To help assure systematic exploration of Institute issues and themes, the EIHS involves a core group of Michigan History faculty who participate regularly in all of its seminars, colloquia, and other program activities. Other department and university faculty are encouraged, of course, to participate in as many Institute activities as their schedules allow. Departmental faculty can become Institute Affiliates by receiving a one-year Institute fellowship. Affiliation as a member of the Steering Committee is normally for two years.
Contingent on funding, the Institute also offers Residency Research Grants to scholars with distinguished records of scholarly achievement. Information concerning these grants may be obtained by enquire to eisenberginstitute@umich.edu.
Director (2009-2011)
Ron Suny’s intellectual interests have centered on the non-Russian nationalities of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, particularly those of the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia). The “national question” was an area of study that was woefully neglected for many decades until peoples of the periphery mobilized themselves in the Gorbachev years. His aim has been to consider the history of imperial Russia and the USSR without leaving out the non-Russian half of the population, to see how multinationality, processes of imperialism and nation-making shaped the state and society of that vast country. This in turn has led to work on the nature of empires and nations, studies in the historiography and methodology of studying social and cultural history, and a commitment to bridging the often-unbridgeable gap between the traditional concerns of historians and the methods and models of other social scientists.
Steering Committee
Christian de Pee, Assistant Professor of Chinese history, studying Tang-Song-Yuan China, representations of imperial power, text and writing, and archeology.
Matthew Lassiter, Associate Professor of US History, studying 20th century United States, urban/suburban, political, social, Southern, and popular culture
Farina Mir, Assistant Professor of Colonial and postcolonial South Asia; Islam in South Asia; History of the British Empire; Nationalism; Language and Society
