|
by Drew McKevitt
While CENFAD has often been well represented at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), this year marks a new turn in the Center’s relationship to one of the history profession’s largest subdisciplinary organizations. Professor Richard Immerman, CENFAD’s Director, is currently serving as SHAFR President in 2007. On the conference’s final day, Saturday, June 23, Immerman will deliver his presidential address titled, “Intelligence and Strategy: Historicizing Psychology, Policy, and Politics.” For those unable to attend the conference, the presidential address is traditionally published in the first volume of Diplomatic History in January of the following year (2008).
CENFAD faculty will also make an appearance at the conference. Professor William Hitchcock will serve as commentator for a panel titled, “NATO and the Gaullist Challenge.” Professor Petra Goedde will chair and comment on a panel titled, “War, Migration, and Citizenship.”
Finally, CENFAD graduate students will showcase their research. Ph.D. Candidate Philip Gibbon will present findings from his dissertation in “Robert Bowie: Analyst and Academic” during a roundtable discussion on the role of individuals in history. In his paper, “Putting the Past Behind Us: Détente, Disarmament and Environmental Warfare in Vietnam,” Ph.D. Candidate David Zierler will draw on his dissertation to contribute a panel on the Vietnam War and the environment. Lastly, Ph.D. Candidate Andrew McKevitt will contribute to a panel on culture in the Reagan era with his paper, “Lost in Translation? Anime as Global Culture in Reagan’s America, 1977-1989.”
The SHAFR Conference will be held in Chantilly, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., on June 21-23, 2007.
4. CENFAD AT THE SMH
by Dr. Gregory J. W. Urwin
Temple University faculty members, alumni, and graduate students have long played a prominent role in the Society for Military History, but this year’s annual conference at Frederick, Maryland, from April 19 to 22, will have CENFAD’s fingerprints all over it.
Temple doctoral student Michael E. Lynch served on the SMH’s 2007 Program Committee, assisting with conference arrangements and the selection of paper panels.
Two members of the CENFAD family have been nominated for the SMH’s Board of Trustees – Professor Jennifer L. Speelman (Ph.D., 2001) of the Citadel and Professor Gregory J. W. Urwin of Temple. If elected, Speelman and/or Urwin will take office during the conference.
Urwin organized and will chair a paper panel titled “Draw Sabers: Cutting Edge Research on the U.S. Cavalry.” Two of the presenters have Temple connections. Ph.D. candidate Richard Grippaldi will speak on “’Healthy, Active, and Respectable Men of the Country’: The Enlisted Men of the U.S. Regiment of Dragoons, 1833-36.” Thomas G. Nester (M.A., 2002) will present a paper titled “On the Frontlines of Civil-Military Relations: The Seventh U.S. Cavalry Confronts the ‘Southern Problem’ during Reconstruction.” Grippaldi is currently Urwin’s student and Nester wrote his M.A. thesis, “The Impact of the Memphis and New Orleans Race Riots of 1866 on Northern Public Opinion and Sectional Politics,” under Urwin’s direction. Fittingly, the SMH bestowed Nester with a Russell F. Weigley Travel Award to defray his expenses for the conference.
Urwin is commenting on a second paper panel, “World War II: The ‘Good War’ through a Non-Traditional Lens,” and Speelman will chair one on “World War II Submarine Warfare.”
Professor Beth Bailey of Temple will present a paper titled “’If You Like Ms., You’ll Love Private’: The Modern Volunteer Army and the Woman Soldier.” It is part of a panel on “Calculated Appeals: The U.S. Military and Its Publics, from the Korean War to the All Volunteer Era.”
J. Britt McCarley (Ph.D., 1989), Chief Historian of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, will chair and comment on a session devoted to “’No Time Like the Present’: Collecting, Archiving, and Teaching the Army’s Branch History as Part of the Global War on Terrorism.”
Another Temple alumnus, Professor Henry G. Gole (Ph.D., 1991) of the U.S. Army War College, will comment on a panel that covers “Soldiering in the 18th and 19th Centuries.”
Patrick Speelman (Ph.D., 2000), Jennifer Speelman’s husband and a visiting assistant professor at the Citadel, will chair a panel that addresses “Problems in Civil-Military Relations (8th C BC - 18th C).”
Professor Douglas V. Johnson (Ph.D., 1992) of the Army War College will chair a panel exploring “Religion in War.”
5. CENFAD HOSTS SECOND INTERNATIONAL HISTORY WORKSHOP
by David Zierler
Last May, CENFAD and Temple’s History Department organized and hosted the first International History Workshop, under the direction of Dr. William I. Hitchcock. The conference was a great success; many of the top scholars in the field and up-and-coming graduate students convened in the Weigley Room for two days of rigorous and enlightening discussion on the present and future state of International History.
This May 19-20, Professor Hitchcock, with the assistance of graduate students Wendy Wong, Kristin Grueser, and David Zierler, will build on that success and stage a second International History Workshop. The theme for the 2007 meeting is “Occupations/Liberations: Framing 20th Century Military Interventions.” This timely topic serves as a common theme for scholars from various regional sub-fields whose work examines the political, military, or cultural occupations of territory by other states, and the resistance that such occupations often provoke. The workshop will encourage comparative analysis of liberations, their costs, their record of success and failure, their social impact on the “liberated,” and the way they become tainted and politically contested. The workshop will also engage in a dialogue about the uses of these terms in the formation of national memory and public discourse about war: one person’s liberation, after all, is usually another person’s occupation. The scholars invited are writing some of the most innovative scholarship in this field, and will present material from divergent methodological perspectives. The panels focus on various geographic locations in which the concepts of liberation and occupation have at times framed the use of political and military violence: Western Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. The workshop will take place in the Weigley Room on the 9th floor of Gladfelter Hall.
Share with your friends: |
