National History Center

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

The National History Center invites the public to attend its Decolonization Lecture Series Featuring Professor Marilyn B. Young on Limited War, Unlimited.

The lecture will be on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. in Room 119, Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue, SE. It is part of the Fourth International Seminar on Decolonization hosted by the National History Center with funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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 explores 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.

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

The lecture is co-sponsored by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and will be webcast.

A second lecture is also scheduled for Wednesday, July 15, 2009 from 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. in Room 119, Jefferson Building, Library of Congress (101 Independence Avenue, SE) with Philippa Levine, Professor History at the University of Southern California. Her lecture is entitled Still Invisible: Women, Gender, and Decolonization.

The National History Center congratulates the 15 scholars who have been selected, from among more than 80 outstanding applicants, to participate in the fourth international  seminar on decolonization, to be held July 5 though July 31, 2009, in Washington, D.C. The seminar, which is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is cosponsored by the American Historical Association and the Library of Congress, and will be held in the Jefferson Building of the library.

Wm. Roger Louis, chairman of the National History Center’s board of trustees, Kerr Professor of English History and Culture, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, will direct the seminar. Other seminar leaders include Dane Kennedy (George Washington Univ.), Philippa Levine (Univ. of Southern California), Jason Parker (Texas A & M Univ.), and Pillarisetti Sudhir (AHA).

In the list below, the name of the participant is followed by degree details, current institutional affiliation, if any, and the topic selected by the participant for research and discussion during the seminar:

Yoav Di-Capua, PhD, 2004, Princeton University; assistant professor, University of Texas at Austin. “Arab Thought on the Eve of Dystopia: 1945–1967”

James Esdaile, PhD candidate, Harvard University (anticipated 2009). “The End of Empire in the Aden Colony: The Role of Social and Commercial Networks in British Decolonization”

Ellen Feingold, DPhil candidate, Merton College, Oxford University (anticipated 2010). “Colonial Judges in a Fading Empire: The Decolonization of Tanganyika’s High Court”

Ryan Irwin, PhD candidate, Ohio State University (anticipated 2010). “Relationship between Decolonization and the Cold War between 1958 and 1971, Framed within Global Apartheid (South Africa)”

Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, PhD, 2008, King’s College, London; fellow at Department of History & Civilization of the European University Institute. “From Africa to Europe: Portugal and the End of European Colonial Empires, 1945–1975”

S. R. Joey Long, PhD, 2006, Wolfson College, Cambridge; assistant professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. “Imperiling Decolonization?: SEATO, Anglo-American Relations, and Singapore”

Julie MacArthur PhD candidate, University of Cambridge (anticipated June 2009).“Mapping Independent Nations: Regional Approaches to Decolonization in East Africa”

Lien Hang Nguyen, PhD, 2008, Yale University; assistant professor, University of Kentucky. “Between the Storms: An International History of the Vietnam War 1968–1973”

Paul Ocobock, PhD candidate, Princeton University (anticipated 2009). “Late 1950s and Early Post-colonial period in Kenya”

Katayoun Shafiee, PhD candidate, New York University (anticipated May 2009). “British Controlled Oil Industry in Iran and the Anglo-American Engineered Coup of 1953”

Taylor Sherman, PhD, 2006, Downing College, Cambridge University; postdoctoral research fellow, Faculty of History; Royal Holloway University of London. “The Integration of the Princely State of Hyderabad into India, 1944–1953”

Benjamin Silverstein, PhD candidate, La Trobe University, Australia (anticipated 2010). “Indirect Rule and Informal Empire: Decolonizing Settler Colonialism?”

Rajagopal Vakulabharanam, PhD, 2004, University of Wisconsin-Madison; lecturer, Department of History, University of Hyderabad, India. “Decolonization and the Indian Left: Communism in Andhra Pradesh, 1947–1955”

Natalya Vince, PhD, 2008, Queen Mary College, University of London; lecturer, French Studies, School of Languages and Area Studies, University of Portsmouth, UK. “Constructing Post-Colonial Womanhood in Algeria and Tunisia: Comparisons, Contrasts, and Mutual Representations in the Early Years of Independence”

Felicia Yap, PhD, 2008, University of Cambridge; lecturer, University of Cambridge and Nihon University, Tokyo. “Captives of Empire: Colonial Society under Japanese Internment, 1941–1945”

The National History Center is now accepting applications for the fourth international summer seminar on decolonization in the 20th century, which will be held July 5 to August 1, 2009, in Washington, D.C.

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 fourth seminar in the series, as in the previous three, 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 At the same time, participants will conduct research in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and other repositories of research materials in Washington, D.C.

Wm. Roger Louis, chair of the National History Center’s board of trustees, Kerr Professor of English History and Culture, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, will direct the seminar. Other seminar leaders will include Dane Kennedy (George Washington Univ.), Philippa Levine (Univ. of Southern California), Jason Parker (Texas A & M Univ.), and Pillarisetti Sudhir (AHA).

Applications and all supporting materials should reach the Administrative Officer of the National History Center by November 3, 2008. They may be e-mailed to decol09apply@nationalhistorycenter.org or mhauss@historians.org. If e-mailing is not possible, the applications may be mailed to The National History Center, 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.

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.

Requirements: Applicants should preferably have a recent PhD (that is, one obtained after January 1, 2002) and be at the beginning of their careers. Applications from 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.

2009 Seminar Details
Application Procedures
Letters of Recommendation Guidelines

Archives and Research resources in Washington, D.C.

American Historical Association’s Archives Wiki

In summer 2008, the Center will collaborate with the Library of Congress to convene the third of the international research seminars on the history of decolonization in the 20th century. These seminars are funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In the third seminar, to be held from July 6 to August 2, 2008, in Washington, DC, 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. At the same time, participants will conduct research in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and other repositories of research materials in Washington, DC. It is expected that many of the 15 seminar participants will come from the new postcolonial states as well as the former metropoles and that they will bring to the seminar multiple viewpoints and historical perspectives. Wm. Roger Louis, chair of the National History Center’s board of trustees, Kerr Professor of English History and Culture, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, will direct the seminars. Other seminar leaders will include Dane Kennedy (George Washington Univ.), Philippa Levine (Univ. of Southern California), and Jason Parker (Texas A & M Univ.).

The fourteen participants for the 2008 Decolonization Seminar are:

• Carolyn Biltoft (PhD Candidate 2008, Princeton University), “Assassination: Life and Death at the End of Empire”
• Jennifer Dueck (DPhil 2005, Oxford), Lecturer, Corpus Christi, Oxford, “Inter-confessional relations in French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon”
• Eric D. Duke (PhD 2007 Michigan State University), Assistant Professor, University of South Florida, “Out of One … Many Nations: Imagining the West Indies Federation”
• Jennifer Foray (PhD 2007 Columbia University), Assistant Professor, Purdue University, “From Dominion Status to Decolonization: The Commonwealth Idea in the Netherlands, 1920–1954”
• Leigh Gardner (DPhil Candidate, 2009, Jesus College, Oxford), “Public Finance and Decolonization in British Africa: Continuity and Change in Kenya and Zambia, 1945–75”
• Emma Hunter (PhD 2007, University of Cambridge), Lecturer, University of Cambridge, “Political Languages in Decolonization Era Tanzania: Revisiting the Centre-Local Dynamics”
• Shereen Ilahi (PhD Candidate 2008, University of Texas at Austin), “The Amritsar Massacre of 1919 compared to 1920 Bloody Sunday in Ireland”
• Fabian Klose (PhD 2007, University of Munich), Lecturer, University of Munich, “The Transfer of Strategic Knowledge in the Age of the Wars of Decolonization”
• Guy Laron (PhD Candidate 2008, Hebrew University), “Decolonization age and the Eisenhower Administration, 1952–1956”
• Daniel da Silva Costa Marcos (PhD candidate 2008, Portuguese Institute for International Relations-New University of Lisbon), “The USA, Portugal, and the Colonial Issue, 1945–1961”
• Laura Robson (PhD candidate 2009, Yale University), “Decolonization and Christian Arab Political Identity in British Mandate Palestine, 1917–1948”
• Maria Romo-Navarrete (PhD, 2006, Sorbonne) Associate Researcher, Research Center of History at the University of Sorbonne, “French Indigenous Political Elites Through the Last Years of the French Empire”
• Lori Watt (PhD 2002, Columbia University), Assistant Professor, Department of History, Program in International & Area Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
  “When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation in Postwar Japan”
• Stefanie Wichhart (PhD 2007, University of Texas at Austin), Assistant Professor, Niagara University, “A ‘well-run’ Iraq or a ‘happy’ Iraq: the Second British Occupation, 1941–1946”

2007 Decolonization Seminar Participants and Leaders

The second international seminar was be from July 9 through August 3, 2007. The fifteen participants and the leaders were:

• Yoav Alon (PhD 2001, St. Antony’s, Oxford), Lecturer, Tel Aviv Univ. Decolonization of Jordan
• Michael Anderson (PhD Candidate [2008], University of Texas, Austin), The U.S. Government and the Institute of Pacific Relations
• Meriam Belli (PhD 2005, Georgetown University), Lecturer, MIT, Geography and Demography of Decolonization in Port Said
• Laura Bier (PhD 2006, New York University), Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech, State Feminism and Decolonization: Egyptian Women and the Gender Politics of Nasserist Rule
• David Campion (PhD 2002, University of Virginia), Assistant Professor, Lewis & Clark College, Pattern of Decolonization in Malta
• Christopher Harding (PhD 2004, St. Antony’s, Oxford), Associate Lecturer, University of Edinburgh, The Emergence of Indian Psychotherapies, c. 1925 – 55
• Joe Hodge (PhD, 2002 Queen’s University, Canada), Assistant Professor, West Virginia University, Colonial Experts, Developmental Doctrines, and the Legacies of the Late British Colonialism
• Chinnaiah Jangam (PhD 2005, SOAS, London), Assistant Professor, Wagner College, Dalits and Decolonization in India
• Christopher Lee (PhD 2003, Stanford), Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, The 1955 Bandung Conference
• Mairi MacDonald (PhD Candidate [2007], University of Toronto), Decolonization in Guinea: The View from Paris
• Brandon Marsh (PhD Candidate [2007], University of Texas, Austin), The West and Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier, 1947–55
• Christopher O’Sullivan (PhD 1999, LSE, London), Lecturer, University of San Francisco, Decline of British Empire, Rise of American Hegemony, and the Middle East, 1935–50
• Berny Sèbe (PhD Candidate [2007], Keble, Oxford), Decolonization or Reinforcement of French Control: The U.S. and the Organisation des Regions Sahariennes, 1957–62
• Penny Sinanoglou (PhD Candidate [2008], Harvard), British Mandate in Palestine, 1922–1948
• Pingtjin Thum (DPhil Candidate [2008], Brasenose, Oxford), Trade Unions and Decolonization of Singapore

2007 Decolonization Seminar Leaders

• Wm. Roger Louis (University of Texas at Austin), Director
• Dane Kennedy (George Washington University)
• Philippa Levine (University of Southern California)
• Jason Parker (Texas A & M)
• Pillarisetti Sudhir (American Historical Association)
• Marilyn Young (New York University)

2006 Decolonization Seminar Participants and Leaders

The first international seminar took place July 10 through August 4, 2006 with fifteen participants from around the globe. They were:

• Anne Louise Antonoff, Yale University, PhD candidate, U.S. and Decolonization in 1952: A Liberalizing Moment?
• Lauren Apter, University of Texas at Austin, PhD candidate, The Role of American Zionism in the Decolonization of Palestine
• Tracey Banivanua Mar, University of Melbourne, Lecturer in Indigenous Australian and Pacific Histories, Indigenous Globalization: historical networks of decolonization in western Oceania
• Daniel Branch, Yale University, Postdoctoral Associate, Not yet Uhuru? The Local Politics of Decolonization in Central Kenya, 1956-1973
• Elizabeth Buettner, University of York, UK, Lecturer in Modern British History, The Impact of Empire: Cultural Decolonization in Europe
• Lucy Chester, University of Colorado, Boulder, Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs, Britain’s Decolonization of South Asia, 1947, and Palestine Mandate, 1948
• Kristen Stromberg Childers, University of Pennsylvania, Assistant Professor of History, Choosing the Mother Country: Decolonization and Migration to France and Britain, 1945-present
• Adrian Howkins, University of Texas, PhD candidate, The Imperialism of Decolonization in Antarctica
• Yasmin Khan, British Academy, University of London, Postdoctoral Fellow in Politics and International Relations, Policemen and Partition: regime Change in North India, 1946-1964
• Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi, University of San Marino, Italy, PhD Candidate, Congo Basin and former Colonial powers relationship
• Jason Parker, West Virginia University, Assistant Professor of History, Decolonization and Third World Federations
• Louise Rice, Rutgers University, PhD Candidate, France, West Africa, and the Re-imagination of Empire in the Era of Decolonization
• George R. Trumbull, IV, Tulane University, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History, An Ocean of Sand: A Cultural History of Water in the Colonial Sahara
• Lorenzo Veracini, University of Queensland, Australia, Postdoctoral Fellow/Lecturer, Settler Colonialism and Decolonization
• Chantalle Verna, Florida International University, Assistant Professor of History and International Relations, Haiti’s “Second Independence” and the Promise of the Post-occupation Period, 1934-1956