Previous Events 2008-2020

DATE

DETAILS

Monday, 29 April 2019, 18:00-19:30

Sponsored by the European Institute and the Grand Challenge Intercultural Interaction, This two-day workshop examines historical mechanisms of cultural and intellectual exchange across the globe. Historians often assume a one-directional transmission of knowledge, leading to the establishment of intellectual and political hierarchies between centres and peripheries. Instead, this workshop investigates the asymmetrical and multi-directional structure of these encounters within Europe as well as in global context.

Organisers: Tessa Hauswedell, Axel Körner, Jospehine Salverda, Ulrich Tiedau.

More details here

With the discovery of an unknown continent during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries not only was a radical change brought about in traditional representations of the world. The West was now also faced with the revelation of the existence of another humankind, an 'otherness' all the more radical because even the possibility of its existence had never been imagined. Numerous questions now came to the fore: what were the origins of these savages (labelled from the start as 'Indians' following on Columbus' original mistake); how had this continent come to be inhabited?

Chroniclers, theologians and cosmographers proposed numerous answers: the population of the Americas could be the result of migrations of all kinds: Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Vikings, Tartars and even Chinese. However, the most popular theory, which persisted for at least three centuries, was that the American Indians were the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. 

This lecture focuses on the 'Jewish Indian Theory', first in the Hispanic world (Diego Durán, Gregorio García, Diego Andrés Rocha) and then in North-Western Europe, especially the Netherlands (Menasseh ben Israel) and England (Thomas Thoroughgood). The 'Jewish Indian Theory' remained widely accepted until the nineteenth century, exemplified by Lord Edward Kingsborough and also Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon.

UCL Institute of the Americas (UCL-IA), the Centre for Transnational History (CTH) and the Institute of Jewish Studies (IJS) are honoured to host Professor Wachtel to deliver this lecture at UCL, co-organized by Professor David Lehmann (Cambridge), Professor Axel Korner (CTH) and Dr Paulo Drinot (UCL-IA). Attendance is free of charge but registration is required and can be done here.

A drinks reception will be served after the lecture at the South Cloisters, Wilkins Building

Enrico dal Lago (NUI Galway)

• The Age of Lincoln and Cavour: Comparative Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century American and Italian Nation-Building. New York: Palgrave, 2015
• William Lloyd Garrison and Giuseppe Mazzini: Abolition, Democracy, and Radical Reform. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013

Discussants: Eugenio Biagini (Cambridge) Nico Pizzolato (Middlesex)

Chair: Axel Körner

• Alessandro de Arcangelis (UCL) - 'Hegelian Networks and Transnational Connections: Revising the Intellectual History of Naples, 1815-61'
• Maria Christina Marchi (St Andrews) - 'The Savoia and the South: Cultural Reinvention in Post-Risorgimento Italy'

The Passionate Politics Reading Group meets once a term to discuss, from a multi-disciplinary perspective, topics inherent to the intersection of human emotions and political life. Texts discussed this year include:

• Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments
• Friedrich Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man
• Michael Goebel's Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism

Samuel Moyn (Professor of Law and History, Harvard University),

Introduction: Axel Körner (UCL Centre for Transnational History)

Virginia Mantouvalou (UCL Centre for Human Rights) will present a vote of thanks.

The lecture will be followed by a reception. A poster is attached.

The event is free and there is no registration.

There is an influential tradition of thought, stretching from the Stoics to Kant and Rawls, according to which the passionate side of human nature is construed as antithetical to the good life. Taking a fresh look at this relationship, the UCL-based research group 'Passionate Politics' engages with the way affective forces shape political movements, personal and group identities. 

In the first public workshop of the series, political theorists, philosophers, anthropologists, scholars of literature and music have been invited to explore how their disciplinary fields conceptualise the passions. This workshop will showcase how thinking across disciplinary boundaries can open up new vistas on the relationship between the passions and human nature.

Discussion of:

Paul Corner, The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy(Oxford University Press, 2012).

Discussion of:

Paul Corner (University of Siena),The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini's Italy (Oxford University Press, 2012). 

Introduction: Axel Körner (UCL)

Discussants: Jane Caplan (Oxford), Stephen Lovell (KCL)

Chair: Carl Levy (Goldsmiths)

The event will be followed by a drinks reception.

This panel will look at the changing idea of the global citizen, from whistle blowers to protestors and migrants, that inform an idea of the future citizen.

*Reduced price tickets available with code CITIZN

Crossing Borders:

People and Objects in Movement from 1500 to the Present

Graduate Conference

This day-long conference will focus on the exchange and movement of people, ideas and objects across national boundaries. Transnational history has become an increasingly popular subject of study among social and cultural historians. The aim of this conference is to tap into this trend by looking beyond the rigid category of the nation to explore how people and objects moved across borders. Organised by the UCL Centre for Transnational History and supported by the UCL Grand Challenge Intercultural Interaction, this conference offers an opportunity for graduate students to present papers in an encouraging, exploratory environment. We seek papers primarily from those with a background in history, but contributors from other disciplines are most welcome. Papers may include, but are not limited to:

- Mercantile networks

- Art, music and literature

- Consumption culture

- Diplomacy

- Tourism, the Grand Tour, travel writing, anthropology

- Science and technology

- Diaspora and exile

- Non elite border crossers - soldiers, fishermen, traders, etc.

The conference will include an introductory address by Professor Axel Körner, who is the Director of the UCL Centre for Transnational History.

Proposals of 250 words, including a title, for papers lasting no more than twenty minutes should be submitted by Friday, 5th July to peopleobjectsideas@gmail.com. Attendance of the conference is free, but we do request that you register by email before the event. More details can be found on our Facebook events page, 'Crossing Borders: People and Objects in Movement'. We look forward to seeing you there!

The working group on Cosmopolitanism explores concepts and practices of cosmopolitanism in comparative perspective. Our aim is to produce a genealogy of works and objects through which we can analyse the transformation of the cosmopolitan ideal and its critiques. We usually do so by reading secondary texts associated with the modern revival of cosmopolitan political theories after the end of the Cold War. Three sessions in 2012 were devoted to the writings of Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Giuseppe Mazzini, which we read in conjunction with texts by Charles Taylor, Nadia Urbinati, and others. In the summer, we will turn to Fougeret de Monbron and the 18th century reception of Stoicism. In the Autumn of 2012, we will discuss different genres of cosmopolitan thought (treatises, travelogues, novels), and we also plan to look at non-European theories of cosmopolitanism. This group is open to academic staff, including visiting scholars, and graduate students who would be prepared to present their own work or a literature review on this topic at least once throughout the series. Participants can approach the topic from a particular angle related to their ongoing work.

For more details, visit our wikipage at https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/x/LxdiAQ.

If you are interested in joining us, please contact the conveners, Dr Dina Gusejnovad.gusejnova@ucl.ac.uk and Dr Simon Macdonaldsimon.macdonald@ucl.ac.uk

DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAMME HERE
A one-day conference convenes specialists working on aspects of China's involvement with Latin America. The programme will begin with a history of the Chinese diaspora focusing on the different patterns of migration taken by Chinese workers on their journey to the Americas. Against this background speakers will then examine Sino-Latin American diplomacy in the twentieth century. This theme will be analysed through the two sides' respective political economies and through the impact of China's investments on emerging markets. Health Diplomacy offers a final perspective through which to trace China in Latin America.

The conference is organised by the UCL Centre for Transnational History and the UCL Centre for Chinese Health and Humanity, with support of the UCL Institute of the Americas and UCL Grand Challenges Intercultural Interactions.  The Conference is free to students and academics. To attend please register here

Larry Wolff (New York University),

Western Perspectives on Eastern Europe:  New Mental Mapping after the Cold War

Chadwick Lecture Theatre B05

(near the UCL main entrance on Gower Street, on the right)

Introduction: Axel Körner (UCL)

Vote of thanks: Wendy Bracewell (UCL-SSEES) 

The lecture will be followed by a reception in the North Cloisters.

Larry Wolff is Professor of History and Director of the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at New York University. He works on the history of Eastern Europe, the Habsburg Monarchy, the Enlightenment, and on the history of childhood. His most recent books include Paolina's Innocence: Child Abuse in Casanova's Venice (2012) and The Idea of Galicia:  History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (2010). 

Abstract: This lecture will discuss the idea of Eastern Europe, as first conceived in the eighteenth century, and how that idea has been recently transformed during the twenty years since the end of the Cold War.  Because the Cold War gave the idea of Eastern Europe its most concrete geopolitical meaning during the communist period, the post-communist period has witnessed a complex transformation of general ideas about the region, most notably in relation to the fall of communism and the entrance of so many lands of Eastern Europe into NATO and the European Union.  The lecture will make use of images and commentary, principally from the media and recent popular culture, in order to attempt to demonstrate the ways in which the idea and imagery of Eastern Europe has been altered during the last two decades.  

The event is generously sponsored by UCL Grand Challenge Intercultural Interaction and the The European Institute.

Gogol and the Gauchos

Film screening of 'Cossacks in Argentina' (2010) and conversation with director Federico Windhausen

In 1962, the Hollywood film studio, Universal, released Taras Bulba, starring Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis.  This film was an adaptation of Gogol's short story (1835, revised 1842) and depicts, in neo-Romantic opulence, the story of the eponymous hero and his cossack band's war against the Poles.

The main scenes of the film were shot in the Northern Argentinian city of Salta, where thousands of extras were employed. Windhausen's documentary film of 2010 returns to the city of Salta in Argentina as it is today and revisits the memories and impressions the filming has made on the community.

Windhausen's film raises important questions of imperial memory in the Cold War and questions of translation and the changing memory of group identities that are used to characterise empires (Cossacks) and nations (Gauchos) across state boundaries - of the way that twenty-first century Agentinians remember twentieth-century Americans playing at nineteenth-century Russians and Ukrainians.

Federico Windhausen is a director and film scholar teaching at the California College of the Arts. His research areas include Latin American cinema (with an emphasis on Argentina) and experimental practices in film, video, and new media.

This discussion is a collaboration of the UCL Centre for Transnational History and the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies Russian Cinema Research Group.

Tim Beasley-Murray, SSEES

Dina Gusejnova, Centre for Transnational History

Dr Dina Gusejnova Leverhulme Fellow History Department and Centre for Transnational History, UCL Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK

Entitled New Perspectives on International History, there will be three panels, on transatlantic relations, transnational approaches to international history, and empire. Presentations will be given by Kathy's colleagues and former students, highlighting the department's strengths in international history and its past, present, and future contributions to the field.

The keynote lecture at 6pm will be by Professor David Reynolds, Professor of International History at Christ's College, University of Cambridge. 

This will be followed by a wine reception with wines selected by Kathy.

Senate Room, 1st floor South Block, Senate House, 

Reception afterwards in the Jessel Room

Book Launch

Professor Stephen Conway, Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth Century. Similarities, Connections, Identities

Chair: Axel Körner (UCL)

Discussants: Timothy Blanning (Cambridge) and Ian McBride (KCL) 

Please note: This seminar will be held at Goldsmiths College, Richard Hoggart Building, Room 256

How to get to Goldsmiths

Richard Clogg (Oxford)

'Defining the Diaspora: The Case of the Greeks'

David Feldman (Birkbeck)

'Migrants, Immigrants and Welfare in Modern Britain'

Maurizio Isabella (Queen Mary)

'Diasporas and circulation of ideas in the era of the liberal revolutions'

Daniel Beer (Royal Holloway)

'Personal Freedom in the House of the Dead: Exile to Siberia 1870 -1900'

Antonio D'Alessandri (Roma III)

'The "Eastern Question" and France: Nationalism, Revolution and Exile after 1848-49'

International Conference
Rewriting Histories - The Transnational Challenge

Video of Axel Korner's keynote lecture 'Five Thoughts on Transnational History'

Speakers included:

Herman Bennett (New York), Volker Berghahn (New York), Wendy Bracewell (UCL), Patricia Clavin (Oxford), John Darwin (Oxford), Wendy Davies (UCL), Semil Deringil (Istanbul), Jeroen Duindam (Groningen), Norbert Goetz (Stockholm), Tom Gretton (UCL), Maurizio Isabella (QMUL), Jonathan Israel (Princeton), Andrew Hemingway (UCL), Mary Hilson (UCL), Axel Korner (UCL), Amelie Kuhrt (UCL), Daniel Laqua (Northumbria), Avi Lifschitz (UCL), Vivienne Lo (UCL), Nicola Miller (UCL), Diana Mishkova (Sofia), Jason Peacey (UCL), Lucy Riall (BBK), Bernhard Rieger (UCL), Katharina Rietzler (UCL), Naoko Shimazu (BBK), Bo Strath (Helsinki), Georgios Varouxakis (QMUL), Peter Wilson (LSE)

In a series of lectures organised by UCL's Centre for Transnational History, internationally renowned experts probe the origins, development and consequences of the current economic crisis.

Details on Global Perspectives on the Current Crisis

26th-28th November

2009

To mark the completion of the "East looks West" Travel Writing Project, Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis are hosting a reception in the Haldane Room, North Cloister, Wilkins Building, University College London, at 6.30pm on Thursday 22 October 2009. Poet, critic and novelist Alan Brownjohn, and critic and memoirist Vesna Goldsworthy, will introduce the volumes of the series.

There will also be a series of further public events at UCL - "Destination London" - to mark the occasion.

For details of the programme click here.

Destination London Flyer:

Recto

Verso

Civic virtue and modernity:

Debates on Rousseau in German-speaking Europe and in Britain

Participants will include:

Alexander Schmidt, Brian Young, Frecderick Neuhouser, Tristan Coignard, Avi Lifschitz, Iain Hampsher-Monk, Michael Sonenscher

Conference programme

Civic virtue and modernity:

Debates on Rousseau in German-speaking Europe and in Britain

The German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square.

Instructions of how to get here

Participants will include:

Andreas Gestrich, Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Daniel Tröhler, Heide von Felden, Karen O'Brien, Liselotte Steinbrügge, Iain McDaniel, Ultán Gillen, John Robertson, Anthony La Vopa 

Conference programme 

Transnational History and Gender

A half-day workshop at University College London (UCL)

Room G09/10, 26 Gordon Square

UCL Department of History

This event explores the role of transnational experiences in the construction and perception of gender from 1500. The workshop brings together specialists from different sub-disciplines of history as well as historians with a specific theoretical interest in gender studies and/or transnational history. The event is open to researchers and graduate students; it is run in cooperation with the European Doctorate in the Social History of Europe and the Mediterranean.

Workshop programme (pdf)

Conference report by Daniel Laqua and published in Quaderni Storici

20th February

2009

The Wilkins Old Refectory

(UCL Wilkins building, enter via South Cloisters)

Map

Pierre-Yves Saunier (CNRS, Lyon)
 

"No more turns: history with a transnational angle"

Pierre-Yves Saunier is the general editor of the 

Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History

More information to follow soon

7th November 2008

10:00 - 5:30 pm

Postgraduate Workshop:

Religion and Social Identity in Antiquity

28th October 2008

6 pm

Inaugural Lecture, Centre for Transnational History

Professor Jacques Revel (EHESS, Paris - NYU, NY)

"Religions beyond borders?
The uses of comparison in the early 18th century"