Welcome to the History Department.

The Department of History held an informal reunion of its alumni on Friday, March 30, 2012. This event—marking the 25th anniversary year of the death of renowned teacher of history, Professor Milton Plesur— featured a special lecture devoted to Milton Plesur’s favorite subject: the American movies.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated Professor Steven Ross, Chair of the Department of History at the University of Southern California, gave a lecture entitled “Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics.

Milton Plesur Graduate History Conference

Each year, the GHA hosts the 21st annual Milton Plesur Conference, a graduate conference named in honor of the late Milton Plesur, a distinguished professor of History who taught at the University at Buffalo from 1955 to 1987.

Panels will begin at 9:00.

This year's keynote will be given by Prof. Paul Deslandes of the University of Vermont's History Department and will begin at 1:00.  He will be giving a lecture entitled  "Physique Models, Cinema Idols, and Porn Stars: Selling the Beautiful Man in Britain, 1954-1980."

Time:  Saturday, March 31st  9:00 - 6:00

Place: Center for Tomorrow

"This book offers a broad compendium of early American deathways; it is the most complete and comprehensive treatment of the subject. But it can also be read as a synthetic account of the history of colonial America itself; readers will learn much of the essential story of North American colonization."—American Historical Review

"A meticulous study. . . . Seeman skillfully reveals how people with different languages, religions, and cultures learned to speak through the symbolism of death."—Journal of American History

The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment

Cambridge University Press, 2012

The Physiocrats believed that wealth came exclusively from the land, that nature was fecund and man could harness its reproductive forces. Capital investments in agriculture and hard work would create profits that circulated to other sectors and supported all social institutions. Physiocracy, which originated in late eighteenth-century France, is therefore widely considered a forerunner of modern economic theory. The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment places the Physiocrats in context by inscribing economic theory within broader Enlightenment culture. Liana Vardi discusses three theorists - Francois Quesnay; Victor Riquetti, marquis de Mirabeau; and Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours - and shows how their understanding of mental processes, science, politics, and the arts influenced their individual approach to economic writing. The difficulty in explaining the doctrine, combined with the expectation that the public would be persuaded by its arguments, mired physiocracy in endless contradictions. This work offers a framework for understanding physiocratic theory and its complicated relation to modern economics.

Prof. James Downs, Assistant Professor of History at Connecticut College gave a talk entitled:

"Diagnosing Reconstruction:

Disabled and Dependent Freed Slaves in the Age of Emancipation"

on Friday November 4th in 280 Park Hall.

Sponsored by the

UB Center for Disability Studies

Michael Pearson, Emeritus Professor of History, University of New South Wales, and author of The Indian Ocean (Routledge, 2003) gave a talk entitled:

"Maritime History:  Past, Present, and Future" from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.in room 532 Park Hall. 

Pearson offered insights into to how the “field” of maritime history can move beyond the limitations of current terrestrial-based models of historical writing.

UB History alumnus and independent scholar Robert C. Plumb spoke about his book, Your Brother in Arms: A Union Soldier's Odyssey, which was published by the University of Minnesota Press in July 2011 as part of their Shades of Blue and Gray series.

The book follows the life and times of George P. McClelland, a member of the 155th Pennsylvania Infantry in the Civil War through never before published letters. After enlisting in Pittsburgh, McClelland saw action in some of the most critical battles of the Civil War, including Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna River, Petersburg, and Five Forks, Virginia,

Robert C. Plumb held corporate marketing positions in two Fortune 500 companies and is a marketing consultant to a non-profit organization and a government agency in the health field. He lives outside Washington, DC.

Witnesses to these Wendat burial rituals were European colonists, French Jesuit missionaries in particular. Rather than being horrified by these unfamiliar native practices, Europeans recognized the parallels between them and their own understanding of death and human remains. Both groups believed that deceased souls traveled to the afterlife; both believed that elaborate mortuary rituals ensured the safe transit of the soul to the supernatural realm; and both believed in the power of human bones.

Appreciating each other's funerary practices allowed the Wendats and French colonists to find common ground where there seemingly would be none. Erik R. Seeman analyzes these encounters, using the Feast of the Dead as a metaphor for broader Indian-European relations in North America. His compelling narrative gives undergraduate students of early America and the Atlantic World a revealing glimpse into this fascinating—and surprising—meeting of cultures.

Jews from all ages have translated the Bible for their particular times and needs, but what does the act of translation mean? Aaron W. Hughes believes translation has profound implications for Jewish identity. The Invention of Jewish Identity presents the first sustained analysis of Bible translation and its impact on Jewish philosophy from the medieval period to the 20th century. Hughes examines some of the most important Jewish thinkers—Saadya Gaon, Moses ibn Ezra, Maimonides, Judah Messer Leon, Moses Mendelssohn, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig—and their work on biblical narrative, to understand how linguistic and conceptual idioms change and develop into ideas about the self. The philosophical issues behind Bible translation, according to Hughes, are inseparable from more universal sets of questions that affect Jewish life and learning.

Are walls remnants of ancient and medieval societies, destined to become anachronistic in modern and postmodern times? Or will they persist, shaping as well as adjusting to new conditions? Do walls necessarily constrain and even isolate those who live within them, or can they act as a medium of support and communication for people on both sides?

This volume, a result of a conference held in conjunction with major exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art in Beijing and Buffalo, New York, in 2005, addresses these questions. Fourteen authors from seven disciplines  provide multiple perspectives on various kinds of walls: materials ones around and within states, cities, and towns, as well as virtual ones regulating the administration of justice, the flow of pathogens, and the transmission of information. Cultural and scientific walls between East and West, China and America, prosperity and poverty, and viewer and viewed, are here explored in both their fragility and their endurance.