Breaking History Podcast

Join Bridget Keown, Dan Squizzero, James Robinson, and Thanasis Kinias, with our guest this week, Dr. Benjamin Schmidt, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University and core faculty in the NuLab for Texts, Maps and Networks. We chat about his journey into Digital Humanities, from his initial research into the moral panics about attention-span discourse of the 20th century and the use of text mining for his research. Dr. Schmidt talks about the need for quantitative research in history using technological tools. Will historians hand over quantitative analysis to the social sciences?

For More Information on the Materials Discussed in this Podcast:

Websites:
Dr. Schmidt’s webpage:
NULabs

Twitters to follow to keep up with Digital Humanities:
@dancohen
@ryancordell
@nowviskie
@amandafrench
@miriamkp
@Ted_Underwood

Journals:
Journal of Cultural Analytics
culturalanalytics.org/

Books:
Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound editing: Beka Bryer
Produced: Dan Squizzero
Music by Kieran Legg

Join James Robinson, Kyra Millard, Matt Bowser, and Thanasis Kinias as we interview Dr. Ryan Cordell as we talk about intersections between 19th century apocalyptic literature and digital humanities, and how Dr. Cordell has used DH in order to research his area of study. We talk about Print History of the 19th century. We then talk about the Viral Texts project and the potential for text mapping networks for historical research.

Why are newspapers named “The Telegraph”?

For More Information on the Materials Discussed in this Podcast:

ryancordell.org/
viraltexts.org/

Articles/Sites Discussed: 

“19th Century Data Vizualization” by Lauren Klein

“Literary Pattern Recognition: Modernism between Close Reading and Machine Learning” by Hoyt Long and Richard Jean So
(Critical Inquiry, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Winter 2016), pp. 235-267)

“Shifting Scales: Between Literature and Social Science” by Ted Underwood and Jim English
(Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 3 (2016), pp. 277-295)

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound Editing: Beka Bryer
Produced: Dan Squizzero
Music by Kieran Legg

Join Bridget, James, and Matt as we interview Nav Athwal, an outgoing Masters Student of World History at Northeastern University, who focuses on the history of Medicine in the British Empire. We will talk about his academic journey from medical school to business to historian and his current process of applying to PhD programs. We talk specifically about his latest research on imperial medicine in British-ruled India and passive resistance vs active resistance. Nav also gives his thoughts on subaltern history, We then commiserate about trying to get into PhD programs. Nav tells us what he thinks of David Arnold. He links world history and subaltern methodology and problematizing Indian nationalist history.

Books Discussed:

Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India by David Arnold

The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856 by David Arnold

Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India by Ranajit Guha

Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference by Dipesh Chakrabarty

Modern India, 1885 – 1947 by Sumit Sarkar

Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire
by Mrinalini Sinha

Ideologies of the Raj by Thomas R. Metcalf

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Niall Ferguson

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound editing: Beka Bryer
Produced: Dan Squizzero
Music by Kieran Legg

Join Bridget, James, and Thanasis as we are joined by Dr. Moya Bailey. Dr. Moya Bailey is an assistant professor in the Department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies and the program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University. Her work focuses on Black women’s use of digital media to promote social justice as acts of self-affirmation and health promotion. She is interested in how race, gender, and sexuality are represented in media and medicine. She currently curates the#transformDH Tumblr initiative in Digital Humanities (DH). She is a monthly sustainer of the Allied Media Conference, through which she is able to bridge her passion for social justice and her work in DH.

Dr. Bailey is a graduate of the Emory University Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. She is the founder and co-conspirator of Quirky Black Girls, a network for strange and different black girls and now serves at the digital alchemist for the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network.

She attended Spelman College where she initially endeavored to become a physician. She fell in love with Women’s Studies and activism, ultimately driving her to graduate school in lieu of medicine. As an undergrad she received national attention for her involvement in the “Nelly Protest” at Spelman, a moment that solidified her deep commitment to examining representations of Black women in popular culture.

We talk about the role of the academic in social change, DH and intersectional social change, the Allied Media Conference, the story of Quirky Black Girls, the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, the concept of “Misogynoir”. We touch on Dr. Bailey’s dissertation on how representations in medical school curriculums shape how doctors see different marginalized groups and how the Nelly protest shaped her research and activism, how problematic portrayals become international, and dismantling binaries. Dr. Bailey talks about the possibilities of linking activists, academics, and scifi writers at the Black To The Future conference.

Books Discussed:

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (2000)
• Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, Edited by Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown (2015)

News Items Discussed:

• “Students at Spelman College protest Nelly’s video ‘Tip Drill'”

Websites Discussed:

• The Allied Media Conference
• Black To The Future Conference
• Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound editing: Beka Bryer
Produced: Dan Squizzero
Music by Kieran Legg

Today we talk smuggling! Join us as were are joined by Northeastern University History Department Faculty Philip Thai, who is a historian of Modern China with research and teaching interests that include legal history, economic history, business history, and history of capitalism. At the core of his inquiries is understanding the complex interplay between law, society, and economy. He is currently working on his manuscript tentatively titled, “The War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast,” which uses China’s campaigns against smuggling during the twentieth century to examine the transformation of state authority and the larger socioeconomic impact of state-building. Professor Thai received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2013 and his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000.

We talk about the theme of smuggling in China, how it fits into Chinese and World Histories, his journey from trade to smuggling, and his academic journey from being a financial advisor to a economics historian.

Books Discussed:

• Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915 by Eric Tagliacozzo (2005)
• Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground
  by Michael Kwass (2014)
• Industrial Eden: A Chinese Capitalist Vision
  by Brett Sheehan (2015)

News Items Discussed:

• “Chinese smugglers caught using zip-line for iPad/iPhone ‘shipments'”

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound editing: Beka Bryer
Produced: Dan Squizzero
Music by Kieran Legg

Join Northeastern Graduate students Bridget Keown and James Robinson as we visit with our department chair, Dr. Heather Streets-Salter, for a discussion on research and teaching of world history! We talk about Dr. Streets-Salter’s path from American history to British Empire to Southeast Asian history. We also discuss world history teaching methods, research possibilities, and underresearched areas.

Books by Dr. Streets-Salter:

• Martial Races: The Military, Martial Races, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857-1914 (2004)
• Traditions and Encounters: A Brief Global History (2006, 2009, 2012) with Jerry Bentley and Herb Ziegler.
• Modern Imperialism and Colonialism: A Global Perspective(2010 and 2014) with Trevor Getz.
  She is also completing a monograph entitled Beyond Empire: Southeast Asia and the World During the Great War

Novels Used By Dr. Streets-Salter When Teaching World History:

• Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa by Mark Mathabane
• Spider Eaters by Rae Yang

Other Books Discussed:

• The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge Military Histories) by Mustafa Aksakal (2010)
• The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia by Cemil Aydin (2007)
• A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire by Sugata Bose (2006)
• Empires at War: 1911-1923 (The Greater War) Edited by Robert Gerwarth & Erez Manela (2014)
• Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World by John Robert McNeill (2001)
• The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gambia by Donald R. Wright

Also Discussed:

• 25th Annual World History Association Conference, happening now in Ghent

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound editing: Beka Bryer
Produced: Dan Squizzero
Music by Kieran Legg

Join Northeastern University Graduate Students James Robinson and Kyra Millard as we discuss the 19th Century Russian-Bulgarian Diplomatic History with newly minted PhD Mikhail Rekun. How did Pan-Slavism influence how Russian diplomats treated the newly independent Bulgaria? Dr. Rekun talks about his research adventures in the Bulgarian and Russian archives. He also touches on writing his dissertation and defending it. How does Diplomatic History fit into World History?
(And because we don’t always broadcast in the order in which we record, this is indeed Episode 5).

News Items Discussed:

• “Putin’s ‘realpolitik’ aims to make Russia indispensable”

Books Discussed:

• Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism: Russian Influence in the Internal Affairs of Bulgaria and Serbia, 1879-1886 by Charles Jelavich (1958)

Websites Discussed:

• www.readercon.org/

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound editing: Beka Bryer
Produced: Dan Squizzero
Music by Kieran Legg

Join Northeastern University Graduate Students Matt Bowser, Bridget Keown, and James Robinson as we discuss the Easter Rebellion that sparked the Irish War of Independence, and whose 100 Anniversary just passed. We discuss some of the recent scholarship, the rising in World History, the role of women in the Easter Rising and their writing out of the history, Ireland and British settler-colonialism, and the Limerick Soviets. We touch briefly on the articles going around the internet about “Irish slavery” and the rebuttal. We wrap about Roger Casement and his diary, and the what-if of the Easter Rising.

From This Episode:

News Items Discussed:

“Two Cities, One Book: Dublin & Belfast Read Fallen by Lia Mills”

Books Discussed:

• 1916: Ireland’s Revolutionary Tradition  by Kieran Allen (2016)
• How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev (1996)
• Ireland And The First World War by Keith Jeffery (2000)
• 1916: A Global History by Keith Jeffery (2016)
• At Home in the Revolution: What Women Said and Did in 1916
  by Lucy McDiarmid (2015)

Websites Discussed:

• Letters of 1916
• Stories from 1916 podcast

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound editing: Beka Bryer
Produced: Dan Squizzero
Music by Kieran Legg

Join Northeastern University Graduate Students Bridget Keown, James Robinson, Jessica Muttitt, and Olivier Schouteden as we join Professor Rick Warner of Wabash College, and President of the World History Association. We talk about Dr. Warner‘s work in world history through food studies, as well as the work of the World History Association. Dr. Warner talks about world history methodology and research within his role as WHA President, as well as the coming WHA annual conference in Ghent. We make the big connections!

From This Episode

News Stories:

“Weary professors give up, concede that Africa is a country” By Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne

Books Discussed:

• The Rise of the West by William Hardy McNeill (1964, 2009)
• The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 by Alfred W. Crosby (1973, 2003)
• Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Sidney W. Mintz (1985, Reprint)
• Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 by Janet L. Abu-Lughod (1991, Reprint)
• The New World History: A Teacher’s Companion by Ross E. Dunn (1999)

Credits:
Brought to you by the Northeastern Graduate History Association
Sound editing: Beka Bryer
Producer: Dan Squizzero
Original Music by Kieran Legg

From this podcast:

The Art:

News Stories:
South Africa economy is on the brink of junk status
Why are South African students so angry?
South Africa appeals parole apartheid era assassin

Books Discussed:
• Art of the South African Townships by Gavin Younge (1987)
• The Neglected Tradition: Towards a New History of South African Art (1930-1988) by Steven Sack (1988)
• Resistance Art in South Africa by Sue Williamson (1989)
• Art and the End of Apartheid John Peffer (2009)
• Biko’s Ghost: The Iconography of Black Consciousness by Shannen Hill (2015)

*Correction: In this podcast, it was mentioned that a book cover was banned because of its political message. In the podcast, Ezrom Legae was credited as the artist.  It was actually Paul Stopforth.