Seventeenth century Isfahan witnessed a craze in the composition of a new kind of book, the majmuʿa, or anthology. Curated and written in the domestic sphere of the household, anthologies archive city-writings once in circulation; they illustrate the practices of urban knowledge and their valorization by communities who took possession of them. The imaginations that […]

In recent scholarship, family archives in the form of a manuscript have been posited as sites for more broadly rethinking archives in the pre-modern Islamicate world.In the context of Isfahan, household anthologies provide a particularly rich ground for theorizing and reassessing pre-modern archival mechanisms and spaces. The anthology referred to in Persian as the majmuʿa […]

Western stereotypes of Ancient Persia often focus on images of exotic harems, scheming queens, and decadent court life. Prof. Lee explains what the ancient textual and archaeological sources actually reveal about women’s lives in the empire of Achaemenid Persia (550-330 BC).  The lecture examines the economic, political, and social power of women across the Achaemenid […]

Adrienne Edgar's new monograph, Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples, is the first book to examine ethnic and racial mixing in the Soviet Union. In marked contrast to its Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union celebrated mixed marriages among its diverse ethnic groups as a sign of the unbreakable friendship of peoples and the imminent emergence of a […]

Please join us for our second Gender + Sexualities Paper Workshop of the Winter Quarter on Thursday, 16 February, at 2 PM.  We will meet in HSSB 4041 to discuss Kristen Thomas-McGill's paper, “Reputation and Habitual Misbehavior on a 'Spicy Little Isle Where Ladies were Few.'” You can find a copy of Kristen’s paper here. […]

Hannibal’s success as a military commander in the Second Punic War (218-202 BCE) – surprising and severely defeating Rome after crossing the Alps at the Trebbia, Trasimene and Cannae battles and trickery against Fabius Maximus and others – is usually not focused on his brilliant weaponization of nature and his important use of Iberian silver […]