History News
Article by Dr Anna Hájková in "Der Tagespiegel" on 14 December 2019 about an enforced queer relationship in a Nazi concentration camp
Dr Anna Hájková on Maria Schmolka in the Observer newspaper 10 November 2019
Article on Maria Schmolka in the Observer, 10 November 2019 at:
Dr James Poskett featured in Audible short story collection
Dr James Poskett recently featured as part of a new Audible short story collection, produced in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection. In Homeless Bodies and Other Stories, leading authors were paired with objects from the Wellcome Collection. In the third episode (“The Master and the Student”), James discusses a skull used by phrenologists with the author Haroun Khan.
Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920
Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920, by Dr James Poskett (University of Warwick), is a new monograph published by University of Chicago Press.
Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world—and how the world changed phrenology.
This is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. Drawing on far-flung museum and archival collections, and addressing sources in six different languages, Materials of the Mind is an impressively innovative account of science in the nineteenth century as part of global history. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history can help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.
Details of all the monographs and edited collection of the Warwick University History Department's current academic staff are available online, and the details of all the monographs and edited collection of the Warwick University History Department's emeritus academic staff are also available online.
Menstruation and the Holocaust
Former undergraduate student Jo-Ann Owusu turned her excellent BA dissertation from the ‘HI31Z Sexualities, Ethnicity, Class: Reinterpreting the Holocaust’ module into an essay in History Today.
Venice had its own ‘Airbnb problem’ during the Renaissance – here’s how it coped
The Conversation has published an article by Dr Rosa Salzberg of the Warwick University History Department on the accommodation issues faced by Venice during the Renaissance. Please see the full article on The Conversation's website.
A Retroactive #MeToo from Hollywood's Golden Age
Professor J E Smyth (author of "Nobody's Girl Friday”; Professor of History at Warwick University), Karina Longworth (author of "Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood"; creator of the "You Must Remember This" podcast), and Victoria Riskin (author of "Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir"; former president, Writers Guild of America, West), were recently interviewed by KQED News:
A Retroactive #MeToo from Hollywood's Golden Age
In 2017, the #MeToo Movement began exposing Hollywood’s culture of sexual violence, which then broadened into a global rallying cry. But sexual coercion and abuse has long had a place in Hollywood as three recently-released books attest. The books examine the working conditions of women during Hollywood's Golden Age and the abuses of casting couch predators like Howard Hughes and Harry Cohn. We'll talk with the authors about the vast contributions - and challenges - for women in the studio era.
Please see the KQED News website for the full interview podcast.
2018 BASEES Women’s Forum Book Prize
Dr Claire Shaw (University of Warwick) is the recipient of the 2018 BASEES Women’s Forum Book Prize for her book Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917-1991 (Cornell University Press, 2017). The judges, Barbara Heldt and Dan Healey, issued the following citation:
‘From the beginning of the Soviet era, the social power of the deaf, their agency and autonomy, was tied to sovietness. This statement, however, oversimplifies a complex history, which Claire Shaw explicates in remarkable detail, drawing on both published and archival sources. Her book expands the scope of our understanding of behaviours and identity in Soviet history, while also providing glimpses into the pre-revolutionary and post-Soviet eras. How deaf identity has been marked by separateness v. inclusion, the status of sign language, the dignity of work, criminality, gender and many other issues will make this landmark study a classic read.’
For more details, please see the BASEES website's press release.