Event Details

This lecture explores these questions: if a republic in the United States was once constituted in relation to death and suffering, what happened to U.S. war politics and culture when the country was continually at war?

In her landmark work on death in the American Civil War, historian Drew Gilpin Faust showed the way war-related carnage deeply affected American culture and society, resulting in a “Republic of Suffering.” This lecture explores these questions: if a republic in the United States was once constituted in relation to death and suffering, what happened to U.S. war politics and culture when the country was continually at war, yet the American people no longer suffered its consequences? Has the distance of war’s carnage enabled endless war?

Professor Dudziak was elected 2017 President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) and served as Vice President in 2016. She was named an Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) in 2017, the highest honor conferred by the Society. In fall 2015, Dudziak was the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress. She has been a member of the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and has been awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the American Council of Learned Societies, and other institutions. She has served on boards of SHAFR, the ASLH, the Law and Society Association, and on boards of the journals American Quarterly and Diplomatic History. She has been an elected member of the Nominating Committee of ASLH and the American Studies Association. She is a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She serves on the Historical Advisory Committee, US Department of State. She is an inaugural Non-residential Fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.