Educational Utopias and the Making of U.S. Global Power, 1898-1950
A lecture by
Talya Zemach-Bersin (’07)
Thursday, March 2
4:15pm ~ Fisk 208
Reception to follow in the commons of the Center for Global Studies
This talk examines the historical contexts and social scientific theories that inspired Americans in the first half of the twentieth century to turn their attention to youth-focused experiments in social engineering. Drawing from archival research that bridges intellectual and cultural history, the history of social science, and U.S. empire studies, this research refocuses the story of America’s rise to power on childhood education schemes.
Talya Zemach-Bersin received her BA American Studies from Wesleyan University in 2007, and her PhD in American Studies from Yale University in 2015. She is currently working on her first monograph, Education and the Making of American Globalism: 1898-1950, which will be published by Harvard University Press. Her research has been supported by the New York University Cold War Dissertation Fellowship, the Council on International Educational Exchange, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. She was awarded the Yale University Prize Teaching Fellowship and her dissertation was awarded the Yale University John Addison Porter Prize and the History of Education Society’s Claude A. Eggertsen Dissertation Prize. Zemach-Bersin has published several articles and book chapters on higher education and internationalism. Her writing and research bridges domestic and international histories and focuses on the relationship between U.S. global power and the social sciences.
This event is sponsored by the Center for Global Studies and the American Studies Department.
