Historical Studies

Sir John Huxtable Elliott, Professor in the School of Historical Studies from 1973–90, died at Oxford Hospital at age 91. He leaves a vast legacy of scholarship, beginning with his 1955 Ph.D. thesis, subsequently published under the title of The Revolt of the Catalans (1963).

Aaron Michael Butts, past Member (2019–20) and Visitor (2020–21) in the School of Historical Studies, has been named Andrew W. Mellon Chair of Early Christian Studies at his home institution, The Catholic University of America, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures. 

"In June, 1948, when I graduated from Princeton High School, I already had a job, as a night watchman at the Institute for Advanced Study, on the far side of town. All kinds of people assumed that the Institute was part of Princeton University, which it wasn’t and isn’t."

"I do not think that postmodernist and postcolonial analysis does away with metanarratives so much as demand a more searching scrutiny of their assumptions, implications and, in part, often concealed purposes."

"In this and other tales from the period, the color of the sultan’s skin has a deeper meaning: His black skin is a metaphor for his non-Christian soul, according to Cord Whitaker, associate professor of English at Wellesley College, a [M]ember of the Institute for Advanced Study, and one of the founding members of the Princeton collaboration."

Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, has been elected to the Medieval Academy of America’s Fellows Class of 2022. The highest honor granted by the academy, it is bestowed upon scholars “who have made notable lifelong contributions to Medieval Studies through their scholarship, teaching, and service.”

Iris Montero-Sobrevilla, current Member in the School of Historical Studies, has won the 2021 Robert F. Heizer Article Award for “The Disguise of the Hummingbird: On the Natural History of Huitzilopochtli in the Florentine Codex” (Ethnohistory, Volume 67, Number 3).