Recent Department News
In Memoriam Gerard Ernest Caspary
The Department of History will hold a memorial gathering for our beloved Gerry Caspary on Sunday, June 22 in the Women's Faculty Club, beginning at 2:00 in the afternoon. All are welcome.
by Geoffrey Koziol, Professor of History, UCB
Told of Gerry Caspary's passing, a former student (herself a renowned historian) responded with the quickness we reserve for the obvious. "He was the real thing." And he was. For a long generation, he was our medievalists' secret weapon in producing a stream of remarkable graduate students, including one who just received a MacArthur award. People outside the program did not always know this. After all, he published only one book: Politics and Exegesis, on Origen's theory of the two swords. But it was quite a book, the product of twenty years' reading, learning, thinking, ruminating. Even so, the book he published was less than half of what he had written, the whole only a minuscule fraction of what he knew. His students had the benefit of being able to learn from the whole. A seminar with him was an experience of legend, for he could easily devote an entire semester to a single text, spinning complex histories out of every word and phrase. He lived ideas. For him, thinking provided its own reward.
In Memoriam Gerald D. Feldman
by Margaret Anderson, Professor of History, UCB, John Connelly, Associate Professor of History, UCB and Beverly Crawford, Associate Director, Institute of European Studies, UCB
Gerald D. Feldman, professor emeritus of the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley, died on October 31 at his home in Berkeley at the age of 70.
Gerald Feldman was a preeminent political historian and a leading authority on the political, social, and economic history of Germany in the twentieth century. He was greatly admired by his colleagues here and in Germany, where he was a frequent visitor, for the breadth and depth of his scholarship. "He was a master of the first half (of the twentieth century) of the German political economy," said Martin Jay, a UC Berkeley history professor and former chair of the department. "He was very much a real historian's historian. He had a tremendous respect for the archives and getting the truth revealed."
C. V. Starr East Asian Library Dedication
by Professor David Johnson
On October 20th the C. V. Starr East Asian Library was dedicated, the culmination of over twenty years of lobbying, planning, and fundraising in which members of the History Department were heavily engaged. I was in-volved in the programming and implementation of this project for over fifteen years, and the initial lobbying and planning efforts, which go back even far-ther, were led by another member of the Department, Professor Emeritus David Keightley. The construction of this library marks a milestone for East Asian studies not only on the Berkeley campus but in the United States. It is the first purpose-built, free-standing East Asian library ever to be built in this country. By building it, Berkeley has declared in the strongest terms its belief that the study of China, Japan, and Korea will be increasingly important in the years to come. This will not go unnoticed in the wider academic community.
The EAL has nearly 900,000 volumes, including many rare imprints and other treasures. Its Japanese collection is the largest in the United States outside the Library of Congress, and the Chinese collection is surpassed by only a few other libraries. In addition, the holdings of the Center for Chinese Studies Library, which will be incorporated into the new EAL, are among the best in the world on twentieth-century China. This great collection will be housed in a great building. The architects, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, whose Neuro-sciences Research Institute in La Jolla and Museum of American Folk Art in New York City received many awards, were able to work within the strict guidelines laid down by the campus to produce a striking structure. The south façade, which faces Doe Library across Memorial Glade, is almost entirely covered by a monumental bronze screen, and there are similar screens on the eastern and western facades. They allow filtered natural light to enter the top three floors of the library, and make the building glow like an enormous lantern at night.
Inside, light that enters indirectly through a great skylight illuminates every floor thanks to a suspended staircase and a very large light well that both extend vertically through the entire building. The reference room on the third floor and the periodical reading room on the fourth floor, both large rooms built without pillars, look directly out on the oaks of Observatory Hill through glass walls. The furniture throughout is of warm-toned cherry, and there are frequent accents in bronze, granite, and stainless steel. The elegant yet pow-erful interior spaces, and the beauty of the building as a whole, are an expres-sion of faith in the nobility of the life of the mind. The campus could, after all, have just built a warehouse for all those books.
HGA Colloquium Series: Making History
The History Graduate Association is sponsoring a series of colloquia involving department faculty and graduate students. A detailed schedule is posted on this website.
New Department Chair
The dean has recently announced the appointment of Professor Mary Elizabeth Berry as Chair of the Department for a three-year term beginning July 1, 2007. Professor Berry, a specialist in Japanese History, has been a member of the Department since 1978 and is currently Dean's Professor of East Asian History. She is a former President of the Asian Studies Association. She replaces David A. Hollinger, who finished his term in June. During the middle weeks of the summer, the Department's affairs are being handled by Summer Chair Andrew Barshay.
Retirements and Recruitment
Professors Gerald Feldman and Leon Litwack retired in June. Both joined the Department in the early 1960s. Our new appointee, Associate Professor Mark Peterson, a specialist in Early American History, has recently moved to Berkeley with his family from Iowa City, Iowa, where he had been teaching at the University of Iowa. We expect to announce shortly two appointments in Early Modern European History.
New Searches Authorized
During the 2007-08 academic year the Department expects to make new appointments in three fields: History of Science, Japanese History, and United States and the World. Complete descriptions of these searches will be posted on this website later in the summer.
Bolton Maps to the Bancroft Library
The Department's spectacular collection of maps produced in the late 1930s by the Works Progress Administration under the supervision of Professor Herbert Eugene Bolton have been moved to the Bancroft Library where they can be preserved and displayed on a rotating basis, and will remain available to the Department for any purpose at any time.