Welcome to the Spring 2018 Edition of History News
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HISTORY NEWSSPRING 2018 WELCOME TO THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES SPRING 2018 EDITION IN THIS ISSUE OF HISTORY NEWS 2 Faculty Updates 4 Alumni Updates 4 Graduate Student Updates 5 Recent Master’s Graduates 6 Interview with Brennan Dempsey 7 Scholarships and Awards 7 Honours Student Spotlight 8 Department Updates 9 Graduate Student Conference 9 December Potluck 10 Visiting Scholar Profiles 12 Annual Department Bonspiel Master’s and PhD students share a drink at the Department’s annual Sutherland Gathering in September 2017 NOW THAT THE 2017-2018 ACADEMIC Canadian Studies, STAY CONNECTED year is coming to a close, we would like to History. Dr. Department of History to take this opportunity to recognise Cooper is cross- Marion McCain Arts and the achievements of the Dal History appointed to Social Sciences Building, 1st Floor 6135 University Avenue community. This year was marked by the Department PO Box 15000, Halifax NS B3H 4R2 exciting new beginnings: the department of Sociology 902.494.2011 welcomed a new cohort of MA students, and Social [email protected] two PhD students, and three visiting Anthropology. dal.ca/history scholars. Dr. Afua Cooper In April, Follow us on social media and There were also bittersweet farewells Dr. Cooper was installed as the seventh stay up to date as we bid fond adieus to Poet Laureate for the Halifax Regional @Dal_ALUMNI Dalumni graduating students and to our resident Municipality. During her two-year @Dal_FASS FASSDal Scottish historian, term as Poet Laureate, Dr. Cooper will @notyetpast dalhistory Dr. Cynthia Neville, who retires this year. perform poetry at civic events, and @dal_fass Dr. Sarah-Jane Corke is also moving on work to promote literature and the arts Visit alumni.dal.ca to update your as she has accepted a position at the more broadly in the city. contact information and stay connected University of New Brunswick. In reflecting on the with Dalhousie University. Another piece of Department news is accomplishments of various For information on events within the the majority appointment of department members achieved this Faculty or to plan a reunion, visit dal.ca/fass or email [email protected] Dr. Afua Cooper, the most recent James year, it is clear that Dal History has a Robinson Johnston Chair in Black great deal to celebrate. FACULTY UPDATES HANLON GREGORY HANLON also by Gregory Hanlon is a French-trained GREGORY HANLON 2 behavioural historian of the early modern period. He has written books on religious Italy 1636 is one of the most closely-researched and detailed books on the operation of The Hero of Italy history in France, rural history in Italy, and Gregory Hanlon’s 2016 book Italy early modern armies anywhere, and is explicitly inspired by neo-Darwinian thinking three books on the involvement of Italy and Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, his Soldiers, and his Subjects in the Thirty Years’ War wherein human beings are evolved animals equipped with a wide variety of innate Italians in the great wars of the early modern predispositions. Taking the French and Savoyard invasion of Spanish Lombardy in era. All this work is directly influenced by 1636 as its specific example, it begins with the recruitment of the soldiers, the care the social and behavioural sciences, from 1636: Cemetery of Armies (Oxford and feeding of the armies and their horses, the impact of the invasion on civilians psychology, to anthropology and sociology, in the path of their advance, and the manner in which generals conducted their to primatology and human ethology. These campaign in response to the information at their disposal. The next section describes sciences enhance our understanding of University Press) has just appeared the unfolding of the long and stubborn battle of Tornavento, where Spanish, humans everywhere as evolved, thinking German, and Italian soldiers stormed the French in their entrenchments. The book animals, packed with natural predispositions. describes in unprecedented detail the tactics of both the infantry and the cavalry, and 1636 ITALY validates the effectiveness of Spanish methods in the 1630s. The account focuses on in paperback amidst a flurry of very the motivations of soldiers to fight, and how they reacted to the stress of combat. Gregory Hanlon arrives at surprising conclusions on the conditions under which they were ready to kill their adversaries, and when they were content to intimidate them into retiring. The volume concludes by examining the penchant for looting positive reviews. Two reviewers labelled of the soldiery in the aftermath of battle, the methods of treating wounded soldiers in the Milan hospital, the horrific consequences of hygienic breakdown in the French camp, and the strategic failure of the invasion in the aftermath of battle. GREGORY HANLON it a “masterpiece”. French and Italian This in turn underscores the surprising resilience of Spanish policies and Spanish arms in Europe. In describing with painstaking detail the invasion of 1636, Hanlon explores the universal features of human behaviour and psychology as they relate translations of the work are presently to violence and war. ITALY 1636 Cemetery of Armies being studied. His 2014 book, The Hero of Italy, (Oxford University Press) has just Jacket illustration: Batalla de Fleurus by Vincenzo Carducci, The Prado Museum, Madrid. 2 appeared in Italian with ACIES Edizioni ISBN 978-0-19-873824-4 1 of Milan. Professor Hanlon will be giving 9 780198 738244 several lectures at the Universite de Montpellier III early in May on various Dr. Hanlon’s 2016 monograph with Oxford University Press. aspects of his research. On May 17 he will be making his first presentation to Pavia, and possibly as well in Parma, his COLIN MITCHELL the Academie Nationale des Sciences, base overseas. I was fortunate enough to spend Belles-Lettres et Arts de Bordeaux, (to the 2017-18 academic year as a which he has been admitted) on how KRISTA KESSELRING sabbaticant/visiting research scholar neo-Darwinian approaches widen our In 2017/18, Krista Kesselring has been at the Centre for Near and Middle East understanding of interpersonal conflict on sabbatical after a four year term as Studies in the Philipps-Universität of in Ancien Regime societies. On May Associate Dean. She spent the autumn Marburg. Most of my time was spent 24 he will give the keynote address to in London at the National Archives and researching and writing my current an international conference on early the winter and spring terms as a visiting book project (Ruling from a Red Canopy: modern soldiering at the University fellow at the University of Durham. She A Study of Prince and Appanage in the of Leiden in the Netherlands, on the is finishing a book on homicide in early Turco-Persianate World, 1000-1650, human universals involved in soldiering modern England and beginning a new contracted with Edinburgh University and combat. On June 2 he will take project on the infamous Court of Star Press). To this end, I have visited part in a university conference on Chamber and its records. archives at the Staatsbibliothek zu Catholics and Protestants in 17th- A personal highlight of the year Berlin, the Niedersächische Staats- century France in Clairac, presenting so far was the visit to Sweden in und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, work on the Counter-Reformation of December, when she was invited to Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, and the the bishops of Agen through their daily speak at the University of Uppsala and Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. correspondence. In June, Professor was able to visit the pre-Viking burial I have one forthcoming article Hanlon will be giving several conference mounds nearby. Although she reports (“Custodial Politics and Princely presentations on his research on the very much enjoying the research leave, Governance in 16th-century Safavid Thirty Years’ War in northern Italy, in she’s looking forward to the return to Iran” for The Safavid World, ed. R. Valenza, in Piacenza, at the University of full-time teaching in September. Matthee (Routledge), and have been contracted to produce two further chapters on the Safavid dynasty for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (OUP) and a 2-volume work in German focusing on Islamic history which is part of the Religionen der Menschheit series published by Kohlhammer Verlag. Since arriving in Marburg in July, I have attended a number of workshops and seminars in England, France and Germany. In September 2017, I presented a paper on the exiled Timurid Prince Yadgar Muhammad (ca. 1470) for my first visit to the 33rd triennial Orientalistentag, Germany’s largest academic meeting for Middle East studies. I am also an adjunct member of Dr. Kesselring had the opportunity to visit pre-Viking burial mounds near the University a multinational (based in Marburg of Uppsala while on sabbatical this year. and Paris) research project entitled 2 | HISTORY NEWS for sin and the ways in which these ideas found expression in political theories of kingship in high medieval Scotland. I am currently working on an article that examines closely the language of royal with royal mercy and the transition in Scotland from Latin- language letters of remission to letters written in the vernacular (Inglis). AJAY PARASRAM Last summer Dr. Parasram went conference hopping, colluding with interdisciplinary colleagues, and working on different pieces of writing. One, entitled “The Little Nyonya and Singapore’s national self: reflections on Dr. Mitchell standing in front of his much- aesthetics, ethnicity, and postcolonial loved 2009 Skoda Fabia. state formation” is forthcoming from the journal, Postcolonial Studies. Within Dr. Parasram giving out “Solidarity the realm of pop culture, he also Pakoras” at one of the Remove Cornwallis DYNTRAN (Dynamics of Transmission: rallies last summer. Families, Authority and Knowledge penned a blogpost for E-International in the Early Modern Middle East, Relations entitled “The International 15th-17th Centuries); as part of a Relations of A Tribe Called Red” which that structural white supremacy has a major DYNTRAN workshop held in brings together some of his favourite longer history (and future) than # 45.