By Sherman Cochran (NHC Fellow, 2002–03) From the Sino-Japanese War to the Communist Revolution, the onrushing narrative of modern China can drown out the stories of the people who lived it. Yet a remarkable cache of letters from one of China’s most prominent and influential families, the Lius of Shanghai, sheds new light on this … Continued
By Raymond Van Dam (NHC Fellow, 1986–87) Basil of Caesarea, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus were prominent churchmen in Roman Cappadocia during the later fourth century. Because of their reputations as distinguished theologians, they are now known as the Cappadocian Fathers. Recent research on Roman families and friendships has … Continued
By Daniel W. Patterson (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) A thousand unique gravestones cluster around old Presbyterian churches in the piedmont of the two Carolinas and in central Pennsylvania. Most are the vulnerable legacy of three generations of the Bigham family, Scotch Irish stonecutters whose workshop near Charlotte created the earliest surviving art of British settlers in … Continued
Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (NHC Fellow, 1981–82; 1982–83) and Laura F. Banfield
By Rita Dove (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) When a woman returns to her Midwestern hometown as an artist-in-residence to teach puppetry to schoolchildren, her homecoming also means grappling with artistic ambition, memories of rejected love, and shocking truths about her family.
By Rebecca J. Scott (NHC Fellow, 2010–11) Around 1785, a woman was taken from her home in Senegambia and sent to Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean. Those who enslaved her there named her Rosalie. Her later efforts to escape slavery were the beginning of a family’s quest, across five generations and three continents, for lives of … Continued
Edited by David Warren Sabean (NHC Fellow, 2008–09), Christopher H. Johnson, Simon Teuscher, and Francesca Trivellato While the current discussion of ethnic, trade, and commercial diasporas, global networks, and transnational communities constantly makes reference to the importance of families and kinship groups for understanding the dynamics of dispersion, few studies examine the nature of these … Continued
By Heather Andrea Williams (NHC Fellow, 2007–08) After the Civil War, African Americans placed poignant "information wanted" advertisements in newspapers, searching for missing family members. Inspired by the power of these ads, Heather Andrea Williams uses slave narratives, letters, interviews, public records, and diaries to guide readers back to devastating moments of family separation during … Continued
By Alan Taylor (NHC Fellow, 1993–94) William Cooper and James Fenimore Cooper, a father and son who embodied the contradictions that divided America in the early years of the Republic, are brought to life in this Pulitzer Prize-winning book. William Cooper rose from humble origins to become a wealthy land speculator and U.S. congressman in … Continued
By Edward Muir (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) Nobles were slaughtered and their castles looted or destroyed, bodies were dismembered and corpses fed to animals—the Udine carnival massacre of 1511 was the most extensive and damaging popular revolt in Renaissance Italy (and the basis for the story of Romeo and Juliet). Mad Blood Stirring is a gripping account and analysis … Continued