PhD 2021 (History and East Asian Languages) Harvard University

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Historiography, history of the book, print culture, manuscript culture, printing technology, reading, archives, translation

BIOGRAPHY

I am a cultural and intellectual historian of early modern Korea with interests in the production and circulation of knowledge, the history of the book, and historiography. 

My book manuscript, Material Historiography: The Official Histories of Koryŏ from Their Compilation to the Present, examines the production, circulation, reception of two court histories treating the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392), the History of Koryŏ and the Essentials of Koryŏ History, from their contested compilation in the early Chosŏn period (1392–1910) to their effective canonization in a plethora of modern editions and databases in our digital present. Drawing on material bibliography, I examine over one hundred call numbers of Chosŏn-era copies of the History and the Essentials held in institutions in Korea and Japan, and analyze their physical features, track ownership marks and seals, and study marginal notes left by readers to uncover the material history of these two historical works. I further track the reproduction of the two histories in numerous print and digital formats and show how tools of Chosŏn’s dynastic legitimacy were transformed into cultural heritage. In so doing, I illuminate practices of scholarship and historiography in early modern Korea and reveal an untold history of circulation and reception of the two histories concealed by the radical changes in media in the twentieth century. Arguing that media and scholarly practices such as notetaking and marginalia were (and are) just as important to the reading and writing of history as high philosophy, I illuminate the changing significance of Koryŏ history from the Chosŏn era to the present, show how the two court histories on Koryŏ—and their material form—influenced the practice of historiography and historical scholarship over time, and encourage reflection on what history actually was and is.

My second project is an investigation into Chosŏn Korea’s state-dominated and heavily non-commercial publishing economy, where woodblock, movable type, and handwriting were all viable methods of making books. It seeks to understand how Chosŏn people obtained their books in this multi-media and non-commercial textual ecology and examines the gifting, lending, borrowing, and copying of books, from royal presents to donations to school libraries.

I received my B.A. in Asian Area Studies from the University of British Columbia and hold an M.A. in Korean History from the Academy of Korean Studies and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. Prior to coming to the University of Chicago, I was a Korea Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

PUBLICATIONS

“Royal Typographic Sublime: Discourse on Movable Type in Early Modern Korea (1392–1910).” Accepted by the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies.

“Facsimiles of Yore: Printing Technology and the Page Image in the Japanese Government General of Korea’s Reproduction of Historical Sources,” Modern Asian Studies (2023): 1–38. 

"Culling Archival Collections in the Koryŏ-Chosŏn Transition," Journal of Korean Studies 24, no. 2, (2019): 225–53.

 

OFFICE HOURS

FIELD SPECIALTIES

Greater Latin America; Modern Mexico; Indigenous politics; environmental history; economic development; history and politics of social science; race in the Americas

BIOGRAPHY

Diana Schwartz Francisco's research and teaching focus on Indigenous politics, the nexus between economic development and environmental change in Latin America, the history and politics of social science, and race in the Americas.

Her book manuscript in progress, tentatively titled “The Dam’s Wake: Development, Indigenous Politics, and Anthropology in the Mexican Tropics,” is a history of the links between Indigenous politics and environmental  change in twentieth-century Mexico. Many scholars have shown how, during the mid-twentieth century, the Mexican State used a combination of co-optation and coercion to both integrate rural and Indigenous citizens and carry out top-down regional development projects. Building on this literature, yet unsatisfied by its treatment of Indigenous identity as static and often divorced from the politics of ecological transformations, the book focuses on the ways development-induced displacement and Indigenous identity are entwined. Centering on the displacement of some 20,000 Indigenous residents of the Papaloapan River Basin for the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam in the 1950s, the book argues that displacement led relocated citizens and scientists alike to refashion and marshal Indigenous alterity as not merely an ethnic denotation but as a political identity to make demands vis-à-vis the Mexican State.

She earned her PhD in History from the University of Chicago (2016), her MA in Latin American Studies from UCLA, and BA in Ethnic Studies and Political Science from UC San Diego. Prior to coming to CLAS, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University (2016-18) and a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Valparaiso University (2018-19). In Chicago, she has taught the Spanish language history course for the Odyssey Project (Proyecto Odisea), a college-credit humanities program for low-income adults. Before commencing graduate school, she worked for a Mexican non-profit that provided support for youth street workers.

PUBLICATIONS

“Displacement, Development, and the Creation of a Modern Indígena in the Papaloapan, 1940s–1970s,” in Ariadna Acevedo & Paula López Caballero, eds. Beyond Alterity: Destabilizing the Indigenous Other in Mexico. University of Arizona Press, 2018.

“Indigenous Policy in Twentieth-Century Latin America.” Latin American Perspectives 39 (September 2012): 111–116.

PhD'16 University of California, Berkeley
AB'09 Pomona College

AUTUMN QUARTER 2024
OFFICE HOURS: IN-PERSON SIGN UP LINK
OFFICE HOURS: ZOOM SIGN UP LINK

FIELD SPECIALTIES

Modern US history; histories of women, gender, and feminism

BIOGRAPHY

Peggy teaches and writes on feminism, women's movements, and motherhood in American and European history. Her first book, WITHOUT CHILDREN: The Long History of Not Being a Mother (Seal Press, 2023), explores the history of non-motherhood in light of falling fertility and rising rates of childlessness today, in the US and globally. Her current research centers on the late 20th century revival of midwifery in the United States and the place birth has occupied in American religion, politics, and culture--and on Instagram. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and she regularly appears on television, radio, podcasts, and at corporate events. Peggy received her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.
In addition to her teaching and writing, Peggy works with the Chair of Undergraduate Studies to oversee undergraduate advising, events, and curriculum in the Department of History.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother (Seal Press, 2023).

"Why Women Not Having Kids Became a Panic," New York Times, May 6, 2023.
 

PhD 2017 (history) University of Pennsylvania
AM 2009 (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies) Columbia University

RESEARCH INTERESTS

African history; Middle Eastern history; imperialism; global nineteenth century; history of death; African diaspora; race and slavery; visual and material culture

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. K.J. Hickerson (she/her) is cultural and political historian of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Nile Valley. Her research stands at the nexus between African history, the study of the African diaspora in the Middle East, and the study of imperialism. Dr. Hickerson’s book manuscript-in-progress, Mortal Struggles: Death and Empire in the Nile Valley, examines cultural practices surrounding death in Sudan throughout the era of Ottoman-Egyptian colonialism, the independent state known as the Mahdiyya, and the early years of the co-dominion of Sudan by Egypt and Great Britain. Her other research and writings address the politics of photography, art, fashion, and medicine in the Nile Valley and beyond.

Before coming to UChicago, Dr. Hickerson was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the Sir William Luce Fellow at Durham University and has received fellowships and grants from the Huntington Library, the Boston Athenæum, the British Academy, the African Studies Association, among others and her writings have appeared in Durham Middle East Papers, Journal of Northeast African Studies; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition; and the Sudan Studies Bulletin.

PhD '22 University of Chicago

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Modern Japan, Disaster Studies, Environmental History, Global Memory Culture, Transnational History, Public History, Emotional History

DISSERTATION

The Earth Still Shakes: A History of Disaster Memorials in Modern Japan

BIOGRAPHY

Alex Jania is a historian of disaster, global memory culture, and modern Japan in the world. Alex’s work sits at the intersection of environmental history, memory studies, and transnational history and seeks to understand how people have used memory practices to make sense of their relationship to past, present, and future environmental hazards. His first book project, Archipelago of Disaster, Archipelago of Memory: Disaster Memorials and History in Modern Japan, explores the history of memorials built in the wake of earthquake and tsunami events in 20th and 21st century Japan, their place in a wider global circulation of memory practice, and their impact as works of public history.

Committed to making the academy more accessible, Alex is an active public historian. Most related to his research, Alex has participated in several memorial organizations dedicated to sharing the memory of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster (also known as 3.11) with English-speaking audiences. As a practitioner, in addition to researcher, of disaster memorials, Alex is interested in how the memorial form can be used to address ongoing disasters, like the climate crisis. Currently Alex is developing a memorial to the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave and other victims of heat death in the age of climate change.

Alex received his Ph.D. with distinction in History from the University of Chicago in August 2022. He also holds a M.A. in Interdisciplinary East Asian Studies from The Ohio State University and a B.A. in History from Baylor University.

NEWS

• Course Spotlight: Disastrous Histories
• Alex Jania to Serve as Master of Ceremonies During Kizuna 10: Inochi
• Course Spotlight: Public History Practicum
• Alex Jania on COVIDCalls Episode #337: Disaster Memory in East Asia
• “How Should Americans Remember COVID-19?: Lessons from Post-Disaster Memorials in Japan”

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My primary research projects have focused on the intersections of women, labor, and capitalism in South Korea and a comparative analysis of Cold War-era popular culture, gender, and society in East Asian countries. Currently, I am writing a book manuscript, entitled "Reimagining Cold War Domesticity: South Korean (De)Housewifization, Family Economy, and Consumer Capitalism," about the economic and cultural history of postwar South Korean domesticity, which considers how the transnational gendering processes of domesticity shaped to naturalize and produce derivatives in relation to class stratification, state, culture, and economy. I want my research to reframe Cold War-era historical narratives by focusing on women's labor and the family unit, demystifying the hegemonic place the U.S. occupies within Korean and East Asian history during the Cold War. The second book project will expand my research interests in gender history into transnational, cultural, and economic dimensions and investigate women's work in the private education industry in Korean diaspora communities in the U.S. and other Asian countries.

BIOGRAPHY

Since earning my Ph.D. in modern Korean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I have taught various courses related to Korea and Asia, addressing history, gender, culture, society, and politics at CSU-Chico, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania, Seoul National University, and Soongsil University. Before joining the University of Chicago, I finished a postdoctoral fellowship at the Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University. I worked as an HK research professor at the Institute for the Study of Korean Modernity at Yonsei University in South Korea.