Tag Archives: Jason Parker

Sixth International Seminar on Decolonization Participants Announced

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Participants for the Sixth International Seminar on Decolonization have been chosen.  The seminar, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and hosted by the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, brings together fifteen scholars at the beginning of their careers to Washington, DC for the summer.  The four-week program consists of class meetings, public lectures, informal gatherings, and research in the Washington area on decolonization in the twentieth century.  It begins in mid-July and runs through the first week of August and has become an important stage is many young historians’ career.

This year, the seminar is directed by Wm. Roger Louis (University of Texas at Austin), with leadership help from  John Darwin (Nuffield College, University of Oxford), Philippa Levine (University of Texas at Austin), Jason Parker (Texas A & M University), and Pillarisetti Sudhir (American Historical Association).

The 2011 participants and topics are:

Amanda Behm, Ph.D. candidate, British and imperial history, Yale University (degree expected 2012).
“The Third British Empire: history, theory and reality”

Eveline Buchheim (Ph.D., Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, 2009), Researcher, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The Netherlands.
“Passion and Purpose: Intimacies of Decolonization”

Paul Chamberlin (Ph.D., Diplomatic / International History, the Ohio State University, 2009), Assistant Professor of History, University of Kentucky.
“New Imperial Frontiers: The End of the Cold War and the Struggle for the Middle East, 1972-1982”

Jessica Chapman (Ph.D., History, University of California–Santa Barbara, 2006), Assistant Professor of History, Williams College, Massachusetts.
“From Disorder to Dictatorship: The Domestic and International History of Ngo Dinh Diem’s Construction of South Vietnam, 1953-1956”

Mads Clausen (Ph.D., English, U. of Copenhagen, 2010), Assistant Professor of British and American Politics and History, Aarhus University, Denmark.
“Out of the Ashcan of History: Decolonisation, Regional Engagement and Australian Post-Imperial Nationhood, 1956-1972”

Chris Dietrich, Ph.D. candidate, History, University of Texas–Austin (expected 2011).
“In the Wake of Withdrawal: British Decolonization and the International Energy Politics, 1967-1971”

Matthew Heaton (Ph.D., History, University of Texas–Austin, 2008), Assistant Professor of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
“The Decolonization of Psychiatry in the British Empire, 1945-1979”

Jon Howlett, Ph.D. candidate, History, Bristol University, UK (expected 2011).
“‘Decolonising Shanghai:’ the American experience of the takeover of Shanghai and the purge of foreign influence in the city”

Su Lin Lewis (Ph.D., History, University of Cambridge, 2010), Past and Present Post-doctoral Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, UK.
“Cultural International and Civil Society Networks in 1950s Southeast Asia”

Moritz Mihatsch, D.Phil. candidate, History, Nuffield College, University of Oxford (expected 2012).
“Colonialism, Neocolonialism and the United States: How the Sudanese Political Parties dealt with Aid and Technical Assistance”

Lata Parwani, Ph.D. candidate, Modern South Asia History, Tufts University (expected 2012).
“From Homeland to Motherland: Reflecting on the Sindhi Hindu Exodus, 1947-49”

Justin Pearce, D.Phil candidate, Politics, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford (expected 2011),
“Decolonisation in Angola and the roots of civil war”

Muhammad Ali Raza, D.Phil candidate, Modern South Asian History, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford (expected 2011).
“Yearning for Freedom and Revolution: Indian Radicals in Moscow during the Interwar Period”

Anne-Isabelle Richard (Ph.D., History, Gonville and Caius College, Univeristy of Cambridge, 2010), Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute.
“How Europe needed Africa: The influence of decolonization in Asia on Eurafrican projects in France, 1945-1954”

Matthew Stanard (Ph.D., Modern European History, Indiana University, 2006), Assistant Professor of History, Berry College, Georgia.
“Belgium’s pro-empire propaganda and official U.S. views of decolonization in the Belgian Congo, 1955-1961”

The Empires Who Came in from the Cold: Cold War and Decolonization

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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 and the Cold War, with the former starting earlier and culminating as the latter entered its final phase, create a fascinating interrelationship.

Decolonization entailed not just the transfer of political and juridical sovereignty but also an intellectual and cultural process that dethroned European assertions and affirmed nationalist self-rule. The ultimate dimensions of the decolonization process make it a larger and longer-running twentieth-century story than that of the superpower conflict.

Jason Parker is associate professor of history at Texas A&M University. His research centers on the interplay of the Cold War and decolonization in U.S. relations with the “Third World.” He is the author of Brother’s Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937-1962 (Oxford, 2008), which received the 2009 Bernath Book Award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.  This lecture is presented in conjunction with the National History Center’s Decolonization Seminar. The four-week seminar held at the Library brings together international scholars to examine various dimensions of decolonization, primarily 20th-century transitions from colonies to nations in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The seminar, supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is cosponsored by the American Historical Association and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

Listen to the podcast of Professor Parker’s lecture by pressing play.

Or, click to watch a webcast of Professor Parker’s lecture.

Jason Parker to Discuss the Cold War and Decolonization

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Professor Jason C. Parker will present “The Empires Who Came In From The Cold: Decolonization and the Cold War” at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, July 21, at the Library of Congress, Room 119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

This lecture is a part of the Center’s Fifth International Seminar on Decolonization, which began on July 12th. It is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are needed. A light reception will follow the lecture and question and answer session.

According to Professor Parker, the overlapping timelines of postwar decolonization and the Cold War, with the former starting earlier and culminating as the latter entered its final phase, create a fascinating interrelationship. Decolonization entailed not just the transfer of political and juridical sovereignty but also an intellectual and cultural process that dethroned European assertions and affirmed nationalist self-rule. The ultimate dimensions of the decolonization process make it a larger and longer-running twentieth-century story than that of the superpower conflict.

Jason Parker is associate professor of history at Texas A&M University. His research centers on the interplay of the Cold War and decolonization in U.S. relations with the “Third World.” He is the author of Brother’s Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937-1962 (Oxford, 2008), which received the 2009 Bernath Book Award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He has published articles in the Journal of American History, Diplomatic History, and the Journal of African American History, among others. His current projects are a history of U.S. Cold War public diplomacy in the Third World, and a comparative study of postwar federations in the decolonizing European empires. He also has received a post-doc fellowship at the Mershon Center for International Studies at the Ohio State University and has been named a Fulbright Scholar for 2009-2010. Professor Parker received his B.A. and M.A. from Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. from the University of Florida.

The lecture is presented in conjunction with the National History Center’s Decolonization Seminar. The four-week seminar held at the Library brings together international scholars to examine various dimensions of decolonization, primarily 20th-century transitions from colonies to nations in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The seminar, supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is cosponsored by the American Historical Association and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress.

Wm. Roger Louis gave a previous lecture in conjunction with the seminar and on Wednesday, July 28, Professor Daniel Branch of the University of Warwick in England will give a third lecture focusing on the African Airlift.