Visiting Speakers

Eli Cook is a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University. He receieved his PhD in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University in 2013, and his BA in History and Economics from Tel Aviv University in 2007. He is currently working on a book manuscript, under contract with Harvard University Press, titled The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Growth of American Capitalism.

Catherine Cymone Fourshey is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the International Studies Program at Susquehanna University. She received her B.A., M.A., Ph.D., and CPHIL from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her current research focuses on precolonial Tanzania, with special interests in the topics of agriculture, hospitality, migration, and the intersections of environment, economy, and politics. Her current book project is titled Strangers, Immigrants and the Established: Hospitality as State Building Mechanism in Southwest Tanzania 300–1900 CE.

Elizabeth Ann Danto, PhD, is professor of social work at Hunter College and at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her book Freud's Free Clinics - Psychoanalysis and Social Justice, 1918-1938 (Columbia University Press, 2005) was awarded the Gradiva Book Award and the Goethe Prize.

Carl Davila is a Professor of History at State University of New York at Brockport with a specialization in Arab History, Classical Islam, Arabic Language and Culture. His books and publications include Al-Āla: History, Society and Text (Forthcoming from Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden); "Elite Music and Dance," in Mapping the Medieval Mediterranean, ca. 300-1550: An Encyclopedia of Perspectives in Research, Amity Nichols Law, volume editor (Forthcoming from E.J. Brill, Leiden); "Teaching Said: Culture Discourse Meets Culture Critique," in Counterpoints: Edward Said's Legacy, May Telmissany and Stephanie Tara Schwartz, editors (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); "Fixing a Misbegotten Biography: Ziryab in the Mediterranean World." Al-Masâq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 12 (ii) 2009.

William Deringer is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his doctorate in the History of Science from Princeton University, where his research focused on the history of economic knowledge. From 2012 -'15, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University, before joining the MIT faculty in 2015.

Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. 

George Estreich is a writer and at-home dad living in western Oregon with his family. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.F.A. from Cornell. Estreich is the author of two books: Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body, a collection of poetry, and The Shape of the Eye, a book about raising his daughter Laura, who has Down syndrome.

Jeffrey Eugenides' first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published to acclaim in 1993. It has been translated into 34 languages and made into a feature film. In 2003, Jeffrey Eugenides received The Pulitzer Prize, the WELT-Literaturpreis of Germany, and the Great Lakes Book Award for his novel Middlesex (FSG, 2002; Picador, 2003). Middlesex was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, France’s Prix Medici, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Eugenides' third novel, The Marriage Plot  (FSG, 2011; Picador, 2012), received wide acclaim from critics. It was a New York Times Notable Book of 2011, a Library Journal Best Book of 2011, and a Salon Best Fiction of 2011. Eugenides' fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Best American Short Stories, The Gettysburg Review, and Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists.