History Working Groups

Members of the Department of History are involved in a number of colloquia, lunches, reading groups, and seminars. Usually held with in conjunction with other programs, departments, and research centers at Yale, these groups are designed to bring together students, faculty, and other interested individuals with shared research interests. Held throughout the academic year, many of these groups meet regularly, while others gather on a more occasional basis.

Africanist Reading Group
This group meets every alternate week to discuss works in progress or critique research papers for publication by students of African history—faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars. Though the Group is "housed" in the Department of History, it is open to other members of the Yale community studying—or interested in—aspects of the African past. For most meetings, one member of the group circulates their research paper or work in progress two weeks in advance. At other meetings, the group reads newly published works of interest and note in African history. The interests and the needs of the graduate students and faculty in residence usually direct the group in a particular year. All periods and regions of Africa are covered, and an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the African past is the modus operandi.
Contact: robert.harms@yale.edu

American Religious History Workshop
The American Religious History Workshop has existed at Yale since the late 1980s and concentrates on discussions of religion's role in American history and culture from the colonial period to the present. Most presentations are given by graduate students, but sometimes the group discusses an important new article or book. The Workshop is open to anyone in the Yale community who wishes to attend—faculty and students alike and meets once a month during term.
Contacts: jon.butler@yale.edu, sarah.hammond@yale.edu

Americanist Reading Group
The Americanist Reading Group was formed with the goal of bringing together scholars working on various aspects of American studies from various departments across the University in order to foster discussion and to interrogate the changing shape of the discipline itself. The reading group meets every two weeks during the academic year in order to read new critical texts, revisit older touchstones of criticism, and workshop the writings of the group members.
Contact: rebecca.berne@yale.edu

British Studies Colloquium
The British Studies Colloquium is an interdisciplinary forum for Yale graduate students and faculty working on any aspect of British literature, history, arts, and culture. With five to six meetings per semester, the colloquium offers an informal setting for graduate students to present work in progress, to get feedback from an interdisciplinary audience, and to cultivate a wider knowledge of British culture than could be provided by any one departmental colloquium. Its programming includes occasional talks by visiting scholars and faculty members as well as by graduate students; in recent years, its core audience has expanded from the Departments of English, History, and History of Art to include Law, Comparative Literature, and Renaissance Studies. Interested students can also join our listserv, british-list@panlists.yale.edu, for announcements relating to the Colloquium and other British studies events at Yale.
Contacts: courtney.thomas@yale.edu or sarah.cieglo@yale.edu

Childhood Studies Group
This reading group is devoted to the burgeoning field of childhood studies—that is, the study of the ideologies and cultures of childhood, with a particular interest in the relationship between the formations of childhood and power. The group meets monthly, on either a Monday or Friday afternoon, to discuss reading, to share research, or to take field trips to museums and archives of interest.
Contacts: robin.bernstein@yale.edu, megan.glick@yale.edu, laura.wexler@yale.edu

Colloquium in International History and Security
International Security Studies at Yale runs a weekly series of talks by graduate students and faculty from many different departments called the Colloquium in International History and Security. Speakers normally present for around 30 minutes, and then take questions and lead discussion for another 30-45 minutes, in seminar format. The talks are held on Wednesdays, at 4:30 p.m. during term. These talks cover a wide variety of subjects. Speakers often use the series to present work in progress, or to try out a possible job talk or a draft conference paper.
Contact: theodore.bromund@yale.edu

Early Modern Colloquium
The Early Modern European Colloquium provides a place for graduate students who are interested in early modern Europe to meet other students and professors in the field and to learn what other graduate students are working on. The Colloquium meets once a month, usually on Fridays for lunch, and has a student present their work at each meeting (papers are usually about 20 minutes). Through such meetings it is hoped that students can both improve their own work and come to know others in their field.
Contacts: lindsay.oneill@yale.edu, keith.wrightson@yale.edu

Environmental History Working Group

Meeting time and place for Fall 2008 TBA.

Esquina Latina: A Latino Studies Graduate Colloquium
Esquina Latina brings together graduate students from around the university interested in all aspects of Latino Studies. We will meet once a month to share and discuss each others' research and supplement this with the latest readings from the field. Together, we will build an intellectual community of Latino Studies students and teachers at Yale. Students from the humanities, social sciences, law and other interested parties are encouraged to attend.
Contacts: geraldo.cadava@yale.edu, julie.weise@yale.edu

European Studies Reading Group
Our primary aim is to discuss the new methodologies, conceptual tools, and analytical frameworks that historians writing after the end of the Cold War have devised to tell the story of Europe. Currently, the group focuses on transnational histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a special emphasis on bridging the historiographical and conceptual divide between Eastern and Western Europe. Chief among the questions we hope to address is what historians of Western Europe can learn by studying Eastern Europe, and vice versa.
Contacts: faith.hillis@yale.edu, catherine.dunlop@yale.edu

Greco-Roman Lunch Colloquium
Once a week during term, graduate students and faculty in several programs of the University, including Ancient Christianity, Ancient Judaism, Classical Archeology, Classics, History, History of Art, Medieval Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and New Testament meet for lunch and conversation and hear a brief, informal presentation by one of their number on work in progress. Attendance at this colloquium, which is voluntary and informal, provides a pleasant and friendly way to keep up with students and faculty in related parts of the University. Lunch is free for all graduate students and faculty.
Contact: benton.layton@yale.edu

History from Below

History from Below meets once per month during the academic year to explore grassroots perspectives on the past. The group is an open forum and members are encouraged to discuss their own research and receive feedback. We also engage classic texts and theories and look at recent scholarship related to our work. Some of the problems we have explored in the past include: how to locate the ideas and activities of "everyday" people, how to incorporate grassroots perspectives into scholarly narratives, the role of the individual in history, the relationship between lived experience and historical change, social movements, oral history, public history, and popular culture. We have collaborated with The Yale Program in Race, Ethnicity, and Migration and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition to bring in outstanding academic speakers whose work has redefined or challenged the conventional boundaries of the field.

Discussion leaders usually distribute a short text before each meeting. Students, faculty, and friends from all backgrounds are welcome.

Contact: joseph.yannielli@yale.edu

Intellectual History Reading/Working Group
This group is broadly dedicated to the study of episodes in intellectual and cultural life relating to transitions to modernity in Europe and America. Fondly do we hope historians and non-historians alike will join us in discussing how intellectuals have grappled with the continuities and ruptures of those transitions, from 1500 to the present. Fervently do we pray that this group will foster more discussion between Europeanists and Americanists at Yale and provide everyone with an opportunity to engage in a field which has long been seen as confined mainly to western Europe.
Contacts: jake.lundberg@yale.edu or kenneth.loiselle@yale.edu

Labor and Working Class History Reading Group
Every other week throughout the academic year, we meet to discuss labor history, class formation, political economy and other topics.Ö Past meetings have included participants from Political Science, African-American Studies, History and American Studies. One person in the group takes responsibility for presenting the readings and leading discussion. The primary aim of the reading group is to foster critical discussion about class and labor and bring class back in to our academic work. The schedule of readings is thus geared towards our own scholarly interests and has ranged from reading the "classics" (e.g. E. P. Thompson and David Montgomery) to readings particular to our dissertations. Everyone is welcome, regardless of specialization or region.
Contact: jay.driskell@yale.edu

Market Culture Group
The Market Culture Group hopes to draw together interested students and faculty for ongoing interdisciplinary and interregional conversations regarding analytic and theoretical methods for the study of historical markets, defined broadly to include all varieties of exchange relations. The Market Culture Groups utilizes the colloquium as a forum for presenting and critiquing works-in-progress, with sessions alternating between large group presentations, including faculty, and smaller dissertation writing workshops, with attendance limited to writing-stage graduate students.
Contacts: julia.ott@yale.edu, jean-christophe.agnew@yale.edu

Medieval Lunch Colloquium
The weekly Medieval Lunch Colloquium brings together medievalists from a variety of departments in the University for informal presentations and discussion. At each meeting, a speaker presents work-in-progress to an interdisciplinary audience of graduate students, faculty and staff working in medieval studies. Speakers include both Yale faculty and graduate students, with occasional out-of-town guests. The luncheon takes place in the Branford College Fellows Dining Room starting around noon, with the talk beginning at 12:30.
Contact: nicole.rice@yale.edu

Russian and East European History Reading Group
The Russian and East European Reading Group usually meets once monthly on Wednesday nights during the term. The group meets to discuss works in progress in history and other fields, usually dissertation chapters or drafts of articles. Members are graduate students and faculty in the Departments of History, Slavic Languages and Literature, Comparative Literature, and Political Science.
Contacts: laura.engelstein@yale.edu, timothy.snyder@yale.edu

Transitions to Modernity Colloquium
The Transitions to Modernity Colloquium is a broadly interdisciplinary forum to explore the nature and causes of the transition to modernity. We encourage participants and papers from history, economics, sociology, literature, political science, philosophy, and related disciplines. The group meets on alternate Mondays to discuss a pre-circulated paper. To facilitate broad-based discussion, each session is introduced by a graduate student discussant from a discipline other than that of the presenter. All Yale faculty, graduate students and visitors are welcome to participate. Further details, and copies of upcoming papers, are available on the Transitions to Modernity website.
Contact: steven.pincus@yale.edu

Yale Early American Historians
Yale Early American Historians (YEAH) is a group of graduate students and faculty from several departments dedicated to the study of early American history. The group meets monthly throughout the academic year to discuss works-in-progress by YEAH members. The group also occasionally hosts guest speakers.
Contacts: catherine.mcneur@yale.edu, john.demos@yale.edu

Yale Enlightenment Colloquium
The Yale Enlightenment Colloquium is an informal gathering for students and faculty studying the Enlightenment. This group understands the Enlightenment as a particular series of episodes in Euro-American intellectual and cultural life that have contributed to and can be linked to the emergence of modernity. This group provides historians and non-historians alike with a space to engage in discussion about some of the wider intellectual themes that help us better understand the specificity of the Enlightenment and the extent to which it embodied both continuity and a break between the early modern/colonial era and that which we label modern. Monthly meetings are devoted to the discussion of primary and secondary readings and presentation of works in progress.
Contacts: jens-uwe.guettel@yale.edu, kenneth.loiselle@yale.edu, james.lundberg@yale.edu

Yale Group for the Study of Native America
The Yale Group for the Study of Native America (YGSNA) was formed in order to bring together the intellectual community at Yale working in the area of Native American Studies. This community ranges across disciplines and beyond the campus. Our intention is to share our work and ideas with each other, to build a network both within Yale and with other institutions, to forge connections with tribal nations and communities, and to build a strong foundation for Native American Studies at Yale. In addition to having an annual colloquium series, the YGSNA will host major speaker events and hopes to continue the work of the Pathways conference. The YGSNA is composed of graduate students, undergraduate students, faculty, and staff.
Contacts: michael.kral@yale.edu, john.faragher@yale.edu

Yale Westerners
Every Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. during term graduate students, faculty, and guests interested in the history and culture of the American West and the study of frontiers (in a variety of periods and places) meet for lunch and conversation at the Blue Dog Cafe in the McDougal Center in the Hall of Graduate Studies. Approximately once a month, the group meets in the Howard Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders in the Whitney Humanities Center where visiting scholars or members of the group present work in progress in an informal setting. The Lamar Center also presents formal lectures in the Hall of Graduate Studies, an annual symposium in the fall, and occasional conferences. To be on the Lamar Center mailing list, contact edith.rotkopf@yale.edu.
Contacts: jay.gitlin@yale.edu, john.faragher@yale.edu

Women's and Gender History Working Group
The Women's and Gender History Working Group consists of faculty, graduate students, and other interested parties engaged in the study of women's history and gender history. The group, which meets at least monthly during term, brings together Yale scholars from a variety of disciplines, allowing them to meet colleagues and share ideas. The group discusses works-in-progress, hosts guest speakers, and occasionally meets as a brown-bag lunch reading group.
Contact: caitlin.crowell@yale.edu

Writing History
Writing History is a primarily a discussion group for graduate students interested in thinking more creatively about their academic history writing. In the past, Writing History has sponsored outside lecturers and internal panels. The normal routine of the groups, however, is to have bi-weekly meetings in order to discuss a particular reading. A different participant chooses the reading each time; some semesters, we read relevant historical or theoretical or creative selections. Currently, the group focuses on reading each other's submissions (mostly dissertation chapters and article drafts).
Contacts: paul.shin@yale.edu, john.demos@yale.edu