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Cornell historians, undergraduates, and graduates research the World. Our expertise stretches across the globe and through the centuries, illuminating the present.
Oren Falk's book and research considers the medieval Icelandic sagas as case studies in the violence general to the human experience, arguing that violence, “both perennial and contemporary,” serves as a technique for dealing with uncertainty....
In this book, the Icelandic case studies elaborated reveal the historically specific ways in which such general truisms get acted out in a particular culture. Successive chapters move from the individual level of struggling to survive and assert dominance in a feud, through the sociological level of creating and upholding institutions that will serve elites’ agendas, to the existential level of coming to grips with the harsh environment Icelanders faced, a sputtering volcanic outcrop stuck in the middle of a storm-tossed North Atlantic.
The research of Kevin Bloomfield, a Ph.D. candidate in history, and colleagues, was recently honored with a publication in Climatic Change.
The paper, Beyond One-Way Determinism: San Frediano's Miracle and Climate Change in Central and Southern Italy in Late Antiquity, examines the cultural impacts of climate change in Italy during the first millennium by studying scientific data and historical records.
Ezra's Archives is a publication put forth annually by the Cornell Historical Society. The Cornell Historical Society (CHS) is an undergraduate organization at Cornell University founded in 2010. CHS educates and fosters appreciation for historical topics and methodology with the undergraduate student population and the community at large. This journal, launched in the Spring of 2011, showcases stellar examples of undergraduate research in the field of history. In 2021, Ezra's Archives was published online and articles can be read in this and previous issues on e-Commons.
This summer marks the 80th anniversary of the “official” end of World War II, but a new book co-edited by Ruth Lawlor, assistant professor of history, extends the war’s timeline back to 1931 and into the mid-1950s.
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A research project collecting records of freedom-seeking enslaved people in the pre-Civil War U.S. came to a halt when researchers received a stop-work order from the National Endowment for the Humanities in early May.
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History professor David Silbey points out restrictions on and risks of using active-duty military to respond to protests.
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Projects spanned topics from Confederate cemeteries to Korean textiles.
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The Centennial Medal recognizes alumni who have made fundamental and lasting contributions to knowledge, their disciplines, their colleagues and society
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Among those being recognized for exceptional teaching and mentorship this year are faculty members Begüm Adalet, Claudia Verhoeven, and Marcelo Aguiar.
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Hyrum Edwards is a Robert S. Harrison College Scholar who also majored in history, Jewish studies & Near Eastern studies.
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Tuesday's meeting between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and the White House yielded “mixed outcomes” that fell short of a substantial reset of relations between the U.S. and Canada, says scholar Jon Parmenter.
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