History Talk

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated existing trends that put at risk the viability of many colleges and universities, as well as that of the towns and cities in which they are located. With the post-COVID-19 shift to more remote work, and millions of people moving to more affordable and livable cities, a place that wants to attract talent will require a thriving academic environment. This represents a new opportunity for “town and gown” to create dynamic, thriving communities. Associate Professor David Staley outlines a talent magnet strategy that offers colleges and towns a plan of action for regeneration, affording institutions of higher learning the opportunity to reinvent themselves and become talent magnets.

Panelists:

David Staley is an historiographer, writer, designer, futurist, and journalist. He is an Associate Professor in the Departments of History, Design and Educational Studies at The Ohio State University.

Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator), Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching, The Ohio State University.

Facing the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors, community and religious leaders, and Allied soldiers viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way to move forward after unspeakable loss. Proponents believed that these unions were more than just a ticket out of war-torn Europe: they would help the Jewish people repopulate after the attempted annihilation of European Jewry.

Historian Robin Judd, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust and married an American soldier after liberation, introduces us to the Jewish women who lived through genocide and went on to wed American, Canadian, and British military personnel after the war. She offers an intimate portrait of how these unions emerged and developed—from meeting and courtship to marriage and immigration to life in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—and shows how they helped shape the postwar world by touching thousands of lives, including those of the chaplains who officiated their weddings, the Allied authorities whose policy decisions structured the couples' fates, and the bureaucrats involved in immigration and acculturation. The stories Judd tells are at once heartbreaking and restorative, and she vividly captures how the exhilaration of the brides' early romances coexisted with survivor's guilt, grief, and apprehension at the challenges of starting a new life of starting a new life in a new land.

Conflict has defined Arab-Israeli relationships for many decades, with the interstate warfare of the 1940s-1980s giving way in the 1990s and after to a roiling confrontation between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people of the Israeli-occupied territories.

Since the 1940s, the United States has striven to contain, manage, or resolve the conflict, with some notable successes and numerous pronounced failures. While not without precedent, the crisis that erupted in early October 2023 marks an especially difficult, deadly and portentous phase of conflict, and thus poses acute policy dilemmas for U.S. officials who seek to achieve stability and peace in the region.

In this webinar, Professor Peter L. Hahn analyzes the complicated situation in Gaza in its historical and contemporary contexts, focusing on the American role and aiming to bring clarity and balanced perspective about this difficult and dangerous moment in the Middle East.

The rural roads that led to our planet-changing global economy ran through the American South. Acclaimed scholar Bart Elmore explores that region's impact on the interconnected histories of business and ecological change. He uses the histories of five southern firms—Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Walmart, FedEx and Bank of America—to investigate the environmental impact of our have-it-now, fly-by-night, buy-on-credit global economy.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with company executives, corporate archives and other records, Elmore explores the historical, economic, and ecological conditions that gave rise to these five trailblazing corporations. He then considers what each has become: an essential presence in the daily workings of the global economy and an unmistakable contributor to the reshaping of the world's ecosystems. Even as businesses invest in sustainability initiatives and respond to new calls for corporate responsibility, Elmore shows the limits of their efforts to “green” their operations and offers insights on how governments and activists can push corporations to do better.

Bart Elmore is Professor of Environmental History and Core Faculty, Sustainability Institute, The Ohio State University.

Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator), is Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching, The Ohio State University.

Join world-renowned historian Geoffrey Parker for a definitive history of the Spanish Armada. In July 1588 the Spanish Armada sailed from Corunna to conquer England. Three weeks later an English fireship attack in the Channel—and then a fierce naval battle—foiled the planned invasion. Many myths still surround these events. The genius of Sir Francis Drake is exalted, while Spain’s efforts are belittled. But what really happened during that fateful encounter? In his recent book, Armada, (co-authored with Colin Martin), Parker draws on archives from around the world and deploys vital new evidence from Armada shipwrecks off the coasts of Ireland and Scotland. In a gripping account, he will provide a fresh understanding of how the rival fleets came into being; how they looked, sounded, and smelled; and what happened when they finally clashed. Looking beyond the events of 1588 to the complex politics which made war between England and Spain inevitable, and at the political and dynastic aftermath, Armada deconstructs the many legends to reveal why, ultimately, the bold Spanish mission failed.

Geoffrey Parker is a Distinguished University Professor and Andreas Dorpalen Professor of European History at the Ohio State University. His book, Armada, can be found at https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300259865/armada/.

Nicholas Breyfogle, Moderator, is an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching at Ohio State University.

On August 4, 1983, Captain Thomas Sankara led a coalition of radical military officers, communist activists, labor leaders, and militant students to overtake the government of the Republic of Upper Volta. Almost immediately following the coup’s success, the small West African country—renamed Burkina Faso, or Land of the Dignified People—gained international attention as it charted a new path toward social, economic, cultural, and political development based on its people’s needs rather than external pressures and Cold War politics. Join James E. Genova as he recounts in detail the revolutionary government’s rise and fall, demonstrating how it embodied the critical transition period in modern African history between the era of decolonization and the dawning of neoliberal capitalism. He will uncover one of the revolution’s most enduring and significant aspects: its promotion of film as a vehicle for raising the people’s consciousness, inspiring their efforts at social transformation, and articulating a new self-generated image of Africa and Africans. The talk is based on Genova’s new book Making New People: Politics, Cinema, and Liberation in Burkina Faso, 1983–1987 and spotlights the revolution’s lasting influence throughout Africa and the world.

Speaker: James E. Genova, Professor of History, The Ohio State University

Moderator: Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching

This is a production of the College of Arts & Sciences and Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit http://origins.osu.edu.

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Across human history and throughout this very diverse planet, water has defined every aspect of human life: from the molecular, biological and ecological to the cultural, religious, economic and political. Water stands at the foundation of most of what we do as humans. At the same time, water resources — the need for clean and accessible water supplies for drinking, agriculture and power production — will likely represent one of the most complicated dilemmas of the twenty-first century.

In this presentation, Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching at Ohio State University speaks on the history of water. The talk is moderated by Bart Elmore, Associate Professor of Environmental History and Core Faculty, Sustainability Institute, Ohio State University.

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley talks about his new book, "Silent Spring Revolution," which chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.  

With the detonation of the Trinity explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945, the United States took control of Earth’s destiny for the first time. After the Truman administration dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, a grim new epoch had arrived. During the early Cold War years, the federal government routinely detonated nuclear devices in the Nevada desert and the Marshall Islands. Not only was nuclear fallout a public health menace, but entire ecosystems were contaminated with radioactive materials. During the 1950s, an unprecedented postwar economic boom took hold, with America becoming the world’s leading hyperindustrial and military giant. But with this historic prosperity came a heavy cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, the insecticide DDT poisoned ecosystems, wildlife perished, and chronic smog blighted major cities.  

In "Silent Spring Revolution," Douglas Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Long Sixties: Rachel Carson (a marine biologist and author), David Brower (director of the Sierra Club), Barry Commoner (an environmental justice advocate), Coretta Scott King (an antinuclear activist), Stewart Udall (the secretary of the interior), William O. Douglas (Supreme Court justice), Cesar Chavez (a labor organizer), and other crusaders are profiled with verve and insight.  

Carson’s book "Silent Spring," published in 1962, depicted how detrimental DDT was to living creatures. The exposé launched an ecological revolution that inspired such landmark legislation as the Wilderness Act (1964), the Clean Air Acts (1963 and 1970), and the Endangered Species Acts (1966, 1969, and 1973). In intimate detail, Brinkley extrapolates on such epic events as the Donora (Pennsylvania) smog incident, JFK’s Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Great Lakes preservation, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the first Earth Day.  

With the United States grappling with climate change and resource exhaustion, Douglas Brinkley’s meticulously researched and deftly written "Silent Spring Revolution" reminds us that a new generation of twenty-first-century environmentalists can save the planet from ruin.

This is a production of the College of Arts & Sciences and Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit http://origins.osu.edu.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone to extraordinary lengths to commemorate the Second World War. Even though the war ended over 77 years ago, Putin has made World War II memory central to contemporary Russian national identity.  This talk will explore how war remembrance serves Putin’s interests, including with regard to his war in Ukraine.  

Panelists:  David L. Hoffmann, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, Department of History, The Ohio State University  and Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator), Associate Professor of History and Director, Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching, The Ohio State University  

This talk is a presentation by the Clio Society in the Ohio State University Department of History.

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/listen/history-talk/world-war-ii-memory-putins-russia

The United States was a nation forged in the ideological fires of a democratic revolution to overturn monarchy and imperial control. Yet many American leaders and citizens ever since have denied or rejected a foreign policy guided by ideology.

Why? If ideas and ideologies help us to order and explain the world, often serving as rationales for (in)action as well as explanations for success or failure, how does the history of U.S. foreign relations appear differently when viewed through the lens of ideology? In short, how has and does ideology drive U.S foreign relations?

Panelists:

A in-text version of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/watch/transatlantic-telephone-iphone