American Empire

Joshua B. Freeman, History, The Graduate Center and Queens College, CUNY

David Harvey, Anthropology, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Lisa McGirr, History, Harvard University

Adolph Reed, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.

In the decades after the Second World War, a profound democratic revolution took place in the United States. These social, cultural, and political changes were also linked to a period of enormous economic growth that, in the 1970s, ground to a halt. What followed was a shift in economic and political power from the wider populace to corporations and the rich. At the same time, the US transformed itself into a new kind of empire, with consequences we are still living with today. How can we account for the rise of consumerism, globalism, and prosperity in post-WWII America? What are the social forces that later overturned decades of work in civil rights and labor movements? Join four distinguished scholars as they consider the history and future of the American empire as we know it.

Fri Feb 22, 6:00pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre
Cosponsored by the PhD program in History; the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics; and the Murphy Institute