At the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester, we met with all of the new faculty hires in the College of Arts and Sciences. This series of podcasts introduces them and their research interests. Steve Davis is an assistant professor in the Department of History. Davis’s area of focus is the history of South Africa, particularly the history of the anti-apartheid struggle. He examines the uses and misuses of oral history in state narratives by comparing interviews with ex-combatants with the official narratives of the state.

At the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester, we met with all of the new faculty hires in the College of Arts and Sciences. This series of podcasts introduces them and their research interests. Francis Musoni is an assistant professor in the Department of History. Musoni's area of focus is African history, particularly addressing mobility and migration in southern Africa. Currently, Musoni researches the movement of illegal migrants from Zimbabwe to South Africa.

Akiko Takenaka is a professor in the Department of History and specializes in the social and cultural history of modern Japan, specifically the Asia-Pacific War. Takenaka discusses her research on the competing histories of World War II and how she uses the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo as a vehicle through which to analyze those narratives in Japan.

History professor Karen Petrone's new book unearths a wealth of buried stories from the Soviet state about the memory of World War I.