivery of healthcare in India. Because of the nature of transmission and the social stigmas particular to India associated with it, AIDS was treated as a prism, which revealed the shortcomings of medical care. Continue reading “Framing Disease in Development: From Local to Global Narratives” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

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Cat's Cradle

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From Cat’s Cradle the TV show to the modern Left’s ‘White Man’s Burden’, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

Beyond Françafrique: France Outside of its Traditional Sphere of African Influence

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Beyond Françafrique:

France outside of its traditional sphere of African influence (19th-21st centuries)

Sciences Po, Paris, Centre d’Histoire, Friday 20 November 2015

The study of France’s policy in Africa has frequently focused on the interactions with its (former) Empire, the “pré-carré”. This has given rise to a narrative of uniqueness and exceptionality, whilst simultaneously contributing to critiques of France as a “neo-colonial” actor in Africa. However, a growing body of new scholarly research suggest that the time is now ripe for a reassessment of this restrictive vision.

The progressive opening up of archives in France and elsewhere, along with the expansion of global and connected histories of empire and decolonisation, has shed new light on the France’s presence in Africa in colonial and post-independence era. Continue reading “Beyond Françafrique: France Outside of its Traditional Sphere of African Influence” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

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Samurai and Courtesans colour photos from 1865. Felice Beato was one of the first people to photograph the far east – and he made life bloom with colour. Here are his rare hand-coloured shots of Edo-era Japan See them at the London Photograph Fair, 23 & 24 May 2015.
Samurai and Courtesans colour photos from 1865. Felice Beato was one of the first people to photograph the far east – and he made life bloom with colour. See his rare hand-coloured shots of Edo-era Japan here and at the London Photograph Fair, 23 & 24 May 2015.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From Disney’s fanciful film about African colonization to how the Civil War changed the world, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

Debating the British Empire: An Interview with Jeremy Black

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British_Empire_1897

Richard Toye
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @RichardToye

Screen Shot 2015-05-28 at 20.35.51How should historians tackle the controversial topic of imperialism? To what extent is it permissible to pass moral judgements on the actions of people in the past who had very different sets of values than we hold today? In his forthcoming book The British Empire: A History and A Debate, Professor Jeremy Black notes that the rights and wrongs, strengths and weaknesses of empire are a major topic in global history, and deservedly so.Focusing on the most prominent and wide-ranging empire in world history, the British empire, Black provides not only a history of that empire, but also a perspective from which to consider the issues of its strengths and weaknesses, and rights and wrongs. In short, this is history both of the past, and of the present-day discussion of the past, that recognizes that discussion over historical empires is in part a reflection of the consideration of contemporary states.

In this video, I interview Professor Black about his findings.

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

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Rioters attack "German" shops, Crisp Street, Poplar, London, May 1915. Photograph: Alamy
Rioters attack “German” shops, Crisp Street, Poplar, London, May 1915. Photograph: Alamy

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From ‘Historians for Britain’ to finding MORE secret UK colonial files, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.

Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

The Global Village Myth

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Global Village Myth

Patrick Porter
University of Exeter

The Global Village Myth takes aim at Globalism, or the idea of the ‘death of distance’ in the world of conflict. And it takes aim at the dangerous policies it tends towards. I argue that even in a supposedly ‘globalised’ world, distance matters.

Does technology kill distance? So often we hear it. The cumulative message of our news cycle, of debate about foreign and defence policy, is the fear that the global spread of ideas, capital, weapons and people makes our world ever more dangerous. Continue reading “The Global Village Myth” →

Roundtable – The Roman World and the Future of Globalisation Studies

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pitts book

Exeter’s Centre for Imperial and Global History is delighted to host an interdisciplinary roundtable on Martin Pitts (University of Exeter) and Miguel John Versluys’s (Leiden University) recent edited volume, Globalisation and the Roman World (Cambridge University Press). The book makes the provocative case for understanding the ancient Roman world as one of the earliest examples of globalisation. Their study challenges that of many Roman historians and archaeologists who feel that the word globalisation is inappropriate to use when discussing the ancient world. With Pitts and Versluys’s book as a starting point, the roundtable participants – ancient historians, archaeologists, sociologists, and modern historians – will discuss how the controversial study of globalisation’s ancient origins might reshape and redirect the interdisciplinary field of globalisation studies. Chaired by Centre Director Andrew Thompson, the roundtable participants are:
  • Martin Pitts (Exeter, Classics and Ancient History)
  • Professor Elena Isayev (Exeter, Classics and Ancient History)
  • Professor David Inglis (Exeter, Sociology)
  • Robert Fletcher (Exeter, History)
  • Marc-William Palen (Exeter, History)

When: Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Time: 3-4.30pm

Where: Amory 128 (University of Exeter, Streatham Campus)