Research & Innovation

The Clara and Robert Vambery Distinguished Professor of Comparative Studies award is offered by the Comparative Literature Department, with MITH as a collaborator. Those candidates selected for the Vambery Distinguished Professorship who propose projects involving digital media are eligible to become MITH Vambery Fellows.

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The Dialectical Questions offers an English translation of the Erotemata Dialectices, the final and fullest textbook on the art of
argumentation written by the reformer and educational innovator
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). Representing an era when rhetoric
and dialectic were seen as interdependent, companion arts,
Melanchthon’s textbook was widely used in Protestant Latin
schools and universities during the Reformation. The translation
tracks revisions to the text across its lifetime editions (1547-1560)
and traces its classical sources. The introduction chronicles the
personal and political upheavals that Melanchthon experienced
during its composition, and provides an overview of its rich and
complex content. It then focuses on the unique feature that sets
this work apart from other early modern dialectics: its many
sample arguments drawn from medicine and natural philosophy.

On Jan. 3, 1867, nearly two years after the end of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass stood before a full house of hundreds of African Americans at Philadelphia’s National Hall. He had been invited to speak in a Black lecture series organized by William Still, famous for his work on the Underground Railroad.

As recounted by the Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, the celebrated African American singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield performed several arias before Douglass’s introduction. Douglass then took the stage to speak on the “Sources of Danger to the Republic.” The Telegraph reported that he “was frequently interrupted by applause, and evidently made the best effort of his life.”

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“Anat Zanger’s Jerusalem in Israeli Cinema: Wanderers, Nomads, and the Walking Dead,” Israel Studies Review, Volume 36, Issue 2, Autumn 2021.

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Read "Spenser and Race: An Introduction."

Argues that Byzantine accounts of the power and responsibility of language of the ninth- to eleventh-century attributed tremendous gravity to the role of the spoken word (logos prophorikos), regarding it as an active participant in the object of speaking.

Over the past 30 years, early modern studies has been increasingly interested in the emergence of race as a category of identity, one that could variously demarcate groups of people along lines of lineage, nationality, religion, and skin color. Indeed, the varied usages of the term race in early modern texts makes it rich site for examining the complexity and intersections of early modern embodiment, identity formation, representational practices, and power relations. Scholars have uncovered how early moderns understood the causes of bodily difference—skin color and the multiple valences of complexion, for example—between different groups of people. Studies have examined the extent to which early modern English people understood themselves as distinctive and different from the Spanish, the Irish, Africans, Asians, and others. Attention to the rhetorical strategies used to describe non-European peoples and the uncovering of the material practices of staging non-Europeans in drama, for example, have exposed the role of race in the early capitalist enterprises of international trade and the rise of the commercial theatre. Somatic difference, belief, and lineage are now understood by scholars as establishing moral and religious hierarchies that provided a foundation for justifications of colonial enterprises and the slave trade.

This special issue of Spenser Studies turns its attention to the dark side of Spenser’s imagination. Race is a strategy. It essentializes people as objects or instruments of power relations, and naturalizes political, economic, social, and sexual arrangements. Authors examine racialization in Spenser’s works from various methodological and critical vantage points.

Read “Spenser and Race."

ONCE A SPECIALIZED SCHOOL of thought developed in law schools, critical race theory (CRT) has become a favorite wedge issue for the Republican Party. During the final months of his presidency, Trump warned that CRT was infiltrating American schools and ordered a halt to what he claimed was CRT-inspired diversity training in federal agencies. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, regularly refers to CRT as a Marxist plot to undermine the nation, and Christopher Rufo, director of the Center on Wealth and Poverty at the conservative Discovery Institute, terms it “a grave threat to the American way of life.”

Read Frederick Douglass and the Trouble with Critical Race Theory

When Andrew Johnson rose to the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, African Americans were optimistic that Johnson would pursue aggressive federal policies for Black equality. Just a year earlier, Johnson had cast himself as a “Moses” for the Black community. Frederick Douglass, the country’s most influential Black leader, increasingly doubted the president was sincere in supporting Black citizenship. In a dramatic meeting between Johnson and a Black delegation at the White House, the president and Douglass came to verbal blows over the fate of Reconstruction. Their animosity only grew as Johnson sought to undermine Reconstruction and conciliate leaders of the former Confederate states.

Learn more about The Failed Promise.