Conference: Liberal-(Il)liberal-Internationalisms. New Paradigms for the History of the Twentieth Century (7. – 9. 12. 2016)

In the first decades of the twenty-first century, scholars of internationalisms are opening up new areas of historical research, probing older stories of imperial and national pasts, reconnecting state and non-state actors and institutions, and moving historical narratives past the simple identification of internationalism as communist or socialist. This workshop will probe the ideological complexities at the core of these twentieth century histories.

In the first decades of the twenty-first century, scholars of internationalisms are opening up new areas of historical research, probing older stories of imperial and national pasts, reconnecting state and non-state actors and institutions, and moving historical narratives past the simple identification of internationalism as communist or socialist. This workshop will probe the ideological complexities at the core of these twentieth century histories.

The workshop begins with a keynote lecture by Alison Frank Johnson on Wednesday, December 7, at 18.00 in the Aula in Court 1 of the Campus of the University of Vienna (Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Vienna). The panel sessions on December 8 and 9 will take place at the Vorwärts-Haus, the seat of the Society for the History of the Workers‘ Movement (Verein für Geschichte der ArbeiterInnenbewegung), at Rechte Wienzeile 97, 1050 Vienna. The event is organized jointly by Philippa Hetherington of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, Peter Becker of the Institute of Austrian Historical Research, and Glenda Sluga and Natasha Wheatley of the Laureate Research Program in International History at the University of Sydney.

The full programme in PDF format is available here.

 

Wednesday, 7 December 2016

18.00    

 

Public Keynote Lecture

 

Alison Frank Johnson (Harvard University): German Chemists, Austrian Sailors, and the Cocaine Epidemic in India, 1908–1914

 

Thursday, 8 December 2016

08.00    

Registration

08.45

Welcome

09.00

Philippa Hetherington (UCL): Introduction

09.20    

 

Panel One: Social Policy

 

Chair: Madeleine Dungy  / Discussant: Glenda Sluga

Dora Vargha (University of Exeter): Out of the World Health Organization: Eastern European International Health in the 1950s

Phillip Wagner (Bielefeld University): Intersections of the Political and the Professional. Languages of Expert Internationalism in Interwar Europe and America

Susan Zimmermann (Central European University): Equality of Women’s Economic Status? A Weighty Bone of Contention in Global Gender Governance Emerging in the Interwar Period

Coffee break

11.30    

 

Panel Two: Cold War

 

Chair: James Mark  / Discussant: Wolfgang Mueller

Timothy Nunan (Harvard University): Shi’a Islamist Internationalisms in a Cold War World

Ljubica Spaskovska (University of Exeter): ‚The moment when everything seemed possible‘ – the 1963 Skopje Earthquake and the Role of the UN in Co-producing Visions of Development and International Solidarity

Joshua Sanborn (Lafayette College): Cold War Internationalism: Ethereal and Corporeal

Lunch break

14.30    

 

Panel Three: Decolonization

 

Chair: Alessandro Iandolo  / Discussant: Natasha Wheatley

Paul Betts (University of Oxford): Socialist Internationalism, Africa, and Rights: Reconsidering Second-Third World Relations in the Wake of Decolonization

Alanna O’Malley (Leiden University): Shifting Internationalisms: The Impact of the Global South and Changing Visions of the International Order at the United Nations from 1958–1970

Coffee break

Carolien Stolte (Leiden University): The People’s Bandung. Re-reading Anti-imperialist Mobilization across 1950s Afro-Asia

Anne-Isabelle Richard (Leiden University): Taking Liberal Europeanism Literally. African Politicians Using European Cooperation to Secure African Rights

20.00    

 

Conference dinner

 

 

Friday, 9 December 2016

 

09.00

 

 

Panel Four: Boundary Questions

 

Chair: Peter Becker  / Discussant: Philippa Hetherington

Abigail Green (University of Oxford): Liberals, Socialists, Internationalists, Jews

Dave Petruccelli (Diplomatic Academy, Vienna): Was the League of Nations Liberal Internationalist?

Coffee break

Sandrine Kott (Geneva University): Liberal and Illiberal Social Internationalisms

Madeleine Herren-Oesch (University of Basel): Crossing the Lines: Repatriation of Internationalists during World War II

Lunch break

13.00

Closing Panel

14.30

Sites of Memory Discussion: the book; abstracts; writing workshop