National History Center

The National History Center has received an additional $1.457 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue its highly successful international summer seminars focusing on decolonization in the Twentieth Century. These seminars have been instrumental in creating a new international field of knowledge. This targeted study of the dissolution of the colonial empires and the lasting effects of their transformations has resulted in intensive scholarly exchange from among the participants, the leaders, and has produced a new body of scholarship devoted to the subject matter. The continued support from the Mellon Foundation sustains the historical analysis on this important subject as well as the work and careers of the young historians.

The seminars will continue to be held in Washington, D.C. in July 2011–2015 and to bring international historians at the beginning of their careers to the Library of Congress to examine the global phenomena of the collapse of the empires and colonial system.

Having just completed the fourth seminar, which ran July 5 through August 1st, Roger Louis, founding director of the Center and leader of the decolonization seminars, stated “The renewal of Mellon Foundation grant is an exhilarating vote of confidence for those who have worked very hard over the last four years to make the decolonization seminar a success, above all the seminar participants themselves.  The National History Center is proud to have helped the research and writing of young historians working in an emerging field of historical knowledge.”

New Books In History

New Books in History has a new podcast of an interview with Mark Philip Bradley and Marilyn Young, the editors of the Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars, the first volume in the Reinterpreting History series produced by the National History Center and Oxford University Press. The volumes in the series aim to convey to readers how and why historians revise and reinterpret their understanding of the past, and they do so by focusing on a particular historical topic, event, or idea that has long gained the attention of historians.

As Marshall Poe, editor of New Books in History,  states, “[The] authors provide no simple answers because there are none. You will not find easy explanations, good guys and bad guys, or ideological drum-beating in these pages. What you will find is a sensitive effort to understand an event of mind-boggling, irreducible complexity. There’s a lesson here: we may think we know what we are doing on far-away shores, but we are fooling ourselves.”

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars

Both this and the second volume in the Reinterpreting History series on the Atlantic World are available for purchase.
The podcast of the Atlantic World on New Books in History is available here.

Professor Philippa Levine, Professor of History at the University of Southern California, gave the lecture on Still Invisible?: 
Women, Gender, and Decolonization, as part of the National History Center’s fourth international seminar on decolonization and its public lecture series.  The John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress co-sponsored the event.

The lecture’s web cast can be viewed here.

Asking why studies of decolonization so rarely explore the contributions of women to decolonization struggles around the world, Professor Levine explored the perspective both of women involved in anti-colonial movements and women who were part of the colonial authority structure. She offered examples of women in both these roles, and hoped to encourage researchers to open up this fascinating field for further study.

Philippa Levine is Professor of History at the University of Southern California. She received her Doctorate in Philosophy from St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, in 1983. She is a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of British Studies and Women’s History Review, and President-elect of the North American Conference on British Studies. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is currently president of the University of Southern California faculty. Professor Levine’s works include Feminist Lives in Victorian England: Private Roles and Public Commitment; Victorian Feminism 1850-1900; Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race (co-edited with Laura Mayhall and Ian Fletcher); Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire; and The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset.

This lecture was a second in series on subjects relating to decolonization, with Marilyn Young of New York University giving another lecture.

Marilyn B. Young, Professor of History at New York University, gave a lecture during the National History Center’s 2009 Decolonization Seminar. The lecture was jointly sponsored by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and webcasted.

Professor Young during her lecture at the Library of Congress

Professor Young discussed how the history of the Cold War in the United States is the history of how, while never abandoning World War II as the platonic ideal of war, post-war administrations were able to use military force in a limited, instrumental way. For this to be possible they had to create a public tolerance for war as normal rather than aberrational, so normal that after a while only those who were actively engaged in fighting it—and their families—noticed a war was being fought at all. War, as Joe Haldeman’s dystopian novel, The Forever War, predicted, would be “forever.” Professor Young’s lecture explored the many ways in which the “forever war” was manifested, first in Asia, and subsequently in the Middle East.

Marilyn Young received her PhD from Harvard University in 1963. She taught at the University of Michigan before coming to New York University in 1980 where she is a full professor in the Department of History. Professor Young teaches courses on the history of U.S. foreign policy, the politics and culture of post-war United States. Her publications include Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895–1901; Transforming Russia and China: Revolutionary Struggle in the 20th Century (with William Rosenberg); and The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990.

You can view the lecture here.

Professor Young co-edited with Mark Bradley the National History Center’s volume Making Sense of the Vietnam War, the first in the Reintrepreting History series published by the Oxford University Press.  The volume is available for purchase.

This is part of a series of lectures on decolonization, with Philippa Levine giving one on women and decolonization.

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The National History Center needs your support.

As an initiative of the American Historical Association, the Center is a forum where historians discuss the historical context of current policies and events and exchange ideas with the public. We have created several major programs since its founding in 2002, and now, more than ever, we need your financial support to continue. These programs include Congressional Briefings, Council on Foreign Relations Lectures, International Seminars on Decolonization, History Education Reform, Oxford University Press Reinterpreting History Book Series, and Summer Institutes for College Teachers.

The National History Center has two additional programs. A Weekly History Seminar, jointly sponsored by the National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson Center, will begin in the spring. It is a seminar dedicated to international and national affairs in historical perspective. The other new program is an arrangement between the National History Center and New Books in History for audiocast interviews with the authors in the Oxford University Press ‘Reinterpreting History’ series. These and other interviews will take place on a regular basis.

The National History Center is a well-managed organization with only one full-time staff member and a small number of dedicated volunteers. We have received some critical support from the AHA and foundations, but most of the operating budget comes from individual historians. It is only through individual commitment that the National History Center will be able to fulfill its purpose of making the connection between the study of history and public affairs.

We need to raise $50,000 to carry on with our present programs and lay the groundwork for future plans. We urge you to become a contributor to the National History Center by making a tax-deductible donation. More information about these programs and how to donate online can be found at the Center’s website.

The National History Center is a unique undertaking, deserving of your support. Become a National History Center Contributor today!

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Professor Alan Brinkley, Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University, gave a briefing to Members of Congress and their staff in May, 2009.  He spoke on the relevance of the Great Depression to today’s current economic situation, Roosevelt’s actions to stimulate the economy in the 1930s, and the recovery that took place.

This is part of the Congressional Briefings program, where historians provide historical context to current issues.

Watch the Congressional Briefing with Alan Brinkley (which begins 1:05 in).

Great Depression with Alan Brinkley from Miriam Cunningham on Vimeo.

(Please note that this video is approximately 56 minutes long)

The National History Center has entered into a partnership with New Books In History , which audiocast interviews with historians discussing their latest research and writing.

The first in the series offered in conjunction with the New Books in History, focuses on the the Reinterpreting History books, published by Oxford University Press. The volumes in the series aim to convey to readers how and why historians revise and reinterpret their understanding of the past, and they do so by focusing on a particular historical topic, event, or idea that has long gained the attention of historians.

This podcast deals with the volume Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal. Marshall Poe, editor of “New Books”, interviewed the editors of the volume, Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan.

The interview is available now online.

As Professor Poe suggests, “You may think that historians normally study states or nations, like France and China. But they also study areas of international or imperial interaction. The most famous example of this sort of ‘international’ history is Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949), but there are many others.’

As a relatively new field, the object of study is the “Atlantic World,” roughly, the history of the interaction of four continents (Africa, Europe, North America and South America) from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. In this podcast, Greene and Morgan talk about the origin of the field, its work to date, and its prospects.

To listen to the interview, click here

The National History Center is now accepting applications for the fifth international summer seminar on decolonization in the 20th century, which will be held for four weeks, from Sunday, July 11, through Saturday, August 7, 2010, in Washington, D.C.  The deadline is November 2, 2009.

Download 2010 Seminar Application Details, Background, and Structure

Download 2010 Letters of Recommendation Guidelines

The international seminar, organized by the National History Center in collaboration with the American Historical Association and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, is funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In the fifth seminar in the series, fifteen participating historians will engage in the common pursuit of knowledge about various dimensions of decolonization, primarily 20th-century transitions from colonies to nations in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Aims: The seminar will be an opportunity for the participants (a) to pursue research at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and other repositories of historical research materials in Washington, D.C., on projects within the overarching theme of decolonization; (b) to exchange ideas among themselves and with the seminar leaders; (c) to produce a draft article or chapter of a book with the guidance of the faculty leaders, who, together with the participants themselves, will offer comments and critiques on the evolving draft papers.

When preparing their applications, applicants may find it helpful to consult the following guides to research resources in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere:

Archives and research resources in Washington, D.C.

American Historical Association’s Archives Wiki

Seminar Leaders: Wm. Roger Louis, Kerr Professor of English History and Culture and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin (and the executive director of the National History Center), will direct the seminar. Other seminar leaders will include Dane Kennedy (George Washington Univ.), Philippa Levine (Univ. of Southern California/Univ. of Texas at Austin), Jason Parker (Texas A & M Univ.), Pillarisetti Sudhir (AHA), and Marilyn Young (NYU).

Applications and all supporting materials should reach the Assistant Director of the National History Center by November 2, 2009. They may be e-mailed to decol2010apply@nationalhistorycenter.org or to Miriam Hauss Cunningham.

If e-mailing is not possible, the applications may be mailed to:

The National History Center

ATTN: Decolonization Seminar

400 A Street, SE

Washington, DC 20003-3889

General Seminar Information: The 15 participants selected to participate in the four-week seminar will receive a small stipend that is intended to cover daily living expenses (food, local travel, and so on). The Center will meet the costs of accommodation that the Center will arrange. The Center will also reimburse (subject to limits) travel costs incurred by the selected participants for traveling between their workplace or place of normal residence and Washington, D.C., and back.

Requirements: Applicants should either have a recent PhD (no more than 5 years out) and be at the beginning of their careers or advanced PhD students who are nearing completion of their dissertations are also encouraged.

Applicants should note that all the academic activities (including discussions and written work) will be in English. Applicants must, therefore, be fluent in English.

Those selected will have to undertake that they will actively participate in the seminar for its entire duration.

Selected foreign participants must make their own arrangements to obtain the necessary U.S. visas; the National History Center will provide any documentation that may be required.

The first volume of the Reinterpreting History series, published by Oxford University Press, received a great book review in the latest volume of the Journal of American History (volume 96, issue 1). The volume, entitled Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives is edited by Mark Philip Bradley and Marilyn B. Young.

Reviewer Patrick Hagopian from Lancaster University in Lancaster, England, says, “This volume gathers together a group of distinguished scholars to bring fresh perspectives to the question, ‘Why Vietnam?’ Their contributions address the factors that led the United States to intervene militarily in Vietnam and the reasons (other than military strategy and feats of arms) that the conflict developed and concluded as it did; they also demonstrate the liveliness of current historiographical debates. The emergence of new interpretations results in part from the availability of new Vietnamese-language archives, the declassification of documents in the United States, and the release of materials in China, Eastern Europe, and Russia…..

“…The new synthesis toward which this volume excitingly, although perhaps distantly, signals, will involve not just the integration of materials from various national archives but the tracing of the connections between the large-scale and finely observed local perspectives that its contributions explore. The cutting-edge research in this volume constitutes a crucial addition to the library of anyone interested in the histories of the Vietnam Wars.”

The full review is availabe at the  History Cooperative.  This volume, and the second volume in the series  on Atlantic History, are available for purchase through the Center’s E-Store.

As part of the National History Center’s ongoing Decolonization Lecture Series, Professor Philippa Levine, Professor of History at the University of Southern California, will give a lecture on Still Invisible?: 
Women, Gender, and Decolonization this Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.

The lecture will be in room 119, Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue, SE.

This lecture will ask why studies of decolonization so rarely explore the contributions of women to decolonization struggles around the world, from the perspective both of women involved in anti-colonial movements and women who were part of the colonial authority structure. It will offer examples of women in both these roles, and hopes to encourage researchers to open up this fascinating field for further study.

Philippa Levine is Professor of History at the University of Southern California. She received her Doctorate in Philosophy from St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, in 1983. She is a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of British Studies and Women’s History Review, and President-elect of the North American Conference on British Studies. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is currently president of the University of Southern California faculty. Professor Levine’s works include Feminist Lives in Victorian England: Private Roles and Public Commitment; Victorian Feminism 1850-1900; Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race (co-edited with Laura Mayhall and Ian Fletcher); Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire; and The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset.

A question and answer sesssion will follow the presentation. Complimentary light refreshments will be served.

Co-sponsored by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress