Harvey Goldberg Center
Annual Report for Year Ending December 31, 2003

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I. GENERAL:

Goldberg Center Executive Committee:
Laird Boswell
Nan Enstad
Alison Frank
Francine Hirsch
Steve Kantrowitz, co-chair
Al McCoy, co-chair
Tony Michels
Francisco Scarano
Brett Sheehan
Jeremi Suri

General:
        The Goldberg Center has become an important part of the intellectual life on the Madison campus. After a brief hiatus during a generational transition within the History Department, the Goldberg Center reformed itself in late 2001 and launched a new program of activities starting in early 2002. With an income of about $5,000 a year, the Goldberg Center has provided seed capital for intellectual innovation within the History Department. During 2003, the Goldberg Center funded a range of activities including a national conference, several campus-wide symposia, and a number of well-attended public lectures.
At its November 2002 meeting, the Goldberg executive committee made plans for an ambitious future conference on “Internationalizing History” that has the potential of making an impact on the History curriculum at this University and a contribution to curricular changes nationwide. Plans for the conference, to be held in the fall of 2005, are proceeding.

II. ACTIVITIES IN 2003:

1) "Internationalizing History" Seminar Series

    Throughout 2003, the history department organized public seminars to generate discussion about the international dimensions of history. The Goldberg Center's financial contributions enabled us to bring outside speakers to campus, broadening the conversation substantially and provoking lively exchanges.

The first seminar, led by our own Professor Steve Stern, met on 11 April 2003. After some brief opening remarks, faculty and graduate students discussed a series of articles offering different approaches to internationalizing history.

The second seminar, led by Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty of the University of Chicago, met on 2 May 2003. This discussion focused on how historians can recapture the voices of “subaltern” peasants and other frequently neglected groups as we internationalize our frame of vision.

The third seminar, led by Professor John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University, met on 12 May 2003. This meeting sparked a lively and fruitful debate about how historians can integrate the perspectives of both the “First World” and the “Third World” into a broader understanding of the Cold War.

    The fourth seminar, led by Professor Thomas Bender of New York University, met on 23 October 2003. Entitled "Empire as a Way of Life," Bender's new work argues that the imperial drive constitutes an element of continuity in US history, and it places it in a broader framework of European imperial expansion.  Bender’s article also suggests how the thought of American elites fits into the European context.

These seminars were successful on many levels. They drew large and diverse groups of faculty and students. They inspired conversations that continued in many informal settings long after the official meetings adjourned. Most important, they drew serious interest to the task of internationalizing our work. With strong faculty and student support, the history department is in the process of planning a series of additional seminars during the next two years.

    Discussions about internationalizing the study of history have also contributed to new initiatives within our department’s undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Professor Jeremi Suri offered a graduate seminar on international history in the spring of 2003 that brought students and faculty together from various area specialties to address topics like the history of imperialism, slavery, capitalism, nationalism, and social protest. Other members of the faculty are planning new collaborative undergraduate and graduate courses that internationalize our teaching.
    
During the last century the history department at the University of Wisconsin has consistently served as a worldwide leader for innovative research and teaching. Our new initiative to internationalize the study and teaching of history promises to continue and update this distinguished tradition for years to come.


2) Planning for Goldberg-Mosse Conference on Internationalizing History

An international conference will take place in Madison in fall, 2005 on the theme of  “Internationalizing History.” With joint funding from the Goldberg and Mosse Centers, scholars will be invited to submit original papers, and conference proceedings will be published in a volume in 2006. A primary aim of the conference will be to further discussion of the UW-Madison undergraduate history curriculum. These discussions were inspired by a suggestion from Professor Colleen Dunlavy:

“Internationalizing history” has become a bit of a buzzword in recent years. It's not about getting scholars to do more comparative history but rather about encouraging them to lift their heads out of their national historiographies and to situate their particular topics in an international context.  The need to do so may be more pressing in U.S. and European history, because they tend to be more systemically insular, but, if so, then perhaps historians of other parts of the world have good insights to share about how to internationalize.  Given that present-day interest in the subject has been prompted by globalization, it would seem to accord well with Harvey Goldberg's agenda (integrating historical inquiry with contemporary concerns).

            In keeping with current History Department discussions about revising the undergraduate curriculum and reviving graduate-level Comparative World History Program, this conference could play a catalytic role in bringing about curricular changes. Although Wisconsin was a pioneer in the World History movement 40 years ago, today we have no undergraduate courses of that description. By contrast, peer institutions across the country have introduced such courses, making World History a core component of undergraduate education and graduate employment. At the graduate level, the Comparative World History program, once a vital part of the Department under John Smail and Phil Curtin, has faded. Such a conference could play a seminal role in encouraging complementary curricular changes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

    Planning for this conference has proceeded in tandem with the intellectual groundwork being laid by the "Internationalizing History" seminar series. Goldberg Center representatives, along with other members of the History faculty and John Tororice of the Mosse Center, have formed a Working Group in International History. As plans for the conference continue, we will seek additional (secondary) support from other UW units.

3) Harvey Goldberg's Lectures

    Thanks to the extraordinary generosity of UW alums James Stevenson and Sidney Iwanter, we have obtained recordings of many of Harvey Goldberg's lectures. The Center has hired a Ph.D. student in the History department as a project assistant to abstract, digitize, and archive these recordings. We know there is significant interest among Professor Goldberg's former students in obtaining copies of these recordings, and we are working to make that possible.

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