National History Center

The National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars have released an updated schedule for the spring 2012 semester of the Washington History Seminar, the Monday afternoon series they co-sponsor with assistance from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. The seminar meets at 4 p.m. each Monday during the academic year in the 6th floor Moynihan Boardroom at the Wilson Center, 13th and Pennsylvania, NW, in downtown Washington, DC (Federal Triangle Metro). Reservations are requested because of limited seating; please e-mail HAPP@wilsoncenter.org.

Jan. 23: Kevin Kenny (Boston Coll.), Abraham Lincoln and the Irish

Jan. 30: Warren Kimball (Rutgers Univ.), F.D.R. and Churchill

Feb. 6: Julia Clancy-Smith (Univ. of Arizona), Barbary Coasts: North Africa, Colonialism, and the Mediterranean, c. 1820-2011

Feb. 13: John O. Voll (Georgetown Univ.), Islam and Democracy for the 21st Century

Feb. 20: NO MEETING – Presidents’ Day

Feb. 27: Sherrill Brown Wells (George Washington Univ.), Jean Monnet and the Future of Europe

Mar. 5: Charles D. Smith (Univ. of Arizona), The United States and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War

Mar. 12: Richard Kuisel (Georgetown Univ.), Unmitigated Gaul: The French Confront America, 1980-2000

Mar. 19: Samuel R. Williamson, Jr. (Univ. of the South), July 1914, Revisited and Revised – or The End of the German Paradigm

Mar. 26: Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac (New York Times and CBS), Peaceful Resolution of Ethnic Tensions

Apr. 2: Dane Kennedy (George Washington Univ.), Reassessing Exploration: The West in the World

Apr. 9: Stephen Weissman, The Lumumba Assassination and CIA Accountability

Apr. 16: Margaret Macmillan (Oxford Univ.), The Outbreak of World War I

Apr. 23: Jeffrey Herf (Univ. of Maryland), Anti-Zionism in Germany

Apr. 30: Tony Smith (Tufts Univ.), The Tragic Irony of America’s Worldwide Struggle for Democracy

May 7: Kenton Clymer (Northern Illinois Univ. and WWC), The United States, Burma, and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1948-1965. Last meeting of the seminar for the spring semester.

In her political biography of Jean Monnet, Sherrill Brown Wells explains how this visionary and entrepreneurial internationalist who never held an elective office, never joined a political party, and never developed any significant popular following in his native France, became one of the most influential European statesmen in the 20^th century. In this presentation to the Washington History Seminar, she cast further light on how Monnet worked with European and American leaders after World War II in establishing peace in war-ravaged Europe through economic integration.

Wells earned her B.A. from Vassar and her M.Sc. degree and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. She  has been a Professorial Lecturer in History and International Affairs at George Washington University since 1992. She has taught history at Rutgers and North Carolina State University, has been a senior historian at the Department of State, a Visiting Professor at Sciences-Po in Paris, and has authored Pioneers of European Integration and Peace, 1945-1963 (2007) and Jean Monnet: Unconventional  Statesman (2011).

A webcast of her presentation is available at Jean Monnet.

The Washington History Seminar is a joint venture of the National History Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, supported by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

In their 1996 book, Islam and Democracy, John Esposito and John Voll examined the
intersection of politics and religion in five Islamic countries. They pointed to the emergence
of pro-democracy movements in Islamic societies despite resistance from authoritarian
regimes, arguing that to understand the multiple political trajectories in these countries,
commonalities as well as historical differences among societies must be considered. The
events of the Arab Spring and other recent developments in the politics of Muslim majority
countries compel a re-examination. What were the new political solvents that accelerated
change? What are the implications of 21st-century developments for understanding the
relationship between Islam and democracy? Does the argument the authors advanced in
1996—that the term “democracy” can have multiple interpretations—remain relevant? John Voll explored these questions with members of the Washington History Center in a wide-ranging presentation on February 13.

Voll is Professor of Islamic History and Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed
bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He is the
author, co-author, or editor of a dozen books, including Asian Islam in the 21st Century, and
more than one hundred articles on Islamic and world history. He is a Past President of the
Middle East Studies Association.

A webcast of his presentation is available at Islam and Democracy for the 21st Century.

The seminar meets at 4 p.m. Mondays in the Moynihan Boardroom on the 6th floor of the Wilson Center, 13th and Pennsylvania, NW, in downtown Washington. It is co-sponsored by the National History Center and the Wilson Center, with support from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.  Reservations are requested because of limited seating: HAPP@wilsoncenter.org. All are welcome; graduate students are especially encouraged to attend.

In the 19th century, tens of thousands of Europeans and others relocated to North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. How can the era of French colonialism be assessed in relation to the broader patterns of settlement, labor, colonial rule, and decolonization? What are the connections between that era and today’s movement of labor migrants from south to north across the Mediterranean? On February 6, Julia Clancy-Smith discussed with the Washington History Seminar the challenges such questions pose for the historian writing comparative colonial history as well as history from both below and above. The answers may help to explain the beginnings of the Arab Spring.

Wilson Center Fellow Julia Clancy-Smith is Professor of History at the University of Arizona, Tucson. She has written Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800-1900 (2011), which won the French Colonial Historical Society Book Award and the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society Award. Her other works include Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (1994).

A webcast of her presentation is available at Barbary Coasts.

The Washington History Seminar gathers at 4 p.m. at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at 13th and Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Federal Triangle Metro stop. It is co-sponsored by the National History Center and the Wilson Center, with the support of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

The National History Center has announced the names of the fifteen scholars selected to participate in the seventh annual International Seminar on Decolonization. They and their proposed projects are:

Elisabetta Bini, European University Institute, Florence, “From Colony to Oil Producer: International Oil Politics in Libya, 1951-1969”;

Michael Collins, University College London, “Sir Andrew Cohen: Decolonization, Political Economy and Imperial Ideology in British Africa, c. 1945-1968”;

Darcie Fontaine, University of South Florida, “Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the Transition to Independence in Algeria, 1962-1970”;

Timothy Daniel Haines, Royal Holloway, University of London, “Decolonization, Nation-States, and Cross-border Hydropolitics in the 1948 India-Pakistan River Dispute”;

George Karekwaivanane, Balliol College, Oxford, “Law, Politic, and Decolonization in Zimbabwe, 1960-1980”;

Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, University of Amsterdam, “U.S. Diplomats and Dutch Public Opinion during the New Guinea Question, 1956-1962”;

Maurice Labelle, University of Akron, “Combating the Legacy of Empire: Arab Anti-Americanism and the United States in Lebanon, 1947-1961”;

Elisabeth Leake, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, “The Development of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, 1936-1965”;

Erik Linstrum, Harvard University, “The Human Factor: Experiments with Psychology in the British Empire, 1898-1960”;

Brian McNeil, University of Texas at Austin, “Frontiers of Need: Decolonization and the International Battle over Humanitarian Aid in Biafra, 1967-1970”;

Sarah Miller-Davenport, University of Chicago, “Hawa’ii Statehood and Changing Ideas of Race, Nation, and American Consumer Culture in the Post-World War II Period”;

Andres Rodriguez, University of Southampton, “‘Decolonizing’ China: Globalizing and Localizing Postwar Visions of State and Society in Republican China, 1945-1949”;

Ethan R. Sanders, University of Cambridge, “Decolonization and the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar: The Historical Legacy and Its Political Implications”;

Claire Wintle, University of Brighton, “Museums and Decolonization: Collecting and Display Practices as Microcosms of Political Encounter”; and

Akhila Yechury, London School of Economics and Political Science, “Debating Identity: The Indian ‘Nation-State’ and the Decolonisation of French India.”

The seminar is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is hosted by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.  This year it will meet from July 8 through August 3.  During those four weeks, the participants will research their topics at the Library, the National Archives, and other repositories in the Washington, DC area; discuss the phenomenon of decolonization; and critique each other’s work. Each will produce a publishable article or chapter of approximately 6,000 words.

The seminar is directed by Wm. Roger Louis, University of Texas at Austin, the director of the National History Center. Faculty members for 2012 are Jennifer L. Foray, Purdue University; Dane Kennedy, George Washington University; Philippa Levine, University of Texas at Austin; Jason Parker, Texas A&M University; and Pillarisetti Sudhir, American Historical Association.