Introducing Dr. Bajalan
Dr. Djene Bajalan is associate professor of history at Missouri State University.
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Talking History
Djene is co-host of Talking History, a radio program and podcast created by KSMU. Each month, Dr. Bajalan and Patrick Needham speak with historians and scholars about the ideas, people, and events that have shaped our world. (https://www.ksmu.org/podcast/talking-history). You can hear the program on the radio on Thursdays, or tune in on the website to hear the radio spot plus “Talking History Extra.”
Djene is also a contributor on several other podcasts, including This is Revolution (https://open.spotify.com/show/0EGnAcDc6f13xJey7nRYPD) and American Prestige podcast where he hosts a series about the history of the Kurds (https://www.americanprestigepod.com/p/the-history-of-the-kurds-w-djene).
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Maybe Scar was the good guy?
We discuss The Lion King at about 36 minutes into the conversation. I ask Djene why the MSU general education world history classes are the way they are, with HST 103 covering up to the year 1600, and HST 104 covering 1600 on. Why 1600? The answer is multi-pronged, but one thing Djene talks about is the difference between premodern societies and modern.
Djene points to the Lion King as an analogy of how pre-modern societies worked: “Everybody is in their place in society and should stay in their place. And the bad guy, Scar, his big sin is bringing the hyenas into the ruling elite, and destructing the natural order of things.”
Djene notes that people did move up and down in pre-modern societies sometimes, but, in general, “if you were a peasant, you would expect your children to continue being a peasant. If you were an aristocrat, you would expect your children to continue being aristocrats. You have a society which was hierarchically organized into different social classes […] There was no concept of a universal right, as it were. But in modern society that's really different.”
So, Scar could be cast as the good guy in the Lion King “because he's trying to bring more people in that ruling elite of society, that's challenging the hierarchies of society.”
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Housekeeping
We also discuss Djene’s other classes, his research interests, and the History department more generally.
Please note that this episode was recorded earlier in the semester, prior to the October 2023 Hamas attack.
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