Foreign Policy
Research Institute
1528 Walnut St, Ste 610
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Tel. 215-732-3774
Fax 215-732-4401
fpri@fpri.org

April 20-21, 2002

Teaching Geography and Geopolitics

A History Institute for Teachers

Sponsored by the Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education
A Division of the Foreign Policy Research Institute

At the Gregg Conference Center
American College
Bryn Mawr, PA

Visit a strange city or neighborhood without a map, and you are lost. We know this, and so do our students. But maps are not only essential for travel. They are vital to understanding national and global history, politics, economics, and culture. Knowing geography, appreciating how it influences political and military events and sets limits to what politicians, economists, and business leaders can do in a given region, is more essential than ever for our young people, who need to understand the world in order to shape fruitful lives in it.

FPRI’s Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education and FPRI’s Center for the Study of America and the West are pleased to announce a weekend-long history institute on “Teaching Geography and Geopolitics,” featuring a series of lectures by leading scholars in several fields. This program is specially designed for secondary school teachers, curriculum supervisors, and junior college faculty.

This History Institute is held in honor of the late Robert Strausz-Hupé, who founded FPRI in 1955. His book Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power, published by Putnam in 1942, is said to have introduced the term “geopolitics” into the American vocabulary. A former U.S. ambassador, five times over, Strausz-Hupé was a much-beloved professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Topics and speakers include:

Why Geography Matters
WALTER A. MCDOUGALL, Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania, and Chairman of FPRI’s History Academy. Author of Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (Houghton Mifflin, 1997) and The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (Basic Books, 1986). The latter book won a Pulitzer Prize.

Mapping: Past and Present
JEREMY BLACK, Professor of History, University of Exeter (United Kingdom). and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute. Author of Maps and History (Yale University Press, 1997); War: Past, Present, Future (St. Martin’s Press, 2000); and, most significant of all (?), The Politics of James Bond (Prager, 2001).

The Changing Map of the Americas
ANTHONY DEPALMA, international business correspondent and former bureau chief for Mexico and Canada, New York Times, and author of Here: A Biography of the New American Continent (Public Affairs Books, 2001)

Cultural Geography of Colonial America
ALAN TAYLOR, professor of history at the University of California at Davis. Author of American Colonies (Viking/Penguin, 2001) and William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (Knopf, 1995). The latter book won the Bancroft, Beveridge, and Pulitzer prizes for American history.

What is Geopolitics?
HARVEY SICHERMAN, President, Foreign Policy Research Institute and former aide to three U.S. secretaries of state. Co-editor of America the Vulnerable: Our Military Problems and How To Fix Them (FPRI, 2002).

The Geopolitics of China
ARTHUR WALDRON, Lauder Professor of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania, and Director, Asia Program, American Enterprise Institute. Author of The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and From War to Nationalism: China’s Turning Point, 1924-1925 (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

The Geopolitics of Europe
DAVID GRESS, Professor of Classics, University of Aarhus (Denmark), and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute. Author of From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents (Free, Press, 2000).

(The conference begins 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 20, and concludes at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 21.)

What Participants Receive

Social studies and history teachers, curriculum supervisors and junior college faculty are invited to apply for participation in the History Institute. Forty participants will be selected to receive:

• free room and board
• assistance in designing curriculum and special projects based on the History Institute
• stipends of $200 in exchange for curriculum units based on the History Institute, plus a representative selection of student work
• partial travel scholarships available for participants outside the East Coast
• free copy of Maps and History, by Jeremy Black
• one-year subscription to Orbis, FPRI’s journal of world affairs

How to Apply

To apply, please send a résumé and a short statement describing your current teaching or professional assignments, your reasons for wanting to attend, and how your students or school district will benefit from your participation.

SUBMIT ALL MATERIALS BY MARCH 15 BY MAIL, FAX, OR E-MAIL TO:

Alan H. Luxenberg, Director, Wachman Fund
Foreign Policy Research Institute
1528 Walnut Street, Suite 610
Philadelphia, PA 19102

Tel. 215-732-3774, ext. 305
Fax 215-732-4401
E-mail fpri@fpri.org

Space is limited; so please apply early. If you cannot attend but would like to be on our mailing list, please let us know by phone, fax, or e-mail.

About FPRI’s History Institutes

In 1996, FPRI inaugurated a series of weekend history institutes, chaired by Walter McDougall. Seven history institutes have been held to date, with keynote addresses by the nation’s leading historians, including William McNeill on “What We Mean By the West” and William McNeill, again, on “Multiculturalism in World History"; Gordon Wood on “The Lessons of History”; John Lewis Gaddis on “What We Now Know about the Cold War”; George Herring on “The Lessons of Vietnam,” Walter McDougall on “The Roots of U.S. Foreign Policy,” and Paul Griffiths on “What is Religion and Can It Be Taught?” Materials from each of the history institutes are available upon request, plus Walter McDougall’s essays on “The Merits and Perils of Teaching about Other Cultures,” “You Can’t Argue with Geography,” and “The Three Reasons We Teach History.”.