[JFKI-News] "Workshop: Making a Case for Internationalism" on June 6-7, 2017

[History <history@jfki.fu-berlin.de>]

On June 6–7, 2017, Freie Universität will host a workshop entitled “Making

a Case for Internationalism” organized by Ilaria Scaglia, a 2016–2017
Volkswagen-Mellon Foundation Fellow for Research in Germany currently
affiliated with the Dahlem Humanities Center and the Department of History
of the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie
Universitaät Berlin.

The workshop “Making a Case for Internationalism” will explore the
historical relevance of international cooperation in the twentieth century
and into the present.

In recent years, numerous scholars have demonstrated the importance of
institutions such as the League of Nations and of internationalism as a
broad set of ideas and practices, and have shed light on the 1920s and
1930s as a crucial moment when concerns about drawing connections with
other countries became of paramount importance for a wide range of people
and institutions. Yet, despite this “revisionist” literature, both from a
historical and a historiographical standpoint, internationalism continues
to suffer from an “image problem.”  In the interwar period,
internationalists often struggled to gain and maintain trust and
credibility.  As a subject for historical inquiry and in public discourse,
internationalism (particularly in its cultural and transnational aspects)
has frequently been “feminized” as a supposedly weaker—and therefore less
relevant—topic.  Also, as Patricia Clavin and Glenda Sluga have
articulated in their introduction to a landmark edited volume (Cambridge,
2017), “internationalisms” were often inaccurately labeled as “utopian,”
“idealist,” and fundamentally “good”—all adjectives coded as “feminine”
and “weak.”  Indeed, the problem remains of how to understand both the
historical and the historiographical dynamics that shaped the history and
the image of internationalism, and how to integrate internationalism in
broader historical narratives of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Seven distinguished speakers in the field of internationalism are invited
to address these issues when exploring the subject of their studies and
when engaging both the scholarly community and the public at large.

The workshop is open to the public and reservations are not required. For
further information, please contact the workshop organizer Ilaria Scaglia:
scaglia@zedat.fu-berlin.de

PROGRAM:

Tuesday June 6, 2017

13:30–18:00:  Session 1

Olaf Stieglitz, Chair, Department of History, JFKI, FU Official Welcome

Ilaria Scaglia, DHC/JFKI, FU, Volkswagen-Mellon Fellow for Research in
Germany and workshop organizer, Introductory remarks,  “Why this
Workshop?”

14:00–14:45: Anna-Katharina Wöbse, University of Gießen,  “Green Heritage:
The History of Environmental Internationalism”

14:45–15:30: Jessica Reinisch, Birkbeck, University of London, “‘You Never
Really Relieved Anybody’: Thoughts on Impact and Agency in the Work of
UNRRA”

15:30–16:00: Break

16:00–16:45: Daniel Laqua, Northumbria University,  “University Students
and ‘This New Gospel of Internationalism’ in Interwar Europe”

16:45–17:15: Commentary by Malte König, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt a.M.

17:15–18:00: Discussion


Wednesday June 7, 2017

09:00–2:00: Session 2

9:00–9:45: Carolyn Biltoft, Graduate Institute, Geneva,  “The ‘Other
Spaces’ of Transnational History”

9:45–10:30: Barbara Keys, University of Melbourne, “Internationalism in
the Culture versus Power Debate: From the Olympic Games to Henry Kissinger
to Amnesty International”

10:30–11:00: Commentary by Sönke Kunkel, JFKI, FU Berlin

11:00–11:45: Discussion

[Lunch not included—several nearby options available]

14:00–17:00: Session 3

14:00–14:45: Patricia Clavin, University of Oxford, “Writing
Internationalism into the Origins of War”

14:45–15:30: Hanne Hagtvedt Vik, University of Oslo, “International Peace
after the Great War: US Lawyers and an International Legal Order”

15:30–16:00: Commentary by Daphne Rozenblatt, Center “History of
Emotions,” MPI

16:00–17:00: Discussion

Zeit & Ort

06.06.2017 - 07.06.2017

Freie Universität Berlin
„Rostlaube“
Seminarzentrum, Raum L 115
Habelschwerdter Allee 45

14195 Berlin