For more information about any of these research institutes or for information on how you and your organization might partner with the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, contact Robert Saladini at rsal@loc.gov or 202-707-2692.
June 16-July 11, 2008
"Rethinking America in a Global Perspective"
An NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers at the Library
of Congress
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Information]
July 6-August 2, 2008
International Research Seminars on Decolonization
An American Historical Association Seminar in which 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.
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In July 2007, the National History Center of the American Historical Association, with support from the Mellon Foundation, collaborated with the Kluge Center to conduct a second international seminar on decolonization in the 20th century. The seminar brought fifteen young historians (recent PhDs and a few who are candidates in the last stages of their doctoral programs) from all over the world to participate in structured seminar discussions, to pursue major research, and to present a closing paper based on their individual research. Some of the 2007 participants had been studying aspects of decolonization in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East for several years. Others had encountered decolonization conceptually as they studied different facets of 20th-century history. The participants’ research was conducted using the Library’s collections, as well as other archival resources in the Washington area. One of the participants was "delighted to discover" an OSS report on the oppressed communities in India in the 1940s here at the Library. Some of the subjects pursued in this year’s seminar were "Decolonization of Jordan," "State Feminism and Decolonization: Egyptian Women and the Gender Politics of Nasserist Rule," "The West and Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier, 1947-55," "Pattern of Decolonization in Malta," and "Trade Unions and Decolonization of Singapore." The seminar included well attended, public lectures by Roger Louis, the seminar’s prime mover, and Crawford Young.
The Kluge Centered supported another in a series of the American Cities Research Institute programs. The series is sponsored by the Community College Humanities Association and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. An overriding objective of the institutes is to promote scholarship among community college faculty. For each of the annual institutes a group of ten community college humanities teachers is selected to carry out guided individual research on topics related to American cities. The underlying premises of the program are that the American city is a prime vehicle for developing economic, social, political, philosophical and cultural theory and that the urban condition is one of the great lenses for interpreting human experience. The name of the 2007 institute was "American Cities and Public Spaces." The topics of the four talks offered during the program were "Democracy and Public life in the American City," "Washington D.C. and the Mall: Evolution and Design," "Newark as a Contemporary Case Study in Social and Cultural History," and "Arts in the Culture War: The battle over Temperance in Reading, Pennsylvania during the Progressive Era." In this last talk, John M. Lawlor, Jr. explored the interconnectedness of many issues such as freedom, women’s rights, child welfare, health, poverty, and crime. He also demonstrated how, during the Progressive Era, the arts transcended locality. Fine arts, illustrations, photographs, low brow arts (vaudeville, music) and dramatic works (plays and films) were all used to convince the public of the "correctness" of various positions on temperance during the period.
Some previous research institutes include:
Globalizing Regional Studies 1999
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1999/9910/9910NEW2.CFM
Rethinking American in Global Perspective, 2005
http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2005/0509/0509new6.cfm
Decolonization Seminar 2006
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2006/0609/0609nhc1.cfm
