This page lists some of the activities our staff have gotten up to of late. Some are rather academic, and some are of the more fun variety.

2021

Anne McCants

• “Polygamy, the Commodification of Women, and Underdevelopment,” with Dan Seligson, Social Science History 46:1, 2022.
• “Coevolving Institutions and the Paradox of Informal Constraints,” with Dan Seligson, Journal of Institutional Economics 17:3, 2021: 359-378.
• “Review Essay: Who Is He Calling WEIRD?” Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World, Journal of Interdisciplinary History LI:4 (Autumn 2021).
• “Nature, Culture and Development.” Economic History Association, Tucson, AZ (October 2021).
• “The Cape Colony Project and Research in Economic History.” Cape of Good Hope Research Workshop I, Lund, Sweden (August 2021).
• “The Wealth of Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia (July 2021).
• “What Role for the ‘Virtues’ in an Economic History of Wellbeing?” Keynote Address: Business and Economic History Conference (remote, May 2021).
• “Institutional Budgets and Living Standards in Early Modern Amsterdam.” European Social Science History Conference, Leiden, Netherlands (March 2021).
• Panelist for OECD book launch, How Was Life? Vol. II. Paris, France (March 2021).
• “Polygamy, the Commodification of Women, and Underdevelopment.” MIT Undergraduate Economics Association (March 2021).
• “Nature, Culture and Development.” DONDENA Center for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policies, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy (February 2021).

Mary Erica Zimmer

• “Documenting Discoveries: Browsing the Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard.” Digital Breakthroughs in Teaching and Research Panel. Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (October 2021).
• “Building Digital Editions for and with Students.” With Mary Isbell and Christopher Ohge. Open Education Conference (October 2021).
• “Digital Humanities and Shakespeare Adaptations” Workshop. World Shakespeare Congress (July 2021).
• “Getting into Character: A Character Identification and Disambiguation Pipeline for the Gender Analysis Toolkit.” With Funing Yang and Ken Alba. Association for Computers in the Humanities (ACH) Conference (July 2021).
• “Word Vectors for the Thoughtful Humanist.” NEH Summer Institute (July 2021).
• Educational Technology Lead, “Teaching Melville: Herman Melville and the World of Whaling in the Digital Age.” NEH Summer Institute (June-July 2021).
• “‘What’s In a Name?’: Using Linked Data for Disambiguation in Browsing the Bookshops in Paul’s Cross Churchyard.” Linked Londons panel, with Janelle Jenstad, Diane Jakacki, Rachel Milio, and Lucas Simpson. CSDH-SCHN 2021: Making the Net Work / Les inscriptions sont OUVERTES pour CSDH-SCHN 2021 (May-June 2021).
• “Beyond Binaries: Refactoring Corpus Analysis with the Gender Analysis Toolkit.” With Ken Alba and Funing Yang. CSDH-SCHN 2021: Making the Net Work / Les inscriptions sont OUVERTES pour CSDH-SCHN 2021 (May-June 2021).
• “Retail at Scale?: Rookes, Rhetoric, and Reading Lists.” Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) Annual Meeting, Austin, TX (March 2021).

2020

Linda Rabieh

• “Gender, Education, and Enlightened Politics in Plato’s Laws.”  2020.  The American Political Science Review 114.3, 911-922.
• “Humane Warfare: An Ancient Perspective on Ethics in War.” MIT Ancient and Medieval Studies Colloquium (9 March 2020).

Anne McCants

• “Disease, Climate Shocks, and Wellbeing: a Long History of Social Response to Crisis.” edX course, with Ellan Spero (edX registration required).
• Interview, “After the Plague” (on NPR’s Planet Money, 9/16/20, 17:05-end).

• 2020 Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History (Economic History Association).

Mary Erica Zimmer

• “Navigating Textual Neighborhoods.” For Neighborhood, Community, and Place in Early Modern London. Fall 2020 Folger Institute Online Seminar, dir. Christopher Highley and Alan Farmer (October 2020).
• MIT DH Lab + MIT Libraries’ Enhancing Instruction at a Distance: Digital Tools for SHASS Teaching series, “Textual Corpus Analysis” session (August 2020).
• MIT DH Speaker Series, “What’s In a Name?” (on digital editions, with Luke Hollis [slides]) (May 2020).

2019

Anne McCants

• President, International Economic History Association, 2018(-21).
• “Polygamy, the Commodification of Women and Long-Run Economic Development.” Yale (April 2019).
• “Institutions Are Not the Rules of the Game.” Baltic Connections Conference, Helsinki, Finland (March 2019).
• “Social Entropy and Economic History.” Oxford University Seminar in Economic and Social History, Oxford, UK (November 2018).

Diana Henderson

• “Romancing King Lear: Hobson’s Choice, Life Goes On, and Beyond,” for a King Lear on Screen. Eds. Sarah Hatchuel, Nathalie Vienne-Guerin, and Victoria Bladen, Cambridge University Press (2019).

Mary Erica Zimmer

• “Presenting the Remix: Performance in The MIT Merchant Module.” Digitizing the Stage conference, hosted by the Bodleian Libraries and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Oxford, July 2019.
• Cuthbert, M. S., S. Risi, L. Tagliaferri, E. Zimmer, A. Abreu, I. Ademolu-Odeneye, D. Atia, R. Bansal, E. Boal, A. Castillejos, M. Duan, M. Gallegos, M. Garza, M. Kim, K. Murray, C. Pan, M. Songonuga, F. Tran, S. York, E. Caragay, A. Culbertson, H. Dacosta, A. Ismoldayeva, E. Itambo, K. Merrill, C. Minsky, I. Redlon, S. Sundaram, K. Xu, D. Yen, S. Zhi, N. Fountain, R. Ahmed. “Archival History of Computing at MIT, 1950–62.” Online resource. 2019. <https://comphist.digitalhumanitiesmit.org>.

2018

Anne McCants

• Host, World Economic History Congress at MIT (August 2018).
• “Global History and the History of Consumption: Congruence and Divergence,” in Global History and New Polycentric Approaches: Europe, Asia and the Americas in a World Network System (2018).
• “Q&A: Anne McCants on ‘Waves of Globalization,’ the 2018 World Economic History Congress at MIT” (Summer 2018).
• “Social Entropy and Economic History.” World Economic History Congress, Boston, MA (August 2018).
• “The Origins of Disorder: Why do Nations Fail to Thrive?” Economic and Business History Society, Jyväskylä, Finland.
• “Polygamy, Social Institutions and Long Run Economic Growth.” European Social Science History Conference, Belfast, UK.
• “Economic History and the Historians.” Invited panelist for The Future of Economic History at the Allied Social Science Association meeting, Philadelphia, PA.

• “Fellow Travelers or Frenemies: Socrates and the Eleatic Stranger on the Knower’s Need to Rule in Plato’s Statesman.” Northeast Political Science Association annual meeting, Montreal, Canada (November 2018).
• Panelist, Professors Professing Publicly: Embracing a Religious Identity in Academia, MIT (September 2018).

Diana Henderson

• “‘This Distracted Globe’: Broadcasting Copiousness and Commonality in the Global Shakespeare Video and Performance Archive.” Broadcast Your Shakespeare: Continuity and Change Across Media, ed. Stephen O’Neill. Bloomsbury Publishing [Arden], 2018: 67-85.

2017

Diana Henderson

• Scholar Social @ Central Square Theatre, following Bedlam’s What You Will (June 2016).
• “The Merchant in Venice: Shylock’s Unheimlich Return,” Shakespeare in Cross-Cultural Spaces, special issue of Multicultural Shakespeares. eds. Varsha Panjwani and Robert Sawyer 14.2 (2017): 165-180.
• “Reflections on Shakespeare 2016, Part One: Elsinore,” blog for the MIT Global Shakespeares Video & Performance Archive, March 31, 2017, at: http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/blog/2017/03/31/reflections-on-shakespeare-2016-part-one-elsinore/
• “Genre and Modernity in Hobson’s Choice and Life Goes On.” Litteraria Pragensia: Studies in Literature and Culture 26, no. 52, December 2016 [published March 2017], “Versions of King Lear.” Eds. Martin Procházka, Michael Neill and David Schalkwyk: 49-57.

Anne McCants

• “History and Social Science in an Age of Uncertainty.”  Keynote speaker, Southwestern Social Science Association annual meeting, Austin, TX (April 2017).
• “Growth, Inequality, and Well-Being: Lessons from Economic History for Uncertain Times.”  Burchard Scholars Lecture, MIT (March 2017).
• “Engaging History with the Beaver Press.”  MacVicar Day Symposium on Pushing Boundaries: A Legacy of Learning Through Exploration and Discovery (March 2017).

2016

Jolyon Bloomfield

• “Tools for Digital Learning.” xTalk (March 2016).
• “Predicting Primordial Black Hole Formation”, Astrophysics Lunch Seminar at Cornell University (January 2016).

Anne McCants

• In the news: http://shass.mit.edu/news/news-human-factor-series-historian-anne-mccants-innovation-and-economic-opportunity
• “Textile Meanings in a Global Capital: Fabric and Fashion in 18th c. Amsterdam,” forthcoming in Miki Sugiura, ed. Linking Cloth-Clothing Globally, Ochanomizu Publishing (forthcoming).
• “History and the Social Sciences: Past Imperfect; Future Promising” (Editor’s Introduction to the 40th Anniversary Issue), Social Science History, Vol. 40:4, 2016: 525-35.
• “Measuring Prosperity and Preserving Freedom: an Economics Education from Michael Polanyi,” Tradition and Discovery, Vol. 42:3, 2016: 25-34.  http://polanyisociety.org/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD42-3/TAD42-3-final-full-pdf.pdf

Linda Rabieh

• Co-leader, Concourse/History: IAP in ancient Rome.
• Infinite Mile Award

Diana Henderson

• “The Importance of Being Hawkes,” and “Star Wars and Shakespearean SpaceTime: On Mentors and Our Collective Future,” for “The Importance of Being Hawkes” Forum, Shakespeare Studies vol. 44 (2016): 17-21, 137-148.
• “Magic in the Chains: Othello, Omkara, and the materiality of gender across time and media.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment. Ed. Valerie Traub. Oxford UP, 2016: 673-693.
• “Tempestuous Transitions and Double Vision: from early to late modern gendered performances on stage, film, and in higher education.” Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies: Gender, Race, and Sexuality. Eds. Ania Loomba and Melissa Sanchez. Routledge, 2016: 59-71.
• “Pluralizing Performance.” Shakespeare in Our Time: Critical Perspectives; the Shakespeare Association of America Companion. Eds. Dympna Callaghan and Suzanne Gossett. Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016: 311-319.
• “Shakespeare Into Fiction.” The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare (print and online editions). Ed. Bruce Smith. Cambridge University Press. 2016: 1707-1715.

2015

Anne McCants

• “The liberal studies curriculum as the basis for an engineering education.” Engineering Studies: Journal of the International Network for Engineering Studies, (Special Issue: Liberal Studies in Engineering).
• “Historical Demography,” in the Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, edited by Hamish Scott, Oxford University Press.
• Public Lecture, Boston Museum of Fine Arts: “Town Dwellers and Market Sellers: Economy and Society in the Dutch Golden Age” in conjunction with Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer exhibition.
• “Making Global Consumers: The Social Reach of 18^th Century Trading Companies.”  Keynote speaker at VI Jornadas Uruguayas de Historia Económica, Montevideo, Uruguay.

Linda Rabieh

• “Leo Strauss on the Politics of Plato’s Republic.” In Companion to Leo Strauss’ Writings on Classical Political Thought. Brill Academic Publishers.
• “Humane Warfare: An Ancient Perspective on a Modern Dilemma.” In Search of Humanity. Lexington Books.
• “Ancient Political Philosophy and Ethics in War.” Invited lecture for the Charles Carroll Program, Department of Political Science, College of the Holy Cross.
• “Ancient Insights on Morality and War in the Age of Drones, Cyber Warfare, and Stateless Terrorism.” Invited lecture for the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas. Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin.
• Co-leader, Concourse/History: IAP in ancient Greece.

Elizabeth Vogel Taylor

• Faculty guest speaker, MIT KEYs Program, Keys for Empowering Youth.
• Keynote speaker at the CSIE UM 2015 Symposium, University of Michigan.
• Video host for Unit 5: Making Molecules, in Annenberg Learner’s Chemistry Modules. Produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Science Media Group.
• Faculty profile, in MIT’s The Tech: https://thetech.com/2011/04/26/taylor-v131-n22

Diana Henderson

• “Shadow Soldiers and Precarious Unions: the Legacies of Shakespeare’s History Play.” Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. 151 (2015), ed. Sabine Schuelting: 38-52.

Jolyon Bloomfield

• “Technological Advances in Physics Pedagogy”, MITx Significant Interest Group presentation, 5/15/2015
• “Formalism for Primordial Black Hole Formation in Spherical Symmetry”, Jolyon Bloomfield, Daniel Bulhosa and Stephen Face, 2015. http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.02071