The Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin welcomes its 2020-21 class of pre and postdoctoral fellows. Peter Slezkine of Columbia University and Theo Milonopoulos of Columbia University are this year’s predoctoral fellows. Jaehan Park of Johns Hopkins SAIS is an America in the World predoctoral fellow who will remain in residence with us at the Clements Center. Dr. Emily Whalen (University of Texas) and Dr. Max von Bargen (Ohio State University) are this year’s postdoctoral fellows while 2019-2020 postdoctoral fellow Dr. deRasimes Combes (American University) has extended her fellowship through December. The Clements Center also welcomes Eli Lake to the team as our National Security Journalism Fellow.

 

Please join us for the W.R. Louis Washington History Seminar Panel with Thomas A. Schwartz on Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography

The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) invites proposals for its first-ever “hybrid” annual conference. 

In June 2020, SHAFR Council decided that next year’s meeting would operate both onsite and online.  The onsite conference will be smaller—recognizing the contingencies of the current public health situation—but registrants will be able to access and participate in the conference from offsite locations.  The resulting event will be both local and delocalized, synchronous and asynchronous.

The Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize Committee—Tehila Sasson, Daniel Bessner and Melani McAlister—is pleased to announce that Bathsheba Demuth (Brown University) is this year’s recipient of the Bernath Article Prize. Demuth's article, entitled “The Walrus and the Bureaucrat: Energy, Ecology, and Making the State in the Russian and American Arctic, 1870–1950,” appeared in the April 2019 issue of the American Historical Review. This deeply researched and creatively conceived article uses the case of the Pacific walrus to argue that in the first half of the twentieth century, the environmental conditions of the Bering Strait challenged both the American and Russian states. Demuth follows the story of how the opposed ideological projects of the two countries--one devoted to free markets and the other to communal labor—both aimed to increase production and, in doing so, to make capitalist citizens of indigenous Alaskan Yupik and Inupiat and to make communist citizens of indigenous Chukotkan Chukchi and Yupik. In making this comparison, Demuth utilizes an expansive source base to denaturalize the story of American exceptionalism. Her article offers novel contributions to the history of capitalism, indigenous history, and the Cold War. Her work also pushes historians of U.S. foreign relations to attend to the role animals and the natural environment play in international affairs as well as what it means to write the history of U.S. foreign relations from borderlands.

In addition, the Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize Committee makes two honorable mentions. The first honorable mention goes to Simon Toner’s article “‘The Paradise of the Latrine’: American Toilet-Building and the Continuities of Colonial and Postcolonial Development,” published in 2019 in Modern American History. Toner’s fascinating and innovative article traces the story of a counter-insurgency, development project in South Vietnam to build sanitary latrines, embedding this story in a deeper imperial history. The article reconceptualizes the U.S.-South Vietnamese relationship, demonstrating how development aid was forged in collaboration with local elites rather than being passively imposed on South Vietnam.

SHAFR is saddened at the loss of noted scholars Amy Kaplan on July 30 aged 66 and Thomas Joseph McCormick Jr. on July 25 aged 87.

Amy Kaplan was the Edward W. Kane Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and past president of the American Studies Association.  Her works included the Cultures of United States Imperialism (1994) collection, co-edited with Donald J. Pease, "which marked a paradigm shift for the field of American Studies, forcing scholars to contend with the United States’s imperialist history."

The New York Public Library is launching a new program series from the Center for Research in the Humanities called Doc Chat. During each 30-minute episode, a NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar will highlight evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and discuss innovative ways of teaching with them. NYPL welcomes educators, researchers, students, and primary source lovers to join the Doc Chat conversation.

 

On July 29 at 3:30pm, NYPL’s Julie Golia and Colgate University Professor Dan Bouk will discuss a curious map and its unusual connection to the Red Scare of 1919-1920. More information and the registration link can be found here: https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2020/07/29/doc-chat-episode-1-mapping-1920s-red-scare

The OAH offers the Richard W. Leopold Prize every two years to the author or editor of the best book on foreign policy, military affairs, historical activities of the federal government, documentary histories, or biography written by a U.S. government historian or federal contract historian.

Further information on the prize and how to apply can be found on the OAH website: https://www.oah.org/awards/book-awards/richard-w-leopold-prize/

The Gilder Lehrman Institute offers annual short-term research fellowships of $3000 each to doctoral candidates, college and university faculty at every rank, and independent scholars working in the field of American history. This year, applications to the program must be received by Friday, July 31, 2020. Applications may propose research at archives in the five boroughs of New York and surrounding areas, including the Rockefeller Archive Center. This year, proposals with a focus on the Cold War will be given greater consideration.

For details about the program, please visit https://www.gilderlehrman.org/programs-and-events/scholarly-fellowships. Application information can be found at https://mailchi.mp/gilderlehrman/applications-for-2020-gilder-lehrman-fellowships-are-now-open-222582.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact [email protected]

JFKI Job Listing

At its meeting on Thursday, the SHAFR Council unanimously affirmed the following statement of solidary:

"The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) affirms that Black Lives Matter and condemns state and non-state violence against racialized communities in the United States and abroad.  We stand in solidarity with those who have been fighting anti-Black racism and vow to continue working for the full inclusion and equality of all peoples in all institutions and communities to which we belong, including SHAFR. 

"Consistent with SHAFR's mission to promote 'the study, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge of American foreign relations,' we believe in identifying the inequities and imbalances of power and influence between and within states and highlighting the connections between racism, patriarchy, economic exploitation, and imperialism.  We hope you will join us in fostering research and dialogue including diverse constituencies, working towards meaningful change, justice, and healing."

New On-Line Global Research Tactics for the Twenty-First Century

Monday 22 June, 12 Noon to 14:00 (EDT) via Zoom

Flyer

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the SHAFR 2020 Annual Meeting scheduled for June 2020 in New Orleans, Louisiana was cancelled.  We have set up a virtual conference page that includes:

• The audio version of this year's SHAFR 2020 Presidential Address- "Inposts of Empire" by Kristin Hoganson, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.  As per SHAFR's usual custom, it will later appear in print in Diplomatic History.
• The SHAFR 2020 Final Program
• Abstracts from those accepted participants and panels that wished to organize virtual events this week.
• Announcement of the SHAFR 2020 prize winners that would have ordinarily been awarded at the annual meeting.

All of this can be found on the SHAFR 2020 Virtual Conference site.

Colleagues from the Society for History of American Foriegn Relations,

Please find attached a letter to our researchers that I hope you will share with your members.  This letter has also been posted to our website and to my blog.

Coordinating Council for Women in History (CCWH) Awards
Deadline- June 15, 2020

The CCWH offers six awards. For full descriptions and application procedures, see https://theccwh.org/ccwh-awards/.

The 2019 Report of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation is now available on the SHAFR Research page.