History in the Present – Recurring

“History in the Present” is a monthly webinar series hosted by the Department of History that historicizes current events, shares cutting-edge research, and aims to promote dialogue on issues of interest between the University and the broader community. As historians, we work across disciplines and collaborate with a broad range of people outside of the University. Thus, in addition to history faculty, museum curators, NGO leaders and experts on the environment and human rights will also be presenting in this webinar series. The event is held on the first Wednesday of each month at noon, via Zoom, and will provide ample time for question and answer.

Please note: Registration is required. By clicking the below Zoom link, you may register in advance and will be emailed with the participant link for the event.

December 1, noon, Wednesday, “Eurasia, pressing issues: a roundtable”

• Prof. Gene Park, “North Korean issues in a historical framework.”
• Prof. Xiaoyu Pu, “How to avoid a new Cold War in a new bipolar world”? 
• Prof. Hugh Shapiro, “Shifting maps and other anxieties along the Heilong jiang/Amur River”
• Prof. Barbara Walker, “Russian, Chinese, and US imperial tactics in Central Asia.” 
• Prof. Gi W. Yun, “South Korean Media Industry in the age of Netflix.”

Gene Park is a historian of East Asia, especially Korea's sociopolitical history. Author of five books, including Korea: A History (Stanford) for release in February, he is currently editing Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Korea with 23 contributors from 12 countries. Besides history, Gene maintains interest in genealogy, population genetics, primatology, portraiture, and religious studies. He serves as a consultant to Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (PBS).  Gene earned a B.A. in history from UCLA, M.A. in Regional Studies East Asia from Harvard, and Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, also from Harvard, followed by postdoc with the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale. At UNR, Gene holds appointments as Rick and Cathy Trachok Endowed Chair in International Studies, Professor of History, and Deputy Director of the Ozmen Institute for Global Studies.

Xiaoyu Pu is an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is a public intellectuals program fellow at the National Committee on United States-China Relations (NCUSCR). Previously he was a non-resident senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Stanton fellow at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Brazil, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program. He is the author of Rebranding China: Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order (The Studies in Asian Security Series, Stanford University Press, 2019). His research has appeared in International Security, International Affairs, The China Quarterly, and The Chinese Journal of International Politics. Dr. Pu received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. 

Hugh Shapiro is on the History faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno, and works on the history of disease in comparative perspective. His recent work appears in volumes published by Harvard, Brill, and globalyceum. Shapiro has enjoyed visiting appointments at Princeton University, at universities in China, Japan, and Taiwan, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. As a Smithsonian Journeys Expert, he has lectured in over 15 countries in Eurasia. He received the Li-Qing Prize for the History of Chinese Science and won his university’s highest teaching award.  Shapiro earned his B.A. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Barbara Walker specializes in Russian and Soviet history, focusing on intelligentsia culture and economy. Her research and publication in this area have been supported by grants and fellowships from the Thomas Watson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the International Research Exchange (IREX), American Councils, the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Nevada, Reno, Core Humanities Program, the University of Nevada, Reno, College of Liberal Arts, and others. Her book Maximilian Voloshin and the Russian Literary Circle is appearing in Russian translation late in 2021. Her current book project is called “A War of Experts: how the US hacked the Soviet system in the Cold War, and both sides lost.” It is about the early Cold War as a competition between the US and Soviet Union to place knowledge most effectively at the heart of popular governance, called “democratic” in both countries. The two types of knowledge-formation she focuses on are mathematics and history, some of whose expert practitioners played notable roles in the early Cold War. Taking a long duree approach, she traces the 20^th century personal and institutional experiences that shaped their competitive efforts; and also the experiences of journalists as mediators between expertise and popular governance in both countries.

Gi W. Yun’s research focuses on social psychological aspects of media and communication. The topics of his publications range from theories of communication, internet research methodology, social media, health communication, agenda-setting, newspaper’s community capital, and social network analysis to big social media data analysis. He enjoys thinking about tools and theories developed by media and communication scholars. He is currently working on projects in the areas of health care advertising in local media, machine bias in information production and consumption, local media agenda-setting on immigration stories, South Korean media landscapes and others. His research projects are funded by National Science Foundation, Google, or Online News Association. Yun received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His journalism and mass communication undergraduate degree is from Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.