Breaking History Podcast

Tune in to the latest Breaking History interview with Dr. Malcolm Purinton, a world historian and teaching professor at Northeastern University. His forthcoming book, Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste and Empire, will be published in Summer 2023 with Bloomsbury Press (pre-orders available May 4, 2023: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/globalization-in-a-glass-9781350324398/)

Image: AHA 2022 logo (https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting)

AHA2022 Online (February 21-27) registration: https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting/aha22-online

Jeff Lamson and Adam Tomasi, World History PhD students at Northeastern University in Boston, discuss their visit to the American Historical Association's 135th Annual Meeting, held this year in New Orleans, LA from January 6-9, 2022.

Speaking of great conferences, the Breaking History podcast would like to let listeners know that Northeastern's History Graduate Student Association is hosting a hybrid conference for graduate students in world history and public history on Saturday, April 9, 2022, with the theme “Crisis and Change across the Anthropocene: Environments, Conflicts, and Inequalities." Graduate students can submit proposals here(https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdIOP6HSw_NpmixuO1gCVAkc53-t2E3OK0f6YO-3FFlWdIMjA/viewform. The deadline is February 14, 2022.

And thank you as always to our sound editor, World History PhD student Cassie Cloutier!

In this episode, history PhD candidates Cassie Cloutier and Luke Scalone, and host Adam Tomasi, discuss preparing for comprehensive exams at Northeastern University. If you're thinking about a history PhD or have comps coming up yourself, learn some excellent tips and perspectives from us!

In this episode of the Breaking History podcast, host Adam Tomasi, an incoming third-year PhD student in world history at Northeastern, discusses the first year of graduate school with two Northeastern graduate students: Hunter Moskowitz, an incoming second-year PhD student in world history, and Liam Moore, an incoming second-year MA student in world history.

We discussed how to succeed in your first year of graduate school, some of our favorite classes, and plans for the future! This is recommended listening for anyone who is interested in attending a history graduate program.

In this interview, host Adam Tomasi talks with Prof. Timothy Brown, the chair of the History department at Northeastern and author of Sixties Europe, recently published with Cambridge University Press. The interview covers many topics, including the graduate school experience, Brown's previous books, and his "Historical Theory and Methodology" course this past Fall.

In this episode, host Adam Tomasi interviews Professor Marty Blatt, the Director of Public History at Northeastern University, who retired at the end of this year's spring semester. Topics include graduate school and student activism in the 1960s and 1970s, Marty's connections to scholars and activists like Howard Zinn, Murray Bookchin, and Noam Chomsky, the joys of teaching, and Marty's long career in public history including more than two decades with the National Park Service.

Dr. Laura Frader, retiring after forty years of teaching in Northeastern's history department, has produced excellent scholarship on French social history and European gender history. Our host, Adam Tomasi, will be talking with her about graduate education, social justice, historical objectivity and data, teaching, and stories about running into Malcolm X and Michel Foucault.

Professor Cameron Blevins has taught excellent courses at Northeastern about digital/computational methods, the Western United States, and the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. His book Gossamer Network: The U.S. Post and State Power in the American West is under contract with Oxford University Press. Our host, Adam Tomasi, will be talking with Cameron about graduate education, digital history, the Twitter-verse, and teaching topics of contemporary significance.

Episode 36: COVID-19 in Context: Histories of the Present by Breaking History Committee

We have our first social distancing episode! Join Adam, James, and Matt as we interview Dr. Jamie Parker, freshly off his dissertation defense, on his dissertation: "The Fluidity of Late Colonial Development: Water Management, State Building, and Rural Resistance in Kenya 1938-63." On the heels of James and Matt's dissertation defenses, we work through defending dissertations in the mid-March pandemic stages during the first couple weeks of Massachusetts shutting down.

Jamie talks about how the British colonial government in Kenyan took resources away from natives and gave them to white settlers in the name of progress and profit. Jamie makes his intervention into the history of development and water resources in the British Empire, using Kenya as his case study. He shows how prioritizing specific economic growth by people far away over all else leads to disastrous consequences. He looks at the power dynamics and how tribal groups interacted with settlers, the colonial government, and the London offices. Jamie lays out the timeline of the Kenyan water mismanagement from the war to the Mau Mau rebellion through independence and post-colonial structures, with the focus on cash-crops. How does that play out in the larger globe, when development agencies replicate putting specific models onto larger population centers? What led Dr. Parker to look to Kenyan colonial water management? What was defending his dissertation like during a pandemic like? What's next for Dr. Jamie Parker and the rest of the newly minted doctors of history?

Book mentioned in the episode:

"The Development Century" by Stephen J Macekura and Erez Manela

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40012143-the-development-century

"Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism" by Joseph M. Hodge

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2139250.Triumph_of_the_Expert

"Empire State-Building: War And Welfare In Kenya 1925-52" by Joanna Lewis

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8349599-empire-state-building

"Seeing Like a Citizen: Decolonization, Development, and the Making of Kenya, 1945–1980" by Kara Moskowitz

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44665459-seeing-like-a-citizen

"Population, Tradition, and Environmental Control in Colonial Kenya" by Martin S. Shanguhyia

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27910250-population-tradition-and-environmental-control-in-colonial-kenya

"Water Brings No Harm: Management Knowledge and the Struggle for the Waters of Kilimanjaro" by Matthew V. Bender

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41839963-water-brings-no-harm

"Developing the Rivers of East and West Africa: An Environmental History" by Heather J. Hoag

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18049134-developing-the-rivers-of-east-and-west-africa

"How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" by Walter Rodney

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40630.How_Europe_Underdeveloped_Africa

The Breaking History podcast is a production of the Northeastern University History Graduate Student Association.

Producers and Sound Editors: Matt Bowser and Cassie Cloutier

Theme Music: Kieran Legg

Today's hosts were: Matt Bowser, James Robinson, Adam Tomasi

twitter: @BreakingHistPod