The talk examines the widespread practice of youth exchanges during the late Cold War through two seemingly peripheral actors: the Romanian Pioneers, the children’s organization of the Romanian Communist Party, and one of its most active partners in the west, the International Falcons Movement, a leftwing youth organization with national branches in Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, and France. Following Romanian and foreign teens who traveled as cultural ambassadors to youth camps organized in the Soviet bloc and Western Europe, the talk examines competing visions and practices of socialist internationalism in order to illuminate the role of “soft power” during the Cold War.

The paper examines German prisoner of war (POW) camps in the Soviet Union from 1941-1956. The Germans were the largest and longest held group of POWs of any of the victor nations of the Second World War. The key research question is why were they held for so long? The paper argues that the POWs were primarily held for economic reasons related to the mass destruction of the war. To support this argument, the paper heavily relies on GIS mapping of the POW camp locations in relation to Soviet infrastructure and environmental resources. The paper provides a detailed methodological breakdown of the mapping process in addition to analysis of the maps.

Susan Grunewald (CMU, Doctoral Student in History), with a response from John Walsh (French and Italian)

Join Panoramas in a discussion about Varying Expressions of Negritude Throughout the U.S. & Latin America

Wednesday, October 10th
4217 Posvar Hall
4:30 PM

Pizza provided! Free & open to the public!

Panoramas provides a web-based venue for thoughtful dialogue of Latin American and Caribbean issues. By enabling a voice for scholars, students, policy makers and others to engage in constructive commentary on relevant current and historical topics, the forum also serves as an academic resource to worldwide educational audiences. Housed at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and maintained by CLAS faculty, students and alumni, Panoramas strives to be at the forefront of scholarly analysis of affairs in the Latin American region.

For more information and to join the conversation, visit:
https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/

Joshua Eisenman’s (马佳士) research focuses on the political economy of China's development and its foreign relations with the United States and the developing world—particularly Africa. His work has been published in top academic journals including World Development, Development and Change, Journal of Contemporary China and Cold War History, and in popular outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Policy. His views have been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist and The New Republic.

Professor Eisenman's newest book, "Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune" (Columbia University Press, 2018), explains how more capital investment and better farming techniques increased agricultural productivity growth in Maoist China. In "China Steps Out: Beijing’s Major Power Engagement with the Developing World" (Routledge, 2018), he worked with Eric Heginbotham to analyze China’s policies toward the developing world. His second book, "China and Africa: A Century of Engagement" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), co-authored with David Shinn, was named one of the top three books about Africa by Foreign Affairs. Their next volume, under advance contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press, will examine the China-Africa political and security relationship.

A distinguished Argentine poet and essayist and one of the finest writers of short stories in world letters, Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) deliberately and regularly altered his work by extensive revision. In this volume, renowned Borges scholar Daniel Balderston undertakes to piece together Borges’s creative process through the marks he left on paper.