History Talk

Our panel of historians reevaluates what we think we know about the War on Drugs. When and where did it really begin? Why has it persisted? And perhaps most importantly, will we ever be able to quit? They uncover how the centuries-long history of global drug prohibition prologues today's discussions of drug use, abuse, and legalization. Panel: Dr. Isaac Peter Campos , Associate Professor of Histor...

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 Socia...

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 straine...

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 nation...

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 tran...

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 ta...

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 Ohio State History P...

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 Histor...

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...

The real origins of the iPhone’s power stems from the pioneering efforts of communication innovators that preceded the AT&T engineers of the 1920s. The story of wired long-distance communication really begins with the Western Union post-diggers who laid the first American transcontinental telegraph in 1861 and the Atlantic Telegraph Company that dropped the first transatlantic telegraph cable...

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-Reservatio...

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 w...

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 | I...

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 an...

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; a...

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 Connect with us! Email: Origins@osu.edu Twitter: @Origins...

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 Connect with us! Email: Origins@osu.edu Twitter: @OriginsOSU Instagram: @OriginsOSU Facebook: @OriginsOSU Find transcripts, background reading, and more at origins.osu.edu A transcript of this podca...

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 o...

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...

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 Connect with us! Email: Origins@osu.edu Twitter: @OriginsOSU Instagram: @OriginsOSU Facebook: @OriginsOSU Find transcripts, background reading, an...

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...

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 halti...

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (a.k.a. AMLO) rode to the presidency in 2018 by promising Mexico "juntos haremos historia" ("together we will make history"). Pundits have fallen over themselves trying to categorize AMLO, refering to him variously as Mexico's Jeremy Corbyn and Mexico's Donald Trump. AMLO's keen sense of his country's history has found expression in his promise to inaugurate the country...

In April 2019, four months of sustained protests throughout Sudan culminated in the ousting of President Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled the country since taking office in a 1989 military coup. Originally a response to the spiraling cost of living, demonstrators soon widened their criticisms to encompass the full impact of Bashir’s three decades in power: brutal political repression, economic stagna...

After more than four years of war, Yemen teeters on the brink of what the European Union has described as “the world's largest humanitarian crisis.” Conservative estimates count at least 10,000 civilian deaths in the ongoing conflict, with millions more threatened by disease and famine. Yet for many in the West, Yemen remains a forgotten war, despite the fact that the Saudi-backed forces fighting...