History

The Venetian Regulation of the Terraferma: Communal Government and Charity in Renaissance

These research findings from a study of the mechanisms of Venetian expansion during the Renaissance will be the final chapter of a book manuscript on charity and community in the Renaissance Treviso.

Sponsor: Oklahoma Humanities Council

PI: David D’Andrea

Law Enforcement and Social Change in Late Ming Rural Communities

This research studies the dynamic interaction between law enforcement and social change in rural communities during the last century of the Ming Dynasty. The research will specifically focus on how local magistrates strove to build local society in accordance with the dynastic law codes in times of drastic social change and in what ways did the new social elements affect law enforcement in local villages.

Sponsor: American Council of Learned Societies

PI: Younglin Jiang

Manifesting the Mandate of Heaven: The Great Ming Code as a Cosmological Instrument for Transforming the Realm

This study will research a rare book at the Beijing National Library, which will lead to the completion of a book-length research study of the great Ming Code.

Sponsor: Oklahoma Humanities Council

PI: Younglin Jiang

The History of Finland with Emphasis on the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

This work will survey Finland’s past with an emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finland’s past offers three special perspectives: since prehistoric times Finland has occupied the political, cultural, religious and economic borderlands between eastern and western Europe; in spite of its geographically periperal poition, the country has found itself in the mainstream of the developments that have created modern Europe; and although a small country, Finland has made important contributions to European and world civilization ranging from the Helsinki Accords on human rights to the invention of the mobile telephone.

Sponsor: Oklahoma Humanities Council

PI: Jason Lavery

The Economic Decline of Jordan in the Middle Ages as Part of the Decline of the Greater Syria Under Mamluk Administration

The economic decline of Jordan in the middle ages must be understood as part of the larger atmosphere of political, financial, social and environmental decline of Greater Syria under Mamluk administration during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The archaeological survey of northern Jordan is part of a larger study on Mamluk agricultural policies in the country: their successes in the fourteenth century and apparent failure by the fifteenth century. The oft-repeated whole-scale abandonment of this region after the plague of the 1340s is far from proven. It remains to be determined to what degree Jordan really was abandoned by the Mamluk authorities and subsequently depopulated and what factors accounted for this.

Sponsor: Oklahoma Humanities Council

PI: Bethany Walker

From Field of Dreams to Stereotypical Screens: Projections of Race in Hollywood Careers and Films of Jim Thorp, Duke Kahanamoku, Paul Roveson, and Johnny Weissmuller

This research focuses on the Hollywood careers of Jim Thorpe, Duke Kahanamoku, Paul Robenson, and Johnny Weissmuller as a window to contradictory and changing ideas about race and race relations in American popular culture. The sport and film careers of these four athletes span the first half of the twentieth century and thus provide insight into the role of sport and film in Twentieth Century American social history.

Sponsor: Oklahoma Humanities Council

PI: Michael Willard