Tag Archives: history

Dr. Wendy Chmielewski Awarded 2023 Anna K. Nelson Award for Archival Excellence

We would like to congratulate our colleague, the former Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Dr. Wendy Chmielewski, for receiving the 2023 Anna K. Nelson Award for Archival Excellence from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Dr. Nelson, a historian and expert on archival preservation and open public access to presidential and government records served on the U.S. Public Documents Commission. Nelson helped write the report that led to the passage of the Presidential Records Act.

George Fujii explains in the SHAFR blog that “The 2023 Anna K. Nelson Prize for Archival Excellence honors an archivist who has demonstrated both exemplary expertise as well as outstanding and dedicated service over time to the community of scholars of the history of U.S. foreign relations and international history.” Dr. Chmielewski helped co-found the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Swarthmore College in 1991 and served on its faculty committee until her retirement in 2021.

Fujii writes of Dr. Chmielewski, “A scholar of women’s history and peace movements, Dr. Chmielewski is honored for her leadership as the George R. Cooley Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection for over twenty years.  In that role, she oversaw the expansion the collection’s records, made detailed finding aids for many of them available on the internet, highlighted many of its print and graphic materials on its website, and added a public history component to this archival repository.  In these ways and others, she has been a driving force in making the Swarthmore College Peace Collection (SCPC) an indispensable resource for scholars of the American peace movement and the history of U.S. foreign relations more broadly.  Beyond the peace collection at Swarthmore, Dr. Chmielewski has also been a member of the advisory committee of the American Museum for Peace, the Jane Addams Papers Project at Ramapo College, and the Centre for Peace History at the University of Sheffield.  SHAFR recognizes her for this work and her multiple contributions to the study of U.S. foreign relations.”

Reflecting on the award, Dr. Chmielewski graciously offered, “As my work for the Peace Collection was always a collaborative effort with other SCPC staff members over many years, I think this award really belongs to the SCPC.”

We are thrilled for Wendy and her colleagues, and we join SHAFR in acknowledging and honoring her work.

Transnational Solidarities, Diplomatic Endeavors, and International History

This academic year the Aydelotte Foundation launched a program to support the promotion of significant scholarly works by our faculty and staff. We are pleased to co-sponsor the first event that is tied to this initiative:

Transnational Solidarities, Diplomatic Endeavors, and International History: A Roundtable on Researching and Writing Histories that Cross Borders

This roundtable, thematically linked to Professor Megan Brown’s recent book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community, will focus on transnational movements, international solidarity, diplomacy, and more.

Event Details:

Location: Scheuer Room
Roundtable: Thursday, February 9th, 4:30-6pm
Reception to follow until 7pm

Panelists:

Dr. Megan Brown is Assistant Professor of History at Swarthmore College, specializing in modern Europe with a focus on France. Her book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard), was published in 2022.

Dr. Cindy Ewing is the Assistant Professor of Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto. She specializes in histories of decolonization and the Cold War in South and Southeast Asia. Her in-progress book examines how Asian and Arab diplomats imported indigenous ideas about rights and sovereignty into the burgeoning international human rights system at the United Nations.

Dr. Kesewa John is a historian of Caribbean radicalism and intellectual history particularly interested in the intersections of Black feminist and Black radical histories of early twentieth century Caribbean activism. Dr. John is a Lecturer in Caribbean History in the Institute of the Americas at University College London and the current Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies, the UK’s only learned society focused on promoting scholarship about the Caribbean and its diasporas.

Moderator:

Dr. Angela Zimmerman is professor of history at George Washington University. She is the author of Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, 2010) and the editor of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Civil War in the United States (International Publishers, 2016). She is currently writing a history of the Civil War as an international anti-slavery revolution with roots in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. It will be called “A Very Dangerous Element.” 

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Sponsored by the Aydelotte Foundation and the Swarthmore College Libraries.

Co-Sponsored by the Asian Studies, Black Studies, French, Global Studies, History, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Political Science Departments at Swarthmore College

Dancing with History: George Lakey TriCo Memoir Launch

We are thrilled to welcome our former colleague and Lang Professor, George Lakey, back to campus to help launch his latest book, a memoir, Dancing With History: A Life for Peace and Justice. Join us for this public TriCollege book talk sponsored by departments at Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr Colleges. A reception and book signing will follow.

Date: January 31, 2023

Author-Student Meet-and-Greet Time: 4:30 p.m.
Location: Lib Lab in McCabe Library at Swarthmore College

Public Lecture Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Science Center, Cunniff Hall (Room 199) at Swarthmore College (Parking in Whittier Lot in Google Maps) (Walking directions to Cunniff Hall)

Lakey Dealing with History book cover
George Lakey’s new memoir, “Dancing with History: A Life for Peace and Justice.”

Download an event announcement flyer and share!

George Lakey is a scholar, writer, activist, trainer, and formerly a Lang Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, where he founded the Global Nonviolent Action Database. He has taught or trained at all three Trico colleges (Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore). Since the age of 19, he has been a tireless leader in peace, justice, and civil rights movements, studying and engaging in nonviolent campaigns for social change. A prominent Quaker, Lakey founded Training for Change here in Philadelphia, and his work can be traced across the anti-Vietnam War movement, gay liberation, Movement for a New Society, Men Against Patriarchy, Jobs with Peace (a labor coalition), climate justice movements, and more.

A prolific author throughout his career, his book include Toward a Living Revolution; How We Win; and Viking Economics. Copies of Dancing with History are available in the Campus Bookstore and can be purchased at the event.

Whet your appetite for this event by watching a trailer from a film about George’s life that is in development as well as the endorsements below.

George Lakey is a national treasure, whom I met when I was 22.  Dancing with George was a blast. His unstoppable, thoughtful, contagious approach to democratic action has inspired my life’s work.

Frances Moore Lappé, Director, Small Planet Institute.

In his memoir, George Lakey recollects his past and current experiences, layer by layer, narrating a life of building peace and justice through one’s actions.

George Lakey’s memoir is an important book, for Friends and for the wide radius of activist groups his life of witness has influenced. It is a testament to the adage that the personal is political, and the political is personal. One can hear eighty years of American culture pulsating through his body and spirit – not simply as unreflected zeitgeist, but as spiritually discerned and focused by a resilient concern for actionable analysis and strategy for a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world.

Doug Gwyn, author of A Sustainable Life: Quaker Faith & Practice in the Renewal of Creation.
Prof. George Lakey supporting students during a month-long sit-in for fossil fuel divestment at Swarthmore College in 2015.

Co-sponsors: Peace & Conflict Studies (Swarthmore); The Peace Collection and Friends Historical Library (Swarthmore); Swarthmore Friends Meeting; Peace, Justice, & Human Rights (Haverford); Peace, Conflict, & Social Justice Studies (Bryn Mawr); Sociology and Anthropology Department (Swarthmore); The Lang Center; Gender & Sexuality Studies

Prof. Margaret MacMillan to offer Cooper Series Lecture: “Friend or foe? War and Society” – September 7, 2022

We are excited to be a co-sponsor of this Cooper Series event featuring Professor Margaret MacMillan, emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford. Read more about the event below, and we hope to see you there.

“Friend or Foe? War and Society”
Wednesday 7th September 2022
7:00-8:30 p.m. in the Science Center’s Chang Hou Auditorium 101
Swarthmore College (map)
Reception to follow

Download a flyer

War is one of the most fundamental driving forces of human civilization. Today, prominent voices claim that we live in the most peaceful era in human history, but contemporary technologies such as artificial intelligence and cyberwar pose potentially existential threats. We should not turn away from the subject of war, however abhorrent we may find it. Rather, we must understand war to mitigate its effects, but also, vitally, because it is integral to understanding who we are.

Professor Margaret MacMillan is one of the world’s preeminent scholars of international relations. A best-selling author and frequent commentator in the media, she is known for her unparalleled grasp of her subject – war and peace – as well as her gift for vivid and powerful storytelling.  Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (2001) is widely regarded as a masterpiece and was awarded the Duff Cooper Prize, Hessell-Tiltman Prize, and Samuel Johnson Prize. Other works include: Women of the Raj (1988); Nixon in China: Six Days that Changed the World (2006); The Uses and Abuses of History (2008); The War that Ended Peace (2014); History’s People (2015) and War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020).   She is emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford, former Warden of St Antony’s College (University of Oxford) and visiting distinguished historian at the Council on Foreign Relations (2020-21).  In 2021, MacMillan won the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. 

This event is co-sponsored by the departments of History, Political Science, and Peace and Conflict Studies.

Polarization as Possibility: The Justice Strategizing of Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The video of the event announced below is now available!

Our friends at the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship at Haverford College are sponsoring an exciting online event on January 21, 2022 titled “Polarization as Possibility: The Justice Strategizing of Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr.” featuring our own George Lakey and Professor Terrance Wiley of Religion and Africana Studies at Haverford College.

Conflict is challenging for many of us, but the insights of King and Rustin offer hope.  King encountered violent conflict across America yet received the Nobel Peace Prize. His mentor Rustin urged “angelic troublemakers” to act more boldly.  What can we learn from the organizing leader behind much of the Civil Rights Movement, Bayard Rustin, who was born in nearby West Chester, PA, and raised in a Quaker household? How did King and Rustin’s theories of change leverage polarization toward possibility, and what does it mean for us in today’s environment? 

Read more and register.

The Quaker Indian Boarding Schools: Facing our History and Ourselves

“The Quaker Indian Boarding Schools: Facing our History and Ourselves”

A presentation by Paula Palmer, Friend in Residence at Haverford College

Thursday, November 6
4:30-6:00 p.m.
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall
Swarthmore College

Paula PalmerPaula Palmer is a sociologist, writer, and activist for human rights, social justice, and environmental protection.  Since 2012 she travels in Quaker ministry, working with Native and non-Native people to build relationships based on truth, respect, and justice. Her Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples ministry recently became a program of Friends Peace Teams. Paula created and facilitates workshops titled, “Roots of Injustice, Seeds of Change: Toward Right Relationship with America’s Native Peoples” (for adults) and “Re-Discovering America: Understanding Colonization” (for middle schools and high schools). As the 2016 Pendle Hill Cadbury Scholar, she conducted research and produced articles and videos about the role Quakers played during the era of the Indian Boarding Schools. She is a frequent speaker for faith communities, civic organizations, and colleges and universities, and has published widely.

Paula is a recipient of the Elise Boulding Peacemaker of the Year Award (given by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center), the Jack Gore Memorial Peace Award (given by the American Friends Service Committee), the International Human Rights Award (given by the United Nations Association of Boulder County), and the Multicultural Award in the “Partners” category (given by Boulder County Community Action Programs). She is a member of Boulder (CO) Quaker Meeting (IMYM).

Paula Palmer

Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Co-Sponsored by History, Political Science, Religion, Sociology and Anthropology, The Intercultural Center, The Office of Inclusive Excellence, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility

 

Other Paula Palmer events that may interest you:

Friday, November 1
7-8:15 pm
The Land Remembers:
Connecting with Native Peoples Through the Land
Interactive lecture
Co-sponsored with Family and Friends Weekend
Sharpless Auditorium
Haverford College

Saturday, November 2
1-3 pm
The Quaker Indian Boarding Schools: Facing our History and Ourselves
Slide Presentation
Delaware History Museum
505 N. Market Street, Wilmington DE 19801

Sunday, November 3
1-3 pm
Re-Discovering America
Interactive Workshop for Tribal Youth and Families
Dover, DE

Friday, November 8
1-2 pm
Where the Truth Leads: A Journey of Listening
Sharing her spiritual journey
Co-sponsored by Quaker and Special Collections
Lutnick Library Rm 232
Haverford College

Friday, November 8
4:30-6:15 pm
Two Rivers
The Film and Discussion
Co-sponsored by the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship
VCAM 001 Screening Room
Haverford College

Saturday, November 9
11 am-1 pm
Roots of Injustice, Seeds of Change:
Toward Right Relationship with America’s Native Peoples
Interactive workshop
MCC: Stokes 106
Haverford College

Monday, November 11
7-9 pm
The Land Remembers: Connecting with Native Peoples through the Land
Interactive talk
Friends Center
15th and Cherry Street, Philadelphia

More about Paula:
In collaboration with the Ojibwe attorney Jerilyn DeCoteau, Paula founded Right Relationship Boulder, a community group that works with local governments and organizations to lift up the history, presence, and contributions of Indigenous peoples in the Boulder Valley. Through workshops and presentations, they promote formation of “Right Relationship” groups in other parts of the country.

For 17 years, as executive director of the non-profit organization Global Response, Paula directed over 70 international campaigns to help Indigenous peoples and local communities defend their rights and prevent environmental destruction.

In Costa Rica, where she lived for 20 years, she published five books of oral history in collaboration with Afro-Caribbean and Bribri Indigenous peoples, through a community empowerment process known as Participatory Action Research. With Monteverde Friends, she helped establish the Friends Peace Center in San Jose and began worshiping among Friends there. She has been a member of Boulder meeting, Intermountain Yearly Meeting, since the mid-1990s.

From 1995 to 2001, Paula served as editor for health and environment of Winds of Change magazine, a publication of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). She holds an M.A. degree in sociology from Michigan State University and has taught courses in the Environmental Studies Department of Naropa University. She is profiled in American Environmental Leaders From Colonial Times to the Present (ABC-CLIO, 2000) and Biodiversity, A Reference Handbook (ABC-CLIO 1998).

“The 1.5 Insurgent Generation: Stories of El Salvador Postwar”

Please join us for a talk by Irina Carlota (Lotti) Silber, Associate Professor of Anthropology, City University of New York:

“The 1.5 Insurgent Generation: Stories of El Salvador Postwar”

Tuesday, October 22nd 2019

Sproul 201, Intercultural Center

4:30-6:00p.m.

Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Co-Sponsored by History, Latin American and Latino Studies, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology, Spanish, the Intercultural Center, the Office of Inclusive Excellence, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility

Please see the poster below for further information.

Irina Silber Talk 2-3

Welcoming Jordan Landes, Curator of the Friends Historical Library

Jordan Landes joined our community on March 11, 2019. Jordan joins us from the Senate House Library, the central library of the University of London where she was a Research Librarian for History.  A true exemplar of the value of a liberal arts education, Jordan has worked in libraries whose foci are literature and theater (Shakespeare’s Globe), contemporary dance (the Laban Library) and computer science (University of Maryland, College Park).

Jordan Landes

Jordan is an alumna of Haverford and in addition to her Master of Library Science from the University of Maryland; she has degrees in History from the University of Maryland (M.A.) and from the School of Advanced Study at the University of London (PhD).  Jordan has focused her studies in Quaker history.  Her doctoral thesis on the role of London in the creation of the trans-Atlantic Quaker community in the late 17th and early 18th centuries served as the basis for her book, London Quakers in the Trans-Atlantic World: The Creation of an Early Modern Community; it was published by Palgrave in 2015. 

 Jordan thinks a great deal about community and its value in the context of libraries and scholarship.  Jordan is also an innovator.  As co-convener of History Day, she developed an event that brings several hundred historians, undergraduates, and post-graduate researchers together with information professionals from over sixty libraries, archives and research organizations.  She has also worked with Wikimedia UK to host editithons in collaboration with the University of Birmingham over Twitter to address the dearth of information on women’s history.  She recently curated several recent exhibits – one on dissent in WWI and another on protest movements, entitled “Radical Voices.”  She is particularly interested in the way that libraries and archives preserve evidence of peace – when so much of the historical documents has focused on the opposite. 

As both librarian and historian, Jordan has built trans-Atlantic networks like the Quakers she has studied.  We are excited to see how she might expand our own networks, not only to England but beyond.

We would like to thank the search committee chaired by Sarah Willie-LeBreton with members, David Harrison, Ellen Ross, Celia Caust-Ellenbogen, Susanna Morikawa, Pat O’Donnell and Peggy Seiden. We would also like to recognize the phenomenal leadership of Pat O’Donnell since Chris Densmore’s retirement over a year ago and the support of Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Susanna Morikawa in not only sustaining the day-to-day work of FHL, but also managing a major grant project, In her own Right.

Exhibit: The War to End All Wars: Devastation, Resistance, and Relief in World War I

WWIexhibitF18

Exhibit: The War to End All Wars: Devastation, Resistance, and Relief in World War I

Atrium, McCabe Library
November 5 – December 1, 2018
Open to the public

November 11, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.  To commemorate this event the Swarthmore College Libraries is sponsoring an exhibition of materials from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Friends Historical Library, and the College Archives will on display.  See materials on the reaction of Swarthmore College, Quakers, and peace activists to the first global war, 1914-1918.

Opening event, Thursday, November 8, 2018
Atrium, McCabe Library, 4:30 p.m.
Open to the public

“Looking Back at the Great War From a Writers’ Point of View”
Mystery writers Charles Todd and Caroline Todd will talk about their books set during World War I and immediately after.  Their detectives, front line nurse Bess Crawford, and soldier-turned Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Rutledge face war time battles and the terrible consequences of war. Open to the public
There will be an opportunity to buy some of the authors’ books and light reception to follow the talk.

Win a signed copy of Charles Todd book!  Free raffle for a book from the Swarthmore College bookstore
Visit the bookstore for a free raffle ticket

History with a Future: Ben Goossen ’13

Goossen 13

McCabe Library Atrium
Thursday, September 7th, 4:30 pm

Please join us in welcoming back Ben Goossen ‘13! Ben will take you through the experiences at Swarthmore that helped shape his decision to pursue a Ph.D. at Harvard University. A History and German Studies double major, and four-time recipient of the Swarthmore College Libraries’ A. Edward Newton Award, Ben will discuss his new book, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era.

Chosen Nation tells the story of a Christian religious group’s entanglement with German nationalism through Hitler’s Third Reich and the Holocaust. Goossen will share from his experiences researching this history of complicity and cover-up, a journey that began at Swarthmore College and led to Old World Europe, seized Nazi archives, and a remote “religious state” in rural Paraguay.

Light refreshments will be served.

Sponsored by German Studies, Department of History, Friends Historical Library, Peace Collection and Swarthmore College Libraries