Week 4

Wednesday

2 February 2-3pm

OC1.07 (Oculus)

Susan Carruthers

Dear John: Love and Loyalty in Wartime America

Week 7

Wednesday 23 February 1-2pm

Online in the History Student Community Space, History Common Room on Teams

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Nathalie Cooper, Mark Knights and Fleur Martin

Restitution of Objects in Museums

Come and hear Nathalie and Fleur talk about their fascinating PhD research and the important issue of restitution of objects held in museums.

Week 8

Wednesday 2 March 2-3pm

Hybrid seminar:

In person in FAB2.32

Online in History Student Community Space, History Common Room on Teams

Click here to join the meetingLink opens in a new window

Christoph Mick and Claire Shaw

Ukraine and the Uses of History

In his address to the nation before the attack on Ukraine in the early hours of 24^th February, Vladimir Putin used history to frame his actions. Sending troops into Ukraine, he explained, was a defence of Russian people in the East of the country, who had been separated from their motherland by arbitrary political decisions, oppressed by an illegitimate regime, and who now demanded Russian protection. Needless to say, this vision of history does not accord with that put forward by the Ukrainian leadership, who themselves call on a long history of Ukrainian statehood to defend their right to resist Putin's forces. In this session, Christoph Mick and Claire Shaw will discuss the ways in which history has been used to frame both sides of the Ukrainian conflict, and how it might help us to understand what comes next.

Week 2

Wednesday 13 October 13:00-14:00

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Imogen Knox

Mental Illness: Historical stereotypes and modern stigma

Content Warning: This session centres around discussions of mental illness, past and present, and will also draw on examples of early modern suicide. If you are affected by the topics raised in this session, please contact Wellbeing [contact info?]

World Mental Health DayLink opens in a new window takes place on 10^th October 2021. This session explores how inheritances from the early modern world shape our understandings of mental illness today, and contribute towards its stigmatisation. We will also query assumptions about past responses to mental illness, in particular suicide, in an attempt to deconstruct long standing stereotypes. We will discuss how our work as historians can aid in the important process of destigmatising mental illness in the modern-day.

Should you wish to do any reading before the session I would recommend the following:

See ‘Treatment in the Past’ section to get a sense of the simplified narrative often presented around mental illness in the past https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wsu-sandbox/chapter/mental-health-treatment-past-and-present/Link opens in a new window

Jonathan Willis on mental illness in the early modern perspective https://manyheadedmonster.com/2020/05/22/mental-illness-an-early-modern-perspective/#more-6467Link opens in a new window

Ali Haggett on the potential for historical research to contribute towards illness education, and the deconstruction of stereotypes https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/men-mental-illness-and-suicide-the-current-scene-in-historical-contextLink opens in a new window

Further reading:

Kathryn Adams on the importance of language when talking about mental health issues in past contexts https://asterion.uk/index.php/2021/08/27/lets-stop-saying-committed-suicide-from-someone-who-knows/?fbclid=IwAR3RaV-LIbwgXqvQdg-1IZuYYC9aJdZQEJk48HBg-ieiYTR424R63jdlVrULink opens in a new window

Mathias Schmidt on the dangers of retrospective diagnosis https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(19)30287-1/fulltextLink opens in a new window

Week 4

Wednesday 27 October 13:00-14:00

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 David Anderson

The Migrated Archive:

Deceit, Denial and the Censorship of Britain's Colonial Past

In April 2011, on the eve of the beginnings of a trial that would see Britain admit to acts of torture against its colonial subjects, Foreign Secretary William Hague revealed the existence of a vast historical archive. This so-called ‘Migrated Archive’, also referred to as ‘the Hanslope Disclosure’ comprised more that 27,000 files that had been illegally and secretly removed from 37 of Britain’s former colonies in the process of decolonisation. Hague declared that these historical records would now be deposited at The National Archive, Kew, but he declined to send them back to the countries from which they had been covertly removed. In this ‘Now and Then’ seminar we will consider how this ‘Migrated Archive’ came into being, how is was ‘discovered’ and revealed, what motivated and conditioned its creation, how and why successive British governments sought to conceal its existence, and what its revelation now tells us about Britain’s colonial past and its current relationship with its post-colonies.

In preparation for this seminar, you may find it useful to listen to two podcasts, in which historians discuss the archive and its significance. You can also dip into the judgments from the two legal cases brought by Mau Mau torture victims against the British government in 2011 and again in 2012. These primary sources give you some idea of how history became a weapon in the court room. And if you wish to further contextualise the storey, then there are three articles that you can read, each of which sets out aspects of the story of destruction, deceit and denial that lies behind the Migrated Archive.

PODCASTS:

· 'Out of the Ashes' Lecture Series, Trinity College Dublin, 23 November 2020:

'Whose History? The Migrated Archive and Britain's Colonial Past' by David M. Anderson https://soundcloud.com/tlrhub/tlrh-iwhose-history-the-migrated-archive-and-britains-colonial-past

· Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, debate on Hanslope Park Migrated Archives < https://youtu.be/oqio-ddxJ9o >

Introduction: Professor Philip Murphy (ICWS): Panel: Dr Mandy Banton (formerly Principal Records Specialist, UK National Archives); Dr James D Brennan (Univ of Illinois); Dr Russell Moul (Univ of Kent); Prof Caroline Elkins (Harvard Univ).

READING:

· Judgment, Mr Justice McCombe, Mutua et al v FCO, Case No: HQ09X02666, Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, 21 July, 2011. Pdf attached.

· Judgment, Mr Justice McCombe, Mutua et al v FCO, Case No: HQ09X02666, Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London, 5 October, 2012. Pdf attached.

· Mandy Banton, ‘History concealed, history withheld: the story of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office ‘Migrated Archives’ and the decades-long international search for redress’, Archives LV, i (2020): 1-29. < https://doi.org/10.3828/archives.2020.1 >

· Shohei Sato (2017) ‘Operation Legacy’: Britain’s Destruction and Concealment of Colonial Records Worldwide, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 45:4, 697-719. < http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1294256 >

· David M. Anderson, ‘Guilty secrets: deceit, denial, and the discovery of Kenya’s “Migrated Archives.”’ History Workshop Journal 80, ii (Autumn 2015): 142-60. < https://0-doi-org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1093/hwj/dbv027 >

Week 8

Wednesday 24 November 13:00-14:00

In-person in H052 (Humanities)

Laura Schwartz

'"Ordinary" Working-Class People? Writing Labour History in Brexit Britain'
Since 2016, class has returned to mainstream political debate in Britain. Brexit campaigners claimed to be championing the interests of 'ordinary' working-class people against a 'metropolitan elite', and since then this motif has been taken up more widely within the Conservative Party and some sections of the Labour Party. This 'ordinary' working-class is constructed as white, male and socially conservative; in spite, or perhaps because of, the fact that today's working class is more ethnically diverse and more dominated by women than any other point in British history. My research challenges and explores contemporary iterations of the 'ordinary' working-class in 2 ways. Firstly, I highlight the long history of a Black, feminised and queer/cosmopolitan working-class in Britain. Secondly, I examine the historical reasons as to why the so-called 'ordinary' working-class is being so narrowly (and inaccurately) defined today, and why the white male industrial worker continues to have such purchase upon the public imagination.

Gurminder K. Bhambra, “Brexit, Trump, and ‘Methodological Whiteness’: On the Misrecognition of Race and Class,” The British Journal of Sociology 68 no.1 (2017): 214-32

Satnam Virdee and Brendan McGeever, “Racism, Class and Brexit,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41no.10 (2018): 1802-1819

Ewan Gibbs, “Class, Culture, and Blue Labour: Who Is ‘Normal’? Class, Culture and Labour Politics in a Fragmented Britain,” Renewal: a Journal of Social Democracy 25, no.1 (Spring, 2017): 86-91

Rhian E. Jones, “The Age of Authentocracy: A Review of Joe Kennedy's Authentocrats published by Repeater Books,” New Socialist, 4 July 2018 https://newsocialist.org.uk/the-age-of-authentocracy/Link opens in a new window

Week

Seminar

Links

Week 2 (Tuesday 13 October, 12-1pm)

Joachim C. Häberlen

Title: Refugee Stories: Explorations in Citizenship from Afghanistan and Syria to Germany

During what came to be known as the refugee crisis of 2015/16 -- a term that is in fact rather misleading --, roughly a million people fleeing from war-torn countries such as Syria and Afghanistan reached Europe, most of them ending up in Germany. How can we write a history of this moment? This presentation will critically discuss how the story of the "refugee crisis" is commonly framed, inquiring about the heroes and heroines of that story, about the political implications of telling stories, and about a possible alternative way of telling the story of those who fled (rather than "refugees").

If anyone wants to read something in advance, they can (but it's certainly not a requirement) to this piece:

Lessons in Citizenship: What Syrians Can Teach Germans (Feb 2020), Al-Jumhuriya, at https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/content/lessons-citizenship-what-syrians-can-teach-germans.

Week 4 (Tuesday 27 October, 12-1pm)

Ben Smith

Title: History, Violence, and U.S. Asylum Law

Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of Latin American citizens have sought asylum in the United States. They have fled for many reasons including political, religious, and ethnic persecution. But most have sought refuge from the increasing levels of criminal violence employed by drug cartels, kidnapping gangs and the notorious Central American "maras". They have encountered a United States where the pledge to "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe" is now more bumper sticker than serious policy. ICE squads raid businesses and private homes and lock detainees in privately-owned deportation centers for years on end; children are separated from their families; and women are forcibly sterilized.

​Many of these detainees can barely afford lawyers fees let alone an expert to back up their asylum case. As a result, over the past five years I have been employing my knowledge of drug cartels and organized crime in Mexico (and to a much lesser extent in Central America) to help fight many of these asylum seekers' cases. In this talk, I will offer some insights from my work, some of the more harrowing stories of both criminal violence and US policy, and some reflections on how academic work can affect real world problems.

Week 8 (Tuesday 24 November, 4-5pm)

Ronan Love

Title: Two financial crises, but a shared political-economy?: Researching the French Revolution in the shadow of 2008

Despite occurring over a decade ago, we would struggle to find an area of our lives today that has not in some way been impacted by the global financial crisis of 2008. From the many left destitute at the hands of austerity to our collective ability to respond to COVID-19, its ongoing legacies are profound and ubiquitous, operating at levels social, political, cultural, economic, within nations and across borders. Although nobody has been spared - perhaps save the bankers - most do not fully understand what happened in those fateful months from 2007-08, which now seem more like a passing memory than historical turning point.

In this talk, I will put the GFC in conversation with my own research on the financial crisis of the French Revolution in order to make both events mutually comprehensible. What can we learn, if anything, about the GFC by revisiting the crisis of 1789? Are these events simply incommensurate, or can we spot similar processes - perhaps even a shared political economy - at work within the causes and consequences of the two crises? This talk will tentatively say we can, but it invites disagreement and an open debate, either from those who know a bit about both events or from those who simply want to know more!

Week 10 (Tuesday 8 December, 4-5pm)

Michael Bycroft

Title: David Hume Meets BLM

In September 2020, the University of Edinburgh changed the name of a building on campus that had been named after David Hume, an eighteenth-century philosopher who wrote that black people are “naturally inferior” to white people. The renaming sparked a debate in the British press, with historians and philosophers weighing in on both sides. The debate raises wider questions, such as: how should we evaluate morally ambiguous intellectuals from the past? How should universities go about making decisions of this kind? How does local activism play out in national and global media? And what does it mean to decolonise the study of the Scottish Enlightenment?

This will be an open discussion covering these and any other questions that participants are interested in. See the link/attachment for a page of quotes about the story, and for links to further (entirely optional!) reading.

 Additional Links and Quotes