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, Dept. 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.]       The above content is made possible, in part, by Ohio Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this content do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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 [A transcript of this podcast is available here.]

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