Department of History 2020 Mini Celebration

Descriptive Transcript

[A dark blue slide bearing the Brandeis seal reads: Brandeis University, Department of History, Celebrating the Class of 2020.

The following slide shows the Brandeis seal to the right, and to left reads:

Michael Willrich is shown before an image of the Mandel Center for Humanities.]

Michael Willrich: Hi everybody, greetings. I'm Michael Willrich. I'm chair of the History Department here at Brandeis. Can we do one thing? Folks, I'm gonna put you on gallery view because I want to see as many faces as I can. If the panelists, the graduates, and the faculty could start their videos if they feel like it, if you'd like to be seen. It's great for us to be able to see you and for you all to be able to see each other and if you can leave your microphones set on mute just so we don't all get overwhelmed with all of the ambient noise in our lives. I'm right now about 20 feet from a construction site and it's not on the Brandeis campus. It's great to see you all.

Greetings to the Class of 2020 and greetings to the families and loved ones and friends of the graduates. I'm very sorry that historic events have prevented us from being able to gather in person today, but it warms my heart to see so many of your faces, and thank you for making this actually one of the best-attended history graduation exercises of all time. There are certain things that Zoom and this kind of virtual graduation does make possible. So I want to start by introducing the faculty. As I do so, each of them should be sort of spotlit for a moment so you can see them. Starting with Professor Gregory Childs, he's a Professor of Latin American History.

[Gregory Childs is shown before a yellow wall where some paintings hang.]

Gregory Childs: Hello graduates, family, friends, Congratulations. Know this is an unfortunate way for us to have to come together but still a special day, a rewarding day. I hope you all enjoy it for the afternoon and beyond.

[Michael is shown.]

Michael: All right thanks, Greg. Next, I'd like to introduce Professor Abby Cooper.

[Abby Cooper is shown in an office, and waves to the camera.]

Michael: Abby Cooper teaches U.S. History, Slavery and Emancipation, African American History and American Religious History as well.

[Yuri Doolan is shown before a white wall.]

Michael: Next, Professor Yuri Doolan. That's great to see the faces. Professor Doolan teaches Asian American History and has a joint appointment in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

[Gregory Freeze is shown before a white wall.]

Michael: Next, I'd like to introduce Professor Gregory Freeze. Professor Freeze teaches Modern Russian and German History as well as the History of Religion.

[Michael is shown.]

Michael: Next I believe our next faculty members are unable to be present today but Professor Xing Hang teaches and researches in the field of East Asian History, particularly Early Modern China. Professor Mark Hulliung, not yet actually.

[Paul Jankowski is shown before a white wall and a 19th-century style painting. He waves.]

Michael: So I guess Professor Hulliung is not present today but he is a Professor of American and European Intellectual History and here we have Professor Paul Jankowski who teaches modern European History and is our Director of Graduate Studies, so you'll be seeing Paul again in a moment.

[William Kapelle is shown before a yellow wall and wooden furniture, and waves.]

Michael: Professor William Kapelle. Professor Kapelle is a Professor of Roman and Medieval History and we'll be hearing from Bill a little bit later.

[David Katz is shown before a blue wall and white bookshelf, he waves.]

Michael: Professor David Katz. Professor Katz is an expert on the History of Ideas. He is the chair of the History of Ideas Program here at Brandeis and his field of specialization is Early Modern England.

[Alice Kelikian is shown before a wall covered in bookshelves.]

Michael: Professor Alice Kelikian. Professor Kelikian teaches Modern European History, and she's also Chair of The Film Television and Interactive Media Program here at Brandeis.

[Wangui Muigai is shown before a white wall.]

Michael: Professor Wangui Muigai. Professor Muigai teaches The History of Science and Medicine as well as African American History.

[Hannah Weiss Muller is shown before a yellow wall.]

Michael: Professor Hannah Weiss Muller. Professor Muller teaches Britain and The British Empire and I just want to tell you the exciting news that Hannah has just been awarded tenure at Brandeis which is a very exciting achievement and great for all of us. She has also received The Michael L. Walzer Award for Teaching Excellence.

[Amy Singer is shown before a green wall and bookshelf.]

Michael: Professor Amy Singer. Professor Singer teaches Ottoman and Turkish History.

Professor Naghmeh Sohrabi could not be here today.

[Michael is shown.]

Michael: Professor Sohrabi teaches Modern Middle Eastern History with a specialization in Iran.

[Govind Sreenivasan is shown waving excitedly from his office.]

Michael: Professor Govind Sreenivasan. Professor Sreenivasan teaches Early Modern European History as well as World History and he's our undergraduate advising head so you'll be hearing from him again in a few minutes.

[Leah Wright Rigueur is shown before a white wall in a bright room.]

Michael: Professor Leah Wright Rigueur. Professor Wright Rigueur teaches U.S. Political History and African American History in the modern period, 20th century primarily.

I'd also like to introduce our incredibly dedicated and skilled administrative staff who many of the graduates have gotten to know personally over the years.

[Martha Cronin is shown before a yellow wall.]

Michael: Martha Cronin. There is Martha who is our Finance and Media specialist.

[Dona DeLorenzo is shown before a yellow wall and wooden breakfront.]

Michael: And Dona DeLorenzo, who is our senior academic administrator and the two of them have done a great deal to make this happen today.

[Michael is shown.]

Michael: Okay, so I guess just back to me, Eli. So to the parents, families, and loved ones of our graduates, our message today to you is simple. Thank you for supporting these talented young people as they have pursued their dreams at Brandeis and thank you for the trust that you have placed in us as teachers and mentors. To the Class of 2020, we all want to thank you for your passion for history and for your engagement with the present and for giving us the opportunity to work with you for the past four years. It's been both an honor and a pleasure for all of us and now I want to hand things off to Professor Paul Jankowski, our Director of Graduate Studies who'll announce the graduate degrees in history. Paul.

[Paul is shown.]

Paul: Okay thank you, Michael and good afternoon. Welcome. Every year the history graduate program welcomes five PhD students and several MA students, and while they're here they all expand historical knowledge. Not just their own but potentially that of everyone by the original research they undertake and the original contributions they make, and along the way they acquire the basis for careers in and out of the academic world. Today, we're honoring six of you for doing just that and a lot more. Five Ph. students and one master's and it gives me great pleasure to do so and to offer you the good wishes and the congratulations of the entire graduate program.

[Bailey Smith is shown wearing headphones before a white wall and wooden breakfront.]

Paul: I think now, Eli, I'm going to go through the six of you being so honored today beginning with the master's graduate, Bailey Smith. Here we are, and among other accomplishments this year, he wrote a master's thesis entitled, "No Lost Cause: A Pacifist Activism in Munich, 1915 to 1933." So congratulations Bailey, and I think now we will move on to the five PhD recipients beginning with Sean Beebe.

[Sean Beebe is shown before a white wall.]

Paul: Here we are, who I congratulate and whose dissertation I was pleased to have something to do with, and it was entitled, "Colonialism to Cooperation: "France, Mauritania and Senegal in 1960 to 1980." Congratulations Sean.

[Cassandra Berman is shown before a white wall where a few paintings hang.]

Paul: And next to Cassandra Berman for a dissertation entitled, "Motherhood Writ Large: Transgressive Maternity and American Popular Print, 1768 to 1868." Many Congratulations, Cassandra, wherever you are.

[Patrick Brown is shown before a white wall and waves.]

Paul: Then Patrick Brown. Hello Patrick. Dissertation defended earlier this year entitled, "Revolution in The Working Class: Collaboration, Conflict and Identity in Nizhny Novgorod, 1917 to 1941." Congratulations and good wishes, Patrick.

[Avinash Singh is shown before a white wall ad painting.]

Paul: And then Avinash Singh for a PhD dissertation entitled, "Sovereign, State, Self: Sikhs and the Politics of Religion in 20th century India." And we're looking forward to hearing more from Dr. Singh in very, very shortly but, for now, congratulations.

[Philip Wright is shown in a room with wooden panels walls, where a bike hangs on the wall behind him.]

Paul: And finally, Philip Wight for a dissertation titled, "Arctic Artery: The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and the World It Made." So many congratulations. Let me just say, before I hand this over to Avinash Singh that that is five PhD dissertations and four continents which I think is not bad, not bad at all. So all the best to all of you, of course, from me and all of us. I think now we will ask Avinash to speak on behalf of the PhD students and graduate students.

[Avinash is shown.]

Avinash: Good afternoon everyone and warm congratulations to the Class of 2020. It is my privilege to be the graduate student speaker today. In Greek narratives sons, and occasionally daughters, triumph over fathers, humankind triumphs over gods and the individual triumphs over society. In the Indian tradition, the hero submits to father, society and tradition and the ultimate scholar is the beautiful, filial-minded elephant-headed God Ganesh. Where I come from these gods walk in history. They're living, breathing, scheming alongside us but a rock, a tree, a field, a forest and even a book can be God. The sacred and the profane exist together. It is an enduring continuum, some would say conundrum, of knowledge. Those who are most knowledgeable commit the worst crimes, and that ignorance is sometimes a lack of learning but it is also a willed blindness. Perhaps then, it is no surprise that the Sanskrit word itihāsa that corresponds to history is not history as we understand it but rather an account of life as it was, is and always will be.

When I spent hours in the musty Indian archives telling my parents I sought to uncover the truth of our past, my wise mother pointed out, quoting tradition, "The archives are not the truth. They are the whispers of what truth could be." In one such archive resides a letter from an Indian soldier fighting in France during World War One. Writing to his mother in the summer of 1915 he says, "As a man climbs the plum tree and shakes down the plums so that they fall in line heaps, so our men here fallen. They too are the children of mothers." My grand uncle was shot and injured in the same battlefield in World War One. As a reward, the British put the war heroes' brothers, my grandfather, through law school. The lawyer then founded an organization and trust for the educational goals in 1928 in Punjab, my home state, a region known for its deep rooted machismo and patriarchy and those schools stand to this day.

Two decades later in 1947, India was partitioned. My father, aged eight, escaped the mayhem by crawling through the sewer outside his home and my mother, aged 11, was hidden under a seat as our family fled on a train that was attacked repeatedly by mobs. I became an adult in the crucible of violent years. The late '80s and early '90s in my home state of Punjab are marked by militant insurgency and in turn government oppression. When I moved to San Diego in 2000, it felt like home. Perhaps because it was warm, perhaps because it had been home to the first Sikh immigrants to the U.S. or perhaps because I was identified as just another Mexican. But that also changed after September 11, 2001 when turbaned bearded Sikhs became the target of racist attacks. My story, my parents' story, my grandparents' story, India, Britain, Europe and America, your story, your parents' story, your grandparents' stories, all of these intertwined with the histories of our nations. We carry out the past within ourselves, a history that serves as a foundation for how we envision our future. I turned to the study of history to understand some of what makes us who we are.

Living in and living away from India and the United States has given me perspective. I do not pretend to have infallible insight into each country but the movement of human beings across the world is not simply about profit and loss or about contagion and protection. Unseen, unfortunate and unpredictable things happen in our world but human beings connect, adapt and help each other. The discipline of history is also about a disciplined approach to the past. It is about facing the uncomfortable truths of our own complicity, collusion and commitment to the schematics of power. And yet it is also an account of all that human beings can get beyond. History is neither the rebellion of the Greek youth nor the blind obedience of the good Indian son. It is storytelling at its best, a narrative that will at some point allow us faith in the human conversation. Class of 2020, I hope you continue your conversations with the past and the present and I wish you the very best for the future. Thank you.

[Michael is shown.]

Michael: Thank you, Dr. Singh for that terrific, terrific speech. We now will have a brief musical interlude, a singing of the Alma Mater by the Brandeis Chamber Singers.

[Opens to a sweeping view on the Louis Brandeis statue with a springtime campus in foreground. The Brandeis Chamber Singers can be heard singing, “To thee, Alma Mater.”

Singing continues, but the video transitions to Chamber Singers on Zoom. There are 22 frames of students in headphones singing from home, set in three rows. Shot focuses on center student before zooming out to include all of them.

Singing:

“We'll always be true.
All hail to thy standard
the white and the blue.”

Transitions to montage of Brandeis campus shots, including shot of stone Brandeis University sign with red flowers in foreground, a drone shot of Louis Brandeis statue and trees, a sweeping view of the Shapiro Campus Center from across the Great Lawn, aerial views of the Shapiro Science Complex with the sports fields and Waltham appearing behind, and a low shot over the grass walking across Chapels Field.

Transitions back to Chamber Singers grid.

Music continues.

Singing:

“Proclaiming thy future,
recalling thy past
our hopes spring from
mem'ries eternally cast.
With sorrows we'll leave thee,
new worlds to create.
May deeds of thy children
make thee forever great.
May deeds of thy children
make thee forever great.”

Fades to black.

Michael is shown.]

Michael: Back to me, I think, Eli. Now I'd like to turn things over to Professor Govind Sreenivasan our director, our undergraduate advising head, who will announce the undergraduate degrees in history for the Class of 2020. Govind.

[Govind is shown.]

Govind Sreenivasan: Thank you very much, Michael. As undergraduate advising head, it really is a great privilege to be able to read the names of those Brandeis students graduating this year in history, and like all of my colleagues, I'm delighted that so many of you are able to be here this afternoon. Just three quick remarks before I begin. We are going to be spotlighting individual seniors as I read the names. Since it's our very proud Brandeis tradition, however, that many of our students have completed additional majors in other departments, some of the names that I read are unable to be here, and in those cases I believe that I, myself, will end up being spotlit and I just want to mention that this is a quirk of the software rather than an unforgivable act of professorial self indulgence.

Second of all, I would just like to ask that you remember to keep your microphones muted during the reading of the names to keep any ambient noise to a minimum, but please do feel free to wave to us all.

And then thirdly, I'm going to be reading names, majors and honors, and in this last respect I should clarify that Phi Alpha Theta, to which many of our seniors have been elected this year, is the National Honor Society for students in History.

And so without any further ado then, this year's graduates of Brandeis in History;

[Tucker Blair Ahlers is shown before a white wall and map of the world and waves.]

[Govind is shown.]
[Wise is shown before an ornate tapestry and waves.]
[Govind is shown.]
[Sarah E. Ernst is shown before a green wall and a shelf where figures stand. Sarah waves and smiles brightly.]

[Trevor J. Filseth is shown before a white wall and waves.]

[Govind is shown.]
[Skyler Morse Gelinas is shown before a white wall and waves.]
[Govind is shown.]
[Sarah Madison Humphries is shown before a gray wall and waves.]

[Maxwell Wye Hunsinger is shown before a blue wall and a covered window.]

[Govind is shown.]
[Renee Moira Korgood is shown before a blue wall and a poster that reads: LOVE many times in a graffiti-style font in many colors. Renee waves.]
[Caroline Elgo Kriesen is shown before a yellow wall where a painting of lilies hangs and waves.]
[Govind is shown.]
[Jordan Finley Mudd is shown in a living room with three family members, who wave or clap.]
[Govind is shown.]
[Brandon Kyle Musto is shown before windows and waves.]
[Samuel Ninchuck is shown before a blue wall and a poster of a golden Buddha and waves.]
[William Edward Peltier is shown before French doors wearing a graduation cap and gown and sunglasses. William waves.]
[Govind is shown.]
[Lucia Wright Pugh-Sellers is shown in a room with white walls and waves. Another person peeks out from the right side of the frame and waves before going back out of the frame.]

[Lucia's father comes into view, clapping, which makes Lucia laugh.

Melanie Rush is shown before a blue wall covered in bookshelves.]

[Thomas John Sand is shown before a white wall and waves.]
[Madeline Elizabeth Silberman is shown before a white wall and a painting of birds perched on a tree.]
[Jacob Aron Silverman is shown before a blue wall covered in posters.]
[Govind is shown.]
[Ferrell Fernando Tanuwidjaja is shown before a close of image or grass covered in morning dew and waves.]

[Judah Michael Weinerman is shown before a white wall and an oven and waves.]

[Samuel Dunham Zarov is shown before a white wall and shelf and waves.]
[Govind is shown.]
Congratulations to each and every one of you and I would now like to introduce our undergraduate mini-celebration speaker Melanie Rush. Thank you all again.

[Melanie is shown.]

Melanie Rush: Hi everyone and thank you all for attending this History Department Celebration. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Melanie. I'm originally from St. Louis, Missouri and I've spent the past four years at Brandeis studying History, Politics and Legal Studies, and joining supercool clubs like Mock Trial and Quiz Bowl. For the next few minutes though, the most important thing you need to know about me is that I am a huge history nerd except I'm not very good with remembering individual dates from history. And what day was the Equal Rights Amendment introduced in Congress for the first time? I don't know. What day was Paul Revere's famous ride? I don't know. What day did we all actually graduate college? I don't know. Maybe some of that makes me unqualified to graduate from Brandeis with a Degree in History, but I would argue the opposite.

The history that I am interested in and the history that Brandeis has taught me is not about collecting data points in history or memorizing random facts. History, to me at least, is about making an argument, telling a story. Of course, these stories should not be constructed out of thin air. The key to history is allowing archival material to guide us so that we can create narratives grounded in fact. In my mind, a good work of history must review the evidence and then construct the narrative with a clear point of view. That also happens to be why I love historiography. Historiography, the study of historical writing, is all about acknowledging the narratives, and arguments historians put forth are a product of their own time and life experiences. In this same way, my understanding of history has been shaped by my experiences at Brandeis over the last four years.

I spent a lot of time at Brandeis trying to understand what my relationship to social justice was. The History Department became an integral part of my answer. While there are a million different ways to define social justice, I have come to view it as the process of creating equity, where societal privilege and oppression have created undue inequity. At first glance, it might be unclear how history is a medium for that type of social change but upon further investigation, I think that's history's most essential role. It fulfills that role not simply by encouraging us to learn from the stories of our past but also, and more importantly, by training us both to question familiar stories and to be vigilant in recovering unfamiliar, forgotten, or suppressed stories.

I am passionate about history because I can use it as a tool to tell the stories of those who have been silenced. To raise the voices of people who have been erased from our collective narrative simply because of their identities. I can use history to flip the balance of privilege and oppression on its head. The History faculty taught me that. They provided me the language and skill to hunt for silences in the archives. Even when I was learning about the Haitian Revolution, early modern Europe, the American Progressive Era, or Chinese piratical societies, I was learning to use history as a tool to evaluate how the ignored, forgotten and oppressed wielded their own forms of power. But I can't give all the credit to this fantastic history faculty. While I learned a lot from my professors about the connection between history, activism and social change, my real journey with social justice came from the Brandeis student body. So I would also like to take a second to say thank you to my fellow students, who led by example and taught me what it means to utilize my education for a greater purpose.

By combining my fledgling passion for social justice with my long-held passion for history, which has existed since I was in second grade dressed up like Amelia Earhart for a presentation and continued in high school when I skipped school the day before the AP World exam so I could study for eight hours straight. Brandeis has finally made everything click. I've learned to turn what I love into what I believe in. I've learned to take the practice of history and create scholarship with a purpose. I've learned that with history, we can disseminate new narratives that push back against the historic power structure of a white supremacy. That's why I believe history is an incredible if somewhat unexpected medium for social justice. Thank you.

[Michael is shown in a bedroom with a keyboard to his left.]

Michael: Okay everybody, thank you so much Melanie. That was that was really outstanding. I decided to get rid of the Mandel Center for the Humanities behind me and show you where I'm at since so many of you are showing us where you are at. So I'd like to now invite Professor Bill Kapelle to close out our program with the homily, Bill.

[Bill Kappelle is shown.]

Bill Kapelle: Good afternoon. The last item on the agenda is the homily. From the start, they represented an attempt to end the mini ceremony on a positive note. That is a tall order, given the present circumstances and you can fill in the blanks based on your politics. The homily is always silly. It is the opposite of high form rhetoric. The topic begins very far from the subject that we are embarked upon today and it only converges at the end with a surprise. The topic today is no exception to that. It is imaginary animals, and I'm not talking about J.R. Rowlings, "Magnificent Beasts."

I have certain bad habits. When I left home some years ago, I very quickly stopped admitting where I came from which is Baldwin, Kansas because that truth led to bad jokes. Rather, I would answer that I come from South Douglas County and I would say that with the importance as if it were Paris, France. That led to fun. Subsequently, I lived in Texas and was alienated. In those days, I claimed I was a Communist. There was no truth to that at all, but it made conservatives mad. That was fun but sometimes dangerous. The first day I lived there, a woman claimed she was going to shoot me. About 20 years ago, another example of this occurred. I became subject to a strange delusion. I no longer was able to believe in Alces alces, that is, the common moose. Geography probably lay behind this delusion.

That Douglas County is on the edge of the High Plains and everyone out there knows all about the jackalope. The jackalope well, maybe you don't know, it's also called Frankenstein rabbit. It has the body of a jackrabbit and the antlers of an antelope or a deer. We know when it was created, in the 1930s by a taxidermist and his brother, who literally put one of these mythical creatures together, displayed it in a motel, a hotel actually, in Wyoming. The object, from their point of view, was fun but their product had legs, culturally speaking. Several generations of taxidermists have continued to supply the world with jackalopes. You can see them on postcards. You can find them in gift shops, including Cabela's supposedly. They have recently appeared in video games. There is one in which the boss is in fact a giant jackalope although I've not played it. Serious scholars look for the root of this mythical animal in the afflictions of rabbits but, of course, it's a waste of time. Westerners love jackalopes because it gives them the occasion to con people from other regions into believing that the jackalope exists, and that is fun.

Furthermore, fun of that sort is not some peculiarity of the American West. If you go to Germany, you can find the Wolpertinger. That is a mythical animal that has the body of a squirrel, the head of a rabbit, antlers, and wings. If you go to another region in Central Europe, you can find a chicken-like creature with antlers. You can buy its eggs in gift shops. They are garishly painted by local artists. Finally, last but not least, the Iranians have a mythical rabbit that has a single horn on its forehead, that's virtually a rabbit unicorn.

This sort of knowledge informed the background of my delusion on the subject of the moose. I became convinced that the moose was in fact an Eastern version of the jackalope. That insight may strike you as absurd, but it was perfectly reasonable from my perspective. I had spent plenty of time in the woods of the north and I had never actually seen one. The zoos of my youth had not displayed them. I had of course seen pictures of moose but pictures can be faked. This delusion was based on the presumption that Easterners had created this fictitious animal to trick naive Westerners of my sort. Once the delusion took hold I delighted if anyone was stupid enough to mention moose to embark upon a rant in which I explained the logical basis of my illusions. It was great fun.

It lasted until one spring day when I took my daughter to Northern New England to a deliver a paper. Since we were going into the magical kingdom of the fake moose, she was subjected on my part to a double-barrel version of my rant. I came in for a good deal of heat from a young woman who believed her eyes. We reached Central New Hampshire successfully and obtained our motel room. Once there, I stepped out into the parking lot and there stalking up the driveway was my personal moose. It was just as ugly as they actually are. It was tawdry; it looked at me through bloodshot eyes, it belched and then it stalked into the woods.

What has this story got to do with your graduation today? Well, the object. Obviously, you are finished and you are going to leave, at least metaphorically. I have given you an example of what you're not going to do in the rest of your life. You are going to use your intelligence and your knowledge to cherish the truth and to display it, not to hide it as I have just done in this homily. And what is the truth? You can fill in the blanks out of your politics. In the name of non-imaginary moose, I want to congratulate you. Thank you.

[Michael is shown.]

Michael: Okay everybody, thank you so much for being here today. We miss you all, and I hope you all are taking good care of yourselves. In closing, I want to remind you that President Liebowitz has made a big message to the community insisting that this is not the end of our celebrations for the Class of 2020. So all of us hope that we will see you back at Brandeis on the campus in person very, very soon. Until then, please take good care of yourselves and of each other. Good bye for now.

[A picture of the Louis D. Brandeis statue is shown. To the right in blue text reads: Congratulations to the Class of 2020 from the Faculty and Staff of the Department of History!]