"Spirit of the American Doughboy" World War I memorial, Wheeling, West Virginia. Courtesy West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Host an OAH Distinguished Lecturer on the Great War and its lasting impacts on American life and culture.
For further reading
"Interchange: World War I," including comments from OAH Distinguished Lecturers Chris Capozzola, Jennifer D. Keene, and Chad Williams, Journal of American History, September 2015
"Why World War I Matters in American History" by OAH Distinguished Lecturer Jennifer D. Keene, The American Historian, February 2015. "Challenging old paradigms, the new scholarship underscores how the war permanently transformed individuals, social movements, politics, foreign policy, culture, and the military." Keene writes. "The historical scholarship connects the war to key issues in twentieth-century American history: the rise of the United States as a world power, the success of social justice movements, and the growth of federal power. Collectively, historians of the war make a compelling case for why the war matters in American history."
SPEAKERS ON THIS TOPIC
Jennifer Keene
Hemingway: A Typical Doughboy?
This lecture reinterprets the wartime experiences of Ernest Hemingway, often considered as having an atypical wartime experience, to challenge myths and misconceptions about the American soldier experience in World War I. Read More
Annette Atkins
"Aliens" on the Eve of World War I
The threat of war crystalized many Americans' fears about the identity patriotism of the multiple newcomers who had made the U.S. their home in the immediate pre-war years. The Minnesota Public Safety Commission created a body of primary documents that help contextualize for us today many of...(Read More)
Mary L. Dudziak
A Bullet in the Chamber: The Politics of Catastrophe and the Declaration of World War I
As members of Congress gathered in April 1917 to decide whether to declare war on Germany, some legislators arrived with battle scars. For Civil War veterans, the memory of that catastrophic war would inform their understanding of a new conflict. But their experience of war was overtaken as 20th...(Read More)
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