Event
Annenberg Seminar in History (Virtual)
Celebrating New Faculty Books: Kathy Peiss (Upenn), author of Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe (Oxford University Press), in conversation with Peter Holquist (UPenn)
Celebrating New Faculty Books: Kathy Peiss (Upenn), author of Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe (Oxford University Press), in conversation with Peter Holquist (UPenn)
4:30pm - 6:00pm | Virtual-- https://upenn.zoom.us/j/7391452355
Kathy Peiss is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at Penn, where she teaches courses on modern American cultural history and the history of American sexuality, women, and gender. Her research has examined the history of working women; working-class and interracial sexuality; leisure, style, and popular culture; the beauty industry in the U.S. and abroad; and libraries, information, and American cultural policy during World War II. She is particularly interested in the ways that culture shapes the everyday lives and popular beliefs of Americans across time. Peiss is the author of Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (1986); Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (1998); and Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (2011), as well as numerous edited volumes and journal articles.
Peter Holquist's teaching and research focus upon the history of Russia and modern Europe. He is the author of Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 (Harvard, 2002) and the founder and editor of the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. His current project, By Right of War, explores the emergence of the international law of war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Specifically, it analyzes the role of imperial Russia in codifying and extending these "laws and customs of war," and examines to what extent European militaries, and particularly the Russian army, observed these norms in practice.
“The Denazified Library. Banning books in occupied Germany”. Excerpt of her latest book, published in Lapham’s Quarterly, Jan. 2020
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/denazified-library
“Why the U.S. Sent Librarians Undercover to Gather Intelligence During World War II,” An excerpt of Kathy Peiss' book, published in Time Magazine,