Georgia professor to speak on foreign relations

(March 3, 2004)--Lester Langley, University of Georgia history professor emeritus, will speak on "The Americas in the Modern Age: A Hemispheric History and a Comparative History" at 4 p.m., Monday, March 8 in Humanities and Social Sciences Building Room 2.01.24 on the UTSA 1604 Campus.

The lecture, hosted by the Department of History, is based on Langley's book of the same name.

Langley has written or edited a number of books on the history of U.S. foreign relations, including "Central America: The Real Stakes, the United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century" and "MexAmerica: Two Countries, One Future." He is general editor of the University of Georgia Press book series, The United States and the Americas.

According to Yale University Press, in his book "The Americas in the Modern Age," Langley offers a fresh interpretation of the history of the modern Western hemisphere since the mid-nineteenth century. He evaluates the dynamics of hemispheric history, beginning with the articulation of the "two Americas" (Theodore Roosevelt's America and the contrasting America described by the Cuban revolutionary, essayist and poet Jose Marti) and culminating with recent controversial efforts to forge a united hemisphere.

Tracing the interactions and influences among the nations of South, Central and North America, Langley departs from other accounts of the past 150 years. He argues that the seedtime for the Americas of the twenty-first century was not the Cold War but the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Langley also contends that it is not what the countries and peoples of the Americas have in common that binds them; instead, their cultural, political and economic conflicts tie them together.

For more information, contact Wing Chung Ng, Department of History chair, at 210-458-4033.

--Tim Brownlee