The Transatlantic Century:
Europe and America, 1890-2010
Tuesday 26 February, 2013
5 - 7pm, $0/Rsvp
NYU, The Humanities Initiative
20 Cooper Square, Floor 5
The Transatlantic Century, by Mary Nolan, is a fascinating new overview of European-American relations during the long twentieth century. Ranging from economics, culture and consumption to war, politics and diplomacy, Nolan charts the rise of American influence in Eastern and Western Europe, its mid-twentieth century triumph and its gradual erosion since the 1970s. She reconstructs the circuits of exchange along which ideas, commodities, economic models, cultural products and people moved across the Atlantic, capturing the differing versions of modernity that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic and examining how these alternately produced co-operation, conflict and ambivalence toward the other. Attributing the rise and demise of American influence in Europe not only to economics but equally to wars, the book locates the roots of many transatlantic disagreements in very different experiences and memories of war. This is an unprecedented account of the American Century in Europe that recovers its full richness and complexity.
Mary Nolan is a Professor of History at NYU and holds the Lillian Vernon Professorship for Teaching Excellence. She was trained as a Modern German historian and has written on German social and labor history and on the politics of Holocaust and World War II memory in Germany. Her research now focuses on twentieth-century European-American relations, economic, political and cultural. She has written on anti-Americanism and Americanization in Europe as well as on American anti-Europeanism. Her next project involves the pivotal decade of the 1970s. She teaches classes on the Cold War in Europe and America, Women and Gender in Modern Europe, Human Rights and Humanitarian Interventions, and Consumption and Consumer Culture. She is on the editorial boards of International Labor and Working-class History and of Politics and Society.
Mary Nolan is a Professor of History at NYU and holds the Lillian Vernon Professorship for Teaching Excellence. She was trained as a Modern German historian and has written on German social and labor history and on the politics of Holocaust and World War II memory in Germany. Her research now focuses on twentieth-century European-American relations, economic, political and cultural. She has written on anti-Americanism and Americanization in Europe as well as on American anti-Europeanism. Her next project involves the pivotal decade of the 1970s. She teaches classes on the Cold War in Europe and America, Women and Gender in Modern Europe, Human Rights and Humanitarian Interventions, and Consumption and Consumer Culture. She is on the editorial boards of International Labor and Working-class History and of Politics and Society.