New Books by Members of the Faculty

Christian Habicht, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, has had his Sather Classical Lectures of 1982 published in Greek. Ho Periēgētēs Pausanias (Institouto tou Bibliou A. Kardamitsa, 2010), was first published in 1985 as Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece by the University of California Press (Paperback ed. with new preface, 1998), and as Pausanias und seine “Beschreibung Griechenlands” (C.H. Beck, 1985). The book was edited by Giannēs A. Pikoulas, who has updated it by adding new evidence from excavations in Greece, a number of new illustrations, and recent bibliography, and was translated by Florentia Pikoula.

Contemporary States of Emergency: The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions, (Zone Books, 2010), edited by Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science, and Mariella Pandolfi, is a collection of essays by anthropologists, legal scholars, and political scientists.  It examines the historical antecedents that have made military and humanitarian interventions possible today.  The book also addresses the practical process of intervention in global situations on five continents, and investigates the ethical and political consequences of these generalizations of states of emergency and the new form of government associated with them.  Professor Fassin contributed a chapter titled “Heart of Humaneness. The Moral Economy of Humanitarian Intervention.”  He has also edited Les Nouvelles Frontières de la Société Française (The New Frontiers of French Society) (Editions La Découverte, 2010), which analyzes profound changes that concern not only immigrants and foreigners but also the next generation of mostly French born in France. The book is based on four years of interdisciplinary research conducted by a group of twenty-five social scientists and coordinated by Fassin, which examined how France has progressively closed its borders to immigration, consequently exerting increasing pressure on all foreigners, and how simultaneously French society has stigmatized and discriminated its Black and Arab population, thus affecting more broadly the social contract and foundational values of the French Republic.

A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2009), by Jonathan Israel, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, examines the intellectual origins of the ideas of equality, democracy, free thought and expression, religious tolerance, individual liberty, political self-determination of peoples, and sexual and racial equality. Israel traces the philosophical roots of these ideas to the Radical Enlightenment, beginning in the late seventeenth century and culminating during the revolutionary decades of the 1770s, 1780s, and 1790s.  A Revolution of the Mind shows that vigorous opposition to such ideas arose from powerful impulses in society to defend the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, ecclesiastical authority, empire, and racial hierarchy – principles linked to the upholding of censorship, religious uniformity, social hierarchy, racial segregation, and far-reaching privilege for ruling groups.

Nicola Di Cosmo, Luce Foundation Professor East Asian Studies in the School of Historical Studies, has edited The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age (Cambridge University Press, 2009) with Allen J. Frank and Peter B. Golden. The volume centers on the history of Inner Asia (c. 1200-1800) and on the legacy of the Mongol empire founded by Chinggis Khan and his sons, including its impact upon the modern world. The book integrates the political, economic, social, and cultural history of the region.

Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, has edited Gabriel Orozco (MIT Press, 2009), a collection of critical writings on the artist whose work has been called "uncategorizable." A conceptual and installation artist, Orozco's oeuvre encompasses photography, sculpture, video, and drawing. The book includes essays by prominent critics such as Benjamin Buchloh, Briony Fer, Molly Nesbit, and Bois. He has also edited Picasso Harlequin 1917-1937 (Skira, 2009), a multi-author volume that functioned as the catalogue for an exhibition he curated in the fall of 2008. The essays concern Picasso's unprecedented diversity as an artist during the two decades separating his trip to Rome and his creation of Guernica.

Peter Paret, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, has published an expanded text of his 2008 Lees Knowles Lectures at the University of Cambridge The Cognitive Challenge of War: Prussia 1806 (Princeton University Press, 2009). The work is a case study of a clash between a traditional and an innovative way of war, and of the military, political, and cultural efforts of the defeated to master and effectively respond to the new methods.

Thomas Spencer, Professor in the School of Mathematics, has edited a new book with Scott Sheffield, former Member (2006-07) in the School of Mathematics and currently Associate Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of New York University.  Statistical Mechanics, published by the American Mathematical Society and the Institute for Advanced Study (2009), is volume 16 of the IAS/Park City Mathematical Series.

Oleg Grabar, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, whose research has had a profound and far-reaching influence on the study of Islamic art and architecture, has a new illustrated book on Islamic art. Originally written in French, the book is appearing simultaneously in French and English editions. The French edition is entitled Images en Terres d'Islam, and is published by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux in Paris (2009).  The English edition, Masterpieces of Islamic Art: the Decorated Page from the 8th to the 17th Century, is published by Prestel (2009). Each version includes a wide range of illuminated manuscript masterpieces from the eighth to the seventeenth century.

Harvard University Press has published a festschrift for Glen W. Bowersock, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, as part of its Loeb Classical Monographs series. Former School of Historical Studies Members T. Corey Brennan (1998) and Harriet I. Flower (2001-02) edited the volume, East & West: Papers in Ancient History Presented to Glen W. Bowersock, which is based on a 2006 Princeton University symposium held in honor of Bowersock upon his retirement.  The volume features contributions from eight scholars from France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, five of whom are past Members in the School.  Also the Oxford University Press has just published Bowersock's new book, From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition. The volume includes seventeen essays, each illustrating how the classical past has captured the imagination of some of the greatest figures in modern historiography and literature. The essays are organized chronologically across three centuries, the eighteenth to the twentieth.

Military Culture in Imperial China (Harvard University Press, 2009), edited by Nicola Di Cosmo, Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies in the School of Historical Studies, explores the relationship between culture and the military in Chinese society from early China to the Qing empire, with contributions by eminent scholars aiming to reexamine the relationship between military matters and law, government, historiography, art, philosophy, literature, and politics.

Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century (Ashgate Publishing, 2009) by Giles Constable, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, contains a group of studies illustrating many aspects of crusading that are often passed over in narrative histories.University of Toronto Press has published Three Treatises from Bec on the Nature of Monastic Life (Medieval Academy Books, 2008), edited with introduction and notes by Professor Constable. The three treatises collected and translated in this volume - Tractatus de professionibus monachorum ('The Profession of Monks'), De professionibus abbatum ('The Profession of Abbots'), and De libertate Beccensis monasterii ('On the Liberty of the Monastery of Bec') - are a striking statement of the position of Bec in relation to episcopal and ducal (later royal) authorities.

From Arabian Tribes to Islamic Empire (Variorum Collected studies) (Ashgate, 2008), the second collection of articles by Patricia Crone, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies, brings together studies on the development of early Muslim society, above all the army with which it was originally synonymous, from shortly after the Prophet's death until the mid-Abbasid period. The focus is on the changes that the Arab tribesmen underwent thanks to settlement outside Arabia, their strained relations with converts from the conquered population, and their gradual eclipse by them.

Leading feminist scholars tackle the critical, political, and institutional challenges that women's studies has faced since its widespread integration into university curricula in Women's Studies on the Edge (Duke University Press, 2008), edited by Joan Wallach Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science.