2010 Publications
Porcelain
With his newest book, The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History (University of California Press, 2010) Professor Robert Finlay details the exotic world of fine porcelain. This work explores the global cultural influence of Chinese porcelain from A. D. 600 to 1850.
For over a thousand years, porcelain was both the most universally admired and most widely imitated product in the world. It played a central role in cultural exchange in Eurasia as the prime material vehicle for the assimilation and transmission of artistic symbols themes, and designs across vast distances. The book examines the integration of Chinese porcelain in the cultures of Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and Europe. It treats porcelain as a barometer of human affairs, a commodity that registers the impact of artistic conventions, international trade, industrial development, political turmoil, elite expenditure, ceremonial rites, and cultural contact.
The Pilgrim Art demonstrates that by the eighteenth century, given its volume and circulation, porcelain yields the earliest and most extensive evidence for sustained cultural encounter on a world-wide scale, perhaps even for the emergence of the first genuinely global culture.
2009 Publications
Smoke gets in your eyes
According to the World Health Organization, approximately 70 percent of men and 30 percent of women in Russia smoke, and the WHO estimated that at the close of the twentieth century 280,000 Russians died every year from smoking-related illnesses - a rate over three times higher than the global average. The demographic crisis in current Russia has occasioned interest by President Putin in health care efforts and by historians in the source of these problems.
With Tobacco in Russian History and Culture: The Seventeenth Century to the Present Professor Trish Starks of the UofA Department of History along with Professor Matthew Romaniello of the University of Hawai'i have brought together leading scholars of Russia, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc, to provide essays that explore tobacco's role in Russian culture through a multidisciplinary approach starting with the growth of tobacco consumption from its first introduction in the seventeenth century until its pandemic status in the current post-Soviet health crisis.
The essays as a group emphasize the ways in which, from earliest contact, tobacco's status as a 'foreign' commodity forced Russians to confront their national, political, and economic interests in its acceptance or rejection and find there markers of gender, class, or political identity. International contributors from the fields of history, literature, sociology, and economics fully present the dramatic impact of the weed called the 'blossom from the womb of the daughter of Jezebel'.
What's forever for?
This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom.
To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initial treaty, the Nez Perce were promised a large part of their ancestral homeland, but the discovery of gold led to a stampede of settlement within the Nez Perce land. Numerous injustices at the hands of the US government combined with the settlers' invasion to provoke this most accomodating of tribes to war. West offers a riveting account of what came next: the harrowing flight of 800 Nez Perce, including many women, children and elderly, across 1500 miles of mountainous and difficult terrain. He gives a full reckoning of the campaigns and battles--and the unexpected turns, brilliant stratagems, and grand heroism that occurred along the way. And he brings to life the complex characters from both sides of the conflict, including cavalrymen, officers, politicians, and--at the center of it all--the Nez Perce themselves (the Nimiipuu, "true people"). The book sheds light on the war's legacy, including the near sainthood that was bestowed upon Chief Joseph, whose speech of surrender, "I will fight no more forever," became as celebrated as the Gettysburg Address.
Based on a rich cache of historical documents, from government and military records to contemporary interviews and newspaper reports, The Last Indian War offers a searing portrait of a moment when the American identity--who was and who was not a citizen--was being forged.
Battle Hymn of the republic
The American Civil War is famous for epic battles involving massive armies outfitted in blue and gray uniforms, details that characterize conventional warfare. Professor Daniel Sutherland's new book, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War is the first work to treat guerrilla warfare as critical to understanding the course and outcome of the Civil War.
Sutherland argues that irregular warfare took a large toll on the Confederate war effort by weakening support for state and national governments and diminishing the trust citizens had in their officials to protect them.
Sutherland points out that early in the war Confederate military and political leaders embraced guerrilla tactics. They knew that "partizan" fighters had helped to win the American Revolution. As the war dragged on and defense of the remote spaces of the Confederate territory became more tenuous, guerrilla activity spiraled out of state control. It was adopted by parties who had interests other than Confederate victory, including southern Unionists, violent bands of deserters and draft dodgers, and criminals who saw the war as an opportunity for plunder. Sutherland considers not only the implications such activity had for military strategy but also its effects on people and their attitudes toward the war. Once vital to southern hopes for victory, the guerrilla combatants proved a significant factor in the Confederacy's final collapse.
the sound of music
Professor Rembrandt Wolpert, recent addition to the department of history, has come bearing gifts. Along with professor D. R. Widdess, Professor Wolpert has produced a beautiful volume of essays in honor of Laurence Picken which has recently been re-released by the Cambridge University Press.
Picken has long been recognized as a pioneer in the study of Oriental and other non-Western musics. Some of his pupils, colleagues and friends from four continents have here brought together this volume of essays as a tribute to him on his seventieth birthday. The book aims to reflect characteristic aspects of Dr Picken's work: his conception of musicology as a science, his sense of historical perspective and - perhaps most importantly - his delight in music of almost every kind. Appealing in particular to those engaged in the study of non-Western music, the volume will also interest everyone concerned with musical structures and their development.
The book aims to reflect characteristic aspects of Dr Picken's study of Oriental and other non-Western musics. Appealing in particular to those engaged in the study of non-Western music, the volume will also interest everyone concerned with musical structures and their development.
pomp and circumstance
Professor Elizabeth Markham's acclaimed volume Saibara : Japanese court songs of the Heian period has been re-released by Cambridge University Press to satisfy demand for information on the important song tradition from the Japanese court.
Saibara, or Drover's (packhorse driver's) Songs, is the title of a genre of measured Japanese court song, traditionally believed to have been derived from the songs of pack-horse drivers bringing tribute from the provinces to the Heian capital and known to have formed part of the official court repertory at least since AD 859. From literature of the Heian period (782-1184) it is evident that these songs enjoyed great popularity at court as entertainment music practised by noble amateurs. Six songs are still performed today, albeit vastly modified. As well as being of value to musicologists, these volumes will interest readers concerned with early Japanese literature and paleography.
2008 Publications
Splish Splash I Was Takin' A Bath
Dr. Trish Starks has published, The Body Soviet: Propaganda, Hygiene, and the Revolutionary State with the University of Wisconsin press. The book follows the tale of health and hygiene in the wake of revolution and social change in the Soviet Union. In 1918 the People’s Commissariat of Public Health began a quest to protect the health of all Soviet citizens, but health became more than a political platform or tactical decision. The Soviets defined and categorized the world by interpreting political orthodoxy and citizenship in terms of hygiene. The assumed political, social, and cultural benefits of a regulated, healthy lifestyle informed the construction of Soviet institutions and identity. Cleanliness developed into a political statement that extended from domestic maintenance to leisure choices and revealed gender, ethnic, and class prejudices. Dirt denoted the past and poor politics; health and cleanliness signified mental acuity, political orthodoxy, and modernity.
Health, though essential to the revolutionary vision and crucial to Soviet plans for utopia, has been neglected by traditional histories caught up in Cold War debates. The Body Soviet recovers this significant aspect of Soviet thought by providing a cross-disciplinary, comparative history of Soviet health programs that draws upon rich sources of health care propaganda, including posters, plays, museum displays, films, and mock trials. The analysis of propaganda makes this more than an institutional history; it is also an insightful critique of the ideologies of the body fabricated by health organizations.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Oaxaca City, Kathryn Sloan analyzes rapto trials—cases of abduction and/or seduction of a minor—to gain insight into the reality that testimonies by parents, their children, and witnesses reveal about courtship practices, generational conflict, the negotiation of honor, and the relationship between the state and its working-class citizens in postcolonial Mexico. Sloan found that the state increasingly usurped parental authority in the home with the introduction of nineteenth-century liberal reform laws. As these laws began to shape the terms of civil marriage, the courtroom played a more significant role in the resolution of familial power struggles and the restoration of family honor in rapto cases. Youths could now exert a measure of independence by asserting their rights to marry whom they wished. In examining these growing rifts between the liberal state and familial order within its lower order citizens, Sloan highlights the role that youths and the working class played in refashioning systems of marriage, honor, sexuality, parental authority, and filial obedience.
Losing my religion
Mahdis and Millenarians is a study of early extremist Shiites in Iraq and Iran. These sectarians originated certain doctrines and religious practices that influenced a number of later Shiite religious and political movements. Their millenarian expectations and willingness to use force against perceived enemies gave them a sense of solidarity and coherence that could be effectively mobilized in revolutionary or conflict situations. They should be viewed primarily within the context of world millenarian sectarian movements.
Smoke on the water
In Venice Besieged: Politics and Diplomacy in the Italian Wars, 1494-1534 (Ashgate Publishing, Great Britain, 2008), Professor Robert Finlay presents ten essays written between 1976 and 2000 that deal with common themes and personalities during crises experienced by the Republic of Venice between 1494 and 1534. The essays examine various episodes and dimensions of that time of troubles, including the impact of apocalyptic speculation on political action, the driving force behind the creation of the notorious creation of the Ghetto, the Venetian contribution to the infamous Sack of Rome in 1527, the links between the spice trade and military disaster, the significance of old age in the ruling class, the role of the family in patrician politics, and the Republic’s attempt to preserve itself in the great struggle between the Ottoman Turks and the Spanish-Habsburg Empire. A unifying theme of the essays is the contrast between the exalted reputation of the Republic (as seen in the famed “myth of Venice”) and the tangled reality of Venetian politics and diplomacy.
2007 Publications
Turn...turn...turn
In his exploration of the use of intelligence in Ireland by the British government from the onset of the Ulster Crisis in 1912 to the end of the Irish War of Independence in 1921, Grob-Fitzgibbon analyzes the role that intelligence played during those critical nine years. He argues that within that period, the British government lost power in Ireland because it failed to utilize the intelligence it received. Through its indifference, the British government contributed to the turning points of the Irish Revolution, and allowed a bloody guerrilla war to develop that was far from inevitable.
Deep in the heart of texas
At the end of Reconstruction, the old order reasserted itself, to varying degrees, throughout the former Confederate states. This period--Redemption, as it was called--was crucial in establishing the structures and alliances that dominated the Solid South until at least the mid-twentieth century.
Texas shared in this, but because of its distinctive antebellum history, its western position within the region, and the large influx of new residents that poured across its borders, it followed its own path toward Redemption.
Now, historian Patrick G. Williams provides a dual study of the issues facing Texas Democrats as they rebuilt their party and of the policies they pursued once they were back in power. Treating Texas as a southern but also a western and a borderlands state, Williams has crafted a work with a richly textured awareness unlike any previous single study. Students of regional and political history will benefit from Williams' comprehensive view of this often overlooked, yet definitive era in Texas history.