CSSH Journal
@csshjournal
Comparative Studies in Society and History journal publishes multidisciplinary research, cultural and area studies, and innovative ventures in theory and methods.
Matt Tomlinson's review essay, "Heal Thyself," is available on FirstView! The essay explores four titles on the topics of #mindfulness, #ayahuasca use, #Spiritualism, and #shamanism. #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1017/S001...
We are excited to add a new book by Matthew Shutzer, winner of the 2022 Jack Goody Award, to our summer reading list! Find details about it, and other recent books by CSSH authors, here: sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/06...
We are thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2026 Jack Goody Award is Mandana Limbert, for her essay, "Homeland Is Where the Soul Resides: Travel Prayer, Passports, and Nation in the Western Indian Ocean” (67-2, 2025). Congratulations! sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/08...
Tobias Kelly's "Private Detectives: #Investigation, #Privacy and Personal Information in Britain, 1965–1975" examines how the work of private investigators "opens wider questions about who should be able to know what about whom." Find it on FirstView! #policing #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1017/S001...
A new essay by Lâle Can (@lalehjoon.bsky.social), "Creating an “Ottoman Siberia”: Punitive Mobility and Imperial Governance in the Late #Ottoman Empire," examines #exile as a mode of punishment. Find it on FirstView! #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Matei Candea & Paolo Heywood's new "What Was Antiformalism, and What Comes Next? On Coherence, Corrigibility and Collaboration" "aims to discern and sharpen the contours of a distinctive tonal shift in contemporary #anthropology —not toward practice, now, but toward “form.”" doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Esmond Chuah Meng Soh and Keng We Koh's "Stars, Kings, Pirates: The Nine Emperor Gods Festival and the Making of a Diasporic Religious Ecology in Postcolonial Southeast Asia" is out on FirstView! #OpenAccess #China doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Our summer issue is out! Articles in this issue are grouped under the rubrics: Imperial Translations; Palimpsestic Frontiers; Scales of Racialization; and Agrarian Revolutions. sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/07...
CSSH is thrilled to share our new feature, On the Playlist! We’ll bring you commentary on CSSH essays by the scholars who wrote them! First up: enjoy @why-winter.bsky.social's discussion of shipwrecks, colonial treasure, and the limitations of the national museum. sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/06...
For your second course, savor Daniel Hershenzon's "Technologies of Devotion and Religious Cooperation in the Mediterranean, 18th-20th Century," examining a surprising case of accommodation between Muslims and Christians at the sanctuary of Santa Rosalia, Sicily. sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/06...
CSSH offers a double dose of "Behind the Scenes" insights today! First, enjoy Reem Abou-El-Fadl's "Voices for Palestine in Egyptian Protest History," on why oral history was key to uncovering the salience of #Palestine to #Egypt’s 1970s student activists. sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/06...
Don't miss our latest Under the Rubric feature, "Performative Sovereignty: a conversation with Sam Wilby and Rao Mohsin Ali Noor about pyropolitics, animal sacrifice, and cosmic alignments across Indian and Ottoman polities." sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/05...
Congratulations to Alyssa Paredes, whose "Topographies of Fungibility:Reinventing the Japanese Taste for Sweetness in the Philippine Highlands" has just been awarded the the Belasco Prize for Scholarly Excellence by the Association for the Study of Food & Society! sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/04...
Nicholas McGee's "Two Journeys into #Diaspora: Qing and British Imperial Investigations in the Dutch East Indies and Australia" is out on FirstView! doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Vanessa Freije's ""The Word of the State against Ours”: The Right to Know and State Terror in 1970s #Mexico" "contends that the struggle over information and recognition became the central battlefield for negotiating state violence and opening in Mexico." #FirstView doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Alice Yao's "From Disorder to Distinction: #Lactose Intolerance and the #Racialization of Digestion in Postwar Medicine (1950–1980)" argues that despite a post-racial scientific agenda, "research on lactose digestion came to produce a normative discourse around whiteness." doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Now on FirstView, @why-winter.bsky.social's "Imperial Nostalgia as Patrimony: Shipwrecks and Treasures in the Colonial Museum" shows how two Spanish museum exhibitions "convert recovered colonial treasure into national patrimony and thereby stage imperial nostalgia." doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Don't miss our latest scholarship! Mina Khanlarzadeh's "Epistemic Translation of Modernity: Negotiating Science and Technology under Semi-Colonial Conditions" is out on FirstView! doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Our latest issue is here! The April edition features essays by Reem Abou-El-Fadl, @jbilik.bsky.social, Charlotte Ciavarella, Anwesha Ghosh, Daniel Hershenzon, Rao Mohsin Ali Noor, @tommasoaga.bsky.social, Sam Wilby, and Gabriel Young. sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/04...
As promised, we are excited to share @jeelyachar.bsky.social's response to the six CSSH authors who engaged with "the semicivilized" in last month's In Dialogue! Don't miss "More #Ottoman Heuristics – A Seventh Take on the Semicivilized." sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/04...
Our latest is Kabir Tambar's "A History of Clamor: Historical Time and the Late #Ottoman Surreal," examining "a scene of late Ottoman parliamentary politics characterized by verbal disruption, raucous applause, and strident indignation: in short, clamor." doi.org/10.1017/S001...
New scholarship on FirstView! Don't miss Nora Elizabeth Barakat's "Building an #Ottoman National Economy." doi.org/10.1017/S001...
Our new In Dialogue explores the relationship between CSSH, the #Ottoman Empire, and comparativism by soliciting reflections on @jeelyachar.bsky.social concept of "the semicivilized" by six CSSH authors. sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/03...
Out now on Firstview, "The 1582 Registro de Mulatos and the Politics of Labor and Race in Early Colonial Cusco, #Peru" by R. Alan Covey and Emilio Ramírez.
"If wonder keeps us attentive to the conceptual and ethical worlds our interlocutors articulated, context keeps us accountable to history," writes Arthur S. Zárate in our latest, "Between Discipline and Wonder: On Writing the Unseen into Islamic History." sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/02...