His entry begins:Much of the reading I have been doing lately has been in connection with my new Ph.D. seminar on "History and Biography"--the first doctoral level course I have ever taught. The course is designed to be thematic in nature, and to assist the students in the course, none of whom is a specialist in History of the United States, in thinking about their dissertations. I have thus outlined various forms of biography to cover in turn over the semester—political history, women’s history, autobiography, psychohistory, etc. as well as historical fiction. In the same way, I have tried to spread my wings a bit in deciding on what course readings to assign my students. It has been particularly fun for me to select various classics of the biographical genre and to read through them (primarily in French) in order to gain insights for class discussions.About After Camp, from the publisher:
Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars gets a bad rap for being composed of scandalous tales of the private lives of the Roman emperors. What struck me in Suetonieus’s portrait of Augustus was how simple and human he was, down to his wearing the ancient Roman equivalent of platform heels to look taller. (Admittedly, this was deflating the God Augustus had been made). I also appreciated...[read on]
This book illuminates various aspects of a central but unexplored area of American history: the midcentury Japanese American experience. A vast and ever-growing literature exists,Learn more about After Camp at the University of California Press website.first on the entry and settlement of Japanese immigrants in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, then on the experience of the immigrants and their American-born children during World War II. Yet the essential question, “What happened afterwards?” remains all but unanswered in historical literature. Excluded from the wartime economic boom and scarred psychologically by their wartime ordeal, the former camp inmates struggled to remake their lives in the years that followed. This volume consists of a series of case studies that shed light on various developments relating to Japanese Americans in the aftermath of their wartime confinement, including resettlement nationwide, the mental and physical readjustment of the former inmates, and their political engagement, most notably in concert with other racialized and ethnic minority groups.
Greg Robinson, a native of New York City, is associate professor of history at l'Université du Québec à Montréal. His books include A Tragedy of Democracy.
Writers Read: Greg Robinson (July 2009).
Writers Read: Greg Robinson.
--Marshal Zeringue
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