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David Prochaska

Professor Emeritus

Research Interests

Modern Europe; modern France; colonial Algeria; postcolonial studies and world history; history and theory; Orientalism; visual culture; history of photography

Research Description

I am a historian of colonialism and visual culture, with a specialty in colonial Algeria and an ongoing interest in France and the Mediterranean. Long interested in visual culture, I have collaborated on book publications and museum exhibitions with three art historians.  I have published on colonial visual culture, especially postcards, in India, Senegal, Egypt, and Algeria. I studied anthropology as a second discipline and am interested in the anthropology oftourism, as well as museum studies, urban history and colonial urbanism. I have extensive foreign experience, and conducted research in Algeria over a year.

I have taught undergraduate courses on 20th century world history, comparative colonialism in India and Algeria, history and visual culture, and film and history. Graduate courses include history and theory, modern European historiography, postcolonial studies, and 19th-20th century comparative world history.

Education

B. A. Stanford University
M.A. University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

Additional Campus Affiliations

emeritus - Center for African Studies
emeritus - Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Highlighted Publications

BOOKS

Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity. Edited by David Prochaska, Edited by Jordana Mendelson, Penn State Press, 2010.

Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics. Edited by Terry Burke, Edited by David Prochaska, University of Nebraska Press, 2008.

O'Brien, David, and David Prochaska. Beyond East and West: Seven Transnational Artists. University of Washington Press, 2004.

Benjamin, Roger, and David Prochaska. Renoir in Algeria. Yale University Press, 2003.

Prochaska, David. Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bone, 1870-1920. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

BOOK CONTRIBUTIONS

Prochaska, David. "Scenes from the Museums: Palace Museum, Beijing and National Palace Museum, Taipei" Inheriting the City: Advancing Understandings of Urban Heritage, edited by Mike Robinson. 2016.

Prochaska, David. "The Self as Other: Yasmine Bouziane" Transnational Spaces and Identities in the Francophone World, edited by Hafid Gafaiti, edited by Patricia Lorcin, edited by David Troyansky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009, p. 388-411.

Prochaska, David. "Telling Photos." Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics, edited by Terry Burke, edited by David Prochaska. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008, p. 245-285.

Burke, Terry, and David Prochaska. "Introduction: Orientalism from Postcolonial Theory to World History." Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics, edited by Terry Burke, edited by David Prochaska. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008, p. 1-71.

Prochaska, David. "Returning the Gaze: Orientalism, Gender, and Yasmine Bouziane’s Photographic Self-Portraits." Modern Art and the Idea of the Mediterranean, edited by Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Prochaska, David. "The Return of the Repressed: War, Trauma, Memory in Algeria and Beyond." Algeria and France 1800-2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia, edited by Patricia Lorcin. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006, p. 257-276.

Prochaska, David. "Untitled (2004)" Beyond East and West: Seven Transnational Artists, compiled by David O'Brien, compiled by David Prochaska. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004, p. 73-107.

Prochaska, David. "The Other Algeria: Beyond Renoir’s Algiers." Renoir in Algeria, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003, p. 121-142.

Prochaska, David. "Art of Colonialism, Colonialism of Art: The Description de l’Égypte (1809-1828)." Computing in the Social Sciences and Humanities, edited by Vernon Burton. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

Prochaska, David. "At Home in Illinois: Presence of Chief Illiniwek, Absence of Native Americans." Team Spirits, edited by Richard King, edited by Charles Springwood. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, p. 157-185.

Prochaska, David. "Exhibiting Hawai'i." Postcolonial America, edited by C. King. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000, p. 321-352.

Prochaska, David. "Ethnography of a Postcolonial Site: Sarnath." Theatres of Decolonization: Architecture, Agency, Urbanism, edited by Vikramditya Prakash. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997, p. 327-350.

"Tales of the City: Between Algérie française and Algerie algérienne." Crossing Cultures: Essays in the Displacement of “Western Civilization”, edited by Daniel Segal. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992, p. 182-225.

Prochaska, David. "Fire on the Mountain: Resisting Colonialism in Algeria." Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa, edited by Donald Crummey. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986, p. 229-252.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Prochaska, David. "Death and Resurrection of Chief Illiniwek (1926-2007)." Studies in Symbolic Interaction, vol. 34, 2010, p. 87-135.

Prochaska, David. "Thinking Postcards." Visual Resources, vol. 17, 2001, p. 383-399.

Prochaska, David. "History as Literature, Literature as History: Cagayous of Algiers." American Historical Review, vol. 101, 1996, p. 670-711.

Prochaska, David. "Fantasia of the Photothèque: French Postcard Views of Colonial Senegal." African Arts, vol. 24, 1991, p. 40-47.

Prochaska, David. "The Archive of Algérie Imaginaire." History and Anthropology, vol. 4, 1990, p. 373-420.

Prochaska, David. "'Disappearing’ Iraqis." Swords and Ploughshares, vol. 5, 1991, p. 13-16.

Prochaska, David. "Approaches to the Economy of Colonial Annaba, 1870-1920." Africa, vol. 60, 1990, p. 497-523.