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Brake, W.P. te

Brake, W.P. te

Wayne te Brake, born in Brooten, Minnesota, USA, in 1947. Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Professor of History at State University of New York, Purchase.

Fellow (1 September 2000 – 30 June 2001)

During my year at NIAS, I worked primarily on two large projects. In the fall, I focused my attention on laying the research foundations for a new book tentatively entitled “Contention and Change in Europe, 1750-1850”. This book will trace the transformation of contentious politics under the combined impact war and revolution in this tumultuous period and at the same time highlight the critical ways in which the political action of ordinary people – rooted in a wide variety of fragmented and essentially authoritarian political cultures in the old regime – shaped the more national and massively participatory politics of the modern era. Of the book’s seven chapters, I have drafted two and one-half.

In the spring semester, I increasingly turned my attention to the organisation of a international conference on “Accommodating Difference: The Politics of Cultural Pluralism in Europe”. I have been working on this collaborative project for more than two years now, and it first took shape when I convened a four-day workshop for the core participants in New York in the summer of 2000 in which we laid out our plans for the culminating conference. This year I worked hard to maintain the scholarly network, to see that the promised papers were written and distributed on time, and to recruit additional participants for the larger conference. Altogether 33 scholars – anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists and historians – from twelve countries discussed seventeen papers in six sessions spread over three days, 5-7 July, 2001.

In addition, during the fall, I revised three papers for publication, during the spring semester I gave lectures, or seminars, in Amsterdam (twice), Florence, London, and New York, and in the last few weeks I drafted two new papers that build on my new research. In all, a very happy and productive year