When an international controversy arose over a Harvard Law Professor’s claims that “comfort women” – Korean and other women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops – numerous news sites, including the publication UConn Today and podcast UConn 360, turned to the best possible source to make sense of the issue: UConn History Professor Alexis Dudden. Read or listen to Professor Dudden explain the matters at hand and the Harvard Law Professor’s recent attempts in the past years to deny the existence and suffering of comfort women.

Since the shocking, and long-debunked, claim appeared late last year, Professor Dudden has been at the forefront of an international movement of scholars challenging the claim and ensuring that the comfort women who suffered, some of whom she has met and profiled, are treated with dignity and respect.

Do yourself a favor and read or listen to Professor Dudden explain it all. If you prefer to hear Professor Dudden in podcast-form, here is the link to the latest episode of UConn 360. Enjoy!

Anti-Asian sentiment and plantation workers. The Jim Crow South and KKK members possessed by demons.

These diverse topics are fueling the anti-racist research and writing being done by UConn History Professors, Jason Chang and Dexter Gabriel. As part of a new series examining emerging research areas, UConn Today spoke with Professors Chang and Gabriel, along with their colleague in UConn’s Human Development and Family Studies department Jolaade Kalinowski, about their exciting work.

For Professor Chang, his research is pushing people to reconsider ideas of plantation workers by focusing on Asian tobacco laborers working in New England in the 1940s and 1980s. With Professor Gabriel, it is his acclaimed 2020 novella, Ring Shout, which analyzes historical topics but also delves into body horror and produces, as one reviewer for National Public Radio wrote, “images and beasts Guillermo del Toro would fall all over himself to help create on screen.” 

For more about the exciting works of Professors Chang and Gabriel, as well as Professor Kalinowski, please check out the UConn Today article, “The Research of Difference: How UConn Researchers are Tackling Anti-Racism.”

When a new academic journal article by a Harvard Law professor argued that “comfort women” – Korean and other women forced to serve Japan’s troops –  were prostitutes who had willingly entered into indenture contracts, an international network of scholars rose to challenge this claim, one not supported by extensive historical evidence.

UConn History Professor Alexis Dudden is at the forefront of this movement and when The New York Times and New Yorker wrote about the controversy, they both turned to Professor Dudden and her expertise. Not only has Professor Dudden researched and wrote about this topic, but she has interviewed the women who were forced into sexual slavery for the soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Since the early 1990s, survivors’ voices have been a part of the discussion and influenced how scholars have written about the topic. But this new article, and the argument at the heart of it, is attempting to marginalize the survivors. As Professor Dudden put it, in the Times article, “This is so startling, 30 years later, to be dragged back, because in the meantime survivors from a wide range of countries found a voice.”

For more about the controversy, and Professor Dudden’s thoughts on the matters, as well as her advocacy for the voices of the women who experienced sexual trafficking and slavery, please give both articles a read.

To commemorate the 75th anniversary of diplomat George Kennan’s “Long Telegram,” the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program published an essay by UConn History’s own Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Frank Costigliola. Professor Costigliola edited 2014’s The Kennan Diaries and published articles and essays about Kennan’s decades-long relationship with Russia and the Soviet Union. His essay, “My Voice Now Carried”: George F. Kennan’s Long Telegram,” is an excerpt from Professor Costigliola’s forthcoming book on Kennan. You can find Professor Costigliola’s excellent essay at the Wilson Center’s Sources and Methods blog.

H-SHEAR (the network for historians studying the early American republic, during the period 1775 to 1860), in association with Cornell University Press, will hold a U.S. in the World Series Authors in Conversation event, “National Imaginaries and Identities in the Global 19th Century.” The event is a discussion of The Greek Fire: American-Ottoman Relations and Democratic Fervor in the Age of Revolutions, by Maureen Santelli, and Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles: Americans in Nineteenth-Century Fiji, by UConn History’s own Professor Nancy Shoemaker. Santelli and Shoemaker will be joined by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu.

The conversation will happen on Friday, March at 12 PM EST. It will occur on Zoom and you must register to attend. You can do so here.

UConn History’s own Professor Manisha Sinha is no stranger to having her work appear in print and read by large audiences. But this week, Professor Sinha had articles published in not one, but two places: CNN and The New York Review of Books.

On Monday, February 1, CNN published Professor Sinha’s thoughts about Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem, “The Hill We Climb,” and how to her, it summoned the story of enslaved early American poet, Phillis Wheatley. Professor Sinha explored Wheatley’s remarkable story, criticisms Gorman and her poem have received, and the ugly history of denying Black women access to the mainstream literary canon. Professor Sinha explained this dark history but also revealed that Gorman and her work beautifully captured the unending yet hopeful Black struggle for acceptance in American democracy.

Then on Wednesday, February 3, The New York Review of Books published Sinha’s “The Case for a Third Reconstruction.” In her essay, Sinha argued that the American Republic is always in danger whenever white supremacist sedition and violence is not confronted and defeated.

We encourage you to read both of Professor Sinha’s articles and share with friends.

Yesterday you might have heard an unmistakable voice on the radio: UConn History’s own Professor Micki McElya. Professor McElya appeared on National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered to talk about the four hundred lights, around the Lincoln Memorial, honoring the 400,000 people in the U.S. who have died from COVID-19. Across the country, many cities and states took the moment to commemorate the staggering death toll of the disease that has wrecked countless families and communities. Professor McElya spoke with All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly about collective mourning and how sharing grief can bring people together.

This is a wonderful interview with Professor McElya. Do yourself a favor and find five minutes today to listen. Follow the link for their conversation and share it with someone close to you.

 

Congratulations to UConn History Professor Dexter Gabriel (under his nom de plume P. Djéli Clark) whose novel, Ring Shout, was selected by National Public Radio (NPR) to appear on their Best Books of 2020 list.

NPR Books editor, Petra Mayer, wrote:

“In P. Djéli Clark’s version of the Jim Crow South, The Birth of a Nation wasn’t just a movie – it was a summoning spell that brought the pointy headed, pale-skinned demons called Ku Kluxes to Earth to feed off the hatred of human Klansmen. Standing against the Klan are demon-hunters Maryse, Sadie and Chef, backed by the power of the ring shouts, chants led by the old Gullah woman Nana Jean. But hatred goes both ways, and Maryse must learn how to use her own before the demons do. Ring Shout is a novella, but it packs cinematic excitement, shuddering body horror, real history and wrenching emotion into its short length.”

This book sounds incredible and a must-read. Well done, Professor Gabriel, and again, congrats on this incredible honor!

An op-ed by James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History Professor Manisha Sinha is prominently featured on CNN.com. The essay notes similarities and differences between the 1860 and 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections.

As Professor Sinha writes, “The one underlying commonality that binds these two historic presidential elections is the conviction that it is American democracy — rather than just opposing presidential candidates — that is on the ballot.”

Do give this excellent article a read. To read the op-ed, click the link. If you enjoy the op-ed, please share.