Olivia DrakeCourtney Fullilove, assistant professor of history, wrote an article titled "Dead Letters—By a Resurrectionist: Liberty and Surveillance in the Tombs of the U.S. Post Office," published in the January 2012 issue of Common-Place.org. In the article, Fullilove describes a history of the 19th century Division of Dead Letters. Until World War I, all undeliverable letters were processed through the central office in Washington. By law, unclaimed letters were burned, pulped, or otherwise destroyed. But Fullilove discovered this wasn't the case. "Here was a riddle," she writes. "In a non-existent box were four letters that should have been destroyed. Their presence was evidence…
David PesciIn this issue we ask "5 Questions" of Jennifer Tucker, associate professor of history, associate professor of science in society, and associate professor feminist, gender and sexuality studies. Q: Professor Tucker, you started off with an undergrad degree in biology but you’re on the History Department's faculty here and specialize in, among other areas, Victorian London and British cultural history. How did your interest evolve in these directions? A: I entered college with a strong interest in history, but I also loved science courses. At Stanford I combined a major in the neurosciences of visual perception and memory with coursework…
Jennifer Tucker received a Huntington-British Academy Fellowship for study in Great Britain in summer 2011. Tucker is associate professor of history, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, associate professor of science in society. In cooperation with the British Academy, the Huntington offers a limited number of one-month exchange fellowships in any of the fields in which the Huntington collections are strong and where the research will be carried out in the United Kingdom. These fellowships are awarded to postdoctoral scholars. The Huntington is an independent research center with holdings in British and American history, literature, art history, and…
This issue, we ask “5 Questions” of Magda Teter, the Jeremy Zwelling Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, associate professor of history, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, associate professor of medieval studies. Teter is the author of Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation, published by Harvard University Press in March 2011. Q: Professor Teter, you are a scholar of religious and cultural history. What are your research interests, and what courses do you teach at Wesleyan? A: In my writing I focus on Jewish-Christian relations, particularly in Poland, which was once the one of the…
Jennifer Tucker, associate professor of history, associate professor of science in society, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, is the recipient of the Curran Fellowship for 2011, according to the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP). The Curran Fellowship, made possible through the generosity of Eileen Curran, professor emerita of English at Colby College, and inspired by her pioneering research, provides research and travel grants intended to aid scholars studying 19th-century British magazines and newspapers in making use of primary print and manuscript sources. Tucker is carrying out a study of the British press's coverage of the Tichborne Claimant…
Magda Teter is the author of Sinners Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation, published by Harvard University Press in March 2011. Teter is the Jeremy Zwelling Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, associate professor of history, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, associate professor of medieval studies. In post-Reformation Poland—the largest state in Europe and home to the largest Jewish population in the world—the Catholic Church suffered profound anxiety about its power after the Protestant threat. According to Harvard University Press, Teter reveals how criminal law became a key tool in the manipulation of the meaning…
This issue, we ask “5 Questions” of William Johnston, professor of history, professor of science in society, professor of East Asian Studies. One of his areas of specialty is the history of disease and epidemics. Q: How did you become interested in the history of diseases, and more specifically, flu outbreaks? A: While in graduate school I examined a number of different fields of history, but was drawn to the history of medicine in Japan because it was in that field that the Japanese first absorbed European scientific ideas and methods. My advisor suggested that I take courses in the…
Ethan Kleinberg, associate professor of history, associate professor of letters is spending the year as director of the Vassar-Wesleyan Paris Program and an invited scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. During the Fall 2010 semester, Kleinberg delivered two lectures based on his current book project, The Myth of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is a French Jewish philosopher who turned to the use of Jewish (more…)
Laurie Nussdorfer, professor of history, professor of letters, is the author of Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. A fast—growing legal system and economy in medieval and early modern Rome saw a rapid increase in the need for written documents. Brokers of Public Trust examines the emergence of the modern notarial profession -- free market scribes responsible for producing original legal documents and their copies.
Ethan Kleinberg, associate professor of history, associate professor of letters, is the author of “Freud and Levinas: Talmud and Psychoanalysis Before the Letter,” published in The Jewish World of Sigmund Freud, 2010.
A book by Laurie Nussdorfer, professor of history and letters, will be discussed Dec. 16 in Rome. Her book, Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), examines the emergence of the modern notarial profession -- free market scribes responsible for producing original legal documents and their copies. Nussdorfer chronicles the training of professional notaries and the construction of public archives, explaining why notarial documents exist, who made them, and how they came to be regarded as authoritative evidence. In doing so, she describes a profession of crucial importance to the people and government of the time,…
Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock, comes to Wesleyan this spring as an assistant professor of history, an assistant professor of Russian and Eastern European Studies. She’ll also be a core member of the College of Social Studies. Her research investigates state efforts to manage spiritual life, as well as the significance and functions of private rituals in modern society. “There were many things that attracted me to Wesleyan, but the students, and the intellectual community more broadly, are at the top of the list,” she says. “When I visited Wesleyan, the students made a profound impression: they struck me as deeply engaged in…