Empires of Knowledge: Expertise and Imperial Power Across the Long Twentieth Century” will take place late next week at the University of British Columbia on 15-16 September 2017.

Hello all, I'm writing to let you know that the workshop “Empires of Knowledge: Expertise and Imperial Power Across the Long Twentieth Century” will take place late next week at the University of British Columbia on 15-16 September 2017. The event features ten papers by noted scholars, as well as a keynote address by Andrew Zimmerman, that explore fundamental questions about the knowledge/power nexus and how expert knowledge about colonial and putatively post-colonial societies shaped the global cultural, economic, and political agendas of metropolitan centers of power from the late nineteenth century to the present. In particular, the workshop will examine how imperial powers used knowledge as a tool of empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it will draw attention to historical continuities created by the movement of colonial expertise across the chronological divide of World War II, especially the post-WWII rubric of “development” and its relationship to the old “civilizing mission” of colonialism. Ultimately, we seek to address the following question: what does the global history of expertise and imperial power suggest about the relationship between knowledge and the modern state, its ironies, and its possibilities? A copy of the workshop program is attached here. The workshop is open to the UBC community and the public, but space is limited (particularly on Sept. 16) and should be reserved in advance. Those interested in participating should also expect to do reading ahead of time, since the workshop format is organized around the discussion of pre-circulated papers. Please contact Prof. Jessica Wang of the UBC Department of History at jessica.wang@ubc.ca if you wish to attend and require access to the papers. The Friday night keynote address, which will take place at Green College, is open to all without any need for prior reservations. “Empires of Knowledge: Expertise and Imperial Power Across the Long Twentieth Century” has been made possible through the generous support of the GHI WEST – Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC; the B&B Stern Foundation, Atlanta, GA; the Liu Institute for Global Issues; Green College; the Faculty of Arts, UBC; and the Department of History, UBC. Featured authors: Julia Cummiskey (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga) Sarah Ehlers (Technical University of Munich) Mark Hendrickson (University of California, San Diego) Prakash Kumar (Pennsylvania State University) Ruth Rogaski (Vanderbilt University) Frederik Schulze (University of Münster and GHI-DC) Suman Seth (Cornell University) Theresa Ventura (Concordia University) Jessica Wang (UBC) Mari Webel (University of Pittsburgh) Friday night keynote address: Andrew Zimmerman (George Washington University), “Colonial Knowledge and Rural Insurgency: From the Self-Emancipation of Slaves and Serfs to Decolonization” Commentators: Robert Brain (UBC) Jeffrey Byrne (UBC) Axel Jansen (German Historical Institute-DC) John Krige (Georgia Institute of Technology) David Lazar (German Historical Institute-DC) Steven Lee (UBC) David Morton (UBC) Helen Tilley (Northwestern University) Heidi Tworek (UBC) Aaron Windel (Simon Fraser University) Andrew Zimmerman (George Washington University) Best wishes, Jessica Jessica Wang Associate Professor of U.S. History and Associate Head, 2017-18 Department of History University of British Columbia