Humanities

Reassessing the First Red Scare of 1919-20 at its Centennial

Adam J. Hodges | 5 Feb 2019

The time has come to take stock of both our historical understanding of the First Red Scare and what it means for us today. The January 2019 issue of The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, which I had the honor to guest edit, is the first substantial scholarly collaboration entirely focused on the Red Scare of 1919-20 and marks the onset of its centennial by uniting exciting and recent, but previously disparate, perspectives.

Announcement: New co-editor for Twentieth-Century Music

Holly Buttimore | 22 Jan 2019

Cambridge University Press is delighted to announce the appointment of Alejandro L. Madrid as co-editor of Twentieth-Century Music, joining co-editor Pauline Fairclough from January 2019.…

Central European History Discussion Forum: The Vanishing Nineteenth Century in European History?

Karen Hagemann and Simone Lässig |

The nineteenth century just isn’t what it used to be. Any number of indicators – from academic job postings and doctoral dissertations to journal articles and conference panels –suggest that interest in the nineteenth century among historians of Europe has been declining over the past three decades.…

Ghost Stories in Early Modern England: The Social, Personal, and Spiritual Dynamics

Laura Sangha |

In early modern England, spectral figures like Madam Savage were regular visitors to the world of the living and a vibrant variety of beliefs and expectations clustered around these questionable shapes.

Fossil shark teeth discovered in leftover rock that contained SUE the T. rex

Kate Golembiewski | 21 Jan 2019

Freshwater shark lived in South Dakota, had teeth shaped like “Galaga” spaceships SUE the T. rex is the most famous fossil from the Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota—the most complete skeleton ever discovered of the world’s most popular dinosaur.…

Promiscuous Presbyterians? Courtship, marriage and sexual activity in 18th and 19th century Ireland

Leanne Calvert | 18 Jan 2019

This blog accompanies Leanne Calvert’s Irish Historical Studies open access article ‘‘He came to her bed pretending courtship’: sex, courtship and the making of marriage in Ulster, 1750–1844‘.…

‘…the Parliament’s Favourite’: Helen Arthur and the Williamite confiscation

Frances Nolan | 14 Jan 2019

This blog accompanies Frances Nolan’s Irish Historical Studies article ‘‘The Cat’s Paw’: Helen Arthur, the act of resumption and The Popish pretenders to the forfeited estates in Ireland, 1700–03‘.…

Reassessing the Hu–Wen Era: A Golden Era or a Lost Decade for Social Policy?

Jude Howell and Jane Duckett | 21 Dec 2018

Journalists, China-watchers and academics have fiercely debated the legacy of China’s leaders, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. Some see the Hu–Wen period (2002–2012) as a “golden era” of rapid growth, while others portray it as a “lost decade” for economic and political reform.…

Ever New and Increasing Awe

Ajit Thakur | 6 Feb 2019

From our perspective, life seems meaningful—and not just full of personally meaningful things, like having children or playing Bach perfectly. Most of us live our lives as if there is an answer to the callings of our deepest soul longings. We live as if what we do matters in some sort of cosmic way. Human life feels as though it has purpose and function and meaning.

“Spirit to Spirit”: The Imagery of the Kiss in the Zohar and its Possible Sources

Tanja Werthmann |

The study illustrates the ways in which Platonic and Neoplatonic concepts were appropriated by the early Kabbalists and their expression through myth and symbol in Zoharic literature.

The Context and Consequences of Sexual Harassment in Southeastern Archaeology

Maureen S. Meyers | 1 Feb 2019

Imagine you are a new field tech, right out of college. You decided to major in anthropology, specifically archaeology, against your parent’s wishes.…

An Englishman’s Home is His Castle? Shakespeare’s Violent Homes

Emma Whipday | 9 Jan 2019

In Woody Allen’s Amazon Prime series, Crisis in Six Scenes, his character Sidney suffers a home invasion. Sidney complains: ‘This is my home, this is my castle, you’re going into the moat!’ Allen is drawing on an Elizabethan proverb that still resonates today: ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle.’ This proverb encapsulated the ideal of a home as a bedrock of the state, ruled over by the (male) householder, and protected from dangers outside.…