Category: history

At an event earlier this week, a colleague mentioned Shakespeare's recent birthday and offered a few appropriate lines. Exhilarated by the latter, I've always been a little skeptical of references like the former - to the actual man - as I've written about here previously.

Now comes this article in the UK Telegraph Independent about Shakespeare as a wiley businessman and speculator who made a fortune off of grain:

Hoarder, moneylender, tax dodger — it's not how we usually think of William Shakespeare.

But we should, according to a group of academics who say the Bard was a ruthless businessman who grew wealthy dealing in grain during a time of famine.

Researchers from Aberystwyth University in Wales argue that we can't fully understand Shakespeare unless we study his often-overlooked business savvy.

"Shakespeare the grain-hoarder has been redacted from history so that Shakespeare the creative genius could be born," the researchers say in a paper due to be delivered at the Hay literary festival in Wales in May.

...

The charge sheet against Shakespeare was not entirely unknown, though it may come as shock to some literature lovers. But the authors argue that modern readers and scholars are out of touch with the harsh realities the writer and his contemporaries faced.

He lived and wrote in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, during a period known as the "Little Ice Age," when unusual cold and heavy rain caused poor harvests and food shortages.

"I think now we have a rather rarefied idea of writers and artists as people who are disconnected from the everyday concerns of their contemporaries," Archer said. "But for most writers for most of history, hunger has been a major concern — and it has been as creatively energizing as any other force."

For artists and writers, it probably always seems as if the times we live in are the very worst for our pursuits, so Shakespeare's 'ingenuity' adds perspective to those struggles. Looks like the arts and business have quite the shared history. No act of common passage, perhaps, but neither a strain of rareness.

Image: Public domain image of a portrait of William Shakespeare by an unknown painter (if you can believe that).

A crannog is a kind of artificial island, usually found on lakes, rivers and estuaries in Scotland and Ireland, that were used as dwellings over five millenia from the European Neolithic Period. On Wednesday April 24, The Archeological Institute of America, along with the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the classics department and the department of archeology present a lecture on this and other prehistoric mysteries of Scotland.

The lecture, at 5:30 pm in room S150 of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, features Celtic archeologist Nick Dixon of Edinburgh University. Free and open to the public.

Image: cover from Dixon's 2004 book on the crannogs of Scotland.

In 1942 when he was just 20 years of age, Norbert Friedman was interned at a labor camp along with his father, uncles and all the able-bodied men of Wielopole, his grandparents' village in Eastern Poland. Four weeks later, 50 members of his family—including his mother, 10-year-old brother and grandparents—were killed in the Belzec extermination camp.

Friedman weighed just 80 pounds when American soldiers found him in 1945, emaciated and legs swollen, in a barn guarded by the SS, the combat arm of the Nazis' most fanatical organization. He and other prisoners had been marched out of the Ganacker Concentration Camp in Bavaria as a final torment as American forces approached the camp. Now an author and Holocaust survivor, Friedman will share his experiences with the UGA community.

Friedman will speak April 19 at 12:20 p.m. in Room 214 of the University of Georgia's Miller Learning Center. The talk is free and open to the public.

 Friedman's visit to UGA is part of a Franklin College interdisciplinary course "The Holocaust from the Victims' Perspectives" in the department of Germanic and Slavic studies.

On Saturday March 16, Jennifer Birch, assistant professor in the department of anthropology, and students from the Student Association for Archaeological Sciences hosted a public archaeology day for the Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society. The dig took place at the Raccoon Ridge site, north of Madison, GA. This location was the site of two prehistoric village occupations, one dating to the Late Woodland period ca. AD 900-1150 AD and the other to the Late Mississippian period ca. AD 1350-1500. The volunteer excavators uncovered pottery and stone tools from three excavation units.

The UGA field school in archaeology will be returning to the site this summer to continue excavations targeted at uncovering the remains of structures, trash pits, and other features associated with the Late Woodland occupation of the site in order to help us better understand this often-overlooked chapter in the prehistoric of Georgia.

Image: from the March 16 dig, courtesy of Dr. Birch.
 

If you have ever seen the biopic of Gandhi by Richard Attenborough starring Ben Kingsley, there is a very striking sequence wherein Mr. Gandhi travels to England and meets with government officials but also visits with working people. It's an interesting juxtaposition and it seems sure that the visitor developed some very specific ideas about the city and its people. The Institute for Native American Studies welcomes a speaker next week who will lecture on a very similar topic.

On Monday, March 4, at 4 PM, in 148 MLC, historian Coll Thrush of the University of British Columbia will give a talk entitled "London Entangled: Indigenous Histories at Empire's Centre."

Thrush describes his talk this way: "Is it possible to write an Indigenous peoples' history of the centre of empire? This talk explores the story of London through the experiences of Indigenous people who came to the city - willingly or otherwise - from territories that became the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, beginning in 1502. Bringing together both urban and Indigenous histories and methodologies, it also calls for a intervention in notions of "center" and "periphery" that undergird much of the way we talk about global and world history." 

Sounds terrific. Mark your calendars.

Our favorite historian, B. Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor in the History of the American South James C. Cobb, kicks of the Global Georgia Initiative with a lecture at 4 p.m. in the Chapel on Jan. 29:

He will discuss "De-Mystifying Dixie: Southern History and Culture in Global Perspective."

"My hope is to demonstrate that much of the South's perceived weirdness relative to the rest of the United States falls away when it is viewed in global context," said Cobb of his Global Georgia lecture. "In other words, seen as ‘a part of the world,' it seems less ‘a world apart.' "

And then the very next day on the same Chapel stage, Cobb will present the 11th Annual Founders Day Lecture at 2 p.m.

Cobb's talk is titled "I Don't Believe I'd a' Told That! Understanding the South Through Humor."

"My predecessors at the podium have set a very high standard," said Cobb, a faculty member in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "I can only hope that, as we celebrate our university's rise to national and global prominence, my remarks will affirm the importance of staying in touch with its cultural roots as well."

Cobb is one of the foremost scholars of Southern history and culture and among the first to write broadly about the South in a global context.

Unusual but good for Cobb to make himself available for two important public lectures in two days. Don't miss either one.

Image: James C. Cobb.  Photo by Christopher T. Martin

Scholars around the world are congratulating the Franklin College and UGA for one new faculty member in particular on campus this semester:

An internationally recognized scholar whose work combines ancient history, archeology and religious studies has joined the University of Georgia as the inaugural holder of the Covenant Foundation Professor of Jewish Studies.

Baruch Halpern, who comes to UGA from Penn State University, has authored four books, including "The First Historians" (Harper & Row, 1988) and the landmark "David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King" (Eerdmans, 2001). The latter, which is being translated into Hebrew and Italian, used historical and archaeological evidence to examine the life of King David of Israel.

Halpern also co-directed archeological excavations of the ancient city Megiddo in Israel, edited two scholarly book series and has appeared in several documentaries on Biblical history. He is currently writing a history of Israel and a biography of the prophet Jeremiah.

"Dr. Halpern is a first-rate scholar whose addition to our faculty highlights the importance of Jewish studies to an intellectually vibrant department of religion that also boasts expertise in Christianity, Islam, Asian studies and Native American religious traditions," said Franklin College Dean Alan T. Dorsey. 

We are glad to welcome Dr. Halpern to campus and happier still for the new opportunties our students will have to learn from him. Esteemed faculty members across our college help attract top students and this is an instance of, a closer look at, how a university advances into the highest eschelons intellectual inquiry and engagement.

Image: UGA photo of Baruch Halpern, Covenant Foundation Professor of Jewish Studies in the department of religion.

The fall 2012 issue of the ugaresearch magazine is out, and available online. It features some great stories on Franklin College faculty, including geography professor Steven Holloway and whole section devoted to the Civil War, with a focus on books by history facuty members Stephen Berry, John Inscoe and a forthcoming work by Kathleen Clark.

Great work all around.

The Athens Banner Herald features the work of LDSOA assistant professor Mark Abbe, GMOA curator Lynn Boland, UGA colleagues from chemistry and the university's Center for Applied Isotope Studies.

Spaulding Distinguished Research Professor of History James Cobb takes to the pages of the New York Times to describe Republican support in the South:

Lest we go overboard in emphasizing the peculiarities of working-class white Southerners, we should remember that racially tinged, working-class white conservatism is a fixture throughout much of rural America. Also is it really all that striking that nearly 6 in 10 working-class whites in the South complained of federal favoritism toward blacks when nearly 5 in 10 responded similarly in the Northeast and the Midwest?

An authority in his field (and friend of the blog), Cobb is a favorite of reporters and opinion editors across the nation. He does a great job for UGA and the Franklin College bringing his scholarship into the sphere of popular media, where it is sorely needed.