Dr. Mausbach, the executive director of the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) at Heidelberg University in Germany, comes to the History Department from July 15 to August 15 as a participant in the Ontario Baden-Württemberg exchange program. He is a guest of both the History Department and the Research Centre in American Studies, but will be housed in the department. He is here working on a larger research project called “Visions of Community: America and Europe in a Cold War World, 1948-1963″, which investigates the cultural undercoating that helped bind together the most enduring alliance in history.
Its basic assumption is that the Atlantic alliance differed from other alliances in that it was not solely understood as a provider of security. Instead, it was amazingly successful in constructing a transnational identity, a common sense of belonging shared by diverse societies. His research stay at Carleton will be devoted to exploring the complexities of Canada’s role in forging an “Atlantic Community.” He will spent part of his time at the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) but also hopes to profit from exchanges with scholars in our own Research Centre in American Studies, the Departments of History and Political Science, and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. I hope you’ll join me in warmly welcoming Dr. Mausbach to Carleton!