Conversations in World History

Conversations in World History

Conversations in World History is a bridge to the past connecting scholars to people interested in the deeper meaning of history. Here, my informal chats with historians open up the past, their research, and major questions and debates in the field. These episodes should help us all engage in the fascinating conversations of world history and to hear from the people who are writing the next pages. The host, David Sherrin, is an author and award-winning social studies teacher. Check out other episodes and his books at www.davidsherrin.com.

Episodes

September 19, 2023 45 mins

Dr. Gretchen Starr-LeBeau recently wrote the book Seven Myths of the Spanish Inquisition, which is the focus of our conversation. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan and now is the chair of the Religious Studies Program at Principia College. She is a professor who cares about teaching, earning the Chancellor’s Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of Kentucky in 2001 as well as the Horace Edwin Harper Jr. and ...

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I speak with Professor David Troyansky of Brooklyn College, a specialist in the French Revolution and the history of aging. Professor Troyansky has been teaching and writing at the university level for almost 40 years. 

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Wolf Gruner is a professor of history at USC-Dornsife, chair of Jewish Studies, and author of the recently published book Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany. We discuss his book as well as the state of Holocaust Studies. 

 

Wolf recommends two other books on the Holocaust for a general reader:

David Engel's The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews

Marion Kaplan's Between Dignity and Despair: Jewi...

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Sarah Clunis is the Curator of African Collections at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Dr. Clunis has taught art history for over twenty years at public universities and historically Black colleges and universities. Her research and classes have focused on the history of African art and the display of African objects in Western museum settings. 

 

Host: David Sherrin

Learn about him at davidsherrin.com or @david_writer.she...

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John Schwaller is a scholar of early colonial Latin America, and of Nahuatl and the Nahua (the Aztec language and people) Dr. Schwaller is the author of five books and the editor of three others. Matthew Restall is a Colonial Latin American Historian with areas of specialization in Yucatan and Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, Maya history, the Spanish Conquest, and Africans in Spanish America. He has published thirty books and eighty ...

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John Schwaller is a scholar of early colonial Latin America, and of Nahuatl and the Nahua (the Aztec language and people) Dr. Schwaller is the author of five books and the editor of three others. Matthew Restall is a Colonial Latin American Historian with areas of specialization in Yucatan and Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, Maya history, the Spanish Conquest, and Africans in Spanish America. He has published thirty books and eighty ...

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John Schwaller is a scholar of early colonial Latin America, and of Nahuatl and the Nahua (the Aztec language and people) Dr. Schwaller is the author of five books and the editor of three others. Matthew Restall is a Colonial Latin American Historian with areas of specialization in Yucatan and Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, Maya history, the Spanish Conquest, and Africans in Spanish America. He has published thirty books and eighty ...

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August 9, 2023 4 mins
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August 2, 2023 54 mins

Lisa Cohen holds a PhD in history from Yale University and recently retired from over 20 years of teaching at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in NYC. I began my career there where she was my department chair. We discuss the teaching of Jewish history and how to integrate Jewish history into a larger world (and American) history so that students learn about more than just the Holocaust.

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June 22, 2023 40 mins

On this episode, I am a guest on Dr. Johanna David-Tramantano's educational podcast Literacy Landscapes. We discuss my views on the use of art as an authentic form of producing history and making arguments about the past. Here's a chance to get a better sense of what my classroom looks like.

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In this special "Student's Corner" episode, a group of students from my class at Scarsdale High School share their research paper findings in two minute segments. The students spent about five months developing topics, questions, and research, including primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. These types of authentic research papers are quite rich and thought-provoking as they emerge from student interest. 

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I speak with Joseph Sassoon, Professor and Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies of Georgetown University. Joseph is also the author of the recent book The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire. A NYTimes review of the book can be found here. We discuss the fascinating Sassoon family, a conversation that takes us from 19th century Baghdad to Mumbai and then to Shanghai and England. The fort...

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In this Teacher's Corner episode, I speak with Nora Schaffer, a social studies teacher in Brooklyn, NY. Nora has a fascinating background in art history, anthropology, and restaurant management. She is now pursuing a PhD in education at Columbia University's Teachers College and we discuss how she brings all her various expertise to the classroom. Additionally, we talk about ways to make the learning of WWI relevant and engaging fo...

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Professor Peter Burke is a Life Fellow of Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge. He has published hundreds of articles and more than 30 books since the early 1970s. His work has been translated into 33 languages. We discuss his most recent book called Ignorance: a Global History

 

Books recommended by Peter:

The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb

Terra Incognita by Alain Corbin

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Peter Bol is the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. We discuss the two dynasties --T'ang and Sung-- that rule China from about 618-1279 CE. We talk about why this period is important for Chinese and World History and the conversation ranges from what the high school textbook gets right and wrong to Neo-Confucianism to Chinese minorities and the introduction of foot-binding...

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April 30, 2023 36 mins

Liz Clarke is a South African illustrator who has been the artist behind seven graphic histories from Oxford University Press including Abina and the Important Men and Witness to the Age of Revolution, both of which have been discussed on the podcast. We talk about the process of making graphic histories and the challenges in creating a visual representation of the past. We discuss the collaboration between the historian and the il...

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April 4, 2023 47 mins

Marie Favereau is Associate Professor of History at Paris Nanterre University. We discuss her book The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World, which was shortlisted for the Cundhill Prize for the best history writing in English. The Khanate of the Golden Horde was the empire ruled by Chinggis Khan's descendants in Russia and Central Asia. Marie explains how the Mongol Empire was unique, the values of a nomadic civilization, and t...

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Andrew Porwancher is a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma who teaches courses in Constitutional Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in history from Cambridge. We discuss his book The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, which won the Journal of the American Revolution Book-of-the-Year Award. Andrew has held research fellowships at a number of universities, including Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford. In 2017, Porwancher won th...

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Today I speak with Adam Hochschild, journalist, lecturer at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and author of eleven books. American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis is his most recent. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 were both selected as finalists for the National Book Cri...

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Today I’m speaking with Professor Christopher Ebert of Brooklyn College and Professor Thiago Kause of UNIRIO, which is the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. They are co-authoring a book about the history of the city of Salvador da Bahia, the first capital of colonial Brazil. Chris was my master’s thesis advisor about a decade ago and he previously wrote a book called Between Empires: Brazilian Sugar in the Early Atlantic Econom...

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