Conable lecturer explores global impact of WWI

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University at Albany, State University of New York

Richard Fogarty, associate professor of history at University at Albany, State University of New York, delivers his talk Oct. 14 for RIT’s Conable Distinguished Lecture Series.

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Conable Distinguished Lecture Series in International Studies continues with a talk by Richard Fogarty, associate professor of history and associate dean for general education, University at Albany, State University of New York, at 6 p.m. Oct. 14 in Eastman Hall, room 2000.

“World War I as a War of Movement” explains how World War I, according to Fogarty, stands as the ultimate example of a war of position, yet saw unprecedented movements of people and materials from all corners of the globe, to all corners of the globe. During this centenary year of the war’s outbreak, Fogarty’s talk will consider ways these movements over vast, worldwide spaces can open up understanding of this conflict that inaugurated the globalized modern world of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Fogarty is an expert in the history of modern Europe, imperialism, war, national identity, racism and society. He is the author of Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918, which won the Phi Alpha Theta Best First Book Award in 2009, and is co-editor of Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict. He is currently working on a general history of France and its empire during World War I, as well as a study of North African prisoners of war in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, with special attention to the place of Islam and Muslims in the wider military, and ideological struggle in Europe and the Middle East.

“I hope the audience will walk away with a greater appreciation for the global extent of this, the 20th century’s first cataclysmic world war,” said Fogarty. “Even the United States participated significantly, though not many Americans are always aware of this, since World War II looms so large in our memories. The war saw the United States emerge onto the world stage as a genuinely global power for the first time, and the war also engaged the world’s great empires of the day—destroying some, expanding others—and affected people from areas as widespread and diverse as Africa, Asia, United States, Europe, the Pacific, and elsewhere. And the war also provoked the invention or development of many technologies that would mark not only the nature of warfare forever after, but would also help shape people’s everyday lives, even today.”

The Conable Distinguished Lecture Series, which welcomes scholars to campus to shed light on topics affecting communities and citizens from around the globe, is named for former Rochester-area politician and diplomat Hon. Barber B. Conable Jr., who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1964 to 1984 and as president of the World Bank from 1986 to 1991. The series is presented by RIT’s Office of the Provost, international studies program and the College of Liberal Arts. The Hon. Barber B. Conable Jr. Endowed Chair in International Studies was made possible by a starting gift from the Starr Foundation.

For more information about the free lecture series, contact Benjamin Lawrance, the Hon. Barber B. Conable Jr. Endowed Professor of International Studies, at bnlgla@rit.edu. Interpreters will be provided upon request.