Clark Ashton Smith—unlike the more famous H.P. Lovecraft—engaged with the medieval as a setting for his fiction. Lovecraft admired classical Roman civilization and the eighteenth century, but had little time for medieval themes. As Brantley Bryant has related, Lovecraft wrote contemptuously that the Middle Ages was a period that “snivel[ed] along…[Read more]

This essay uses Arnaldo Momigliano’s genealogy of antiquarianism and historiography to propose a new method for engaging the past. The Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987) traced antiquarianism from its advent in ancient Greece and later growth in Rome to its early modern efflorescence, its usurpation by history, and its transformation…[Read more]

A family tale inspired the author to explore seemingly minor, but related details of the Saint-Domingue, French, and American Revolutions, including the population movements to and from the United States. “A Haitian Tale of Diasporas and Revolutions” is a documented historical and personal narrative through cultures and continents, as…[Read more]

This photoessay documents the 82nd Annual Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival, which took place in Morgan City, Louisiana over Labor Day weekend in 2018. It contains photographs of the festival, including images of pageant queens, food vendors, and the Blessing of the Fleet. The essay documents the authors’ experience of the festival, and c…[Read more]

This article explores the interface of multiple legal systems in early modern Daghestan. By comparing colonial engagements with legal plurality with indigenous genres of Daghestani legal discourse, I aim to shed light on the plurality of legal systems that preceded as well as informed legal discourse under colonialism. The Daghestani turn to…[Read more]

This chapter uses Our Marathon: The Boston Bombing Digital Archive to consider the ways that collaborative, public-facing digital humanities initiatives can conflict with institutional conventions and methods of evaluating academic labor. Collaborative work creates challenges as well as opportunities for its organizers and laborers. The particular…[Read more]

The Wellcome Library, in considering a project to digitise and transcribe recipe manuscripts using crowdsourcing technologies, commissioned this report from Ben Brumfield and Mia Ridge in Summer 2015. The report addresses issues specific to this project, and to the Wellcome Library’s digital infrastructure.

Es bien conocido que la Relación sumaria de la Historia verdadera del Rey Don Pedro (PhiloBiblon BETA Texid 3377) es una de las obras de mayor complejidad analítica en toda la literatura hispánica de finales de la Edad Media y comienzo del Renacimiento. No solo en lo que concierne a su laberíntico entramado ecdótico, del que se han ocupado inve…[Read more]

In this directed readings course, students will study the relationship between the discipline of history and computing tools through a combination of theoretical and hands-on activities. They will read and respond weekly to a number of print and digital materials. There are two objectives for this directed readings: to explore the methods of…[Read more]

On the evening of 8 September 1778, an altercation occurred in Boston between bakers employed making bread for the French fleet anchored offshore and a number of unidentified townspeople. When the crowd asked the bakers for some bread to eat, the bakers refused, so the crowd assaulted both the bakers and a pair of French naval officers who hurried…[Read more]

Examines the organization and curriculum of the Jesuit colleges in the Maryland-New York Province from the creation of the province in 1879 through the establishment of the New England Province in 1926. Explores how the provincial and collegiate administrations worked to adapt to the changing educational landscape during this period, focusing…[Read more]

This essay is part of a pioneering special issue on Ottoman international law, and analyses the work of several Egyptian and Ottoman lawyers focused on the understudied field of private international law. It argues for greater attention to the history of private international law by examining lawyers and functionaries in Ottoman and post-Ottoman…[Read more]

Review essay of: Robert Justin Goldstein, American Blacklist: The Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008); Ivan Greenberg, The Dangers of Dissent: The FBI and Civil Liberties Since 1965 (New York: Lexington Books, 2010); Tim Wiener, Enemies: A History of the FBI (New York: Random House, 2012).

Between 1836 and 1865, a series of marriages took place within the Greek Orthodox community of London. Initially performed in homes and a converted chapel, ceremonies began to be held in the newly constructed Greek Orthodox Church from 1850 onwards. Unaware of the legal necessity of registering marriages with the government, marriages were not…[Read more]

A spreadsheet containing the names and additional details of members of the Lancaster Amicable Society in 1887. The names were originally published in the 1887 catalogue under the title of ordinary members and included 112 persons. Using the 1881 and 1891 censuses for England, individuals have been identified and information, including occupation,…[Read more]

This course examines the history of virtue in the context of the expanding global economy from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century. The course follows the growth of the European economy from the Italian Peninsula in the sixteenth century to the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, the development of colonial and worldwide…[Read more]

This course investigates the historical roots of modernity through an examination of the cultural and intellectual developments associated with the Enlightenment. This course places 18th-century thinkers in the context of the development of commercial society, the beginnings of globalization, and debates on the outbreak and consequences of the…[Read more]

Syllabus for Western Civilization course on Medieval and Early Modern Europe taught at UCLA in Spring 2016.