Sarah B. Snyder
Sarah B. Snyder is a historian of U.S. foreign relations who specializes in the history of the Cold War, human rights activism, and U.S. human rights policy. She is the author of two award-winning books. From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (2018) explains how transnational connections and 1960s-era social movements inspired Americans to advocate for a new approach to human rights. Her first book, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (2011), analyzes the development of a transnational network devoted to human rights advocacy and its contributions to the end of the Cold War. She is also the co-editor with Nicolas Badalassi of The CSCE and the End of the Cold War: Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 1972-1990 (2018). In addition to authoring several chapters in edited collections, she has also published articles in Diplomatic History, Cold War History, Human Rights Quarterly, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, European Journal of Human Rights and Journal of American Studies. She previously served as a Lecturer at University College London and as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.
Lectures
- “From Selma to Moscow: How U.S. Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy” *
- “Americans in the World: How Sites of Informal American Empire Have Shaped U.S. Foreign Relations”
- “Continuity and Change in U.S. Human Rights Policy” *
- “Informal Bases: The Construction of American Communities Overseas”
- “‘Promising Everything Under the Sun’: The Role of Human Rights Activism in the End of the Cold War”
Lectures marked with a * are offered as part of the OAH's initiative, Historians' Perspectives on the Rise of Donald Trump.
