Not the Usual Suspects: Everyday Agents of Globalization in the Twentieth Century

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Not the Usual Suspects: Everyday Agents of Globalization in the Twentieth Century

Organizer
German Historical Institute, Washington, DC
ZIP
20008
Location
Washington
Country
United States
From - Until
31.03.2022 - 05.05.2022
Website
https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/empires-mistress-the-labor-of-love-in-imperial-circuits
By
Andreas Greiner, German Historical Institute Washington

This lecture series reassesses globalization from a bottom-up perspective. It presents less known "everyday" agents of economic, cultural, and political globalization: historical actors who initiated and promoted connection and exchange (intentionally and unintentionally) across world regions through their day-to-day activities. The different lectures discuss the activities of individual and group actors since the 1920s, covering a truly global range of geographies.

Not the Usual Suspects: Everyday Agents of Globalization in the Twentieth Century

This lecture series reassesses globalization from a bottom-up perspective. Globalization processes have typically been associated with intergovernmental organizations, multinational corporations, and NGOs. Less known are the “everyday” agents of economic, cultural, and political globalization: historical actors who initiated and promoted connection and exchange (intentionally and unintentionally) across world regions through their day-to-day activities. Backpacking tourists in postwar Europe, for instance, redefined the very idea of Europe with their cross-border itineraries and the many interactions with their host communities. The lecture series shines a spotlight on these and other drivers of globalization at the micro-social level. The different lectures discuss the activities of individual and group actors since the 1920s, covering a truly global range of geographies including the Middle East, East Asia, and the Caribbean. By applying an actor-centered approach to the study of twentieth-century globalization, the lecture series highlights the significance of globalization agents not usually suspected of playing this role.

Organizers: Andreas Greiner, Mario Peters.

Programm

Mar 31, 2022 / 2pm (ET) / 8pm CEST / Zoom

EMPIRE'S MISTRESS: THE LABOR OF LOVE IN IMPERIAL CIRCUITS

Speaker: Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez (University of Hawai'i)

This talk examines the sexualized labor of love and hospitality through the relationships that American soldiers built with Filipino women during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines. It reframes the story of Isabel Rosario Cooper, the sometime-mistress of General Douglas MacArthur, away from a tragic romance to that of labor, survival, and creativity within the deeply asymmetrical structure of empire to understand how intimacy was integral to its workings.

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SKnfTIoBSSOp5S0INq053Q

Apr 14, 2022 / 12pm (ET) / 6pm CEST / Zoom

DOING UTOPIA AND COMMUNAL LIVING IN SOUTH AFRICA, JAPAN, AND JAMAICA, 1900–1950

Speaker: Robert Kramm (LMU Munich)

Communes in the early twentieth century were an integral part of the modern world. Despite being located at the geographical, political, and social margins of modern society, these communes never existed in enclosed circles. They were both a niche and hub for radicals, revolutionaries and reformers, and their doing utopia in seeking a better world. This talk investigates communal life in various places of the non-Western world, including unionized South Africa, imperial Japan, and colonial Jamaica. And it discusses the possibilities of communal living and subjectivity beyond capital, empire, and state power.

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4SE1PdHnSGmdsukOlVZrAg

Apr 21, 2022 / 6:30pm (ET) / Lecture at GHI Washington

BACKPACK AMBASSADORS: HOW YOUTH TRAVEL INTEGRATED EUROPE

Speaker: Richard Ivan Jobs (Pacific University Oregon)

Richard Ivan Jobs' lecture will tell the story of backpacking in Europe in its heyday, the decades after World War II, revealing that these footloose young people were doing more than just touring the continent. This history of cross-border mobility reconsiders European integration from a social and cultural standpoint rather than the typical political or economic perspective.

May 05, 2022 / 6:30pm (ET) / Lecture at GHI Washington

REACHING THE PEOPLE: AMERICAN GLOBALISM AND THE QUEST FOR UNIVERSAL LITERACY

Valeska Huber (University of Vienna)

Valeska Huber’s talk connects two global phenomena that are rarely brought together: Over the course of the twentieth century, world population grew from less than two billion to more than six billion. At the same time, literacy rates increased equally fast from an estimated twenty per cent to eighty per cent worldwide in 2000. In her talk, Valeska Huber will explore debates about access to information in the twentieth century through a range of microhistories related to the creation of new reading publics. Highlighting agents of cultural globalization that are not usually in the limelight, such as missionaries, primary school teachers and librarians, she will explore the reach and limits of American globalism in the field of twentieth-century information politics.

https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/empires-mistress-the-labor-of-love-in-imperial-circuits