“Mind the Gap”: New Directions in Culture, History and Diplomacy in a Time of COVID

Blanche Weisen Cook, the acclaimed biographer of Eleanor Roosevelt, will be discussing her new paper ‘Doctors Divided: The AMA’s war against National Health care for ALL, 1935-2020’. Margaret Peacock (Innocent Weapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War), Audra Wolfe (Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science), and Patryk Babiracki (Soviet Soft Power in Poland: Culture and the Making of Stalin’s New Empire, 1943-1957) will discuss new directions and their future publications, and reflect on moving forward in a time of COVID.

The panel sets the stage for on-campus lectures by each scholar in the 2021-2022 academic year.

Piers Ludlow, Chair, Department of International History, will introduce the programme and Victoria Phillips, Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics, will moderate the discussion.

Margaret Peacock is Associate Professor of History at the University of Alabama.

Audra J. Wolfe (@ColdWarScience) is a Philadelphia-based writer, editor, and historian. She is the author of Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America.

Patryk Babiracki is Associate Professor in Russian and East European history at the University of Texas-Arlington.

Blanche Wiesen Cook is Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s Studies at the John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Victoria Phillips is LSE Visiting Fellow in the Department of International Histroy at LSE. She is the author of Martha Graham’s Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy. A Lecturer in History at the European Institute and Department of History at Columbia University in the City of New York, Dr. Phillips is also Associated Faculty at the Harriman Institute, director of the Cold War Archival Research project (CWAR), and Visiting Fellow in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics

Piers Ludlow is Head of Department in International History at LSE. His main research interests lie in the history of Western Europe since 1945, in particular the historical roots of the integration process and the development of the EU.

The Department of International History (@lsehistory) teaches and conducts research on the international history of Britain, Europe and the world from the early modern era up to the present day. Sponsored by the department’s Contemporary International History and the Global Cold War research cluster.

This event series is co-hosted by the Cold War Studies Project at LSE IDEAS