Historical Studies

Reflecting on preliminary results obtained from a seven-year HistoGenes project, Patrick J. Geary, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, describes how advances in the field of paleogenom­ics are not only revolutionizing the study of paleolithic hominids but are also allowing scholars to answer questions about much more recent history, previously inaccessible using traditional historical and archae­ological sources.

Verena Krebs is an award-winning medieval historian working on Christian Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. She draws on archaeology, art, and written sources for her scholarship. At IAS, Krebs will work on her second monograph, “Africa Collecting Europe: Patronage and Power in Christian Ethiopia, 1468–1530", which will tease out an untold story about the assertion of power in a pre-colonial African kingdom.

Historian Jérémie Foa offers a very unique view of the 1572 massacres in his work entitled Tous ceux qui tombent: visages du massacre de la Saint–Barthélemy [All that fall: faces of the St. Bartholomew's day massacre]. He exhumes the “small lives” that were taken by reconstituting history in minute detail and honoring the names of the anonymous victims.

The new Rubenstein Commons building at the Institute for Advanced Study, designed by Steven Holl Architects, stands in stark contrast to the explicitly functionalist forms of other modern buildings on campus: the Member housing, designed by Marcel Breuer, or even the welcoming but austere (what’s known as “brutalist”) spaces of the dining hall, designed by Robert Geddes.

Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, has completed volume two of his catalogue raisonné of American painter Ellsworth Kelly. Working with the artist’s estate, Bois has produced a thorough catalogue of the artist’s paintings, sculptures, and reliefs between the years 1954 and 1958, including high-quality reproductions of the art, history of ownership and exhibition, and bibliographic notes.