Home > Research > Seminars > Seminars by focus area and theme > Modern North American History

Modern North American History

  • North American Map, CC0North American Map, CC0

The political developments, societal transformations, cultural shifts, foreign policy initiatives, national security concerns, and international relations that originated from the US have left an indelible mark on the North American continent and the global landscape. This seminar series, organized by the Sciences Po Center for History (CHSP) in Paris and the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) in the Netherlands, forms a platform to explore these diverse and interconnected themes. 

This series, one of very few of its kind in Europe, intersects with various significant historiographical trends, continuing the move towards a more integrated view of US and North American history. It pays special attention to the inclusion of global, imperial, transnational, and interconnected histories to reframe our understanding of the United States’ place in the world and the emerging focus on international environmental history and issues.

The platform, which meets once a month in a hybrid format, encourages active participation from doctoral students and aims to serve as an open and inclusive forum for discussing some of the most innovative recent scholarship. It aspires to bring together historians of different backgrounds and in different stages of their career, foster a historiographical and interdisciplinary conversation, and critically consider the contemporary societal and political ramifications of the historical events under discussion.

Fall 2023

  1. September 25, 2023
    Kristin Hoganson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Structures of Power:     U.S. Infrastructure Building in the Circum-Caribbean During the Bad Neighbor Era 
  2. October 23, 2023, 17h-18h30 CET
     Matthew Connelly (Columbia U), America's Secrecy Industrial Complex: History and the Future
  3. November 20, 2023, 17h-18h30 CET
    Andrew Preston (Cambridge U),     From Planning to Strategy: New Deal Liberlism and the Invention of National Security
  4. December 11, 2023, 17h30-19h00 CET
    Rebecca Herman (UC Berkeley), Cooperating with the Colossus: US Military Basing in World War II Latin America

Winter/Spring 2024

  1. January 29, 2024, 17h-18h30 CET 
    Sean Vanatta (University of Glasgow), A Treacherous Ocean of Money: Finance and Failure across the Interwar Atlantic, 1920-1935
  2. February 26, 2024, 17h-18h30 CET
    Sarah Nelson (Leiden U), Networking Empire: Communications, Decolonization, and American Power in the 20th Century
  3. March 25, 2024, 17h-18h30 CET 
    Augusta Dell’Omo (SMU Center for Presidential History), Human Rights for White Power
  4. April 29, 2024, 17h-18h30 CET
    Elsa Devienne (Northumbria U), Rubbish Tactics? Oil Spills, Beach Clean-Ups, and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (1969-2023)
Back to top