German history expert receives both Killam and Guggenheim fellowships

Professor James Retallack’s deep dive into pre-World War One Germany – illuminating a time when the promise of democratic reform and social justice was not yet derailed by fascism and communism – has earned both the Killam Research Fellowship and the Guggenheim Fellowship.

University of Toronto researchers took six of the prestigious fellowships in total – all from the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Retallack, of the department of history, will use the fellowships to research and write The Workers’ Emperor:  August Bebel’s Struggle for Social Justice and Democratic Reform in Germany and the World, 1840-1913. A biography of the leader of the Social Democratic Party in pre-World War One Germany, the book will offer a life-and-times account of the country’s missed opportunities to implement liberalism and democracy and steer away from Nazism.

“Receiving both a Killam and a Guggenheim fellowship this year is a great honour,” said Retallack.  “In the humanities, time to read and write is particularly precious.  These fellowships will enable me and my graduate students to synthesize a vast array of sources and help us understand a crucial moment in German and world history.”

U of T took three of the six new Killam Research Fellowships, which are administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.  The other recipients include atmospheric scientist Jonathan Abbatt and inorganic chemist Robert Morris, both of the department of chemistry.

Abbatt studies pressing issues in climate research, including the effect of changing temperatures and sea ice on aerosol particles in the Arctic. He is the principal investigator of NETCARE, a Canadian consortium of researchers that encompasses the broad scientific expertise needed to integrate our understanding of the Arctic atmosphere and its impact on climate change.

Abbatt says his Killam will enable him to advance his project, Aerosol Particles and Climate: Addressing Fundamental Connections in the Canadian Arctic. “The Killam Fellowship will allow me to visit different network co-investigators and to participate in fieldwork activities,” said Abbatt.

Morris works towards a more environmentally-sustainable chemical industry. His project, Developing Catalysts Based on Iron, focuses on better understanding newly-discovered iron compounds that promise to replace the rare, expensive and sometimes toxic platinum metal catalysts that are currently used for the synthesis of fuels, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and fragrances. Further development depends on the discovery of green, efficient and selective catalysts.

Morris is already responsible for major breakthroughs in this field and has helped lay the foundation for greener chemical processes. “With this award, we’ll be able to concentrate on the next big push in what has now become a very competitive field of catalyst discovery,” Morris said.

Retallack is also joined by Nikolai Krementsov of the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology and Thomas Keymer of the department of English in receiving Guggenheim Fellowships, administered by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and offered to just 175 of 3,100 applicants from across the United States and Canada.

Krementsov’s project, entitled I Want a Baby: The History of Bolshevik Eugenics, explores the unique history of eugenics in Bolshevik Russia after the 1917 revolution, where the discipline was not based on coercion or a desire to maximize the genetic fitness of the Russian people. “Why did eugenics fail to develop in Imperial Russia but flourish under the Bolsheviks, only to come to a screeching halt a decade later,” said Krementsov. “My goal is to examine this history in detail in its national and international contexts.

“Public discourse and state policies towards science often change when a state’s leadership changes, so drawing lessons from the Bolshevik Russia period may offer insights into the relationships between science and society that many nations grapple with today.”

Keymer’s interest in libel and censorship in literature grew out of an interest in the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries during periods of political upheaval. Print was the most powerful medium for sharing ideas, and authorities went to great lengths to silence writers, with repressive laws, intimidation and proxy arrests.

“There is so much to discover and explain about the distinctive features of 18th-century writing,” Keymer said, citing irony, ambiguity and innuendo as examples. “Authors dreamed up complex modes of expression to circumvent the constraints forced upon them at the time. It became all about how to write ingeniously.

“These techniques remain crucial into our own time, too, in a range of repressive or coercive situations,” Keymer added. “George Orwell used them. You could even say that when Ai Weiwei was jailed or when the Charlie Hebdo satirists were killed, it was because they didn’t use them.”