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A Brief History of CCWS

 

Begun in 1994 as the Cold War History Group (COWHIG) and a full-fledged Center for Cold War Studies (CCWS) since 19 November 2002, CCWS works to promote scholarship on the Cold War period. CCWS holds an annual graduate student conference (in conjunction with the George Washington (University) Cold War Group (GWCW) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)) , hosts visiting scholars, puts on public events (lectures, symposiums, and workshops), and serves as a forum to discuss scholarly work in-progress by its members.

CCWS is a project of the UCSB Department of History. In addition to this ongoing support of the History Department, CCWS receives or has received funding or other support from the Dean of the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC), the UCSB Office of Research, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), and private donors. We gratefully acknowledge these supporters of CCWS. CCWS currently is seeking both permanent funding support as well as funding for individual projects. Please contact the UCSB Development Office if interested in financially supporting the Center and its activities.

Selected Milestones

• 1994- COWHIG founded
As lore has it, COWHIG traces its beginnings to a fateful meeting one day between Profs. Fredrik Logevall and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa who decided to form an informal group for discussing work-in-progress by graduate students and faculty. Little did they imagine that their efforts would eventually result in a full-fledged Center for Cold War Studies...

• 31 May 1997- COWHIG's Second Graduate Student Conference "Reassessing the Cold War Revisited"
COWHIG's second graduate student conference was the first to feature non-UCSB presenters and commentators. Jerald Combs of San Francisco State University delivered the keynote address on "The United States, NATO and the Soviet Threat to Western Europe, 1948-1962." A faculty roundtable explored "New Directions in Cold War History."

• 28-29 January 2000- The Cold War after Stalin, An Opening for Detente?
This COWHIG conference featured participants from Western Europe, the United States, and Canada who addressed opportunities for negotiation presented by Stalin's death and a new emphasis in Soviet foreign policy on "peaceful coexistence." Conference papers will be published as The Cold War after Stalin’s Death: A New International History, 1953-1956, edited by Klaus Larres and Kenneth Osgood (Rowman & Littlefield, Harvard Cold War Series, forthcoming).

• 9-10 March 2001- "The End of the Pacific War, Revisited" Conference
This conference/workshop brought together a distinguished panel of international scholars to reevaluate the end of the Pacific War in light of new sources, especially those from Russia and Japan, and recent scholarship on the subject. It addressed the roles played by the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war that induced Japan's surrender. Further, it examined the importance of events surrounding Japan's surrender on historical memory in Japan, the United States, and Russia. Its procedings will be published by Stanford University Press (forthcoming).

• 19 November 2002- COWHIG becomes a full-fledged Center for Cold War Studies (CCWS).

• 23 April 2003- CCWS Inagural Lecture and Signing of UCSB-LSE Exchange Agreement
Dr. Odd Arne Westad, of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), delivered the inaugural lecture for the Center for Cold War Studies. His lecture was preceded by a signing ceremony for a UCSB-LSE graduate student exchange program. Westad's talk was titled "The Cold War: the Origins of the Present." During his stay Westad also led a workshop on "The Cold War on the Periphery."

• 30-31 March 2005- "Reinterpreting the Cold War in Asia" Conference Series launched
CCWS brought together eleven leading Cold War scholars from three continents (Asia, Europe, and North America) to develop a new interpretive synthesis of the history of the Cold War, beginning with 1945-1956. Conference proceedings will be published digitally on the UC eScholarship Repository. The second of this planned three-conference series is tentatively scheduled for Spring 2006 at UCSB.

• Spring 2005- Annual UCSB-LSE-GWU International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War
A UCSB tradition since 1996 and sponsored in cooperation with the George Washington (University) Cold War Group (GWCW), and the LSE Cold War Studies Centre (CWSC). These graduate student conferences showcase exciting new scholarship on the Cold War era by an international contingent of graduate student presenters. UCSB and GWU first jointly sponsored this conference in 2003 (previously, both institutions had organized separate annual conferences) and the LSE joined as a co-sponsor in 2005.

• October 2007- The Center for Cold War studies is renamed The Center for Cold War Studies and International History.

• July 2008- Tsoyoshi Hasegawa Steps Down as CCWS Co-Director

In July 2008, after a decade-and-a-half of dedicated service to the Center, Professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa stepped down as co-director of CCWS, taking a richly deserved opportunity to concentrate more fully on his own research and scholarship.  Professor Salim Yaqub became CCWS director.