The political developments, societal transformations, cultural shifts, foreign policy initiatives, national security concerns, and international relations that originated from the US have left an indelible mark on the North American continent and the global landscape. This new hybrid seminar series, organized by the RIAS and the Sciences Po Center for History (CHSP) in Paris, forms a platform to explore these diverse and interconnected themes.

This series, one of very few of its kind in Europe, intersects with various significant historiographical trends, continuing the move towards a more integrated view of US and North American history. It pays special attention to the inclusion of global, imperial, transnational, and interconnected histories to reframe our understanding of the United States’ place in the world and the emerging focus on international environmental history and issues.

The platform, which meets once a month in a hybrid format, encourages active participation from doctoral students and aims to serve as an open and inclusive forum for discussing some of the most innovative recent scholarship. It aspires to bring together historians of different backgrounds and in different stages of their careers, foster a historiographical and interdisciplinary conversation, and critically consider the contemporary societal and political ramifications of the historical events under discussion.

Coordinators:

– Dario Fazzi (Leiden University / RIAS)
– Gaetano Di Tommaso (RIAS)
– Mario Del Pero (Sciences Po-Paris, Centre d’histoire)
– Olivier Burtin (Université de Picardie Jules Verne)

Program 2023-2024

⁃  September 25, 2023, 17h-18h30 CEST
Kristin Hoganson (University of Illinois), Structures of Power: US Infrastructure Building in the Circum-Caribbean During the Bad Neighbor Era

⁃  October 23, 2023, 18h-19h30 CEST
Matthew Connelly (Columbia University), America’s Secrecy Industrial Complex: History and the Future

⁃  November 20, 2023, 17h-18h30 CET
Andrew Preston (University of Cambridge), From Planning to Strategy: New Deal Liberalism and the Invention of National Security

⁃  December 11, 2023, 17h30-19h00 CET
Rebecca Herman (UC Berkeley), Cooperating with the Colossus: US Military Basing in World War II Latin America

⁃  January 29, 2024, 17h-18h30 CET
Sean Vanatta (University of Glasgow), A Treacherous Ocean of Money: Finance and Failure across the Interwar Atlantic, 1920-1935

⁃  February 26, 2024, 17h-18h30 CET
Sarah Nelson (Leiden University), Networking Empire: Communications, Decolonization, and American Power in the 20th Century

⁃  March 25, 2024, 17h-18h30 CET
Augusta Dell’Omo (Southern Methodist University), Far Right Capitalism in the U.S. and South Africa at the End of the Cold War

⁃  April 29, 2024, 17h-18h30 CEST
Elsa Devienne (Northumbria University), Rubbish Tactics? Oil Spills, Beach Clean-Ups, and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (1969-2023)

Contacts: mario.delpero@sciencespo.fr; g.di.tommaso@roosevelt.nl