Claremont McKenna College

America in the Pacific, From Polk's War to Obama's 'Pivot'

BRUCE CUMINGS

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2013

In 2011, President Barack Obama announced a new American foreign policy of a “pivot to Asia.” This new strategy involves redirecting the focus of American foreign policy toward the Asia-Pacific region. Despite this new direction for the government, U.S. involvement in Asian-Pacific affairs has spanned over two centuries. Over this time, the U.S. has not only influenced the make-up and direction of that region, but U.S. interactions with Asian-Pacific countries has also dramatically helped to shape America’s industrial, technological, military and global rise to power. Drawing stories from his book Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power (2009), which was selected as one of the Atlantic’s 25 Best Books of the Year (2009), Professor Cumings will speak on these historical ties between the U.S. and the Asia-Pacific region and the present course of these ties under the Obama administration in his Athenaeum lecture.

Bruce Cumings is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College and chairperson of the Department of History at the University of Chicago. His research and teaching focus on modern Korean history, 20th century international history, U.S.-East Asian relations, East Asian political economy, and American foreign relations. Author of ten books, his first book, The Origins of the Korean War (1981), won the John King Fairbank Book Award of the American Historical Association, and the second volume (2004) of this study won the Quincy Wright Book Award of the International Studies Association. He is the editor of the modern volume of the Cambridge History of Korea (forthcoming), and is a frequent contributor to The London Review of Books, The Nation, Current History, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Le Monde Diplomatique.

Professor Cumings was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999, and is the recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, NEH, the MacArthur Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford, and the Abe Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council. He was also the principal historical consultant for the Thames Television/PBS 6-hour documentary, Korea: The Unknown War (1988). In 2003 he won the University's award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, and in 2007 he won the Kim Dae Jung Prize for Scholarly Contributions to Democracy, Human Rights and Peace. He is working on a book on the Northeast Asian political economy.

Bruce Cumings’ visit to campus is jointly sponsored by the department of history at CMC and the Athenaeum.