Dr. Ingo Trauschweizer
By Dr. Ingo Trauschweizer
Associate Professor of History & Director of the Contemporary History Institute
2018-19 is shaping up to be an exciting year for our students and faculty affiliates at the Contemporary History Institute. We’ll get to interact with outstanding scholars from different fields and disciplines (History, International Studies and Political Science, Journalism) in the fall, and we have an equally diverse lineup of CHI talks planned for the spring.
This fall we’re bringing back the Elizabeth Evans Baker Lecture, which was last on offer in the 1980s. Our first speaker is Professor Amitav Acharya. On Nov. 29 at 7:30pm in Baker Ballroom A the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and a Distinguished Professor in the School of International Service at American University will present “Is Peace and Cooperation Possible After the Liberal Order?.”
The Baker Peace Conference—on March 28 and 29, 2019—on “Temple of Peace? International Cooperation and World Order since 1945” will take up a pressing issue: what happens when (or if) the postwar liberal world order becomes less sturdy? And what is it that has evolved since 1945 in the first place? Here, too, we’ll hear from historians, political scientists, and diplomats. Our keynote speaker is Admiral (ret.) James Stavridis, former NATO supreme commander.
We hope these events will spark lively discussions on campus and contribute to the university’s efforts to present difficult dialogues in a civil form.
Aside from these signature events, I’d like to highlight two themes that will run through the year.
For one, CHI was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct a program for and with veterans (students as well as those not affiliated with the university) on how humanities sources could help spur conversations about experiences in war. We hope this year-long program will lead to more lasting relationships between students, veterans, and the wider community. Look for announcements of public programs on Forum and in the CHI Newsletter.
And we’ll see some of our accomplished alumni return to Athens. For our second talk in the speaker series, on Oct. 11, we welcome three of them: Christian Peterson (Ph.D., 2009) and William Knoblauch (Ph.D., 2012), who are the co-editors of a new book on the history of world peace, and Joanna Tague (M.A., 2003), who contributed a chapter on the recent history of Mozambique. In February 2019, we will host Christina Morina (M.A., 2002).
CHI Conversations: Building on last year’s successful launch, we will also run the second iteration of our CHI Conversations. This fall, these will take place on Thursday afternoons, usually either from 2-3 or 3-4 p.m., at Sing Tao Center. The conversational format allows us to engage in difficult dialogues, bringing historically informed perspectives to bear on topics of current importance. For the program, contact me at trauschw@ohio.edu.
I hope many of you can join us on Thursday, Aug. 30, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Sing Tao Center for our 2018 welcome reception. Come and meet our faculty, returning students, our new cohort of masters and doctoral students, and our staff and administrators. And I hope to see you on Sept. 13 for the first talk in our fall speaker series.
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