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Maya Jasanoff

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Maya R. Jasanoff
Maya Jasanoff in 2012
Born (1974-10-12) October 12, 1974 (age 50)
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
EducationHarvard College

Cambridge University

Yale University
Occupation(s)Historian, author
EmployerHarvard University
Notable workEdge of Empire (2005)
Liberty's Exiles (2011)
TitleCoolidge Professor of History
Parents
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship
Windham–Campbell Literature Prize

Maya R. Jasanoff is an American academic who serves as Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University, where she focuses on the history of Britain and the British Empire.[1]

Early life

Jasanoff grew up in Ithaca, New York and comes from a family of academics. Her parents, Sheila and Jay Jasanoff, are both Harvard professors, and her brother Alan is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[2] She was educated at Harvard College before studying for a master's degree at Cambridge, where she worked with Christopher Bayly. She earned her PhD at Yale with Linda Colley, completing the thesis "French and British imperial collecting in Egypt and India, 1780–1820" (Yale, 2002).[3]

Career

Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard, Jasanoff was a fellow at the University of Michigan, through its Society of Fellows, after which she taught at the University of Virginia.[1]

Jasanoff has been announced as chair of the 2021 Booker Prize jury, the other judges being writer and editor Horatia Harrod, actor Natascha McElhone, novelist and professor Chigozie Obioma, and writer and former Archbishop Rowan Williams.[4]

In February 2022, Jasanoff was one of 38 Harvard faculty to sign a letter to the Harvard Crimson defending Professor John Comaroff, who had been found to have violated the university's sexual and professional conduct policies.[5] After students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Jasanoff was one of several signatories to say that she wished to retract her signature. In an e-mail, Jasanoff wrote, "I signed the letter without properly considering its impact on students and, obviously, without fuller information. This was a serious lapse in judgment and I apologize unreservedly for my mistake."[6]

Her guest essay in The New York Times on the day of the death of Elizabeth II in which she wrote that the Queen had "helped obscure a bloody history of decolonisation"[7] prompted a backlash on social media,[8] including from the paper's readers.[9]

Books

Edge of Empire

Jasanoff published her first book, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850, with Alfred A. Knopf in 2005 and received mostly favorable reviews. In the London Review of Books, UCLA history and political science professor Anthony Pagden called the work a "brilliant contribution" to the historical investigation of the complexities of empire;[10] in The Guardian, Richard Gott called it "a riveting and original book."[11] However, in The American Historical Review, University of Pennsylvania English professor Suvir Kaul said Jasanoff's history of "objects and individuals, no matter how lovingly recollected, do not add up to an argument that historians should think of empire as instantiating 'the essential humanity of successful international relationships'," and underestimate the "concerns of those peoples who were at the receiving end of imperial power, whether that power was exerted by Europeans or by the native elites who functioned increasingly at their command."[12] In The New York Times, Columbia University history professor Mark Mazower found "a high degree of wishful thinking" in Jasanoff's casting 18th- and early 19th-century empire as less asymmetrical domination and more "the kind of happy cross-cultural fusion that we dream about today".[13]

Liberty's Exiles

Jasanoff published Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World in 2011, also with Alfred A. Knopf.[14][15][16][17] The book describes the trajectories of the approximately 60,000 American Loyalists who fled the Thirteen Colonies to relocate to other parts of the British Empire; some 8,000 of those who elected to relocate were free black people, but 15,000 enslaved African-Americans were also forcibly moved when their Loyalist owners chose to go. Liberty's Exiles was widely and favorably reviewed.[18][19] In The New York Times, Thomas Bender called it a "richly informative account", "smart, deeply researched and elegantly written".[20]

The Dawn Watch

Jasanoff's 2017 book, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World,[21] published by Penguin Press[22] and in the UK by William Collins[23] centers on the life and times of novelist Joseph Conrad.[24] The Times lauded the book as the "Conrad for our time",[25] and The Spectator called her an "enviably gifted writer...her historian's eye can untie knots that might baffle the pure critic", noting that she "steers us securely and stylishly through those latitudes where Conrad witnessed the future scupper the past".[26] In the judgment of the Financial Times: "This is an unobtrusively skilful, subtle, clear-eyed book, beautifully narrated",[27] while the Literary Review observes: "Written with a novelist's flair for vivid detail and a scholar's attention to texts, The Dawn Watch is by any standard a major contribution to our understanding of Conrad and his time."[28] Reviewing the book in The Guardian, Patrick French began: "The Dawn Watch will win prizes, and if it doesn't, there is something wrong with the prizes."[29] In The Hindu, Sudipta Datta wrote that Jasanoff's approach to Conrad makes for a "remarkable retelling of Joseph Conrad's life and work and its resonance with the present dysfunctional world".[30] In The Guardian, William Dalrymple named the book to his list of best holiday reads of 2017.[31] According to the Wall Street Journal's reviewer, "The Dawn Watch is the most vivid and suggestive biography of Conrad ever written."[32] In The New York Times, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o applauded the book as "masterful". Thiong'o wrote that Jasanoff succeeded where "An Image of Africa: Racism in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness", Chinua Achebe's classic Conrad essay, had failed, specifically in bringing into clear relief "Conrad's ability to capture the hypocrisy of the 'civilizing mission' and the material interests that drove capitalist empires, crushing the human spirit". "The Dawn Watch", Thiong'o wrote, "will become a creative companion to all students of his work. It has made me want to re-establish connections with the Conrad whose written sentences once inspired in me the same joy as a musical phrase."[33]

As part of the project, Jasanoff blogged a journey on a cargo ship sailing from China to Europe.[34] She also published an essay in The New York Times describing the portion of her journey in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the piece drew criticism.[35] In a letter to the editor, Boston University professor Timothy Longman said the essay "reeks of condescension" and "continues the widespread practice of ignoring the voices of Congolese intellectuals, many of whom write about their homeland with nuance."[36]

The Dawn Watch was discussed on Andrew Marr's Start the Week program on November 6, 2017.[37] It was BBC Radio Four's Book of the Week.[38]

Awards

In 2005, Jasanoff won the Duff Cooper Prize for Edge of Empire.[39] She won both the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction[40] and 2012 George Washington Book Prize[41] for Liberty's Exiles. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013[42] and in 2017, she was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, valued at $165,000.[43]

Jasanoff won the 2018 Cundill History Prize valued at $75,000 for The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World.[44]

Bibliography

Books

  • Edge of empire: lives, culture, and conquest in the East, 1750–1850.
  • Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World.
  • The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World.

Essays and reporting

Critical studies and reviews of Jasanoff's work

The Dawn Watch

References

  1. ^ a b Pezza, Elizabeth C. (April 28, 2009). "15 Faculty Hot Shots: Maya Jasanoff". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  2. ^ "Maya Jasanoff Professor of History". History Department. Harvard University.
  3. ^ Colley, Linda. "Teaching". Linda Colley, Historian and author. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  4. ^ "The 2021 Booker Prize judges announced". The Booker Prizes. December 15, 2020. Retrieved December 16, 2020.
  5. ^ "38 Harvard Faculty Sign Open Letter Questioning Results of Misconduct Investigations into Prof. John Comaroff". www.thecrimson.com. The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved February 9, 2022.
  6. ^ "3 graduate students file sexual harassment suit against prominent Harvard anthropology professor". www.bostonglobe.com. The Boston Globe. Retrieved February 9, 2022.
  7. ^ Maya Jasanoff (September 8, 2022). "Mourn the Queen, Not Her Empire". The New York Times.
  8. ^ Camilla Turner (September 9, 2022). "New York Times under fire for article saying Queen 'helped obscure bloody history of decolonisation'". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  9. ^ Hugh Tomlinson (September 10, 2022). "'Repugnant' New York Times column by Maya Jasanoff raises ire". The Times – via The Australian.
  10. ^ Pagden, Anthony (May 11, 2006). "C is for Colonies". London Review of Books. pp. 30–31. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  11. ^ Gott, Richard (August 20, 2005). "The collectors". The Guardian. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  12. ^ "In This Issue". The American Historical Review. 112 (3): xiii–xv. June 1, 2007. doi:10.1086/ahr.112.3.xiii. ISSN 0002-8762.
  13. ^ Mazower, Mark (October 9, 2005). "Edge of Empire: Skirmishes of Empire". The New York Times. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  14. ^ Maier, Pauline (March 13, 2011). "Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles, on British Loyalists after the revolution". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  15. ^ Roberts, Andrew (February 12, 2011). "Liberty's Exiles by Maya Jasanoff: Review". The Daily Beast. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  16. ^ Piecuch, Jim (March 10, 2012). "Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (review)". Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. 109 (3): 475–477. doi:10.1353/khs.2011.0119. ISSN 2161-0355. S2CID 159627420.
  17. ^ Howe, Stephen (February 25, 2011). "Liberty's Exiles, by Maya Jasanoff". The Independent. Archived from the original on May 12, 2022. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  18. ^ Hunt, Tristram. "Liberty's Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire by Maya Jasanoff: review". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  19. ^ Wood, Gordon S. "Good Losers". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  20. ^ Bender, Thomas (April 29, 2011). "Book Review – Liberty's Exiles – by Maya Jasanoff". The New York Times. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  21. ^ "The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff". Kirkus Reviews. August 21, 2017. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
  22. ^ "Nonfiction Book Review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff. Penguin Press, $30 (400p) ISBN 978-1-59420-581-1". Publishers Weekly. June 26, 2017. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
  23. ^ "The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff – Hardcover". HarperCollins UK. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  24. ^ Lambert, Craig (2014). "Prescient fiction Joseph Conrad's Crystal Ball". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  25. ^ Carey, John (October 15, 2017). "Book review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff". The Times. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  26. ^ "How Joseph Conrad foresaw world trade and terrorism". The Spectator. October 14, 2017. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  27. ^ "The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff — new horizons". Financial Times. November 3, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
  28. ^ "John Gray – Homo Duplex". Literary Review. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
  29. ^ French, Patrick (November 3, 2017). "The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff – Joseph Conrad in world history". The Guardian. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  30. ^ Datta, Sudipta (November 4, 2017). "Darkness visible: review of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World". The Hindu. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  31. ^ Barnes, Julian; Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi; Hare, David; Lawson, Mark; Mishra, Pankaj; Monbiot, George; Perry, Sarah; Soueif, Ahdaf; Tóibín, Colm (July 8, 2017). "Best holiday reads 2017, picked by writers – part one". The Guardian. Retrieved September 18, 2017.
  32. ^ Gorra, Michael (November 10, 2017). "Review: Following in Joseph Conrad's Wake With The Dawn Watch". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
  33. ^ Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ wa (November 21, 2017). "The Contradictions of Joseph Conrad". The New York Times. Retrieved November 24, 2017.
  34. ^ Jasanoff, Maya (December 22, 2013). "Sailing the seas of global trade: From China to Europe on a cargo ship". Al Jazeera America. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  35. ^ Chutel, Lynsey. "It's time to stop using Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' as a guidebook for the Congo". Quartz. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  36. ^ Longman, Timothy (August 23, 2017). "The Complexity of Congo". The New York Times. Retrieved August 26, 2017.
  37. ^ "Start the Week – Next on – BBC Radio 4". BBC. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  38. ^ "The Dawn Watch, Book of the Week – BBC Radio 4". BBC. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
  39. ^ Brickhouse, Robert (March 3, 2006). "'Edge of Empire' wins Duff Cooper Prize". Inside UVA Online. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  40. ^ Hoffert, Barbara (March 8, 2012). "National Book Critics Circle: For Immediate Release: NBCC Award Winners for Publishing Year 2011". Critical Mass. Archived from the original on March 11, 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  41. ^ "George Washington Book Prize of $50,000 goes to Maya Jasanoff for Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World". Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. June 4, 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  42. ^ "Maya Jasanoff". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved September 11, 2017.
  43. ^ Mike Cummings (March 1, 2017). "Yale awards eight writers $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes". YaleNews. Retrieved April 28, 2017.
  44. ^ "Walking in Joseph Conrad's footsteps, Maya Jasanoff Wins 2018 Cundill History Prize". Newsroom. Retrieved November 16, 2018.
  45. ^ Online version is titled "Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and the art of ambivalence".
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