Sep 24, 2024 - Dr. Odd Arne Westad, Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University, will serve as the 2024 Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lecturer on Monday, October 14, 2024.
Professor Westad will deliver two lectures. His first lecture, titled “On Major War: The United States, China, and Lessons From the Past,” will take place at 2:00 p.m. At 7:15 p.m., Westad will talk about “The Hinge: British Imperial Administrator James Bruce and the Re-ordering of Empire, 1840-1860.” Both lectures will be held in Union University’s G. M. Savage Memorial Chapel and are free to the public.
An award-winning author, Westad has written or edited 16 books on international affairs. His book The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (2006) won the Bancroft Prize, the Akira Iriye International History Book Award, and the Michael Harrington Prize from the American Political Science Association. His book Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750 (2012) was awarded the Asia Society's Bernard Schwartz Book Award in 2013. His latest book, titled The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform, will be published in late October 2024. In it, Westad and historian Chen Jian examine the political, economic, and social changes that occurred in China after Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution.
Professor Westad earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before starting his position at Yale, he was on faculty at the London School of Economics and Harvard University. An internationally recognized expert, Professor Westad is known from providing a clear analysis of complex issues in his public lectures.