History Commons^™

Alegal: Biopolitics And The Unintelligibility Of Okinawan Life, Annmaria M. Shimabuku

Sociology

Okinawan life, at the crossroads of American militarism and Japanese capitalism, embodies a fundamental contradiction to the myth of the monoethnic state. Suspended in a state of exception, Okinawa has never been an official colony of the Japanese empire or the United States, nor has it ever been treated as an equal part of Japan. As a result, Okinawans live amid one of the densest concentrations of U.S. military bases in the world. By bringing Foucauldian biopolitics into conversation with Japanese Marxian theory, Alegal uncovers Japan’s determination to protect its middle class from the racialized sexual contact around its mainland …

New York After 9/11 [Chapter: Conflict And Change], Zachary Baron Shemtob, Patrick Sweeney, Susan Opotow

New York State City & Regional

An estimated 2 billion people around the world watched the catastrophic destruction of the World Trade Center. The enormity of the moment was immediately understood, and both news coverage and history of the catastrophe quickly took on global proportions—less understood has been the effect on the locus of the attacks, New York City, not as a seat of political or economic power, but as a community; not in the days and weeks afterward, but in the months and years. This period of tumultuous change offers important insights about New York today and holds important lessons for the future. New York …

The Biblical Space And Jewish Identity, Pnina Arad

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The earliest known Jewish pictorial map of Eretz Israel is a woodcut that shows the Exodus and the wanderings of the Israelites into Canaan (the only known copy is preserved in the Zentralbibliothek in Zürich). A long text in Hebrew that is written on the map's right-hand side gives evidence to its production in Mantua in ca. 1560. The title of this text — the first verse of Numbers 33 ("These are the journeys of the children of Israel, which went forth out of the land of Egypt") — and some quotations from Numbers 34 that are included in the …

Mapping With Midwives: Sources About Jewish Midwives In Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam, Jordan Katz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, western European cities began to enact robust regulations concerning the training and licensure of midwives. The city of Amsterdam refined its bureaucratic procedures for midwife licensure earlier than other European locales, and all prospective midwives – including Jews – were required to register in the Collegium Obstetricum from 1668 onward. Midwives had to attend anatomy lectures, report their apprenticeships, and pass a comprehensive examination. Although individual Jewish midwives often went through standard municipal procedures to gain admittance to the profession, Jewish communities had their own internal methods of regulating midwives and ensuring …

Domestic, Religious And Public: The Use Of Space By Jewish Women In Early Modern Italy, Federica Francesconi

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Mirian (daughter of the late Abram Israel Mora) and Rachel (daughter of the late Raffael De Silva and widow of Isach Oliver), the authors of the two testaments published here for the first time, lived in the Venetian ghetto since about the 1630s-1640s. While the former was a Levantine Jew, the latter was a Ponentine.1 In a sense, both belonged to the same family and household, the De Silvas, who lived in the ghetto vecchio: Mirian was a servant while Rachel a matron. When Mirian and Rachel each became aware of their extreme illnesses—we do not know their respective ages—they …

Inquisitorial Prison As A Site Of Cross-Cultural Encounter: The Case Of Manuel Cardoso De Macedo Aka Abraham Pelengrino Guer, Ronnie Perelis

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Prisons are often a site of cross-cultural encounter and religious illumination. People from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds meet each other and inevitably share ideas and experiences. The inquisitorial prison housed individuals who were accused of crimes of conscience and thus the encounters that a prisoner would have in a secret prison of the Inquisition would often enough center on issues of belief and identity. I will look at a case from Lisbon in the early 1600s, where individuals from different socio-economic, ethnic and religious backgrounds meet and transform each other's religious outlook and commitments within prison walls. I will …

Absconding And Chasing Across The Western Sephardic Diaspora, Daniel Strum

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Merchants of the Western Sephardic diaspora engaged in travels. Traveling, however, often raised question among their creditors whether the purpose of a travel was really for legitimate business interests or an attempt to abscond with their funds. By examining cases of creditors chasing absconding debtors and the surveillance of debtors in arrears who might be about to flee, my presentation discusses the concepts of residence and absence from one’s place of residence within a diaspora characterized by widespread mobility and secret identities and property. The Western Sephardic diaspora interwove extensive trading networks and early modern commercial techniques required traders to …

Fluid Boundaries: Rivers And The Jewish Communities Of Early Modern Ashkenaz, Debra Kaplan, Joshua Teplitsky

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In this discussion we explore an aspect of space that is often overlooked in studies of Jewish life in the early modern period: the interactions between Jews and the natural world. Our session will focus around Jewish engagement with rivers, and how waterways shaped the spatial dimensions of daily life. In European settlements across the continent rivers bisect cities and towns, and were arteries of commerce, trade, and travel. Waterways also connected settlements, were a site of contact for non-elite Jews, and, as a force of nature, impacted the lives of Jewish and Christian neighbors. Rivers could be used as …

Counter Institution: Activist Estates Of The Lower East Side [Bibliography], Nandini Bagchee

New York State City & Regional

In the midst of current debates about the accessibility of public spaces, resurfacing as a result of highly visible demonstrations and occupations, this book illuminates an overlooked domain of civic participation: the office, workshop, or building where activist groups meet to organize and plan acts of political dissent and collective participation. Author Nandini Bagchee examines three re-purposed buildings on the Lower East Side that have been used by activists to launch actions over the past forty years. The Peace Pentagon was the headquarters of the anti-war movement, El Bohio was a metaphoric “hut” that envisioned the Puerto Rican Community as …

Our Country: Northern Evangelicals And The Union During The Civil War Era [Bibliography], Grant Brodrecht

History

On March 4, 1865, the day Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, Reverend Doctor George Peck put the finishing touches on a collection of his sermons that he intended to send to the president. Although the politically moderate Peck had long opposed slavery, he, along with many other northern evangelicals, was not an abolitionist. During the Civil War he had come to support emancipation, but, like Lincoln, the conflict remained first and foremost about preserving the Union. Believing their devotion to the Union was an act of faithfulness to God first and the Founding Fathers second, Our Country explores …

Impact Of The West On The Middle East And North Africa: American Exceptionalism?, Mackenzie Voke

Senior Theses

This paper examines why American universities in the Middle East are very popular, despite anti-American sentiment throughout the region. In analyzing this apparent paradox, I give particular focus to the American University of Beirut and the American University in Cairo.

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Digital Addenda To: The French Of Outremer: Communities And Communications In The Crusading Mediterranean, Laura Morreale, Nicholas Paul, Alan M. Stahl, Philip Handyside, Massimiliano Gaggero, Angel Nicolaou-Konnari

Publications

Digital addendum to the essay collection originating with the 2014 Fordham conference entitled The French of Outremer. The addendum includes files for 3-D printing (in .stl format), an enriched manuscript stemma, a Byzantine genealogy, as well as more traditional textual addenda to contributions in the book.

Abstract of the book, from the Fordham University Press website: "The establishment of feudal principalities in the Levant in the wake of the First Crusade (1095-1099) saw the beginning of a centuries-long process of conquest and colonization of lands in the eastern Mediterranean by French-speaking Europeans. This book examines different aspects of the life …