Videos and Audiocasts from National History Center events.
Is environmental history our best hope for the future? This question, posed by Patricia Nelson Limerick (Center for the American West) in a conversation with Christof Mauch (Rachel Carson Center), ignited plans for a more in-depth discussion about the future of the field. The resulting invitation-only workshop, which co-sponsored by the National History Center, the [...]
In the last Washington History Seminar for the semester, Paul S. Landau, historian at the University of Maryland, will discuss “South Africa and the End of Apartheid” on Monday, May 2, 2011 at 4:00 pm at the Wilson Center. Upon his release from prison, Nelson Mandela led the crowd in a rousing chant of the [...]
At the next Washington History Seminar, Don H. Doyle of the University of South Carolina will explore “America’s International Civil War” on Monday, April 25 at 4:00 pm at the Wilson Center. While the military contest between North and South dragged on inconclusively over four years, an equally crucial contest of diplomacy, ideology, and propaganda [...]
At the next National History Center-Woodrow Wilson International Seminar for Scholars weekly “Washington History Seminar,” David S. Painter, Georgetown University will examine the relationship with oil and world power. His lecture, entitled “Oil and World Power” is Monday, November 29, 2010 at 4:00 pm at the Wilson Center. During the twentieth century oil was essential [...]
Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia, is presenting at the next National History Center-Wilson Center “Washington History Seminar” on Monday, November 22 at 4:00 pm at the Wilson Center. He will be discussing “Accidents and Axioms: The Curious History of U.S. Foreign Policy.” The history of U.S. foreign policy has usually been told in order to [...]
The next Washington History Seminar features Erin Mahan, Chief Historian of the U.S. Department of Defense, who will discuss “Weapons of Mass Destruction” on Monday, November 1st, at 4:00 pm at the Wilson Center. After the anthrax letter attacks of 2001 and in the months leading to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the [...]
Historian Caroline Elkins gives the next Washington History Seminar at the Wilson Center on Monday, September 27, discussing “Reflections on the Mau Mau and the End of Empire.” Caroline Elkins is Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Her first book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in [...]
Kicking off the Fall 2010 semester of the Washington History Seminar: Historical Perspectives on International and National Affairs is Donald A. Ritchie, the Historian of the United States Senate, with “Why a Congress and Not a Parliament?” As the tortuous legislative proceedings on health insurance demonstrated, the United States Congress operates differently from the parliamentary [...]
The story of the movement that led President Obama’s father and thousands of other young Africans to study abroad in the 1950s and 1960s is much more complicated than is usually thought, according to Dan Branch, a historian of Kenya and alumnus of the National History Center’s International Seminar on Decolonization. Focusing on students from [...]
Jason C. Parker, professor of history at Texas A & M University, gave a lecture at the Library of Congress as part of the National History Center’s Fifth International Seminar on Decolonization. The lecture, entitled “The Empires Who Came in from the Cold: Cold War and Decolonization” focused on the overlapping timelines of postwar decolonization [...]