Berlin-Baltimore-Cairo: a life trajectory and tribute to Giovanni

by Amy Holmes

In the interest of full disclosure: I have agonized over what to write for this short tribute to Giovanni, and encountered a type of writer’s block worse than anything I remember having during my dissertation.  I can’t reasonably explain why. Having just defended my dissertation at JHU in January, I thought about simply posting what I had written in the acknowledgements to my dissertation in which I thanked Giovanni and Beverly, because I mean everything I said, now even more than then.  But then I thought that would be sort of like cheating.. so I’ve just written a few things about what I think and remember, and I apologize because I know that I will never be able to bring to paper what he actually meant to me, to all of us.

Giovanni has contributed to changing the discipline of sociology, as well as the life trajectories of a number of his students.  I am one of those many people. 

I first read the Long Twentieth Century in 1999 when I was studying for my M.A. in political science in Berlin.  The following year I presented the book in a class on “Jahrhundertbilanzen” at the University of Marburg, where we read a number of the recently published books that reviewed 20^th century history.  The Long Twentieth Century sort of stuck out on the syllabus, as it was much more ambitious than the others which “only” covered one century. I never told Giovanni this, but for me reading the book was like gazing upon a Breughelian painting: you could see the passage of time, the structural changes, the hands of the laborers and the jewels of the king, every minutiae of every detail could absorb one for hours, and with a theory to explain it all.  It was dazzling.

It was this book which convinced me to apply for the Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins and which eventually led me to return to the US in 2002 after living in Germany for almost six years.  One of the pictures below was taken in 2005, when Giovanni and Beverly were invited to Marburg as guest speakers.

Baltimore is not exactly a city that makes the heart grow warmer.. although it might be better than Binghamton in some respects, anyone who has been there – or at least seen the Wire – knows that it is something of an urban dystopia. Still, I look back fondly on the four years I spent there and recall, along with some other things such as gobbling down the half-price burritos on Tuesday nights with fellow grad students at One World Café, the many interactions with Giovanni.. In December 2002, at the end of my first semester in the Ph.D. program, I asked Giovanni if I could meet with him to talk about my dissertation.  I was naturally nervous because I knew that my topic would stray a bit onto unchartered territory and away from “orthodox” world-systems analysis.  I told him that I wanted to do research on the American overseas military presence and that I would do a case study of one country each which hosts US troops and bases in the core, periphery, and semi-periphery. To my surprise, Giovanni didn’t need as much convincing as I had expected, and at the end of our meeting gave me his blessing: “you’re in business.”

Not everything was brightness and light.  After the invasion of Iraq, some of us started the Hopkins Anti-War Coalition.  Giovanni and Beverly read the names of the Iraqi war dead, standing in front of the library with a small number of people. We watched the 2004 elections at Joel’s house and despaired.

A few years went by and in the Spring of 2008 I was offered a job at the American University in Cairo.  Not knowing what I might be getting into, I turned to Giovanni and Beverly for advice. Although he left the decision up to me, I could tell that Giovanni somehow liked the idea of me going to Cairo, mainly convincing me with a sentence which was as simple as it was unforgettable: “Egypt is an important country.”

In January 2009 I returned to Baltimore to defend my dissertation, which was also the last time I saw Giovanni.  Ten years after first reading “the book that changed my life,” I now say farewell. The longue durée of Giovanni’s life is over. I will miss him dearly.