Ohio University - Contemporary History Institute

The Contemporary History Institute admits approximately twelve new students each year. These students are selected on a highly competitive basis from a national and international pool of applicants; they are admitted to the Institute only after having been accepted for study in one of the Institute’s affiliated departments.

Student Body	Student Publications
Student Research	Student Placement

Student Body
During the past several years, the Institute has attracted students from such U.S. institutions as the University of Chicago, Columbia University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the George Washington University, the University of Georgia, the University of Illinois, the University of Kansas, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Notre Dame University, the Ohio State University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Stanford University, Temple, the University of Texas at Austin, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Washington.

Students from the Bahamas, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Italy, Kenya, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, and Zimbabwe have also been accepted into the program.

Usually about one-fourth of the Institute’s students are from countries other than the United States.

Student Research
Institute students engage in a wide range of innovative research projects as part of their course of study. The following is a brief sample of the diversity of research projects recently carried out by CHI students:

All Roads Lead to Moscow: The United States, Great Britain, and the Communist Monolith
From Words to Deeds: Russian Nationalism and the Conservative Opposition to Perestroika, 1985-1991
From Peripheral to Pivotal: The Evolution of Cultural Fundamentalism as a Political Movement, 1960-1980
Parallel Agendas: The Ngo Dinh Diem Regime, the United States, and the Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961-1963
Byron Price and the Office of Censorship’s Press and Broadcasting Divisions in World War II
A Feminist Critique of Realist International Relations Theory
Never Again: Women and the Practice of Abortion Before Roe
A Prestige Press Perspective of Early Cold War History: Joseph and Stewart Alsop, 1946-1948
The Origins and Development of the Strategic Hamlet Program
To the Notre Dame Address: Jimmy Carter and the Politics of Global Interdependency
Cold War Legitimacy in Crisis: An International History of Détente, 1968-80
Nationalism with a Human Face: The Origins of Czechoslovakia’s Dissolution, 1918-1993
From Hollywood to Reykjavik: Ronald Reagan and Nuclear Abolition
Looking Forward: How Conceptions of Time Affected Foreign Policy During the Eisenhower Administration
Soviet Dissidents: The Emergence of Their Dissent and the Importance of the Issues They Raised; A Case Study of Andrei Amalrik and Vladimir Bukovsky
The Evolution of U.S. Grand Strategy, 1947-1950
Dudley Do-Right and Friends: Lester B. Pearson, Canada, and the 1956 Suez Crisis
The Shaping of Things to Come: American Images of the Cold War’s End, 1945-53
The United States and the Caribbean Legion: Democracy, Dictatorship, and the Origins of the Cold War in Latin America
Skimpy Coverage: Sportswomen in Sports Illustrated, 1954-2000
Irish Neutrality: The Myth and the Memory
Prescriptions for Sexuality: Female Sexuality and the Domestic Ideal in American Medical Journals, 1950-1969
American Rifle Company Commanders and the War Against Germany, 1942-1945
Governing Freedom: The Corona Program and the Formulation of the Outer Space Treaty, 1959-1963
French Food vs. Fast Food: Jose Bove Takes on McDonald's
The 1994 U.S. Invasion of Haiti
Hollywood's Communists, 1943-1953
Geneva 1954: The Western Alliance and the Emergence of South Vietnam
The Cold War and the Olympics: Coverage in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times of the United States' and Soviet Union's Pursuit of Athletic Supremacy, 1948-1988
The Johnson Administration and the Cyprus Crisis of 1964
Reconsidering the China Lobby: Senator William F. Knowland and US-China Policy, 1945-1958
Michael Walzer's Moral Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Context of the Post-War American Foreign Policy Debate
Discord in Black and White: The Breakdown of the Black-Jewish Alliance in the Civil Rights Movement
Giving Contemporary Meaning to Steve Biko's Legacy
The Lisbon Conference, Western Rearmament, and the Evolution of NATO

Student Publications
CHI doctoral candidates have compiled an impressive record of publishing their dissertations. A list of recently published books based on CHI dissertations includes:

Shu Guang Zhang (Ph.D. 1990) Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949-1958. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Philip Nash (Ph.D. 1994) The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Jupiters, 1957-1963. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
H. Campbell Craig (Ph.D. 1995) Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Steven R. Taaffe (Ph.D. 1995) MacArthur’s Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign. Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1998. (Featured Selection, History Book Club, 1998).
Michael R. Hall (Ph.D. 1996) Sugar and Power in the Dominican Republic: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Trujillos. Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Michael S. Sweeney (Ph.D. 1996) Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Victor Scott Kaufman (Ph.D. 1998) Confronting Communism: U.S. and British Policies Toward China. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
Alessandro Brogi (Ph.D. 1998) A Question of Self-Esteem: The United States and the Cold War Choices in France and Italy, 1944-1958. Westport, CT: Praeger (International History Series), 2001 .
Raymond J. Haberski (Ph.D. 1999) It’s Only a Movie!: Films and Critics in American Culture. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.
Steven P. Remy (Ph.D. 2000) The Heidelberg Myth: The Nazification and Denazification of a German University, 1933-1957. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Philip Catton (Ph.D. 1998) Diem's Final Failure: Prelude to America's War in Vietnam (Modern War Studies). Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Jeffrey Coker (Ph.D. 1999) Love's Labor Lost: Left Intellectuals, Labor, and the Proletarian Myth Since the Great Depression. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003.
Jeffrey Woods (Ph.D. 2000) Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anticommunism in the South, 1948-1968. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004.
Paul Chastko (Ph.D. 2002) Developing Alberta's Oil Sands. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004.
Philippe Girard (Ph.D. 2002) Clinton in Haiti: The 1994 US Intervention in Haiti. NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.
Derek Catsam (Ph.D. 2003) "A Brave and Wonderful Thing": The Freedom Rides and the Integration of Interstate Transport, 1941-1965. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, forthcoming 2005.

Student Placement
The Institute’s graduates have found further educational and career opportunities in a variety of areas. Universities that have accepted CHI students for additional graduate training include Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Virginia, Yale, Colgate, and Ohio State.

Institute graduates have received Fulbright, Jacob Javits, and Hubert H. Humphrey predoctoral fellowships, the Charles Warren Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard, the John Olin Postdoctoral Fellowship at Yale, and postdoctoral fellowships at Ohio State University's Mershon Center. They have found academic employment at the University of Virginia, Maryland-College Park, Utah State, Nevada-Las Vegas, the University of Cincinnati, Texas Tech, SUNY-Brooklyn, Mankato State, McNeese State, Tulane, and George Washington universities, among others.

Students have also secured internships and other positions at the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and its Cold War International History Project, the Nuclear History Program, the Los Alamos National Laboratories, Senator Edward Kennedy’s Washington office, and the Suddeutscher Zeitung, a major Munich newspaper.