University of Washington

FALL 2017 | NEWSLET TER 2018 HISTORY LECTURE SERIES: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER The History Lecture Series returns in January 2018 with four presentations by nationally recognized historians on the theme of protest and dissent. In "Speaking Truth to Power: Protest and Dissent in Modern History," the speakers will trace connections between earlier protest movements in locations around the globe and contemporary struggles for social, economic, and political justice. The Department of History and the University of Washington Alumni Association present the popular annual speaker series. Arbella Bet-Shlimon will analyze the recent history of popular dissent in the Middle East with a focus on the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Bet-Shlimon is a historian of the modern Middle East, and is preparing a book for publication on the city of Kirkuk. Laurie Marhoefer is a scholar of Weimar and Nazi Germany (1918-45) with a specialty in politics broadly and the politics of race, gender, and sexuality. Her lecture will examine public protest in Nazi Germany— moments when large groups of ordinary people took to the streets to make demands on the government. Perhaps surprisingly, the regime did not simply arrest these people, and in fact was quite responsive to their demands, up to a point. The talk will highlight a few examples and draw some conclusions about the power of public protest even under a fascist dictatorship. Joshua Reid will survey recent activism in Indian Country, framed historically within the longer context of American Indian activism in settler colonial North America. Reid's research interests include American Indians, identity formation, cultural meanings of space and place, the American and Canadian Wests, the environment, and the indigenous Pacific. In his lecture, Anand Yang, a scholar of South Asian history, will examine Mahatma Gandhi's ideas of nonviolent protest as well as its deployment in his long campaign to win independence for India. Yang's research and writing is comparative and global, revealing connections involving India, China, and other regions of Asia, as well as in relation to the rest of the world. DEAR FRIENDS OF HISTORY A warm welcome to all of you! I am looking forward to greeting everyone in person in and around Smith Hall. The new academic year is only a few weeks old and already the campus is buzzing. I am fortunate that I was able to squeeze in one final bit of research in early September in the British Library, that amazing treasure house of gems ranging from the original records of colonial South Asia (my area of specialization) to the Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, Jane Austen's manuscripts, and the handwritten notations of Mozart and the Beatles, to name just a small handful of remarkable texts stored in this magnificent archives in London. In the fall quarter I will be curating and partly teaching a new course, History in the Age of Trump. The class will showcase the talents of many of my colleagues and the ways in which their scholarship and pedagogy specifically and the discipline of history generally expose and offer correctives to "alternative facts" in a post-truth era. The winter quarter will once again mark the launch of a new History Lecture Series (HLS) convened in partnership with the UW Alumni Association. The 2018 series will be organized around the theme of protest and dissent in history. Those of you who attended the 2017 HLS, "Worlds Turned Upside Down: Five Revolutions That Shaped Our Times," know that the lectures are immensely popular and draw large crowds. So please book your tickets early. The department also hosts a large number of talks on a variety of topics throughout the year that are open to the public. For additional details, please see our events calendar: history.washington.edu/calendar. I am pleased to note that Liora R. Halperin, formerly an assistant professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will be affiliated with us beginning this fall when she will assume the Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. Professor Scott Kurashige, a scholar of comparative and intersectional race and ethnicity at the University of Washington Bothell, will also be affiliating with the Department as an Adjunct Faculty member beginning this fall. Finally, a special thanks to my excellent colleagues in the department and to the stellar staff we faculty and students cannot do without: Josh Apfel, Tracy Maschman Morrissey, Star Murray, Lori Anthony, Jessica Claycomb, Sara Early, Nell Gross, Eric Johnson, Kim McKaig, and Jeri Park. May we all have a productive and enjoyable 2017-18. PROFESSOR ANAND YANG, CHAIR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY For details on Department of History talks and public events, please see our calendar: history.washington. edu/calendar history matters history matters

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