Category: News

Summary of Announcement
The SMU Center for Presidential History announces a call for articles (500-1,000 words) to be published as part of a new research website dedicated to the Election of 2004.

Full Announcement
The Center for Presidential History (CPH) at Southern Methodist University is pleased to announce that it will be producing a new scholarly website dedicated to the Election of 2004.  In keeping with the mission of the CPH, this website will provide original research material and content which can be accessed and used freely by both scholars and the general public.

As part of the CPH’s Collective Memory Project, this Election of 2004 website will be built around a primary feature: long-form filmed interviews with key participants in that election cycle.  These filmed interviews and their accompanying transcriptions will appear with supporting material, including articles on key subjects.

We invite you to participate in this project by contributing original articles of 500-1,000 words.  Contributors will be compensated for each complete article.  Those who inquire will be provided with a complete list of article topics (examples below).  We are interested in receiving applications from scholars in various stages of their careers, including graduate students.

To apply for participation, please submit your curriculum vitae to Brian Franklin, Associate Director of the Center for Presidential History, at brfranklin@smu.edu.  Priority consideration will be given to applications received by March 15, 2014.  Deadline for application is March 31, 2014.

For more information on this Election of 2004 project, as well as the broader Collective Memory Project of the CPH, click here.

Sample Selection of Article Topics
Iowa Caucuses
McCain-Feingold
527 Organizations
Republican National Conventions
Kyoto Treaty
Flip-flop
Dick Gephardt
Wesley Clark
Goodridge v Department of Public Health
Osama Bin Laden Video (10/29/04)

For a complete list of article topics, follow the application instructions above.

The SMU Center for Presidential History (CPH) is accepting applications for two student work-study positions. Consistent with the broad work of the CPH, these positions will include work in a variety of fields, including research, clerical work, communication, website management, and event planning.  The position pays $11/hour, and requires 10 hours of work per week. These hours are flexible.  Application period will close on February 24, 2014.

Qualifications
– Candidate must qualify for Federal Work-Study program
– Candidate must be willing to work daytime and evening events, approximately once/month.

Application Instructions
– Send a one-page resume or letter of interest to CPHinfo@smu.edu (do not exceed one page)
– In your resume/letter, include your hours of availability within general SMU office hours (Monday-Friday, 8:30-5:00)
– Write “Student Worker Position” in the Subject line of your email.

You can also find this application information by signing in online at MustangTrak or looking at this link.

The CPH is accepting applications for a 2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellowship.

The successful candidate will couple his or her own research and publishing agenda with their contributions to the CPH’s Collective Memory Project.  For more information, or to apply, visit this site.

CPH Director Jeffrey Engel recently received the Bernath Lecture Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Engel’s lecture, “Bush, Germany, and the Power of Time: How History Makes History,” has now been published in the prestigious journal Diplomatic History.

George H.W. Bush backed German reunification with a puzzling degree of enthusiasm. His strategic reasoning was clear and not in dispute, as he desired to keep a unified Germany enmeshed within NATO. Less obvious, however, is his general forgiveness of Germany’s past, for which he was pilloried. Yet history was much on Bush’s mind in reaching these decisions. Germans had learned from the past, he argued. Europeans had not. They could not keep the peace no matter their ongoing political consolidation, his administration concluded by reading European history, without Americans in their midst. Bush backed unification, therefore, to ensure NATO’s survival and thus an ongoing American presence on the continent. By studying Bush’s sense of history, and a policymaker’s historical sensibility more broadly, historians can thus gain greater insight into this decision and how strategic decisions are more generally formed.

You can read the entire article here.