Ideas

In celebration of the appointment of Maria Hsiuya Loh to the School of Historical Studies Faculty, Visitor (2021–22) and Research Associate (2022) Abbey Ellis explores how Loh's work reshapes traditional views of a great Renaissance artist and grafts new stems onto the legacy of art historical scholarship at the Institute.

The research of Brad Bolman, Founders' Circle Member in the School of Historical Studies, focuses on the history of knowledge about organisms since the nineteenth century. "I study how scientists and other interested parties come to know what an organism is, whether it’s a beagle, a rose, or a truffle," he explains.

Art historian Marilyn Aronberg Lavin describes how three busts attributed to Baroque artist Gianlorenzo Bernini shaped the career of her husband Irving Lavin, past Professor in the School of Historical Studies, and how she recently repatriated one of these artworks to Italy from her home at IAS.

Reflecting on preliminary results obtained from a seven-year HistoGenes project, Patrick J. Geary, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, describes how advances in the field of paleogenom­ics are not only revolutionizing the study of paleolithic hominids but are also allowing scholars to answer questions about much more recent history, previously inaccessible using traditional historical and archae­ological sources.

Few people are familiar with the small Austrian town of Braunau near Salzburg. It is here, at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, that Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889; in that home, he spent the first two months of his life.

The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan, Faculty (1956–74) in the School of Historical Studies, is the subject of a "clear-eyed, and compelling" biography written by Member (2009–10) and Director's Visitor (2011) Frank Costigliola.

For il manifesto, Valentina Porcheddu interviews Angelos Chaniotis, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, about the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens. 

Yve-Alain Bois, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, has published An Oblique Autobiography, a collection of essays and reminiscences, with no place press.

The role of reproductions in facilitating the study of the ancient Mediterranean has long been recognized at IAS. Upon his appointment as the Institute’s first professor of Greek epigraphy in 1935, Benjamin D. Meritt petitioned then-Director Abraham...

Verena Krebs is an award-winning medieval historian working on Christian Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. She draws on archaeology, art, and written sources for her scholarship. At IAS, Krebs will work on her second monograph, “Africa Collecting Europe: Patronage and Power in Christian Ethiopia, 1468–1530", which will tease out an untold story about the assertion of power in a pre-colonial African kingdom.