You're all cordially invited to the Problematics Presentation that is taking place on Wednesday 2 May 2018 between 6.30pm-8pm at Room 308 (upstairs) (School of English, New Faculty of Philosophy Building, 3rd Floor, AUTH).
Our guest speaker, Robert Gregg, Professor of History at Stockton University, U.S. will be presenting on ' 'As American as Mom, Baseball, and Apple Pie': Randolph Bourne, the Johnson Reed Act of 1924, and the Making of a Great Depression.'
Please find below the presentation abstract and the speaker's bio.
ABSTRACT:
The vision of a multicultural society enshrined in the work of W.E.B.
Du Bois, Randolph Bourne, and the participants in the World Races Congress of 1911 was obliterated in the trenches of the Western Front and in the linguistic nationalism enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles. In the United States, the Great War led almost inexorably to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as a political force and to the virtual exclusion of immigrants in the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, while across Europe similar impulses contributed to the rise of fascism.
This presentation will examine the impact of these developments on American culture, politics, and economics, focusing also on their global significance. In the United States, political isolationism was matched by a denuding of ethnic identities in American culture alongside a growing vulnerability in the economy that would result in the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Meanwhile, the breaking of linkages between American immigrants and their native communities disrupted the latter and increased the appeal of authoritarian dictators therein.
Since we are witnessing today the renewed assault on the multicultural vision, and a growing clamor for further exclusion of immigrants (echoing the language of a century ago), examining these earlier exclusionary efforts is important. In the process of such an examination we may detect warning signs that we may wish to heed.
BIO:
Rob Gregg is Professor of History and Dean of General Studies. His publications include a work on African-American migration (Sparks from the Anvil of Oppression), one on comparative history (Inside Out, Outside In), and an edited encyclopedia (Routledge'sEncyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture). He also co-edited (with Ken Tompkins), Reaching Forty, a volume covering the 40 years of Stockton's existence. He is currently working on three plays with his brother Al Gregg -- Midsummer Night's Scream (a musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream), Frogs-Reimagined (a musical adaptation of Aristophanes' The Frogs), and Piper (a musical inspired by Syd Barrett). His current visit is organized as part of the international exchange between AUTh-Greece and Stockton University-U.S.
