Department of History: Welcome

Highlights

The Department of History is pleased to announce that Professor Margaret O'Mara will offer the 2012 History Lecture Series: Pivotal Elections of the Twentieth Century. The Series will consist of four lectures on October 9, 16, 23, and 30, 2012. Register to be notified when tickets are available.

In the final month of Election 2012, the History Lecture Series will look back at four game-changing presidential contests of the last century – looking at the candidates, the parties, the voters, and the America of their historical moment.

We begin with a lecture on the wild and woolly three-way contest in 1912 between Republican incumbent William Howard Taft, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and third-party “Bull Moose” Teddy Roosevelt. The next installment takes on the election of 1932, exploring Franklin Roosevelt’s win during the depths of the Great Depression and subsequent transformation in the relationship between citizens and their government. The third evening fast-forwards to 1968, a year of political crisis at home and abroad, and fast-moving cultural shifts that reshaped both the Democratic and the Republican parties. The series ends with the election of 1992, when the competition between incumbent George W. Bush, “New Democrat” Bill Clinton, and the iconoclast Ross Perot reflected the new political imperatives and economic realities of a post-Cold War, globalized world.

What were the critical issues shaping each election? Why did the winning candidate prevail? How did these events reflect the broader social and economic context of the United States at that time? What lessons can pivotal elections of the past teach us about the present and future? Join Professor Margaret O’Mara on a historical journey that promises to inform, surprise, and inspire.

Events

February 9, 2012
Diane Fujino (UC Santa Barbara) will lecture on "Samurai among Panthers: The Narrative and Interpretive Histories of Richard Aoki."
Communications 226, 4:00pm
February 24, 2012
Sima Daad will give a lecture on "Medieval Texts and Modern Context: The Composition and Reception of the Persian Treatise Cahr Maqala (The Four Discourses, 12th c.)." Part of the Brown Bag Lecture Series in Persian and Iranian Studies.
SMI 203E, 12:30pm
February 28, 2012
Andrea Geiger (Simon Fraser University) will lecture on "Triangulating Difference: Japanese Immigrant Negotiations of Race, Caste, and Borders in the North American West."
Communications 226, 4:00pm
April 5, 2012
Richard White (Stanford University) will lecture on "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America."
Part of the "From the Civil War to the Pacific Century: Sesquicentennial Reflections on State Power" lecture series.
Free and open to the public, but tickets are required: cspn@uw.edu, 206-543-8656. Reception to follow.
Kane Hall 210, 7:00pm
April 17, 2012
Elliott West (University of Arkansas) will lecture on "Rethinking the West in the Civil War Era." Part of the "From the Civil War to the Pacific Century: Sesquicentennial Reflections on State Power" lecture series.
Petersen Room, Allen Library, 4:00pm
May 3, 2012
Sarah Deutsch (Duke University) will lecture on "The Speculative State: The U.S. West in the 1920s." Part of the "From the Civil War to the Pacific Century: Sesquicentennial Reflections on State Power" lecture series.
Communications 226, 4:00pm
May 17, 2012
Kelly Lytle Hernández (UCLA) will lecture on "Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol." Part of the "From the Civil War to the Pacific Century: Sesquicentennial Reflections on State Power" lecture series.
Petersen Room, Allen Library, 4:00pm
May 24, 2012
Daniel Martinez HoSang (University of Oregon) will lecture on "State Power, Race Power and the Rise of California." Part of the "From the Civil War to the Pacific Century: Sesquicentennial Reflections on State Power" lecture series.
Petersen Room, Allen Library, 4:00pm