Video: 2026 LaFeber–Silbey Lecture – "A World Without Law?"
Watch the LaFeber–Silbey Lecture video - link available in the full article.
Cornell historians, undergraduates, and graduates research the World. Our expertise stretches across the globe and through the centuries, illuminating the present.
Research Links
Faculty Research
Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland: This Spattered Isle: New Book by Professor Oren Falk
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.
Graduate Student Research
History & Science Research Synergize for Greater Understanding
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.
Undergraduate Research
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.
History News
Panel explores Indigenous voices in Abiayala/Latin America
Cornell University will host “Indigenous Voices in Abiayala/Latin America,” on April 9 at 4:45 p.m., exploring Indigenous media self-representation in Latin America – known as Abiayala in the Guna language. Held in the in the A.D. White House and organized by Polly Lauer, a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in Romance studies in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, the panel will feature scholars discussing Mapuche and Maya K’ishe’ cultural production, Indigenous languages and broadcasters’ fight to sustain native-language media such as Guatemala’s oldest Maya radio station.
Admitted Class of 2030 seeks real-world impact
Cornell admits the Class of 2030 emphasizing real-world impact, enrolling 5,776 students from 102 countries.
At Cornell University, the diverse cohort reflects the land-grant mission and applied learning goals across multiple colleges.
Humanities students take D.C. trip to advocate for funding
Cornell University Humanities Scholars traveled to Washington, D.C. to advocate for increased National Endowment for the Humanities and National Archives funding, meeting with congressional offices to highlight the impact of humanities programs on education. Their two‑day trip underscored how federal support strengthens community partnerships, language programs, and public humanities initiatives benefiting campuses and local organizations nationwide.
HIST 4084 How to be Modern: Thinking with Max Weber
HIST 4084 How to be Modern: Thinking with Max Weber (HST-AS, SSC-AS (HIST-HEU)
Wednesday: 2:00-4:30 plus Independent Research
Professor Nicholas Mulder
Max Weber (1864-1920) was the sharpest analyst of modernity: a condition marked by a global capitalist economic system, in which individuals are forced to specialize in a profession and calculate rationally without the comfort of religious belief but longing for objectivity in a world overtaken by relativism. But despite Weber’s influence he never produced a major programmatic book or school and left a fragmented body work across sociology, history, law, economics, religion, and philosophy. This reading- and discussion-intensive course examines Weber in the round, exploring both his empirical historical work and why any study of the modern human condition requires grappling with the issues that Weber identified: universalism and relativism, objectivity, rationality, specialization and vocation, transnational comparison, historical development, ideal-types, and motivation.
HIST 2154 Sex and Power in Jewish History
HIST 2154 Sex and Power in Jewish History (also JWST 2851, RELST 2154) (HST-AS) (HIST-HEU, HIST-HPE)
Monday and Wednesday: 2:30-4:15
Professor Olga Litvak
Jewish men and women in early modern Europe lived their lives within a gendered social order inherited from the Talmudic period. The relationship between sex and power remained fundamental to Jewish communal discipline until the eighteenth century. The explosion of vernacular publishing, increasing economic and geographic mobility and the coming of emancipation challenged existing gender norms and liberated Jewish desire - well, almost. As we will see, modernity has an ambiguous effect on Jewish sexual expression and Jewish sexual politics. It is not clear that the emancipation of Jewish men had the same emancipatory effect on Jewish women. Jewish patriarchy proved unexpectedly resilient. In this course, we will explore why - despite Judaism's reputation for liberal attitudes to sex - neither most Jewish men nor many Jewish women embraced the possibilities of personal liberation from a reproductive regime of rigid self-control and near compulsory heterosexual monogamy.
Escalation playbook: Why limited strikes rarely stay limited
With the the Pentagon seeking $200 billion for the escalating Iran conflict, David Silbey, historian in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, sees a typical escalatory pattern. He analyzes Strait of Hormuz closures, risks, and deployment options shaping U.S. defense policy.
HIST 1965 Introduction to African History
HIST 1965 Introduction to African History (HST-AS) (HIST-HGS)
Monday and Wednesday: 10:10-11:25 plus discussion
Professor Rachel Sandwell
This course will offer a broad overview of African history from the development of early human societies to the modern era, and a critical introduction to how historians approach the writing of African history. We will think about the origins of the discipline and field of African history, the politics of history writing, and the many sites of historical thinking outside the academy. We will consider major events in the continent’s history, including the emergence of early societies and states; religious transformations; innovations in agriculture; the development of regional and global trade systems; slavery; colonization and decolonization; and African intellectual and artistic productions. The course will familiarize students with methods, concepts, and debates that are central to the field of African history.
History Events
Apr
07
Tuesday
02:00 PM
Apr
08
Wednesday
04:30 PM
European History Colloquium - Atina Grossmann
Mary Ann Wood
B21
Apr
09
Thursday
12:00 PM
Apr
09
Thursday
04:30 PM
European History Colloquium - Dan Edelstein
Mary Ann Wood
B21
Apr
10
Friday
10:30 AM
Apr
11
Saturday
10:00 AM