2022
Stanford Historian
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Chair’s Letter Table of Contents Chair’s Letter
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History of Now
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Featured Events
Department Updates
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Faculty Profile Pedro Regalado
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Awards
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Visitors
Connect With Us
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History of Now
In the 2022 Winter Quarter, the world witnessed the escalation of existing tensions into a full-fledged war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. History faculty members responded to the local and global media requests with informed, historical commentary.
Dear Stanford History Department Alumni and Friends, Warm greetings from Stanford University! We were thrilled to return in person to History Corner last fall, and to be reminded that learning and teaching - in fact the whole journey of scholarship - is a communal activity. With masks on, we forged ahead, and I’m happy to report that we had a splendid year. This issue of the Stanford Historian lets you explore some of the diverse intellectual journeys we’ve taken together. As part of our ongoing efforts to show the relevance of History to our undergraduates, in Fall 2021 we launched a new undergraduate course called The History of 2021. Over 140 students enrolled, filling the auditorium to hear History faculty members lecture on the historical background of timely topics: the war in Ukraine, the pandemic, controversial monuments, and much more. Faculty also responded to important public happenings with op-eds, podcasts, and TV and print media appearances. Our department events brought more than 70 acclaimed researchers together to join the Stanford community, establishing and deepening intellectual networks across the nation as well as the globe. The department continues to be a hub of intellectual exchange, attracting visiting scholars from near and far. This year we had the honor of hosting four distinguished professors for short-term residencies: Monica Green (Independent Scholar), James Millward (Georgetown), Francesca Trivellato (Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton), and Stephen Sawyer (American University of Paris). They were joined by three Krupp Foundation-Bing student researchers from Germany, as well as the 2022-24 Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Chandra Vadhana R. In the next academic year, we will welcome two additional scholars, Professor Pedro Regalado (Assistant Professor of History) and Dr. Yuhe Faye Wang (Inaugural IDEAL Postdoctoral Fellow), to our community. Our faculty and students received numerous awards for their research and teaching. And after two years of Zoom commencements, we were thrilled to return as a community this June 12 to celebrate the Class of 2022 at an in-person commencement ceremony. The event brought more than 80 students together and their families to Stanford. None of this would be possible without the day-to-day efforts of our students, faculty, and staff - and of course the generous support of our benefactors. This year we were immensely grateful to receive a new gift, the John Lo Undergraduate History Education Fund, which will support our continuing efforts in undergraduate research and learning. You too can support us by following us on Twitter, visiting our website, and stopping by the History Corner when you are back for the 2022 Reunion or for a brief visit to the Farm. We are always interested in hearing your professional updates as well; please feel free to reach out to us at history-info@stanford.edu. Thank you for connecting with us and for your support of the Department of History at Stanford. We couldn’t do this without you. Sincerely, Caroline Winterer Chair, Department of History William Robertson Coe Professor of History Stanford University
Ukraine & Russia
February 24, 2022 | ABC 7 News History of 2021 Course In Fall 2021, we offered a brand new undergraduate course, History of 2021, featuring 10 lectures that engaged pressing issues through historical lenses. Nearly 140 Stanford undergraduates took the course, discussing a wide array of national and global occurrences such as the January 6 attacks on the U.S Capitol, the military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the contemporary regime’s policies in Russia and China, and pandemic politics. “We hear a lot about living in unprecedented times. Studying history can help nuance these claims and challenge assumptions of contemporary exceptionalism,” said Professor Fiona Griffiths, our department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies and the course’s faculty coordinator. “A historic perspective can enable or enhance critical attention to contemporary events – much of what we saw happen in the news this past year was built on long-standing power dynamics, whether domestic or international, that are not always self-evident.” Stanford News Service spoke to each of the faculty members involved in the teaching of the course and asked them to describe, in their own words, what a historical perspective can bring to bear on our understanding of present-day conflicts and challenges. Read the full report, including brief video interviews, at this link.
From Chernobyl to Russian allies: Stanford expert explains Russia-Ukraine conflict Professor Amir Weiner March 10, 2022 | The Washington Post
Muslims are fighting on both sides in Ukraine Professor Robert Crews April 9, 2022 | Angry Planet
Bucha, Chechnya, and Russian War Crimes Professor Amir Weiner May 9, 2022 | Deutsche Welle News
Russia Victory Day and the war in Ukraine Professor Norman Naimark Review our faculty’s media appearances on this topic at this link.
Professor Norman Naimark
Professor Amir Weiner
Professor Robert Crews
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Department Updates
Featured Events
by Colin Hamill, Events & Communications Coordinator Yuhe Faye Wang joins us in Fall 2022 as IDEAL Postdoctoral Fellow!
The 2021-22 academic year has seen a steady increase in the number of events, where our faculty and students engaged in diverse intellectual exchange with local, national, and international scholars. We welcomed to the History Corner over 70 scholars, most of whom shared their ongoing research in person with Stanford affiliates. The corner stone of these engagements was our annual workshop series-- namely, Africa Research, British History, Eurasian Empires, European History, French Culture, Gender History, the Ottoman Empire & the Middle East, Environmental and Climate History, and U.S. History. These ten groups held monthly or quarterly meetings, discussing the cutting-edge newest research in their focal area and also providing Stanford historians an essential forum to strengthen their papers before publication. We also hosted three academic conferences: Estelle-Fest, honoring Emerit Professor Estelle Freedman, Under-Mapped Spaces, organized by Ph.D. student Riley Brett-Roche and Professor Kären Wigen about the newest digital methods and tools in cartography, and Re-Mapping Sovereignty, convened by Professors Kären Wigen and Martin Lewis to explore the questions of state, borderlands, politics through maps. We were thrilled to bring back the weekly Coffee & Donuts tradition to the Citrus Courtyard Arcade. Gathering over warm drinks, donuts, and healthy snacks, countless Stanford undergraduates met with our faculty, undergraduate peer advisors, and student services staff. Some conversations ended in a major or minor declaration; others led to historical inquiries into our today; and yet others brought about collaborative research projects. On May 9& 10, 2022, we hosted the Honors Thesis Conference, featuring ten presentations from our graduating cohort. Research topics included poppy trade in colonial India, gender ideology in Nazi Germany, Afro-Asian writers during the Cold War, labor movements in the U.S.A and Brazil, HIV activism, and white supremacist discourse. For more information about our activities, please visit the Events tab on our website. We look forward to welcoming you to our events in the next academic year!
We are delighted to welcome Yuhe Faye Wang to the History Corner as one of the five inaugural IDEAL Provostial Fellows. Wang is working toward her Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale University. Her research centers on the intersections of Asian American history, legal history, the history of the North American West, and studies of racial capitalism in the 19th century. Her current project investigates how the civil rights of corporations in the United States were built upon the civil rights of Chinese immigrants, and how a series of Supreme Court decisions entangled constitutional protections against racial discrimination with corporate law in the decades immediately after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Wang will file her dissertation in Summer 2022, and join our department in September, offering one U.S. History course every year and working on her research project. Professor Estelle Freedman’s Retirement In April 2022, Stanford faculty and students gathered together with distinguished scholars from across the country to celebrate Professor Estelle Freedman’s retirement. A U.S. historian specializing in women’s history and feminist studies, Professor Freedman has taught at Stanford University since 1976 and is a co-founder of the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research, focusing primarily on the history of social reform, social change, and women’s movements, has received numerous national fellowships and awards. Her excellence in teaching has been recognized by the Stanford Dinkelspiel Award, H&S Dean’s Award, Kahn-Van Slyke Graduate Mentoring Award, and the American Historical Association’s Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award for graduate mentorship. The April Conference celebrated Professor Freedman’s contributions to the intersectional scholarship on the histories of women, feminisms, and sexuality as well as the scholarship she continues to inspire through the work of Stanford graduate students, faculty members, and alumni. The conference program can be found here, and a recording of Professor Freedman’s final lecture for HISTORY 61/161 The Politics of Sex: Work, Family, and Citizenship in Modern American Women’s History will be posted on our website this summer.
Peter Paret | 1924 - 2020 Emerit Professor of History Taught at Stanford 1969 - 1986 Former Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
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In Memoriam
Katie Meyer | 2000 - 2022 B.A. Minor in History (Class of 2022) Studied foreign relations, South Asia, U.S. History Stanford Women’ Soccer Team Captain 5
Awards
Faculty Profile Pedro Regala
Faculty
Pedro Regalado joins us in July 2022 as Assistant Professor of History. His Ph.D. dissertation from Yale University received the 2020 Michael Katz Award for Best Dissertation from the Urban History Association. His research interests include race, ethnicity, labor, inequality, immigration, and urban politics and planning with a focus on 20th century U.S. history and Latinx communities.
Professor Steven Zipperstein is one of the recipients of the 2021 - 2022 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Tell us about your work and what excites you most about research. As an historian, my research explores the intersection between political economy and modern U.S. history. I’m interested in how ordinary people shaped history in seemingly unusual or unexpected ways. And I’m particularly captivated by how Latinx immigrant experiences broaden our understanding of American politics and urban economic development. What courses will you offer in the 2022-23 academic year? I’m really excited about the courses I am teaching next year! In the winter, I will offer a graduate seminar, History 305D Global Urban Histories, exploring a diverse array of theoretical approaches, archival issues, and historiographies of colonialism, globalization, social networks, urban systems, and cities. In the spring, I will teach History 50C/150C 20th Century U.S. History, a core U.S. history survey course at Stanford History, and also a brand new course with Professor Ana Minian about U.S. Latinx history. Tell us about your book manuscript, Latinx Gotham: Work and the Modern City. My book tells the remarkable story of New York’s Latinx community, which grew from a few thousand in the 1920s to 2.5 million today. Representing almost a third of the city’s population, the community is comprised of Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans (who together make up over 70% of the city’s Latinxs) as well as Ecuadorians, Colombians, Hondurans, and others. New York’s 6
Latinxs live in neighborhoods scattered across the five boroughs, and increasingly in the surrounding metropolitan counties. Some national groups are relative newcomers; others have called the city home for over two centuries. They form part of a larger collective—elusive, unequal, and often fractured—that is a fundamental element of life in the nation’s largest metropolis. Yet, when many people consider the history of Latinx New York, they don’t usually think of the community’s rich legacy— instead, they often conjure an image of Gotham in ruins, evoking the 1970s fires of the Bronx that destroyed tens of thousands of apartment units and that, for scholars of U.S. history, symbolized the pinnacle of postindustrial decline. I approach New York’s Latinxs both as residents and as economic actors who lived through three major waves of urban change during the 20th century: from the New Deal to postwar urban renewal, from the War on Poverty to the era of fiscal retrenchment, and finally, during the transition to a postindustrial service economy. I trace how Latinxs generated a sense of belonging in the city’s neighborhoods, how they integrated themselves into the city’s labor force, and how their politics evolved over time. Ultimately, my book unpacks how Latinxs became vital to the success or failure of urban policy after World War II, offering novel explanations for why New York developed in the way that it did throughout the 20th century and thus reorienting our conceptions of decline and revitalization.
Professor Fiona Griffiths was named one of the 2022 Medieval Academy of America Fellows.
Professor Destin Jenkins received the James A. Rawley Prize & the Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians.
Professor Gordon Chang was presented with the Daughters of the American Revolution History Award Medal.
Dr. Gil-li Vardi received the Phi Beta Kappa 2022 Undergraduate Teaching Award.
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Visitors
Students Graduate Student Awards Zoë Gioja, Emily Greenfield, and Lauren Urbont Center for Teaching & Learning Centennial Teaching Award
Lauren Urbont History Department Excellence in First Time Teaching as a Teaching Assistant, History 115D – Europe in the Middle Ages, 300-1500 Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin History Department Excellence in Designing and Teaching an Undergraduate Course, History 53S Black San Francisco
Edward Halley Barnet Best Written Dissertation Award Homo Musicus: The Musical Instrument as a Model of Life and Mind in Early Modern Europe
Matthew Randolph, Jacob Daniel received the Hoefer Prize for Mentorship from Stanford Center for Teaching& Learning.
Visiting Professors Professor Monica Green (Independent Scholar) Suppes Visiting Professor
s Professor James Millward (Georgetown University) Visiting Scholar
s Tanner Allread received a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.
Jon Cooper History Department Excellence in Designing and Teaching an Undergraduate Course, History 32S Utopian Dreams, Dystopian Nightmares: Visions of the Ideal Society in Early Modern Britain.
Professor Francesca Trivellato (Institute for Advanced Study) William H. Bonsall Visiting Professor in the Humanities
s Professor Stephen Sawyer (American University of Paris) Kratter Visiting Professor in European History
Visiting Student Researchers 2022 Krupp Foundation Bing Fellows
History Department Undergraduate Student Awards Arman Kassam James Birdsall Weter Prize for Outstanding History Honors Thesis “Man on the Moon: John Wilkins’s Lunar Fascination and its Anthropocentric Futures, 1630-1650” Hagar Gal Oral Communication Award for Excellence in Honors Thesis Presentation
Daniel Travassos Ferreira Jerry Anderson Prize for the Best Undergraduate Research Paper in History “The Making of Branner’s Geological Map of Brazil (1919)” 8
This year marked the return of visitors to campus! We were able to welcome new connections, finalize visits that had been delayed, and even welcome back those who had been forced to leave due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our visitor’s contributions will be felt long after their Stanford residency, and we look forward to welcoming them back to the Farm again soon!
Malin Wilckens (Bielefeld University) Franziska Keybolte (University of Münster) Magnus Altschäfl (LMU Munich)
s Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar Dr. Chandra Vadhana R. Fulbright Awardee
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