Presenter Biographies
Tariq Omar Ali, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Professor Ali completed his dissertation titled "The Envelope of Global Trade: Political Economy and Intellectual History of Jute in the Bengal Delta, the 1850s to the 1950s" at Harvard University in August 2012. In his dissertation and current manuscript project, Tariq explores how the Bengal delta's integration into global circuits of commodity and capital shaped local economic, political and intellectual histories as well as how economic lives, social and cultural formations, and political processes in the delta were informed and influenced by the cultivation and trade of jute.
Marcello Flores, Professor of History at the University of Siena and director of the European Master in Human Rights and Genocide Studies at his university. He is the author of 9 award winning monographs, including: L'immagine dell'Urss. L'occidente e la Russia di Stalin (il Saggiatore, 1990) (The image of the USSR. The West and Stalin's Russia).
Daniel Gilbert, Assistant Professor, School of Employment and Labor Relations at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Professor GIlbert is a labor and cultural historian of the modern United States. He is especially interested in the labor histories of workers in the culture industries, and the ways in which working people have shaped forms of cultural representation. His first book, Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency (University of Massachusetts Press), was published in 2013. Along with his ongoing research on sports, Dan is working on a new project about the cultural history of public sector labor.
Jessica Graham, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California at San Diego. Her current book manuscript, Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Racial Inclusion as a Strategy of the U.S. and Brazilian States, 1930-45, assesses Brazil and the United States during the Great Depression and World War II.
Jessica Greenberg, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford University Press, 2014). Her research interests are in the anthropology of democracy, legal anthropology, postsocialism, youth, social movements, and revolution. She was awarded a 2016-2017 LAS Study in a Second Discipline, Law.
Erik McDuffie, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include the African diaspora, black radicalism, black feminism, black queer theory, and the Midwest. He is the author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Duke University Press, 2011). He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and an American Council for Learned Societies fellowship in support of his new book, tentatively titled Garveyism in the Diasporic Midwest: The American Heartland and Global Black Freedom, 1920-80.
Maple Razsa, Associate Professor of Global Studies at Colby College, Professor Rasza is the author of “Bastards of Utopia:” The Radical Imaginary from the fall of Socialism to the Occupy Movement (Indiana University Press, 2014); He is also the creator of several documentary films central to the themes of our “Ten Days” project, and has agreed to introduce and screen his 2010 Bastards of Utopia (54 min) during one of the evenings of the Fall symposium.
Kristin Romberg Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Professor Romberg is is currently completing a monograph on the Russian Constructivist Aleksei Gan, provisionally entitled Constructivist Realism: Aesthetic Theory for an Embedded Modernism. For fall of 2017, she is contributing to the exhibition Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test.
Marcello Flores, Professor of History at the University of Siena and director of the European Master in Human Rights and Genocide Studies at his university. He is the author of 9 award winning monographs, including: L'immagine dell'Urss. L'occidente e la Russia di Stalin (il Saggiatore, 1990) (The image of the USSR. The West and Stalin's Russia).
Daniel Gilbert, Assistant Professor, School of Employment and Labor Relations at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Professor GIlbert is a labor and cultural historian of the modern United States. He is especially interested in the labor histories of workers in the culture industries, and the ways in which working people have shaped forms of cultural representation. His first book, Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency (University of Massachusetts Press), was published in 2013. Along with his ongoing research on sports, Dan is working on a new project about the cultural history of public sector labor.
Jessica Graham, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California at San Diego. Her current book manuscript, Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Racial Inclusion as a Strategy of the U.S. and Brazilian States, 1930-45, assesses Brazil and the United States during the Great Depression and World War II.
Jessica Greenberg, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford University Press, 2014). Her research interests are in the anthropology of democracy, legal anthropology, postsocialism, youth, social movements, and revolution. She was awarded a 2016-2017 LAS Study in a Second Discipline, Law.
Erik McDuffie, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include the African diaspora, black radicalism, black feminism, black queer theory, and the Midwest. He is the author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Duke University Press, 2011). He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and an American Council for Learned Societies fellowship in support of his new book, tentatively titled Garveyism in the Diasporic Midwest: The American Heartland and Global Black Freedom, 1920-80.
Maple Razsa, Associate Professor of Global Studies at Colby College, Professor Rasza is the author of “Bastards of Utopia:” The Radical Imaginary from the fall of Socialism to the Occupy Movement (Indiana University Press, 2014); He is also the creator of several documentary films central to the themes of our “Ten Days” project, and has agreed to introduce and screen his 2010 Bastards of Utopia (54 min) during one of the evenings of the Fall symposium.
Kristin Romberg Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Professor Romberg is is currently completing a monograph on the Russian Constructivist Aleksei Gan, provisionally entitled Constructivist Realism: Aesthetic Theory for an Embedded Modernism. For fall of 2017, she is contributing to the exhibition Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test.