CSSH Journal

CSSH highlights new books by former journal authors Joseph Masco, Judith Scheele, and @margaretjwiener.bsky.social!

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/08...

Our latest Under the Rubric, "Submergent Histories," features Mandana Limbert, Jan Jansen, and Jeffrey Kahn discussing how the study of #mobility at #sea can isolate historical processes that, wherever they are found, remain at depth and hard to discern.

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/07...

"The overarching objective is not just to show the well-known limitations of national archives as a source of historical material, but also to show how actually existing “state archives” go well beyond the remit of official institutions, with notable consequences over our conception of the state."

File no. 2/1–555 from the Institute of Popular Culture, titled “Bills and Ministerial Decrees on the Establishment of the Institute (the Popular University) and its Board of Directors.” The document dates within this file range from 1945 to 1959.

New work by @chihab.bsky.social, "Notes on the Difficulty of Studying State #Archives in #Egypt," is out on FirstView!

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Frederick Cooper's "Decolonizing #Decolonization" is out on FirstView: "This article poses the question of what work the concept of decolonization can and cannot do." #Russia #Africa #Empire #History

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In our latest Behind the Scenes, "Runways and Relations," Carla Jones analyzes a series of images to show how the public #catwalk operates as a platform for political communication in #Indonesia. Don't miss it!

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/07...

From the abstract: "This paper examines how, in politically polarized contexts, people reconstruct the biographies of contested memorialized figures to challenge or reproduce dualistic metanarratives of national history."

New to FirstView, "Theorizing #Moral Liminality: Historical Biography, Political Co-optation, and the Decolonization of Public Space" from Andreja Siliunas and Cresa Pugh! #Sociology

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New scholarship on FirstView! David Frankfurter's "Ritual and the Enemy Body: A New Approach to Modern Atrocity." #Violence #History #Anthropology

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Check out our June newsletter, with our latest articles and web features:
mailchi.mp/3e3a94739861...

Read more about the issue's authors, including Marcin Wodziński, Uriel Gellman, Gadi Sagiv, Koreen M. Reece,
Dennie Oude Nijhuis, Marc A. Hertzman, Marco Garrido,
Serkan Yolaçan, Ping-Hsiu Alice Lin, and Thomas R. Trautmann, here:

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/06...

Our new issue is out and fully #OpenAccess! Articles in this issue are grouped under the rubrics: Marital Strategies; Institutional Power; Imperial Geographies; and Long Histories. #Anthropology #History #Sociology

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/06...

My new article 'The Politics of Colonial Lists' just published in Comparative Studies in Society and History @csshjournal.bsky.social
And it is open access! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Find her related article, "Topographies of Fungibility: Reinventing the Japanese Taste for Sweetness in the Philippine Highlands," here:

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In our latest Behind the Scenes, Alyssa Paredes compares highland bananas to other luxury fruits and describes how the banana disrupted assumptions about Japanese palates and sensitivities to taste. Bon appétit!

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/06...

We are delighted to share a syllabus of scholarship on food and feasting! Gather at the CSSH table, with "Comestibles, Cuisines, and Convivia."

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/06...

In our new Under the Rubic feature, "After Life," Jon Bialecki and Jeanne Kormina discuss Mormon transhumanism, the remains of Tsar Nicholas II, and the multiple temporalities of death. Don't sleep on it!

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/06...

From the abstract: "Through analysis of Molla Nasraddin, a pioneering satirical magazine from the early twentieth-century Caucasus, I reveal local engagements with empire that defy traditional binaries of center versus periphery, indigenous versus foreign, and resistance versus accommodation."

Cover illustration, “Seven Occupations,” Molla Nasraddin, 6 June 1910. Illustrator: Oscar Schmerling. Image reproduced by Çınar-Çap Nəşriyyatı (vol. 3, 2005).

New on FirstView: Serkan Yolaçan's "A Seven-Headed Public: #Empire and #Satire in Revolutionary #Caucasus." #History #Anthropology

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From the abstract: "By investigating the shift in survey methods from comprehensive terrestrial to aerial reconnaissance, I show how geological knowledge production served purposes far beyond imperial resource identification and extraction."

Miners' hands sift through metamorphic rock searching for rare flashes of emerald green crystals (author’s photo).

Ping-Hsiu Alice Lin's "After Exploratory #Geology: Gemological El Dorado in Global #Afghanistan" is out on FirstView! #Mining #Anthropology #History

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From the abstract: "I argue that the collapse of the Soviet imaginary of linear progress and inability to articulate a new frontier myth resulted in “asynchronous belonging,” characterized by radical polarization around memory and irreconcilable allegiances to different moments in local history."

New on FirstView, Victoria Fomina's "The Unsettled Frontier: Historical Imagination and Asynchronous Belonging on the Amur River." #Post-Socialism #Memory

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Proud to see Ping-hsiu Lin's article out now in
@csshjournal.bsky.social! Open access too!

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cc @harvard-jchs.bsky.social

Don't miss Marc A. Hertzman's "The Pacific Route: #Brazil, Japan, the Paris Peace Conference, & the Meanings of Racial Equality," exploring the Brazilian aftermath of Japan’s unsuccessful bid to include racial equality as a principle in the League of Nations charter in 1919.

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CSSH celebrates new books by its authors Julia Elyachar and Courtney Handman!

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2025/05...

"The history of corruption/anti-corruption has been a popular struggle over what politics should look like."

New on FirstView, "A Thousand Years of #Corruption: A History of Corruption and Anti-corruption in the #Philippines since 1946" by Marco Garrido.

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If you are similarly obsessed, don't miss his 2021 CSSH essay and our subsequent interview, "Elephants, Kings, and Comparison, a Conversation with Tom Trautmann."

sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2021/09...

Thomas Trautmann can't get enough of elephants, and neither can CSSH! His latest, "Alexander and the #Elephants," is out on FirstView. #India

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