Dec. 8, 1997
Contact: Jamie Lawson Reeves
(615) 322-2706
| |
Dec. 8, 1997 Contact: Jamie Lawson Reeves (615) 322-2706 |
Nashville, Tenn. -- The Vietnam War dominated news during President Lyndon Johnson's administration, but Vanderbilt historian Thomas Schwartz says that other aspects of the administration, particularly U.S. relations with Europe, are also significant.
Schwartz has been awarded a two-year North Atlantic Treaty Organization Research Fellowship, which began in October, to enable him to conduct research for a project titled "NATO, Europe and the Johnson Administration: Alliance Politics, Political Economy and the Beginning of Detente, 1963-1969."
The associate professor of history's research will ultimately result in a book he plans to complete in 1999 -- "In the Shadow of Vietnam: Lyndon Johnson and Europe."
Schwartz is one of 27 individuals or institutions of NATO member countries to receive a Research Fellowship for the study of aspects of common interests and shared values of NATO.
NATO awarded 96 total fellowships; the aim of the fellowships is to promote research leading to publication in two distinct areas.
Schwartz will be focusing on how NATO redefined and reconstituted itself during the late 1960s. "I feel like I am opening an area of history that is really understudied and a period of what was a most fascinating time -- the 1960s," he said.
NATO was established in 1949 to bring about peace and stability in Europe. It came up for renewal in 1969 and in 20 years its role had changed dramatically. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and the Russian threat seemed to diminish, particularly after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The Cold War seemed to be coming to an end, and NATO was promoting peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe.
Schwartz's two-year fellowship will allow him to travel to Britain, France and Germany to research their perspective of NATO, allowing him to write a more complete international look at this period. Schwartz, who specializes in international affairs, also received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship earlier this summer and is on leave for one year of research in Washington.
Although on the surface Vietnam and Asia seemed to be focal points for the Johnson administration"m `"û@tes' 36th prÛïpent was far more successful in many respects in regards to relations with Europe, Schwartz said.
Since joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 1990, Schwartz has taught courses on U.S. foreign relations and the United States and the Vietnam War in addition to a variety of seminars and freshman writing classes. When he returns to campus he plans to teach a seminar on the political, social, cultural and military aspects of the United States and Western Europe during the Cold War.
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