History Talk

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, U

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 sub

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 His

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, 2

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. Panelists: Nicholas Breyfogle, Associate Professor, Department of History; Director, Goldberg Center Kip Curtis, Associate Professor, Department of History Jennifer Eaglin, Assistant Professor, Department of History Bart Elmore, Associate Professor, Department of History   Posted 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.    Posted 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 This video is presented in partnership with Ohio State Newark Earthworks Center, American Indian Studies, and the Department of History. Posted April 6, 2021. [A transcript of this podcast is available here.]

  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 This 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.

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.]

  Ohio State University experts Melissa Beard Jacob, Ph.D., and Associate Professor Daniel Rivers discuss Indigenous Peoples' Day and the history of Indigenous People. Dr. Jacob is the Intercultural Specialist for Native American and indigenous Students and Dr. Rivers is a faculty member in the Department of History. [Posted October 14, 2020]

  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]

On the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences hosted a conversation with a panel of experts. They discussed the legacy of enfranchisement, especially for women of color; the ongoing gender disparity in elected officials; and how history informs the 2020 election. Panelists included: Susan Hartmann, professor emerita, Department of History; Treva Lindsey, associate professor, Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Sarah Paxton, JD; PhD candidate, Department of History; Producer, Prologued podcast; and Leticia Wiggins, PhD, Department of History; Multimedia Producer, WOSU Public Media. [Posted August 2020]

From Mao Zedong to Martin Luther King Jr., China has a long and complex history of interaction with African American movements for equal rights. Please join Ohio State University’s Melvin Barnes Jr. and Princeton University’s James Watson-Krips as they discuss Barnes’ research on the history of Chinese-African American interactions from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter. [Posted July 2020]  

From Plague to Influenza and HIV, learn about the history of global pandemics in order to better understand the current coronavirus pandemic, a panel discussion with John Brooke, Jim Harris, Thomas McDow, Erin Moore, and Kristina Sessa. -Posted May 2020 [A transcript of this podcast is available here.]

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

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 ab