paul.kramer

Vanderbilt Magazine, October 3, 2022 “When Associate Professor of History Paul Kramer decided to speak out against the use of waterboarding by U.S. forces during the Iraq War, he took an unfamiliar approach. Rather than write an academic article directed only at his colleagues, he tried his hand at a historical narrative …

In this informal, one-hour lecture, Prof. Paul Kramer of Vanderbilt University, speaks to his undergraduate students in the course “Writing for Social Change” on some principles and practices to keep in mind when workshopping each other’s writings. He focuses on one-on-one conversations between peers, but much of the lecture can …

This essay explores the invention of the “global” and its role in the formation of transnational history, through a review of Isaac Kamola’s Making the World Global. As Kamola argues, global thinking reflected a particular, late-20th century moment in the history of U. S. universities and foundations, one characterized by …

This longform narrative history in the Los Angeles Review of Books, based on extensive interview and newspaper research, explores the surprising, forgotten history of Los Angeles’ first sanctuary city declaration–in November 1985—as a lens onto the historical crossings of urban politics, U. S. foreign relations, and struggles over the place …

This historiographic essay explores and critiques existing approaches to the study of racialized power in the United States’ transnational histories and, especially, the study of US foreign relations. It advances a new conceptual approach to histories of racialization, and discussing race as a dimension of sovereignty, policy-making, culture, transnational solidarities, …

This historiographic essay discusses, promotes and critiques “new histories of American capitalism,” arguing for the benefits of reframing this enterprise methodologically, as political-economic history, and making the case for the necessity and multiple, reciprocal benefits of connecting histories of capitalism to histories of the United States in the world. It …

This interpretive essay makes the case for integrating histories of US immigration politics with imperial histories of the US in the world, specifically by foregrounding and problematizing transnational and global hierarchies and power relations, and thematizing the opening (as well as closing) of the US immigration regime as a function …

The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 19, 2017 What role might historians committed to democratic and egalitarian politics play in challenging authoritarianism?  This essay takes on conventional claims that history is absent from public debate, and that it has “lessons” to teach, arguing instead that historical thinking is ever-present and …

This investigative history examines the consequences of war and securitization after 9/11 for US disaster preparedness, using the example of the post-Hurricane Katrina catastrophe in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.  While commonly understood as separate events, the “war on terror” and Hurricane Katrina were deeply entwined, from the siphoning …