Nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas, much of the world was already connected via trade, exploration, and cultural exchange. In fact, one can trace globalization all the way back to the 11th century, according to Yale’s Valerie Hansen, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences.
In the literary magazine of Asian culture Mekong Review, Assistant Professor Denise Ho (History) introduces “Becoming the Song,” a film about a Hong Kong pop-singer turned pro-democracy activist. The documentary—produced by Professor Helen Siu (Anthropology)—is an introduction to what is at stake in Hong Kong today, as told through the lens of Denise Ho’s career in music. The review examines the role of music in China’s recent political past, and also analyzes Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan roots.
GLC Director, David W. Blight talks with Elizabeth Hinton on Race, Policing, and Mass Incarceration in times of the COVID 19 global pandemic.
The Middle East have long been at the center of human history—from some of the world’s first civilizations to today’s news. The first cities were in the Middle East, and most of the world’s oil is in the region.
Ivo Banac, a historian of Eastern Europe who taught at Yale from 1977 until his retirement in 2009, died on June 30 at the age of 74. Banac died after an illness in Zagreb in his native country of Croatia, where he had taught and served in several prominent political positions since leaving Yale.
Banac, the Bradford Durfee Professor of History Emeritus, focused his teaching and scholarship on the Balkans. He served two terms as head of college for Pierson College, from 1988 to 1995, and also chaired the Council on Russian and East European Studies at Yale.
Chaos and conflict roiled the Mediterranean in the first century B.C. Against a backdrop of famine, disease and the assassinations of Julius Caesar and other political leaders, the Roman Republic collapsed, and the Roman Empire rose in its place. Tumultuous social unrest no doubt contributed to that transition — politics can unhinge a society. But so can something arguably more powerful.
In November, 1989, when the Berlin Wall suddenly began to crumble and then fall, much of the world watched in awe. Could it be true that Communism was about to collapse? For seventy years, it had been a system, an ideology, that ordered large swaths of the globe. Now a whole vision of history—a vision meant to maximize freedom, but which had turned, over time, into tyranny—seemed to be leaving the stage.