Friday, 5-4-12 – Department of History Awards Ceremony
Gold B Room, MSU Union- 3:00 – 5:00 Join us to honor the undergraduate, graduate and faculty of their accomplishments in the 2011 – 2012 academic year!
Monday, 11-14-11 – Dr. Leo Lucassen, “THE LURE OF THE CITY: GLOBAL PATTERNS OF MIGRATION SINCE THE 18th CENTURY”
Room 340 Morrill Hall, 12:00 pm
This talk compares and analyzes the moves creating urbanization in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Soviet Union, Europe, Oceania, and North America.
**Additional session for graduate students 2-3:00, same room. Grad Students, plan to describe & discuss your work; read Lucassen and Laarman, “Immigration, intermarriage and the changing face of Europe in the postwar period,” The History of the Family 14 (2009):52-68. For PDF: click here
Thursday, 11-10-11 – Dr. Marcie Cowley, “The Right of Inheritance in Soviet Legal Discourse”
Room 340 Morrill Hall, 4:00 pm
The institution of inheritance and its role in a socialist society and economy was negotiated for much of the Soviet period. Inheritance as an institution was the means by which large amounts of wealth were reproduced and transferred in capitalist societies and its exploitative potential was of great concern to Communist theoreticians. From its early abolition in 1918 with minor restrictions for purposes of social welfare to the progressive liberalization of inheritance laws in the decades that followed, Soviet policy leaders and legal theorists struggled with how to articulate its socialist character, along with the necessary role of the state and civil law in structuring property relations between Soviet citizens. Ultimately, the institution of inheritance was sanctioned and encouraged. However, while the law allowed for personal property rights in items of a consumerist nature and rights of usage to housing, officials had largely succeeded in abolishing capital. The paradox of property relations in the Soviet Union is thus far more complicated than a complete abolition of individually held property.
Tuesday, 11-08-11 – Dr. Emily Conroy-Krutz, “Looking Towards Africa: American Missionaries, the Colonization Movement, and the Evangelical Response to Imperialism”
Room 340 Morrill Hall, 4:00 pm
In the early nineteenth century, the American foreign missionary movement sought to transform the whole world in the image of evangelical Protestant Christianity, working with, and at times against, the expansion of Euro-American imperial power. In the mission to Liberia, white American missionaries under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission were guided by the hope that they were united with African American colonists in the “salvation” of Africa. Yet conflicts between missionaries, colonists, and the indigenous population plagued the mission, as did political currents from within the United States. The Board?s mission would only continue for a decade in Liberia before these conflicts drove the out of the reach of the colony. The effects of this experience, though was profound for the evangelical understanding of the proper relationship of missions to imperialism, and of religion to politics.
Monday, 09-26-11 – Dr. Christine Walley, Ties That Bind: Toxic Pollution, Urban Brownfields, and the Embodiment of Class and Gender in Post-Industrial Southeast Chicago.
Room 303 International Center, 3:30 pm
Chris Walley is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at MIT. She is currently completing a book Exit Zero: An Anthropologist’s Account of Family and Class in the United States (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press) and an accompanying documentary film also entitled Exit Zero made with filmmaker Chris Boebel. Both projects use family stories to explore the meaning of the loss of the steel industry for residents of Southeast Chicago and the long-term impact that deindustrialization has had on expanding class inequalities in the United States. The talk considers the implications of pervasive toxic brownfields for the region’s future and for how class, gender and race come to be embodied in post-industrial landscapes.
Thursday, 09-22-11 – Dr. Brenda Elsey, Citizens and Sportsment: Politics and Soccer in 20th – Century Chile
Room 303 International Center, 4:00 pm
Fútbol, or soccer as it is called in the U.S., is the most popular sport in the world. Brenda Elsey takes a fresh look at life in twentieth-century Chile by exploring how fútbol clubs integrated working-class men into urban politics, connected them to parties, and served as venues of political critique. Drawing on archival records, club documents, neighborhood publications, and sports magazines, Elsey demonstrates that soccer in Santiago enabled men and women to debate ideas about class, ethnic, and gender identities. This original historical study reveals that the relationship between formal and informal politics is essential to fostering civic engagement and supporting democratic practices.
Brenda Elsey is Assistant Professor of History at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY. She is the author of Citizens and Sportsmen: Fútbol and Politics in Twentieth-Century Chile (University of Texas Press, 2011). Her current research focuses on the relationship between popular culture and the transnational solidarity movements with Latin America, especially in the 1970s and 80s.
For more information about this event contact: Alex Galarza (galarza1@msu.edu)
