History Talk

During the Cold War, cultural diplomacy emerged as an important aspect of relations between states across the globe. Exhibitions, concerts, performances, book readings, and film screenings captured the ideological message of each side, as they showed conflicting “ways of life” in the global Cold War context. Based on Theodora Dragostinova’s recent book, "The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene," this talk interrogates the importance of Cold War culture in a global perspective, tracing the cultural contacts of small Bulgaria from the British Museum and NYC’s Metropolitan to New Lexington, Ohio, to Mexico City, New Delhi, and Lagos. Panel: --Nicholas Breyfogle | Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center --Theodora Dragostinova | Associate Professor, Department of History Brought to you by the Clio Society of the Ohio State History Department, in partnership with the Bexley Public Library and the magazine Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.   Posted December 15, 2021  

China has expanded its global presence over the last decade much to the concern of U.S. officials. Africa is a major recipient of this new influence, building on Cold War relationships first forged during an earlier era of Sino-American competition. Yet looking at Chinese engagement in Africa over the last 50 years reveals that increased power has transformed Beijing’s foreign policies and strained its global relationships. Panel: Nicholas Breyfogle (Moderator) | Associate Professor, Department of History Patrick Nash | Graduate Student, Department of History Joe Parrott | Assistant Professor, Department of History This podcast was supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center, the Goldberg Center for Teaching Excellence in the History Department, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Bexley Public Library. Posted November 18, 2021  

The issues of race and racism remain as urgent as ever to our national conversation. Four scholars discuss such questions as: Since Race does not exist as a biological reality, what then is race and where did the idea develop from? What is racism? How have race and racism been used by societies to justify discrimination, oppression, and social exclusion? How did racism manifest in different national and historical contexts? How have American and World history in the modern eras been defined by ideas of race and the power hierarchies embedded in racism? Panel: -Nicholas Breyfogle | Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center, Ohio State University -Alice Conklin | Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, Department of History, Ohio State University -Robin Judd | Associate Professor, Department of History, Ohio State University -Hasan Jeffries | Associate Professor, Department of History, Ohio State University -Deondre Smiles | Ph.D. Geography '20; Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Victoria, Canada Posted October 15, 2021 [A transcript of this podcast is available here.]

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, India played a pivotal role in global conversations about population and reproduction. In this talk about her new book, Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India, Sreenivas demonstrates how colonial administrators, postcolonial development experts, nationalists, eugenicists, feminists, and family planners all aimed to reform reproduction to transform both individual bodies and the body politic. Across the political spectrum, people insisted that regulating reproduction was necessary and that limiting the population was essential to economic development. This talk investigates the often devastating implications of this logic, which demonized some women’s reproduction as the cause of national and planetary catastrophe. To tell this story, Prof. Mytheli Sreenivas explores debates about marriage, family, and contraception. She also demonstrates how concerns about reproduction surfaced within a range of political questions about poverty and crises of subsistence, migration and claims of national sovereignty, normative heterosexuality and drives for economic development. Panelists: Nicholas Breyfogle | Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center Mytheli Sreenivas | Associate Professor, Departments of History and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies This talk is brought to you by the Clio Society of the Ohio State History Department, in partnership with the Bexley Public Library.   Posted September 14, 2021  

The story of Israel's foundation has often been told from the perspective of Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. In this presentation, Ori Yehudai turns this historical narrative on its head, focusing on Jewish out-migration from Palestine and Israel between 1945 and the late 1950s. Based on previously unexamined primary sources collected from twenty-two archives in six countries, he will talk about how, despite the dominant view that displaced Jews should settle in the Jewish homeland, many Jews instead saw the country as a site of displacement or a way-station to more desirable lands. Covering events in the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, Yehudai provides a fresh transnational perspective on the critical period surrounding the birth of Israel and the post-Holocaust reconstruction of the Jewish world. Panelists: Nicholas Breyfogle | Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center Ori Yehudai | Schottenstein Chair in Israel Studies and Assistant Professor, Department of History This podcast is brought to you by the Clio Society of the Ohio State History Department, in partnership with the Bexley Public Library, and Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective.   Posted August 20, 2021

We are facing a world food crisis of unparalleled proportions. Our reliance on unsustainable dietary choices and agricultural systems is causing problems both for human health and the health of our planet. Solutions from lab-grown food to vegan diets to strictly local food consumption are often discussed, but a central question remains: how did we get to this point? Join Professor Chris Otter as he takes us back over the last 200 years to explore how we developed our current diet heavy in meat, wheat, and sugar. He’ll explore how the British played a significant role in making red meat, white bread, and sugar the diet of choice—linked to wealth, luxury, and power—and how dietary choices connect to the pressing issues of climate change and food supply. Panelists: Nicholas Breyfogle | Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center Chris Otter | Professor, Department of History This event is presented in partnership with Bexley Public Library.   [Posted June 14, 2021]

Faculty experts from the Ohio State University Department of History hold a conversation about the first one hundred days of the Biden administration. Panelists: Maysan Haydar, Lecturer and Graduate Student, Department of History Treva Lindsey, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Peter Mansoor, Professor and General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair in Military History, Department of History Margaret Newell, Professor, Department of History Joseph Parrott, Assistant Professor, Department of History     Posted May 7, 2021

Eminent environmental historians from the Ohio State University Department of History share how environmental history informs our shared future in a world confronted by pandemics, climate change, droughts and floods, unstable food supplies, changing energy needs, and the threats of pollutants and toxins.\nPanelists:\n Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center\n Kip Curtis, Associate Professor, Department of History\n Jennifer Eaglin, Assistant Professor, Department of History\n Bart Elmore, Associate Professor, Department of History\n\n \nPosted April 23, 2021

Shannon Gonzales-Miller, PhD, shares her dissertation research project that sought to examine the experiences of identity erasure, invisibility and hyper visibility for Urban Indian, graduate students who attended an historically and predominately white public university. She considers how prevailing, monolithic descriptions of Native students influences the classroom experiences of non-Reservation Native students. \n\n \nPosted April 21, 2021

This presentation is an Indigenous autoethnographic study of a family’s story of survival through the Native American boarding school system. Although this project was in a part an academic exercise, it was also an effort to reclaim pieces of a family’s experience that was purposefully silenced and erased from mainstream hegemonic nationalist narratives. Speaker: Melissa Beard Jacob, PhD | Intercultural Specialist, Native American and Indigenous Student Initiatives, Office of Student Life Multicultural Center | The Ohio State University\nThis video is presented in partnership with Ohio State Newark Earthworks Center, American Indian Studies, and the Department of History.\n\nPosted April 6, 2021.

  The medieval church gave birth to the misogynistic rhetoric that continues to hinder women’s progress in the West today, but it also witnessed the first real “feminist” rumblings of discontent. Medieval women were not content to be victims of oppression: they challenged the rhetoric, and when that didn’t work, they found ways to work around it. In this podcast, historian Sara Butler speaks about women in the Middle Ages and how they faced many of the same challenges that we do today. Sara Butler is a Professor and the King George III Chair in British History at The Ohio State University Department of History. Posted March 11, 2021.

With more than 80 million forcibly displaced people in the world and another 260-plus million international migrants, humans today seem to be on the move. Debates over immigration and refugee policy in the U.S., Europe, and across the world have become fierce and deeply divisive, to say the least, and will surely continue to dominate politics in the coming years. All the while, lives are in the balance as people around the globe take the often difficult decision to set off to make a new home in another country. History allows us a glimpse at the motivations and predicaments people on the move face today and in the future. Ohio State University Department of History panelists Theodora Dragostinova, Associate Professor; Maysan Haydar, Lecturer and Robin Judd, Associate Professor discuss these issues with Host Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor, Department of History.   Posted February 4, 2021.   [A transcript of this podcast is available here.]

On World AIDS Day 2020, in the midst of another pandemic, Ohio State University History Professor Thomas McDow presented a close look at the historical factors that shaped the global spread of HIV, from equatorial Africa to the world. Thomas F. McDow is a specialist in African History at Ohio State University. He co-teaches a course with a microbiologist on the global history and science of HIV and is writing a history of HIV in Tanzania.     [Posted December 4, 2020]

Ohio State University Department of History faculty experts discuss the historical context of Election 2020. Panelists include: Paula Baker, Associate Professor, Department of History; Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor, Department of History and Director of the Goldberg Center; Susan Hartman, Professor Emerita, Department of History; Clay Howard, Associate Professor, Department of History; and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Associate Professor, Department of History   -Posted Dec. 1, 2020 [A transcript of this podcast is available here.]

A conversation with Ohio State University Department of History faculty members, John Brooke, Jennifer Eaglin and Samuel White about the historical context of climate change.   [Posted September 29, 2020]

In early June 2019, residents of Hong Kong took to the streets to protest proposed legislation by the Hong Kong government that would enable extradition from the city to mainland China. Over the ensuing months, heavy-handed tactics by the police only swelled the movement, which has grown to involve over a million residents of Hong Kong. The demonstrators' demands have also expanded to encompass an investigation into police brutality, the resignation of Chief Executive Carrie Lam and the establishment of free democratic elections in the city. Although the extradition bill itself has been withdrawn, protests seem certain to continue. For many Hong Kongers, the proposed legislation was merely the latest attempt by Beijing to undermine the unique "one country, two systems" status under which the city enjoys a large decree of economic and legal autonomy. What’s at stake in this standoff between protesters, Hong Kong’s government, and Beijing? How did Hong Kong’s autonomy come about in the first place, and how might it be at risk? On this month's episode of History Talk, host Lauren Henry discusses this pivotal moment in Hong Kong's history with two experts on modern China: Dr. Denise Y. Ho and Melvin Barnes Jr. To learn more about the history of Hong Kong and China, read our feature article, Hong Kong in Protest, by Melvin Barnes Jr. Be sure to check our other coverage of the region: Remembering Tiananmen: The View from Hong Kong, The United States, China, and the Money Question, China Dreams and the “Road to Revival”, and Modern China and Its Institutions. -Posted September 2019

In early June 2019, residents of Hong Kong took to the streets to protest proposed legislation by the Hong Kong government that would enable extradition from the city to mainland China. Over the ensuing months, heavy-handed tactics by the police only swelled the movement, which has grown to involve over a million residents of Hong Kong. The demonstrators' demands have also expanded to encompass an investigation into police brutality to the resignation of Chief Executive Carrie Lam and the establishment of free democractic elections in the city. Although the extradition bill itself has been withdrawn, protests seem certain to continue. For many Hong Kongers, the proposed legislation was merely the latest attempt by Beijing to undermine the unique "one country, two systems" status under which the city enjoys a large decree of economic and legal autonomy. What’s at stake in this standoff between protesters, Hong Kong’s government, and Beijing? How did Hong Kong’s autonomy come about in the first place, and how might it be at risk? On this month's episode of History Talk, host Lauren Henry discusses this pivotal moment in Hong Kong's history with two experts on modern China: Dr. Denise Y. Ho and Melvin Barnes Jr. To learn more about the history of Hong Kong and China, read our feature article, Hong Kong in Protest, by Melvin Barnes Jr. Be sure to check our other coverage of the region: Remembering Tiananmen: The View from Hong Kong, The United States, China, and the Money Question, China Dreams and the “Road to Revival”, and Modern China and Its Institutions. -Posted September 2019

Voting is perhaps the most fundamental act of democratic citizenship. In a democracy, our political leaders receive their mandate, and the system itself derives its legitimacy, from the people who elect them. In the United States, however, the right to vote has never been extended universally. Although the franchise has expanded to include many more citizens since 1776, these gains have come haltingly and unevenly. Even as women gained suffrage, African Americans were kept from the polls in many parts of the country for decades. And elected officials have long meddled with district boundaries to choose their constituents, rather than the other way around. This month, hosts Lauren Henry and Eric Michael Rhodes speak with two experts on voter disenfranchisement in the United States—Professors Daniel P. Tokaji and Pippa Holloway—to consider the past and present of voting rights. How does historical voter suppression continue to affect electoral outcomes today? Listen in to find out. To learn more about the history of voting, check out these Origins features: A History of Stolen Citizenship; Re-mapping American Politics: The Redistricting Revolution Fifty Years Later -Posted July 2019 [A transcript of this podcast is available here.] o

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (a.k.a. "AMLO") rode to the presidency in 2018 by promising Mexico that "juntos haremos historia" (together we will make history). Pundits have fallen over themselves trying to categorize AMLO, refering to him variously as Mexico's Jeremy Corbyn and Mexico's Donald Trump. AMLO's keen sense of his country's history has found expression in his promise to inaugurate the country's "fourth transformation." In doing so, he has positioned himself squarely in the pantheon of Mexican reformers. The phrase is a reference to the march of Mexican politics towards social democracy (after independence in 1810, the liberal reforms of the 1850s, and the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s).  This month, hosts Lauren Henry and Eric Michael Rhodes speak with two experts on 20th century Mexican history—Drs. Elena Jackson Albarrán and Reyna Esquivel-King—to consider what exactly such a transformation might look like. From AMLO's strategic deployment of history to corruption and the politics of Mexico's "Other Border," we explore in this episode the historical context and contemporary ramifications of Mexico's 2018 election. To learn more about modern Mexican history, check out these Origins features: Shifting Borders: The Many Sides of U.S.-Mexican Relations; Mexico and the Memory of 1968; A Postcard From Oaxaca, Mexico; A Postcard from Mexico City. -Posted July 2019

In April 2019, four months of sustained protests throughout Sudan culminated in the ousting of President Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled the country since taking office in a 1989 military coup. Originally a response to the spiraling cost of living, demonstrators soon widened their criticisms to encompass the full impact of Bashir’s three decades in power: brutal political repression, economic stagnation, and civil war in the country’s west and south. In the end, the huge crowds who took to the streets of Khartoum and other cities (including a significant proportion of women) crystallized their demands in a simple chant, directed at Bashir: “Just fall — that’s all.” International observers have suggested that the uprising in Sudan represents a second “Arab Spring.” Yet perhaps more important is the long history of popular protest within Sudan, which have twice in the past toppled autocratic governments. As protestors continue to defy the military government and demand the establishment of civilian rule, understanding Sudan’s past is key to any attempt to predict its future. Join us in this month’s History Talk podcast, as your hosts Lauren Henry and Eric Michael Rhodes discuss this pivotal moment for Sudan with two experts on Sudanese history and politics: Ahmad Sikainga and Kim Searcy. To learn more about the history of Sudan, read our feature article, Who Owns the Nile? Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia’s History-Changing Dam. Be sure to check our other coverage of the region: All Politics is Local: Understanding Boko Haram, Searching for Wakanda: The African Roots of the Black Panther Story, and our recent episode, Who Owns the Past? Museums and Cultural Heritage Repatriation. -Posted May 2019