Professor of History Thomas Wilson presented a paper, "Sacrifice and Confucian Conceptions of Gods and Spirits," at a conference in Taipei, Taiwan. Fifteen scholars from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and the U.S. were invited to present papers at the International Conference on the Global Confucius: Sacrifice and the Confucius Temple, which was sponsored by the Taipei Municipal Government and the Taipei Confucius Temple Association. More ...

“I’ve long been interested in Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln,” announced Harvard professor John Stauffer to his audience in the Kennedy Auditorium on March 30. As a child, Stauffer frequently moved from one house to the next – nine times, to be exact – and as such, his experience of childhood was that of something impermanent and perpetually transitory. “Along with tennis, my constants were history and literature,” he said. No matter where he went, he could count on those things to remain the same. Significantly, at thirteen years old, a friend lent him Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – something that indeed changed his life for good. “I loved the way he wrote, and the power of writing resonated with me,” Stauffer explained. He read Abraham Lincoln a short time later, and soon become permanently enthralled with antebellum American history.
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John Stauffer, author and professor of English and American literature and language at Harvard University, will present a lecture titled “Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and the Great Books” at Hamilton College on Tuesday, March 30, at 4:15 p.m., in the Science Center’s Kennedy Auditorium. He will discuss his bestselling book Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (Twelve 2009). The lecture is free and open to the public. More ...

The New York Times included Fallen Giants - A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes in its “Paperback Row” column in the Sunday Book Review on Feb. 21. Co-authored by James L. Ferguson Professor of History Maurice Isserman and University of Rochester professor Stewart Weaver, the book was described as "an awe-inspiring work of history and storytelling." The Times originally reviewed Fallen Giants in September 2008. More ...

“Hamilton College was a conservative institution, resistant to change, whose fate was one of reform and change,” said Maurice Isserman, the James L. Ferguson Professor of History, as he presented a brief overview of Hamilton in the 19th and early 20th century. Speaking to a full house at the Clinton Historical Society on Feb. 14, Isserman noted that during his research process he spent many hours in the college archives and was surprised by the steady flow of alumni who visited while conducting their own research. The absence of student visitors has prompted him to plan a teaching seminar on college history in the archives to encourage them to visit with greater frequency. More ...

Maurice Isserman, the James L. Ferguson Professor of History, will talk about the history of Hamilton College on Sunday, Feb. 14, at 2 p.m. at the Clinton Historical Society on Fountain Street in Clinton. The talk, titled “A bicentennial overview of Hamilton College history,” is free and open to the public.
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Described by a New York Times reviewer as “the book of a lifetime... an awe-inspiring work of history and storytelling,” Fallen Giants - A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes has been released in paperback by Yale University Press. Co-authored by James L. Ferguson Professor of History Maurice Isserman and University of Rochester professor Stewart Weaver, the book was originally published in 2008 in hardback. More ...

Associate Professor of History Lisa Trivedi gave a paper titled "Won't You Be My Neighbor?: reflections on Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." at St. Lawrence University on Jan. 22. Trivedi was invited to speak by St. Lawrence for Peace, a campus advocacy group that is part of the college's Global Education Initiative and that organized a week of events celebrating Dr. King's life and work. More ...

Associate Professor of History Lisa Trivedi has been elected the 2010 vice president and the 2011 president of the Society for Advancing the History of South Asia (SAHSA), a group soon to be an affiliated society of the American Historical Association (AHA). Although there has been a caucus of historians of South Asia for some time in the AHA, the founding of SAHSA nearly three years ago marked a significant change in the visibility of South Asia within the discipline's premier professional organization. More ...

Professor of History Maurice Isserman has authored revised versions of Across America: The Lewis & Clark Expedition and Exploring North America 1800-1900 and Associate Professor of History Kevin Grant has authored a revised version of Exploration in the Age of Empire 1750-1953. The three books are part of Facts on File's Discovery and Exploration 10-book series revised for a young adult audience. Isserman serves as the co-editor for the entire series. More ...