As part of our month-long celebration of Black History Month, here’s an excerpt from the Introduction of White World Order, Black Power Politics, by Robert Vitalis. This award-winning book contends that racism and imperialism are the twin forces that propelled the course of the United States in the world in the early twentieth century and in turn affected the way that diplomatic history and international relations (originally known as “race relations”) were taught and understood in the American academy.
In episode 14, Patrice McMahon, associate professor of political science at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, talks about the role of NGOs in post-conflict peacebuilding. She gives us the history of NGOs as an international force, explains the role they played in the Balkans after the conflict there, and indicates how NGOs have had to professionalize and globalize since then in order to remain relevant.
And, for easy access, here’s the full list of episodes so far:
Episode 1: Peter Conners talks Dead Heads and the 40th anniversary of the (probably) greatest Grateful Dead concert ever
Episode 2: Glenn Altschuler looks at the history of Cornell University
Episode 3: Suzanne Gordon dives into the issues surrounding veterans’ health care
Episode 4: Gordon Lafer warns us about the power of corporate lobbying
Episode 5: Keith Bildstein waxes lyrical on the beauty of birds of prey
Episode 6: Rosemary Sekora discusses BookExpo and BookCon
Episode 7: Michael McGandy launches Three Hills, our new trade imprint
Episode 8: Jim Lance explains what he wants to acquire and why
Episode 9: Alan Bernstein goes to Hell (well, he gives us some context and history, anyway)
Episode 10: Greg Britton and Zach Gresham reveal what really happened at AAUP17
Episode 11: Sean Malloy breaks down the Black Panthers as an international force
Episode 12: Julia Azari provides the background on presidential mandates
Episode 13: Brandon Keim gets anthropomorphic on us
Episiode 14: Patrice McMahon shows how NGOs got to be so important
If there’s someone you’d like to listen to on an episode let us know by emailing Martyn Beeny or tweeting at the Press.
One hears so much these days, in academic circles, about the transnational that it is surprising that a decade ago it was a new concept in many fields. This was particularly so among historians of United States foreign relations, where high-level diplomacy and affairs of state had been the focus of attention as long as anyone could remember. So it was that the inaugural publications in The United States in the World—a book series dedicated to transnational scholarship—were unexpected, innovative, and trend-setting in the study of what was once termed “foreign affairs.” This year marks the ten-year anniversary of the first two books published in the series, and it is time to recognize the insight of the founding series editors and give tribute to the field-changing impact of the twenty volumes that have been published since 2007.
The story of the series goes back to 2005, when Mark Philip Bradley and Paul A. Kramer collaborated with my predecessor at Cornell University Press, Alison Kallett, to frame the series concept. At that time no press had a series of books in history focusing on the role that non-state actors, flows of capital and peoples, and non-governmental organizations had in state diplomacy and international relations. The editors proposed to push beyond the then-popular idea of global history and then to “draw on domestic and international archives,” “challenge conventional periodizations,” and “explore how people, ideas, and cultures traveled between the United States and the rest of the world.” Moreover, while looking ever outward to the larger world, the books were always intended to enrich and broaden, as Mark and Paul wrote in their series proposal, “our understanding of modern United States history.” Continue reading “Outbox – The Transnational Trend in U.S. Foreign Relations 10 Years In: Reflections on a Path-breaking Book Series”→
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