April on the MacMillan Report

Three visiting historians and a Yale scholar of modern Russian culture discussed their research in April on “The MacMillan Report,” a one-on-one interview show presented by Yale’s Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.

Designed to showcase the innovative research by Yale faculty in international and area studies, “The MacMillan Report” is hosted by Marilyn Wilkes, communications director at the MacMillan Center, and airs on Wednesdays at noon during the academic year. Each segment runs between 15 and 20 minutes long.]

Launched in October of 2008, the show has featured more than 200 faculty members (see the show’s archive).

“The Development of Forestry in Early Modern China”

Ian Miller, Agrarian Studies Program Fellow
April 5

An assistant professor of history at St. John’s University, Ian Miller does research on conflicts over wood resources and the development of private institutions for production forestry and woodland conservation in early modern China. In particular, he is studying the role that graves played as focal points in conflicts over the woodland environment, and the impact of changing tax policies on the markets for wood and timber.

“Zionist Women in Interwar Poland”

Jolanta Mickutė, the Joseph P. Kazickas Visiting Assistant Professor in Baltic Studies
April 12

Jolanta Mickutė is an assistant professor of history at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, and her research examines political and cultural issues in the interwar period in Central and Eastern Europe.

“Ganges water machine: Designing New India’s Ancient River”

Anthony Acciavatti, Agrarian Studies Program fellow
April 19

Anthony Acciavatti is a historian of science and technology with training in architecture and cartography. His first book, “Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India’s Ancient River,” is an atlas of the Ganges River basin — the first such comprehensive atlas in half a century — based on a decade of fieldwork and archival research that Acciavatti begun as a Fulbright Fellow in 2005. It won the 2016 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize. His account of irrigation, geography, population, and climate is the basis of a traveling exhibition that has appeared in museums and biennials in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. His dissertation, titled “Schools to Satellites: Enlightening and Entertaining Village India,” examines a group of scientists and engineers working with artists and designers to develop pedagogy for villagers during the Cold War. Acciavatti will use his time as a fellow at Yale to turn his dissertation into a manuscript as well as develop an exhibition of the films and objects he studies. He is a co-founder and editor of Manifest: A Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism. 

“Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840-1890”

Molly Brunson, associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures
April 26

As a scholar of modern Russian culture, Molly Brunson specializes in the literature and visual art of the 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis on the recurrent realisms that emerged in imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Spanning a broad historical scope, her research encompasses topics as diverse as the socially conscious genre painting of the early 19th century and the sweeping novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to the avant-garde’s claims to the “real” and the rise of Soviet socialist realism. She is particularly interested in aesthetics and interart studies, theories of the novel, visual cultural studies, the representation of space, and the transnational and transhistorical networks of modern culture.