Hidden Cornell treasures

Hidden Cornell treasures to be digitized

Some hidden Cornell treasures soon will be available to scholars around the world, thanks to the Cornell University Library and the College of Arts and Sciences’ Grants Program for Digital Collections, which this year awarded four grants.

New book examines 'I' vs. 'us' in late antiquity

To understand the past – and, often, the present – we group people together, attributing the same characteristics to individuals in a group as we do to the group as a whole, especially when it comes to religion.Éric Rebillard challenges this approach in a new book, co-edited with Jörg Rüpke, titled “Group Identity and Religious Individuality in Late Antiquity.”

Sending Syrian refugees to Gulf states a misguided solution

Mostafa Minawi,Cornell University assistant professor of history and director of the university’s Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative, says sending Syrian refugees to other Gulf countries because it is where they’d have a more ‘natural’ home makes the false assumption that race or ethnicity is more important than nationalisms.

Prof. Derek Chang Intertwines Upbringing With Studies

As Prof. Derek Chang, history and Asian American studies, sees it, race is at the heart of American society. For Chang, racial tensions underlie problems throughout American history.Focusing on black-white relations in the American south and Chinese-white relations on the West Coast, Chang said he looks for similarities and differences in the way different regions treat race.Read more about his work in this Cornell Daily Sun piece.

William Provine, history of science scholar, dies at 73

William Provine, the Andrew H. and James L. Tisch Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Cornell, died Sept. 1 due to complications from a brain tumor at his home in Horseheads, New York. He was 73.Provine, a professor of the history of biology in the departments of History and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, was born Feb. 19, 1942, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Teaching Slavery to Reluctant Listeners

Edward Baptist, associate professor of history, writes about his experience teaching college students about slavery, in this piece in the New York Times magazine.

ISS project examines reasons for U.S. mass incarceration

An interdisciplinary team of Cornell scholars is collaborating on a new project, The Causes, Consequence and Future of Mass Incarceration in the United States, supported by the Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS) and led by Peter Enns, associate professor of government.

History prof. explains aftermath of slavery

Edward E. Baptist, associate professor of history, discussed slavery’s continued legacy in American social and political structures at a Tuesday talk titled “Abolitionism, Modern ‘Anti-Slavery’ and #BlackLivesMatter,” and covered in this Cornell Daily Sun story.

Hope and Scandal in Hungary

Holly Case, associate professor of history, writes this piece in Dissent Magazine about Hungarian thinker and former statesman, István Bibó.Case is the author of Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea During World War II (Stanford University Press, 2009). 

Students posing for a group photo

How Cornell has changed me

An A&S senior says her classes, professors, and friends have taught her to welcome challenges and to think critically.

Philip Gourevitch

Lecture launches Shoah Foundation archives at Cornell

In the 1994 Rwandan genocide, neighbors killed lifelong neighbors, husbands killed wives and parents killed children. It was an intimate conflict, according to Philip Gourevitch ’86, staff writer for The New Yorker and an experienced reporter on the Rwandan genocide.

Klarman Hall

Casey Schmitt

I am a historian of early America and the Caribbean, with particular interests in human trafficking, colonization, and illicit economies over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In my research and my teaching, I am interested in tracing individuals who crossed imperial boundaries—by choice and by coercion—in order to understand how processes like colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and trade functioned in the interstices of early modern empires.

/casey-schmitt

Two juniors receive Harry Caplan Travel Fellowships

This spring marks the 100th anniversary of Harry Caplan’s graduation from Cornell. After receiving his doctorate, Caplan, Class of 1916, M.A. ’17, Ph.D. ’21, joined the faculty and over a nearly 50-year career as a professor of classics became one of Cornell’s most beloved and inspiring teachers.

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