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To kick off the new year, the American Historical Association’s 129^th Annual Meeting will take place in New York City from 2-5 January 2015. We’re thrilled to ring in the new year with 5000 historians in the city we are proud to call our US headquarters. As you finish packing your bags, we’ve put together an OUP guide to the conference, but make sure to leave room in your suitcase. We hope to meet you at our booth (#504), where we’ll be offering discounts on our titles, complimentary copies of Oxford’s journals, and demonstrations of our online resources.

Retrospectives:

• James McPherson’s Battle Cry after a Quarter Century
  Saturday, 3 January 2015 from 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
  Murray Hill Suite B, New York Hilton
• Journeying into Evangelicalism: Twenty-Five Years of Traveling with Randall Balmer’s Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
  Monday, 5 January 2015 from 8:30 AM-10:30 AM
  Hudson Suite, New York Hilton, Fourth Floor

OUP-chaired panels:

• Buying and Selling History: Some Perspectives on the Marketplace
  AHA Session 38
  Friday, 2 January 2015 from 3:30 PM-5:30 PM
  Clinton Suite, New York Hilton, Second Floor
  Chaired by Tim Bent, Executive Editor for Trade History, OUP USA
• Media Training Workshop for Historians
  Monday, 5 January 2015 from 9:00 AM-10:30 AM
  Concourse E, New York Hilton, Concourse Level
  Chaired by Purdy, Director of Publicity, OUP USA

Special Events:

• The American Historical Association Award Ceremony
  Friday, 2 January 2015 from 7:30 PM-8:30 PM
  Metropolitan Ballroom West (Large), Sheraton New York, Second Floor

In honor of the awards ceremony, we’re celebrating some of the winners with a reading list:

• Kate Brown, winner of the Albert J. Beveridge Award for Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters, on life in a nuclear wasteland
• Jacob Darwin Hamblin, author of the Paul Birdsall award-winning Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism, on the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the decision to use chemical weapons
• Jacob S. Dorman, winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize for Chosen People: The Rise of American Black Israelite Religion, on Black Israelites and the meaning of Chanukah
• Deborah Cohen, winner of the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain, on Downton Abbey
• Trevor R. Getz, winner of the James Harvey Robinson Prize for Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History, on grappling with a liberal dilemma in writing Abina’s story

Meet the editors of two of Oxford’s online resources offering portraits of men and women whose lives have shaped American, British, and world history.

After Hours:

The American Historical Association has put together a wonderful guide to exploring the city. Inspired, OUP’s history team has pulled together some of our recommendations on entertainment and off-the-beaten track sites.

Theater:

“I enthusiastically recommend Sleep No More, the interactive, immersive reimagining of Macbeth. It’s set in the fictional McKittrick Hotel (in actuality a five-floor warehouse made into over 100 rooms) in the early 20^th century. Following Macbeth throughout his descent into madness was one of the most enthralling theatre experiences I’ve had. It’s heavy on the walking and stairs, but well worth seeing.”

— Kateri Woody, Marketing Associate, Higher Education Division

“You’ve probably heard the buzz about The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night-time. It’s all true. Phenomenal acting combined with innovations in set and production design make for a thrilling theatre experience.”

— Alana Podolsky, Assistant Marketing Manager for History, Academic/Trade Division

Museums:

“One of my favorite places in the city is the Morgan Library and Museum. It’s right down the road from OUP, and the library is absolutely beautiful. Also, admission is free on Friday evenings.”

— Alyssa O’Connell, Editorial Assistant, Academic/Trade Division

“MOMA’s exhibit on Matisse’ Cut-Outs could be one of the best exhibits I’ve seen in some time. In ill health, Matisse turned to cut-outs as his primary medium later in life. Like his paintings, Matisse masters the fine line between boldness and simplicity through shape and color. A video of the master at work shows his thoughtfulness as he designs the pieces. The wonderful exhibit draws together large and small-scale works, from his covers for jazz periodicals to his Swimming Pool, a piece he designed for his own dining room in lieu of visiting the beach, which had become too difficult. “

— Alana Podolsky, Assistant Marketing Manager for History, Academic/Trade Division

Off-the-beaten track:

“In a city of skyscrapers, I frequently find myself craving places on a scale I can relate to, pieces of New York that feel human-sized and a part of the city’s deeper history, akin to Back Bay in Boston and Society Hill in Philadelphia. It’s easiest to find these in Greenwich Village or in parts of Brooklyn, but there are other historic places hidden in plain sight in Manhattan.‎

“Near OUP on 36^th Street is a small enclave called Sniffen Court that I have walked past with great envy and intrigue for 18 years. A half-mews, it is a tiny, wrought iron gated community of 1860s homes that were converted from stables after the advent of the automobile. Today these ten mews homes are some of the Manhattan’s most exclusive real estate. One of the homes was listed for sale earlier this year for a mere $7.25 million. There’s artwork on the outside of several building in the mews, winged horses on one and colorful stage designs on the frieze of another, a reminder of a theater well off Broadway, the Sniffen Court Players. Sniffen Court features on the album cover of The Doors’ “Strange Days,” though whenever I peer in, it’s New York of the 19^th century that I am transported to, not 1967.

“I recently had an opportunity to visit another hidden spot with theater connections that seems out of place and time in Manhattan: Pomdander Walk. Larger than Sniffen Court, this full mews runs between 94^th and 95^th Street, right behind Symphony Space on the Upper West Side. Built for the theater community and intended to be temporary housing, this colorful 1920s era English Tudor village is an oasis from the streets around it. Originally it was inhabited by actors, musicians, and artistic types, but to own one of the full houses on the Walk today would require more than a starving artist’s (or assistant professor’s) income. It is a little piece of Downton Abbey in the heart of Manhattan, a place where residents have long made the city a little less alienating and created a special community.

“The Big Apple Tours during the AHA will be showcasing many architectural and historic sites around the streets of NYC, but part of the joy‎ of the city is just walking and making your own discoveries, architectural and otherwise.”

— Susan Ferber, Executive Editor for American and world history obsessed by architectural history and unusual real estate in New York, perhaps because she doesn’t own any or even live in the five boroughs

However you spend your time at AHA, we hope to see you at the OUP booth. Please stop by and say hi.

Featured image credit: View of NYC from Top of the Rock. Photo by Dschwen, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia commons

The post AHA 2015: Kicking off the new year with the American Historical Association and OUP appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Fifty years ago today, a most unlikely figure was called to speak at the Oxford Union Debating Society: Mr. Malcolm X. The Union, with its historic chamber modeled on the House of Commons, was the political training ground for the scions of the British establishment. Malcolm X, by contrast, had become a global icon of black militancy, with a reputation as a dangerous Black Muslim. The visit seemed something of an awkward pairing. Malcolm X encountered a hotel receptionist who tried to make him write his name in full in the guest book (she had never heard of him), sat through a bow tie silver service dinner ahead of the debate, and had to listen to a conservative debating opponent accuse him of being a racist on a par with the Prime Minister of South Africa. A closer look at the event, though, reveals the pairing of Malcolm X and the Oxford Union to be a good fit — and reveals much about the issues of race and rights then, and now.

From the perspective of the Oxford Union, a controversial speaker was an entirely good thing. The BBC covered Malcolm X’s costs and broadcast the debate. In late 1964, though, Malcolm X also spoke to student concerns about race equality. For many years, the British media’s (sympathetic) coverage of anti-racist protests in the American South and South Africa gave the impression that racial discrimination was chiefly to be found elsewhere. A bitter election which turned on anti-immigration sentiment in late 1964 in Smethwick, in the English midlands, with its infamous slogan, “If you want a n***** for you neighbour, vote Labour,” exposed the virulence of the race issue in Britain, too. Students followed this news abroad and at home. Some visited “racial hotspots” in person. Others joined demonstrations in solidarity. Still, on the surface, such issues seemed a world away from Oxford’s dreaming spires.

But some students in Oxford were also grappling with the question of race in their own institution. The Union President, Eric Antony Abrahams, was a Jamaican Rhodes Scholar, who had vowed to his sister in his first week that he would “fill the Union chamber with blacks.” Abrahams was part of a growing cohort of students from newly independent nations who studied in Britain, many of whom called for changes in curriculum and representation. Three days before Malcolm X arrived, Oxford students released a report showing that more than half of University landladies in the city refused to accept students of color. The University had an official policy of non-discrimination, but the fact that many landladies turned down black applicants in practice had been a running sore for years. The report, and Malcolm X’s visit, brought the matter to public attention. Student activism ultimately forced a change in practice, part of a nationwide series of protests against the unofficial color-bar in many British lodgings. At a time when Ferguson is rightly at the forefront of the news, events in Oxford in 1964 remind us that atrocities elsewhere should serve as a prompt to address, rather than a reason to ignore, questions of rights and representation nearer to home.

For Malcolm X, coming to Oxford was an exciting challenge. He loved pitting his wits against the brightest and the best. As chance would have it, as Prisoner 22843 in the Norfolk Penal Colony in Massachusetts, he may well have debated against a visiting team from Oxford. More germane, though, was Malcolm’s desire in what turned out to be the final year of his life to place the black freedom struggle in America within the global context of human rights. He had spent the better part of 1964 in the Middle East and Africa. In each stop along his dizzying itinerary of states, he attempted to build support for international opposition to racial discrimination in America. Malcolm’s visits to Europe in late 1964 were no different. But it was Oxford that afforded him the opportunity to broadcast his views before his widest single audience yet. Citing the recent murders of civil rights activists in Mississippi, Malcolm X told his audience: “In that country, where I am from, still our lives are not worth two cents.”

At a time when cities across the United States have recently braced themselves against the threat of rebellion in the aftermath of the acquittal of Michael Brown’s killer, it is hard not to conclude that for many African Americans, Malcolm’s words at Oxford continue to haunt the nation. Indeed, by placing the civil rights movement in broad relief internationally, Malcolm sought to link the fate of African Americans with West Indians, Pakistanis, West Africans, Indians, and others, seeking their own justice in the capitals and banlieus of Europe. Emphasizing the independence of this new emergent world both within and outside of the confines of Europe, Malcolm hoped that the “time of revolution” his audience was living in would in part be defined by a broader sense of what it meant to be human. There could no longer be distinctions between “black” and “white” deaths — despite his condemnation of the media for continuing to indulge such distinctions.

The post How Malcolm X’s visit to the Oxford Union is relevant today appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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