By David Patrick Geggus (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) The Haitian Revolution of 1789–1803 transformed the Caribbean's wealthiest colony into the first independent state in Latin America, encompassed the largest slave uprising in the Americas, and inflicted a humiliating defeat on three colonial powers. In Haitian Revolutionary Studies, David Patrick Geggus sheds new light on this tremendous … Continued
By Cleanth Brooks (NHC Fellow, 1978–79; 1979–80; 1980–81) This series of case studies examines the degree and extent to which some dozen particular seventeenth-century poems deal with the history of the time out of which they came.
By Thomas R. Metcalf (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) Thomas Metcalf's fascinating study examines the ways the British sought to legitimate their rule over India. He demonstrates that the principles the British devised incorporated contradictory visions of India, yet together they made the authority of the Raj lawful. Students of modern India and the British Empire will … Continued
By Martha Vicinus (NHC Fellow, 2000–01) Intimate Friends offers a fascinating look at the erotic friendships of educated English and American women over a 150-year period, culminating in the 1928 publication of The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall’s scandalous novel of lesbian love. Martha Vicinus explores all-female communities, husband-wife couples, liaisons between younger and older women, female … Continued
Edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (NHC Fellow, 2007–08) and James Schmidt In recent years there has been a major revival of interest in the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Thinkers have looked to Kant's theories about knowledge, history, the moral self and autonomy, and nature and aesthetics to seek the foundations of their own political … Continued
By Christopher W. Brooks (NHC Fellow, 1989–90) Law, like religion, provided one of the principal discourses through which early-modern English people conceptualised the world in which they lived. Transcending traditional boundaries between social, legal and political history, this innovative and authoritative study examines the development of legal thought and practice from the later middle ages … Continued
By Patricia Sullivan (NHC Fellow, 2001–02) A “civil rights Hall of Fame” (Kirkus) that was published to remarkable praise in conjunction with the NAACP’s Centennial Celebration, Lift Every Voice is a momentous history of the struggle for civil rights told through the stories of men and women who fought inescapable racial barriers in the North as well … Continued
By Kunal M. Parker (NHC Fellow, 2014–15) This book reconceptualizes the history of US immigration and citizenship law from the colonial period to the beginning of the twenty-first century by joining the histories of immigrants to those of Native Americans, African Americans, women, Asian Americans, Latino/a Americans and the poor. Parker argues that during the … Continued
By Margaret Humphreys (NHC Fellow, 2004–05) The Civil War was the greatest health disaster the United States has ever experienced, killing more than a million Americans and leaving many others invalided or grieving. Poorly prepared to care for wounded and sick soldiers as the war began, Union and Confederate governments scrambled to provide doctoring and … Continued
By Andrew Delbanco (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1990–91; 2002–03) If Dickens was nineteenth-century London personified, Herman Melville was the quintessential American. With a historian’s perspective and a critic’s insight, award-winning author Andrew Delbanco marvelously demonstrates that Melville was very much a man of his era and that he recorded — in his books, letters, and marginalia; and … Continued