In May, we asked our alumni: What aspects of history interest you the most? Social history? Military history? Why? Read on to see what they said.
Ray Fantone (BA '83) wrote: "Military History, it seems that the stresses and strains of war both overseas and on the home front enabled and accelerated changes in Social History through out history."
Melinda Lyons (BA '79) wrote: "I am currently most interested in people movements across history, and how the settlement brought change to the settled groups previously living in the location."
Jeremy Nelson (BA '89) wrote: "Military history."
Sara Schaffzin (BA '73) wrote: "I am particularly interested in the history of ideas and how this history relates to everything else: politics and public policy, economics, societal mores, social behavior, and so on. For example, as teacher of academic English to international graduate students at Cornell, I had the honor of working with Seok-Won Lee, now a professor at Rhodes College but then a brilliant student of Japanese intellectual history whose research was on the ideological bases for Japan's imperial ambitions between the world wars, including the connection between Japan's notion of Pan-Asianism and the thinking of African-American intellectuals. (See, for example, https://www.tandfonline.com/do...). Seok-Won's research added an important dimension to my understanding of the interwar period. (He, among my hundreds of students, stands out in my mind since I have continued to follow his work even into my retirement.)I am currently reading The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, by Cornell faculty member Nicholas Mulder, as I try to understand why sanctions against countries like Russia and Iran don't seem to be thwarting their militarism. I wasn't much of a star in the UR history department (sorry, Professor Kaeuper!) but I am grateful that my study of history in college opened the gate to a lifelong interest, and wide reading, in the subject. This interest stood me well in my teaching at Cornell, where I often needed to explain current events in the U.S., and their historical background, to my international students."
Stay tuned for another question next month!
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