• privacy policy
• accessibility
• sitemap

UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

The UCD College of Arts and Celtic Studies Transatlantic Relations Seminar will host a one-day conference in conjunction with the Clinton Institute for American Studies.

Reform and Renewal: Transatlantic Relations during the 1960s and 1970s

Transatlantic relations underwent significant change during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly with regard to the United States and the countries of Western Europe.  Post-1945 co-operation, dependence and direction increasingly gave way to resentment, economic competition and division over military and foreign policies.  A weakened United States economy, coupled with a focus on détente, led the Nixon administration to adopt policies that directly challenged European economic and security concerns.  Yet, this was also the time when transatlantic relations experienced rejuvenation.  Domestic political dynamics influenced this evolving US-European order, as shifts in the power balances between liberals and conservatives altered the political landscape.  The rise of conservatism in the United States, no less than the debacle in Vietnam, augured new foreign policy priorities for American leaders.  Coinciding with the renewed focus on economic liberalism on both sides of the Atlantic, the influence of conservatives in redefining international relations became increasingly prominent.  This conference aims to explore the political changes which helped redefine the transatlantic relationship as the Sixties era came to an end, and a new age of conservatism came to prominence.

Plenary speakers:

Professor Robert K. Brigham

Professor Brigham is the Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations at Vassar College, New York.  During 2007-2008, he is the Mary Ball Washington Visiting Professor at the School of History and Archives, UCD.  He is the author of numerous books and essays on American foreign relations, including Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (1999) written with Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight, ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army (2006) and Is Iraq Another Vietnam? (2006).

Dr Stefan Halper

Dr. Stefan Halper is a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge and a Senior Fellow at the Cambridge Centre of International Studies, where he is Director of the Donner Atlantic Studies Programme. Dr. Halper began a long career of public service for the US government in 1971 and has served four American presidents in the White House and the Department of State. He is also the co-author of two books: the bestselling America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (2004), which analysed the American neoconservative movement, and The Silence of the Rational Centre: Why American Foreign Policy is Failing (2007), which looked at various social and political themes in American society that affect US foreign policy.

Dr Dominic Sandbrook

Dr Sandbrook is the author of Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (2005), White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (2006) and Eugene McCarthy and the Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism (2004).  He has been an associate fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford University and is currently working on a book on the United States during the 1970s.

Additional plenary speakers to be confirmed

Twenty minute paper proposals are invited on any aspect of transatlantic relations during the 1960s and 1970s, and on any aspect of political change in relevant countries.

This one-day conference will take place on Saturday, 7th June 2008, at the William Jefferson Clinton Auditorium, UCD.

Please send paper title, 300-word abstract and a short CV to:
Dr Sandra Scanlon:
School of History and Archives, University College Dublin, Newman Building, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
or Sandra.Scanlon@ucd.ie

Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday, 21st March 2008

Conference organisers: Dr Catherine Hynes and Dr Sandra Scanlon, UCD School of History and Archives.