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The Walnut Rubbing Chinese Gentleman: Ernst Cordes’ Travelogue to Beijing, 1937

by guest contributor I-Yi Hsieh Boarding on the Siberia train, in the mid-1930s, the German Sinologist Ernst Cordes traveled across the Manchurian-Russia border to the cities of Harbin, then Manchukuo’s “New Capital” (formerly Changchun), and Mukden (Shenyang). Cordes went south… Continue Reading →

The “Conquest of the Sun” and Ideas about Energy

by contributing editor Carolyn Taratko In late summer of 1878, a visitor strolling the park at Trocadéro on a sunny day during the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris would have encountered an enormous silver-plated cone. Twenty-four square meters of reflective… Continue Reading →

Hellenism and the Materiality of Greek Books in Renaissance Italy

by guest contributor Anna Gialdini In the Preface to the Magnum ac perutile Dictionarium (1523), Janus Laskaris put words into the mouth of his pupil Guarino Favorino about Favorino’s ethnic identity. Favorino argued that while his parents were Italian, he… Continue Reading →

Institutionalized: Between American Political Development and Intellectual History

By Daniel London Two different kinds of literature sit uneasily next to each other on bookshelves. One group falls under the rubric of American political development (APD) scholarship, an innovative subfield of Political Science. The other books are more generally… Continue Reading →

Visual Affinities, Living History

by contributing editor Brooke Palmieri There are all kinds of ways in which a book’s form can intensify its content, draw its words into relationships, inscribe its title within the family trees of works written by other people in other… Continue Reading →

New Grounds, New Voices: Postwar Politics and Economics

by guest contributor Eric Brandom The Western Society for French History meeting is always rewarding, and this year in Chicago did not prove an exception. “Searching for New Ground: Re-Evaluating the Theoretical Foundations of Politics and Economics in Postwar France,”… Continue Reading →

Violence as Legal Argument in Eleventh-Century France

by guest contributor Matthew McHaffie Eleventh-century France is often described as a feuding society, where social and cultural attitudes towards violence found their meanings in feud and vengeance. From tit-for-tat revenge killings, to conflicts between lords competing for resources, to… Continue Reading →

Passage and Place: Loci in Humanist Travel Writings

by Madeline McMahon After midday on August 14, 1483, the Dominican friar Felix Fabri and his fellow pilgrims to Jerusalem began to prepare for their celebration of the feast of the assumption of Mary. They constructed a small kind of… Continue Reading →

Education in Excess: The Folger Institute’s “Theatres of Learning”

by guest contributor Timothy Lundy When Erasmus began to compose his authoritative textbook on style, De copia, during the last decade of the fifteenth century, it’s highly unlikely that he envisioned a gathering of twenty-first century scholars in a reconstructed… Continue Reading →

The Jewish Musical Pioneers: Salamone de Rossi and Rabbi Leon of Modena

by guest contributor Elad Uzan One of the ways in which the history of the Jewish people reveals itself is through music. The Torah, Writings [Ketuvim], and the Psalms contain over eight hundred references to the spiritual and religious usages… Continue Reading →

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