Conversations in World History

In this episode, I speak with Karen Stohr about issues of ethics and morality involved in Hamas' terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and Israel's retaliation. We discuss a variety of topics and questions in the abstract (or via other examples) to zoom away from the current crisis in order to discuss larger principles. Karen is a professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at Georgetown University. Among other books, she has wri...

Dr. Max Lazar is a social studies teacher and department chair at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in NYC. He earned his doctorate in history from U.N.C. Chapel-Hill. His dissertation focused on Jewish integration in Frankfurt between 1914-1938. Max teaches a course called "Dual Narratives" at the Heschel School and he shares his insights and experience providing a balanced historical approach to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict t...

Christopher Goscha is a professor of history at Université du Québec à Montréal, specializing in the Cold War in Asia as well as questions of colonisation and decolonisation in the Afro-Asian world. Chris  has published several books including The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam (Princeton University Press, 2022), The Penguin History of Vietnam (Penguin/Random House, 2016), Vietnam, A New History (Basi...

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of the great British Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson who died on September 26, 1846. In recognition and remembrance of Clarkson's monumental and tireless work to end the slave trade and slavery in the British Empire, I am re-airing my fascinating conversation with the journalist Adam Hoschchild, author of one of my favorite history books: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to F...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...