Linda Kerber on the Stateless and Citizen

Linda Kerber, a Professor at University of Iowa and a student of Bernard Bailyn at Harvard some years ago, is famous not only for her study on the founding mothers in early republic hsitory and women history, but also becayse she was the President of American Historical Association in 2007(Do not be suprised that a woman who became the AHA
President, especially in such a nameless university).

I went to Columbia on Thursday to have a class last week and noticed that she was going to give a lecture on stateless and citizenship, although it was a pity that I finally missed it on that day. I just searched for it and found her presentation paper from the Law School
of CU. Also I found her AHA Presidential Address in 2007, although I have read it before.

Actually I am not very curious about her topic and theories in this two papers, what I am interested is how she explain it and integrate the stateless in her papers. After all, I know her ideas directly from Hannah Arendt(Arendt discussed the stateless in her Origins of the
Totalitarism. I am just not sure whether her ideas also come from Giorgio Agamben or not, while actually Agamben furthers Arendt's interpretation on the stateless). Arendt interprets the stateless from a perspective of the Heidegger's existentialism, while Agamben's interpretaton directly from Kojeve and Hegel(negation).

Last semester I even worte a paper for my core seminar on the Jews and the Japanese-Americans who became the stateless in the world history and became non-citizens or excluded from the citizens of the United States. After that I put this topic aside and is working on Mercy Warren now.

When I got Linda Kerber's papers, I just was suprised that she could focus on this topic and keep on working on it. I have touched this topic, but just could not focus on it, partly because I am so disattracted a man and do not like to work on it, while in fact, I do not have good topics for my dissertation thesis.

Sometimes, we admire those distinguished professors, while in fact, they are famous and successful just because they make more effort on their topics, while we are not. Time and tide waits for no man!