By Scott C. Martin

1968 was an explosive year.  In Chicago, the Democratic National Convention produced riots, police violence, and vehement protest against the Vietnam War.  Student unrest and demonstrations in the United States, Mexico, France, and elsewhere rocked political and educational establishments around the world.   A different type of explosion occurred that year in Costa Rica; one that would change the nation’s rural community culture, terrain, and environmental policy.  To commemorate the 50 year anniversary of the explosion of Volcan Arenal, last month my spouse, Dr. Lara Martin Lengel, and I visited La Fortuna, a popular destination in the Zona Norte region, and the gateway to Volcan Arenal, the site of the massive 1968 eruption and lava flow.  A steep trek up narrow, rocky paths to the top of the lava fields reveals a landscape changed by tons of lava, now cooled into extensive swathes of black, volcanic rock, interspersed here and there with lone orange or white orchids, and patches of ground covered in blue berries.  At some points along the lava trail, one also finds magnificent views of Lake Arenal, Costa Rica’s largest body of fresh water. Continue reading →

The Department of History at BGSU is delighted to announce that Professor Mary L. Dudziak, a leading U.S. legal historian and the 2017 President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), will present this fall the 2018 Gary R. Hess Lecture in Policy History on Monday, October 22^ndat 4:00pmin the Bowen-Thompson Student Union, Room 228.

Prof. Dudziak

Professor Dudziak’s lecture, tentatively entitled “The War Powers Pivot: How Congress Lost its Power in Korea,”will derive from the Korean War chapter in her forthcoming book, Going to War: An American History.  Under contract with Oxford University Press, the book will present a revisionist account of the decline of political restraints on presidential war power. Her research on the topic has been influenced by Dr. Hess’s book, Presidential Decisions for War.We believe her discussion of the Korean conflict and presidential war powers will be particularly timely.

Professor Dudziak is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University.  Her recent and current research lies at the intersection of domestic law and U.S. international affairs, examining war and political accountability in American history. She is the author of War·Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2012); and editor of September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? (Duke University Press, 2003); She founded the Legal History Blog and contributes to Balkinization, a group blog on constitutional law, theory, and politics. .

Many of us have admired Professor Dudziak’s scholarship since the appearance of her earlier work that examined the impact of Cold War foreign affairs on civil rights policy. She is the author of Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey (Oxford University Press, 2008); Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2000) (2nd ed. 2011); and co-editor (with Leti Volpp) of Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders, a special issue of American Quarterly(September 2005), reissued by Johns Hopkins University Press in March 2006. Other works on civil rights history and 20th-century constitutional history have appeared in numerous law reviews and other journals.

Prof. Hess

Prior to joining Emory Law in 2012, she was the Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law; she also held joint appointments in USC’s departments of history and political science. Prior to joining USC Law, she was a law clerk for Judge Sam J. Ervin, III, of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a professor of law and history at the University of Iowa. Prof. Dudziak served as the John Hope Franklin Visiting Professor of American Legal History at Duke Law School and as the William Nelson Cromwell Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She has also been a Distinguished Visitor at the University of Maryland School of Law.

Professor Dudziak earned JD, MA, MPhil and PhD degrees from Yale University and an AB from the University of California, Berkeley.

Established by Dr. Hess’s former students to recognize his forty-five years of service to the department, BGSU, and the profession, Gary R. Hess Lecture in Policy Historyis an annual distinguished lecture invites a senior scholar in the field of foreign relations or military history to present a public lecture on a topic in their field of expertise.

Past presenters of the Gary R. Hess Lecture in Policy History:

2017 “ The Paradox of Wilsonianism: World War I and American Internationalism”

Lloyd Ambrosius, University of Nebraska

2016 “A Grain of SALT: Arms Control, the Soviet Threat, and the War on the CIA”

Richard Immerman, Temple University

2015 “Mission Accomplished or Mission Failure? The United States and Iraq since 1990”

Peter L. Hahn, Ohio State University

2014 “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered”

Barton J. Bernstein, Stanford University

2013 “Are Indians Part of Diplomatic History?”

Walter L. Hixson, University of Akron

2011 “Analogies at War: The Use and Misuse of History in Foreign Policy Decision-Making”

George Herring, University of Kentucky

Dr. Jackson Presenting

“Toledo’s Great Migrations: Two or Three?”  BGSU’s own Dr. Nicole Jackson, Associate Professor of History, posed this question to a diverse audience at Way Public Library in Perrysburg on Wednesday evening, June 27.

The usual story identifies Toledo as part of two great migrations:  Migration #1 was the movement of former slaves away from their masters’ homes after the Civil War; Migration #2 was the movement of rural African Americans to urban areas in the north and west between the 1940s and 1970s.  Dr. Jackson suggested an additional Migration for Toledo: the movement of fugitive slaves from slave-holding states to Ohio, other northern states and Canada.  In this alternate Migration #1, Toledo played a major role, both by creating incipient black communities and by extending the pathway from slavery to freedom for those fleeing bondage in slave-holding states.  Black communities established in the Toledo area during the first two migrations attracted those who came in the third migration.  Dr. Jackson’s presentation on this aspect of local history drew lively questions and discussion from the audience and provided an excellent example of the way scholars can connect the university and the public.

The Department of History is recruiting a full-time instructor in the field of Ancient History. Please check bgsu.hiretouch.com for the full description. (If the link doesn’t work, please check go to bgsu.hiretouch.com, then search the History Department posting.) It’s a great time to join us: excellence in undergraduate and graduate education, professional development, curriculum innovation, and great colleagues and students. The deadline to apply for the position is June 21.

The Department of History is pleased to announce that Dr. Jackson will be offering a new course in the fall: HIST 3910, “Slave Resistance, Fugitivity and the Underground Railroad.”

The course counts as an elective in the History major and minor, it is cross-listed with Ethnic Studies 3000, and fulfills the upper-division requirement of the Multidisciplinary Core of the College of Arts and Sciences. It will meet on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 11:30-12:20.

From Dr. Jackson:

There are only a few well known instances of slave rebellion in the United States, and only one successful revolution in the Americas, a fact that slave owners often used to assert that enslaved people were happy with their bondage. But as Harriet Tubman allegedly said, “There were two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.” Enslaved people constantly resisted the dehumanization of their enslavement in any way they could, even if it cost them their lives. This course looks at the history of slavery through the eyes of people who refused to let the institution of slavery rob them of the large and small freedoms all humans crave. We will consider slave narratives, rebellions and representations of slave resistance in popular culture (films, novels, television). The course will also investigate the important role that Ohio, especially northwest Ohio, and Michigan, in particular Detroit, played in the history of the Underground Railroad and free Black communities. 

On Tuesday, April 3, 2018, BGSU History Department Professor Walter Grunden visited the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing to present an invited guest lecture at the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences. The lecture, entitled, “The Left Behind: Travel Restrictions, Science Policy, and the Cold War in Occupied Japan,” examined how United States occupation officials used visas for international travel from 1945 to 1952 as both a carrot and stick to influence the political behavior of Japanese scientists, which ultimately resulted in the isolation of a select group who were deemed to have been communists, socialists, or “fellow travelers.” Grunden’s host, Professor Zaiqing Fang, noted that this is an aspect of postwar Japanese history about which Chinese academics know too little. The essay upon which the lecture was based has been accepted for publication in the Journal of American-East Asian Relations.

Grunden’s visit to Beijing marks the halfway point in a six-month long journey in Asia, which so far has taken him to South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and several destinations in China. “I am trying to get the most out of my spring sabbatical not only by conducting research for my primary project, but also by visiting important historical sites, such as the Great Wall, and pursuing side interests, such as experiencing national history museums, as well as exploring numerous temples to examine up close the many forms of Buddhist iconography that can be found throughout East and Southeast Asia. I’m really looking forward to sharing these experiences with my students when I return to Bowling Green,” Grunden said. Grunden also remarked that the trip has had some particularly memorable moments. “One day last week as we exited a museum, we found that all the traffic in our part of the city had come to a complete stop. There was an incredible security presence with both police and uniformed military officers lining the streets. Suddenly, on the overpass ahead, there arrived a number of police and military vehicles followed by series of luxury sedans speeding by. Only the next day did we learn that we had encountered Kim Jong-Un’s motorcade on its way to downtown Beijing.”

The next stop for Grunden will be Japan, where he will continue his research on science policy during the years of the US

occupation. Grunden has been awarded a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science to collaborate on this project with Professor Kenji Ito at the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI) in Hayama, Japan.

Photo 1: Grunden (center) and Professor Zaiqing Fang (left) pose for a photo with faculty and graduate students of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of the Chinese Academy of Science’s College of Humanities & Social Sciences

Photo 2: Promotional poster for Grunden’s lecture, “The Left Behind”

Photo 3: Grunden and his wife, Han Li, on the Great Wall at Juyongguan north of Beijing