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SHAFR Recognizes Outstanding Scholarship and Service at the 2025 Annual Meeting

SHAFR Recognizes Outstanding Scholarship and Service at the 2025 Annual Meeting

The Betty M. Unterberger Dissertation Prize Committee–Nicole Anslover (chair), Samantha Payne, and Nicole Phelps—has awarded the 2025 prize to Daniel Chardell for his dissertation "The Gulf War: An International History, 1989-1991."  It was completed at Harvard University under the direction of Erez Manela.  In this examination of the 1991 Gulf War, Chardell argues for new interpretations of the end of the Cold War.  He analyzes Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait through the lens of new understandings of the global balance of power amidst the collapse of a Communist superpower.  Through multinational archival work, Chardell explains how differing U.S. and Arab visions of sovereignty helped shape foreign relations in the post-Cold War world. This dissertation will spark new conversations about the Gulf War and greater international relations at the end of the 20th century.
 
The committee also awarded Honorable Mention to David Helps for his dissertation, “Securing the World City: Policing, Migration, and the Struggle for Global Los Angeles, 1973-1994,” which was completed at the University of Michigan with advisor Matthew D. Lassiter.  In it, Helps crafts a transnational urban history that examines the transformation of Los Angeles during the twenty years Tom Bradley served as mayor, a period of dramatic growth in the city’s population and its economic role as a port city.  In examining contests over downtown redevelopment, security at the 1984 Olympics, and the Rodney King verdict, Helps brings together an impressive range of scholarship and archival research to illustrate how action at multiple scales came together in a specific place. 
 
Congratulations also go to Kaitlin Simpson for receiving Honorable Mention for her dissertation, "The Flowers of El Dorado: Gender, Production, and the Cut Flower Industry in the United States and Colombia, 1908-Present.”  Completed at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, under the supervision of Tore Olsson, it is a creative and beautifully written history of the cut flower industry in the United States and Colombia during the twentieth century.  Simpson draws the reader in through a gendered analysis of the ascent of the cut flower industry, moving seamlessly between the U.S. and Latin America and drawing on a wide range of methodologies to explain how and why cut flowers were produced and consumed.  The committee especially appreciated the way she captures the experiences and perspectives of women workers in Colombian flower fields by reading corporate archives against the grain.  
 
The winner of the 2025 Marilyn Blatt Young Dissertation Completion Fellowship is Margie Tang-Whitworth, a Doctoral Candidate in History at the University of Minnesota.  Her dissertation--“‘The Oriental Julia Child’: Chinese American Cuisine, Gendered Orientalism, and the Cold War”—is an exciting and thought-provoking study that examines how four Chinese American female celebrity chefs influenced popular U.S. perceptions of foreign relations, Chinese migration, and the Cold War both at home and in the world.  Tang-Whitmore’s project argues that “authentic” Chinese food on U.S. plates, hand in hand with the crafted performances, delivered an intersectional formation of the “model minority myth” in the United States.  Utilizing an approach that skillfully combines interdisciplinarity with both public and private primary sources, it unearths a key means by which Chinese American anticommunism increased during a key period in U.S., international, and global history.  The award committee (Kate Burlingham—chair, Aaron Coy Moulton, and Marc Selverstone) was greatly impressed with Tang-Whitmore’s original approach and conceptual framework.  Her dissertation, once completed, will make an outstanding addition to the breadth of work at SHAFR.
 
Dante LaRiccia of Yale University received Honorable Mention for the Young Dissertation Completion Fellowship.  His dissertation--“Carbon Colonization: U.S. Empire in the Age of Oil”—explores the origins and evolution of the global oil economy and charts its role in advancing America’s interests and mission abroad.  It reveals how the processing, shipment, and consumption of oil—in addition to its extraction—facilitated the imperial ambitions of the United States.  He then traces the impact of those ambitions and their ensuing frictions—between and among American oil companies, U.S. policymakers, and local peoples, at both the elite and grassroots levels—framing those contestations against the backdrop of the Cold War.  Incorporating documents from over two dozen archives, LaRiccia’s work sits at the intersection of environmental, international, and energy history and offers a wide-ranging and creative account of the climate crisis and its imperial roots.  Its insights into both colonization and decolonization, realized through the lens of the global petroleum economy, provides a deeper understanding of both our geo-climatic era and the projection of U.S. power abroad.
 
Taylor Prescott of the University of Pennsylvania also received Honorable Mention for the Young Dissertation Completion Fellowship.  His dissertation—Sovereigns and Exiles, Recaptives and Revolutionaries: A History of Black Interethnic Exchange in Sierra Leone, 1775-1848—is a political, intellectual, and global history that links the American Revolution with the movement for independence in Sierra Leone.  By connecting the history of the United States with the global history of Sierra Leone, he argues that the importance of the American Revolution extends beyond its influence in the Euro-American world and reaches to those colonized in Africa.  His project is part of a growing literature that seeks to shed light on the important links between U.S. and African history during this early period.   Further, by calling for a “global history of Sierra Leone,” his project addresses the need to see Africans as global actors long before the anti-colonial movements of the late twentieth century.  The committee was impressed by Prescott’s project and excited about the much needed geographic and temporal diversity it brings to SHAFR.
 
The Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize Committee—Mattias Fibiger (chair), Oli Charbonneau, and Kaete O’Connell—is pleased to announce that Ben Zdencanovic is this year’s winner.  “‘A Strange Paradox’: U.S. Global Economic Power and the British Welfare State, 1944–1951” in Diplomatic History is a pathbreaking contribution to U.S. foreign relations history.  With exceptional archival depth and analytic precision, Zdencanovic reinterprets the trans-Atlantic ecumene in the immediate postwar years.  He skillfully nuances the dominant “embedded liberalism” thesis, revealing profound tensions between American marketism and British statism in the elaboration of the postwar economic order.  Yet he also exposes, through a detailed study of tobacco duties, the deep interdependencies between the two projects.  For example, U.S. dollar aid financed British imports of American tobacco, and taxes on the consumption of this tobacco financed much of the incremental increase in government spending necessary to realize the Beveridge Plan. Elegantly written, empirically rich, and theoretically incisive, this is scholarship of the highest caliber.











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Apply for the SHAFR-in-Asia Pacific Workshop 2026

Apply for the SHAFR-in-Asia Pacific Workshop 2026

Call for Applications

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Call for Proposals to host the 2028 SHAFR Annual Conference

Call for Proposals to host the 2028 SHAFR Annual Conference

Every other year, SHAFR holds its annual meeting in a location other than the Washington, D.C., area. The SHAFR Council would like to hear from members interested in hosting the conference in late June 2028 and is especially interested in hearing proposals from people who would like to host the conference on their campus or at their institution with affordable meeting and housing facilities.  

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SHAFR letter to Ambassador Brewer regarding HAC

SHAFR letter to Ambassador Brewer [PDF]

SHAFR letter on Historical Advisory Committee representative dismissal

SOCIETY FOR HISTORIANS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN RELATIONS
1301 E. Main Street, Box 23
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
Email: [email protected]

Cate Dillon
White House Liaison
U.S. Department of State
[email protected]





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Three Members of NHA's Executive Committee File NEH Lawsuit Advocacy Update

Three Members of NHA's Executive Committee File NEH Lawsuit

Advocacy Update

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National Humanities Alliance - Legislative Update

Legislative Update

 
 

Legislative Update

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CFP - 7th Annual Women in Baseball Virtual Conference

Call for Papers
7th Annual Women in Baseball Virtual Conference
Women Beyond the Diamond
September 19-21, 2025

Topics can focus on ideas such as: announcers, owners, execs, writers, artists, architects and so much more. All topics and time periods related to women’s baseball are welcome.


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NHA Memo to Members

Updates on the NEH

NHA Response to DOGE Actions

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CFP- Peace Across the Ages: Legacies, Lessons, and Change

Call for Proposals:
Peace Across the Ages: Legacies, Lessons, and Change
Peace History Society Conference
November 6-8, 2025
Berry College
Mount Berry, GA

The Peace History Society invites paper and panel proposals for our upcoming conference on the theme “Peace Across the Ages: Legacies, Lessons, and Change.” At a moment when intergenerational dialogue and historical awareness feel particularly urgent, this theme invites scholars to explore the historical roots, present-day practices, and future possibilities of peace movements and nonviolent conflict resolution across generations, communities, geographic contexts, and international boundaries. For more information, please visit our website: peacehistorysociety.org 




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Judge grants CREW discovery in DOGE FOIA suit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 16, 2025

CONTACT: Jordan Libowitz | [email protected]
 

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CFP - Dick Arndt Prize for an Outstanding Work on Cultural Diplomacy.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS 

Dick Arndt Prize for an Outstanding Work on Cultural Diplomacy

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SHAFR Statement Denouncing the Political Assault on Free Speech, Academic Integrity, and Higher Education

This moment is overwhelming. Each day we wake up to new attacks on history; the humanities; libraries, museums, and archives; and colleges and universities, as well as individual faculty, scholars, and students. We work from the resolute belief that scholarship, teaching, and free inquiry are essential for democracy. As a scholarly organization committed to careful historical analysis of the role of the United States in the world, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) denounces the attacks on these values. 

SHAFR and its leadership have signed statements on the political assault on the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and the National Park Service. Yet the situation continues to worsen. We have recently witnessed the shutting down of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars; the arrest, detention, and deportation of students and faculty who are green-card and visa holders for their exercise of free speech; the attacks on all efforts to make our campuses and organizations inclusive and welcoming for all; and the Trump administration’s refusal to respect judicial and congressional authority. We have seen attempts to rewrite history for the sake of partisan agendas, and both the Federal and Presidential Records Act have been violated.

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Melani McAlister statement on the Smithsonian Institution

April 2, 2025

The Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure. It is a repository of knowledge and a site of learning. The Smithsonian museums and educational programs reach Americans and international visitors from around the world, telling stories of outer space and ordinary spaces, histories of hope and struggle, and histories of collaborative achievement.

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Court refuses to toss CREW win against DOGE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 20, 2025

CONTACT: Jordan Libowitz | [email protected]
 

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Call for nominations for Peace History Society book and article prizes

Call for nominations for Peace History Society book and article prizes

The Peace History Society (PHS) seeks nominations for the following prizes. All submissions are due May 15, 2025. 

Founded in 1964, the PHS aims to encourage and coordinate national and international scholarly work to explore and articulate the conditions and causes of peace and war, and to communicate the findings of scholarly work to the public. 

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Judge rules DOGE likely subject to FOIA, must give CREW documents

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 10, 2025

CONTACT: Jordan Libowitz | [email protected]
 

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SHAFR letter to President Trump regarding the removal of the Archivist of the United States

SHAFR letter to President Trump regarding the removal of the Archivist of the United States

The text of the letter is reproduced below:

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CFA- SHAFR Second Book Workshop

SHAFR Second Book Workshop

SHAFR welcomes applications for participants in a Second Book Workshop scheduled to take place in person on Wednesday June 25 (8:00am–5:00pm), right before the SHAFR Annual Meeting in Arlington, VA. This initiative is aimed at mid-career scholars who are researching/writing their second book and who would like to have a productive environment in which to receive feedback on their work. Participants will be part of a group of peers; they will give comments to others and receive feedback themselves. 

Selection process: The screening committee (formed by three members of the Women in SHAFR committee plus two other experienced SHAFR scholars) will select twelve participants in a two-stage process. In the first stage, they will select potential participants based on the excellence of their work in terms of originality, rigor, and significance. In the second stage, they will rank the applicants who have passed the first round depending on their belonging to a “priority group” (see below).

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NARA Notice 2025-045: President of the U.S. Dismisses Dr. Colleen J. Shogan

National Archives Notice

To: All Employees

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