Michael Goebel pursued the aims of the Pierre du Bois Chair by also organizing a series of public lectures that address Europe’s role in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century world, for example through colonialism and migration, as well as the question of how that global role conversely impacted European history itself.
The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution: Europe and America
19 June 2020
This online lecture looked at the role played by political charisma in the Atlantic Revolutions of the period 1775-1820’s, and particularly at the way the charismatic reputation of early figures, such as the Corsican Pasquale Paoli and George Washington, shaped the roles available to later leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar.
David Bell is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. Professor Bell was educated at Harvard and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris before completing his doctorate at Princeton. A specialist in the history of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century France, he is the author of seven books, including The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Harvard University Press, 2001); The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It (Houghton Mifflin, 2007); Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, forthcoming in July, 2020).
The event took place on June 10th from 16:00 to 17:15 and was hosted online by the Graduate Institue via Cisco’s Webex platform.
Please watch here the Video of the Lecture
Disclosing The Problem of Empire in the International Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois
MONDAY 12 APRIL 2021, 16:00 – 17:30
The picture of the world as composed of discrete and independent states still exercises a hold over our political imagination. This is an image in which the domestic regime and constitution of the state is disaggregated from international relations, sovereign independence characterises the relations of states to each other, and international organisations recognise this sovereignty through equal standing. This tripartite image of a domestic constitution, external sovereignty, and equal membership in international society obscures longstanding imperial entanglements that have structured the modern world.
This online lecture argued that, W. E. B Du Bois, whose international writings span the decades when this image of the world came to be dominant, productively illuminates its blind spots and offers conceptual resources to move beyond its limits. Critical reflection on the problem of empire and a sustained attention to the relationship between the domestic and international realms of politics were persistent features of Du Bois’s political thought, from his early articulations of the argument that “the color line belts the world.”
Adom Getachew is Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. She is a political theorist with research interests in the history of political thought, theories of race and empire, and postcolonial political theory. Adom holds a joint PhD in Political Science and African-American Studies from Yale University. She is on the faculty board of the Pozen Center for Human Rights, a fellow at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture.
A Video of the Lecture is available below.
Project Europe: A History
MONDAY 12 OCTOBER 2020, 16:00 – 17:30
This online lecture provided a fresh and provocative interpretation of the history of European integration. It discussed how the European Union and its predecessors became so important over time, and how it has impacted ordinary people’s lives. Did it really create peace after the Second World War, as is often argued? How about its contribution to creating prosperity? The presentation looked back at the myths and realities of integration and challenged conventional wisdoms of Europhiles and Euro-sceptics alike.
Kiran Klaus Patel holds the chair of European history at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. Before joining LMU, he held chairs at Maastricht University and the European University Institute in Florence, and an assistant professorship at Humboldt University in Berlin. He has been (inter alia) a visiting fellow/professor at Harvard University, LSE, Sciences Po in Paris and the University of Oxford. His latest publications include: Project Europe: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); The New Deal: A Global History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
Please watch here the Video of the Lecture