World History on the Brain

As scholars, we all have our main projects and we all have side projects. One of mine, for example, is Jewish History. Even though my diss is on print culture in early modern England and Scotland - which has nothing remotely to do with Jewish history - I'm always on the look out for references to Jews. Whether it's an insult thrown at another person ("he was acting the Jew"), an image of a hooked-nose money lender, or my favorite: Satan, with what I have a hunch are "Jewish features" (need to consult our early modern German Art Historian for that one):
I love that Satan looks like he's in the video for Thriller.

Anyway, I also, it seems, have world history on the brain. I've read a couple of accounts of the sailing world history network - the seaman with 7 wives in several transatlantic countries and colonies, a man who was knocked out and then miraculously save aboard a Turkish ship and then worked in "Turkish lands" as a surgeon's assistant before returning to England - ok, only 2 so far. But every time I read one of these the specter of our World History chair creeps up and whispers in my ear: "hey, there's a social biography just waiting to be written". And I begin to think, this might make and interesting story, I wonder if I could get an article out of this. And then I shake my head and plow back into my documents, marking these potential gems. Should any of these turn out to be real traceable people, I might have a social biography on my hands. Should they all turn out to be invented, I have an English imagining of the brig bright world, which is tinged with foreign knowledge, sex, and the exotic (dare I say, the Oriental?). All I have are crumbs right now, but maybe one of these crumbs will actually lead to something.

Considering WH as a class made me want to tear my hair out, I'm surprised at how attractive I actually find it as a field of research and study. I'm realizing now how much I like the comparative, transnational, transcontinental, follow-something-round-the-world approach to history In many ways, that's what always attracted me to European history and it shouldn't surprise me that I wanted to see it writ large. (I've never been one for purely national histories, preferring to try to look at two or three locations and work with them simultaneously. It also doesn't always pan out; see old dead projects: Theater/Cabaret in Paris and Berlin, 1919-1939; Broadsides in 3 nations context: England, Scotland, Ireland; and hopeful future project: Broadsides: England, Scotland, France (London, Edinburgh, Paris), possibly expanded to colonial Mexico (thanks, J!). I guess it's also no shocking that my pull to a diasporic cultural/ethnic group mirrors this kind of analysis (Jewish women in the Netherlands versus Islamic lands).

I'm plugging merrily along on my project (almost done with the years 1660-1662) and my "side project" files keep growing and growing. Don't worry, I haven't lost focus on my main project, but I'm increasingly surprised and happy that my diss research will be able to be taken in a variety of different places and into a variety of different projects.