Afternoon Academics   

Who are the refugees whose flights formed American colonialism? What drove many to land acquisition and invasion of tribal nation lands? Study the human geography of historical displacements that defined the U.S. story. Focus will be on using maps and archival sources to examine Protestants fleeing to the New World, Indigenous forced migrations, kidnapping of Africans for enslavement and the Irish Great Hunger. What about cultural identity makes a refugee group exclusionary once escaped from prior tyranny? 

Some historians have called World War II the most transformative event of the 20th century. Explore why, how and who were affected by war that most thought not possible after the conclusion of World War I. Explore its causes, both long and short term as well as how some lesser-known figures, geo-political grand strategies, and technologies made the war what it was and determined how those caught up in its maelstrom experienced it. Topics for Part One will include the German-Soviet pre-war Alliance, the Rise of Japan as a world power in the 19th century and leading into that nation’s two wars with China that both precipitated and might also be viewed as the initial stages of the Second World War proper, Code-breaking, and Axis occupation of far-flung portions of Allied nations.