In addition to the Royal D. Alworth, Jr. Memorial Lecture, forums and conferences, the Institute provides a series of international lectures by local, national and international authorities on subjects of timely interest. The Alworth Institute draws not only upon the rich store of local academics with expertise in a variety of areas, but also visiting international faculty.
Spring 2025 Lectures
(6 lectures)
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) in Honduras and Central America: Its Progress and New Opportunities for Collaboration
Thursday, January 30 - 6:00 pm - KAM Library 4th Floor Rotunda
Presented by Professor Jorge Ernesto Matamoros Canales
Coordinator of the Language Center & COIL Program at the National Pedagogical University of Honduras (UPNFM)
Professor Matamoros will discuss life in Honduras with an engaging activity that focuses on the country's economy, education, culture, and politics. He will also address pressing challenges faced by the Honduran population, including economic struggles, political instability, migration, judicial issues, social inequalities, and difficulties in education and health. He will invite the audience to consider the changing impacts of natural disasters, violence, and corruption as they affect the country's economic progress.
In this context, Professor Matamoros will discuss how his COIL facilitation work in Honduras and Central America responds to these contexts and share the growing opportunities for collaboration in the region.
Professor Jorge Matamoros holds a degree in Philosophy from the Lateran University in Italy and a degree in English teaching. His current role with the Language Center and the COIL program at the National Pedagogical University of Honduras (UPNFM) both operate under the Vice-Registry for Internationalization. He has conduced a variety of COIL training programs in collaboration with various organizations, reaching educators across the Americas.
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The Politics of Disruption: US Foreign Policy Today
Thursday, February 20 - 7:00 pm - KAM Library 4th Floor Rotunda
Presented by Thomas Hanson
Former Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. State Department
UMD Alworth Institute for International Studies Diplomat in Residence
Thomas Hanson will discuss U.S. Foreign Policy as it has been practiced in recent years. He will pay particular attention to the Trump administration’s developing policies. He will offer an historical comparison to previous “disruptions” in this area.
When with the U.S. Department of State, Hanson's foreign postings included East Germany, France, Norway, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and Georgia. He also assisted in opening new embassies in Mongolia and Estonia. Hanson worked on the Foreign Relations Committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He was Director for NATO and European Affairs at the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington, D.C. He now serves on the St. Paul-Minneapolis Committee on Foreign Relations and as a lecturer/consultant for the Minnesota International Center. He is an occasional foreign affairs commentator on Minnesota Public Radio and serves on the board of the Minneapolis chapter of the Oslo Center for Peace. Hanson graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in International Relations. He holds graduate degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; the Geneva Institute of Advanced International Studies in Switzerland; and the National School of Administration (ENA) in Paris, France.
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The Gulag from Stalin to Putin
Thursday, February 27 - 6:00 pm - Solon Campus Center 120
Presented by Dr. Alan Barenberg
Hubert H. Humphrey Visiting Professor of Russian Studies
Macalester College, Associate Professor of Russian Studies
The death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison camp in 2024 serves as a reminder that the detention and brutal treatment of political enemies is common in Putin's Russia. The use (and threat) of detention to maintain order is clearly reminiscent of the Stalin era, when millions were held in a system of prisons, camps, and exile settlements, better known as the Gulag. Yet how much are Russia’s penal system and practices today shaped by legacies from the Stalin era? Dr. Barenberg will examine the origins, nature, and legacies of the Stalinist Gulag -- and its ongoing influence on the Russian penal system today.
Dr. Alan Barenberg specializes in the history of the Soviet Union, with an emphasis on the social and economic history of the 1930s-1970s. His research focuses on a broad range of topics in the economic and social history of the Russian Empire and the USSR. His book, Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta (Yale UP, 2014), uses the case of the Arctic community of Vorkuta to resituate the Gulag in the history of the Stalin and post-Stalin eras. This book has been recognized with various prizes, including the Canadian Association of Slavists' Taylor and Francis Book Prize in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2015), the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from the Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies (Honorable Mention, 2015), and the Texas Tech University President’s Book Award (First Prize, 2016). Dr. Barenberg teaches specialized courses on the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, as well as surveys of Western civilization. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2007), an M.A. from the University of Chicago (2000), and a B.A. from Carleton College (1999).
(This event is cosponsored by the UMD History Program.)
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Russian-Ukrainian War: Roots, Stages, Prospects
Monday, March 24 - 7:00 pm - KAM Library 4th Floor Rotunda
Presented by Dr. Oleksandr (Alex) Komarenko
Visiting Associate Professor of the Institute of Global Studies and the Department of History, University of Minnesota,
Professor of the Faculty of History, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war became the bloodiest and largest conflict in the Post-Soviet space, which has already led to a global catastrophe and complete breakdown the world order that existed after the end of the World War II. Dr. Komarenko will explore historical factors in the tragic conflict between the two neighboring Eastern-Slavic countries, the main stages of the full-scale war, and the prospects for the future, especially through the prism of the current political changes in the USA.
Dr. Komarenko has been with the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ukraine) for more than 35 years. He is a two times Fulbright Visiting Professor/Scholar at Hamline University in St. Paul and at Stanford University in California. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa (2002 to 2006), Visiting Professor of the University of Ataturk in Turkey (2016 - 2017) and Visiting Professor of the University of Meiji, Japan in January of 2015. He was Deputy Dean of the Faculty of History of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Director of Scientific Programs (2002 - 2014); and, from 2010 to the present he is Director of International Programs of the Union of Rectors of Higher Educational Institutions of Ukraine. Dr. Komarenko is the author/co-author of 4 books and nearly 70 scientific articles and other publications.
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A More Perfect Union: Public Scholarship and the US Constitution in a Polarized Society
Tuesday, April 22 - 5:30 pm - KAM Library 4th Floor Rotunda
Presented by Dr. Adam Hjorthén
Associate Professor of History and Senior Lecturer in American Studies, Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS), Uppsala University
Dr. Hjorthén will use the history of the National Constitution Center (NCC) in Philadelphia as a
lens to think about the complex meanings and values of the Constitution in American society.
The NCC was created in 1988 by the US Congress as a “non-partisan” museum. It marked a
key moment in the heritagization of the Constitution. By studying the NCC, he will, first,
explore the multiple significances of the Constitution since the 1980s, from discussions about
law, democracy, and citizenship, to corporate capitalism and the machinations of state politics.
Second, it will investigate the specific role of academic scholars within NCC operations,
examining the tension of conducting public scholarship on an intensely partisan object, within
a non-partisan institution, in an era of significant political polarization. Dr. Hjorthén offers insights into the US Constitution and its significance to our political system through his work as a Swedish scholar.
Dr. Hjorthénam is Uppsala University's member of the national humanities think tank Humtank and, since 2024, has served as its Co-director. He has a PhD in history from Stockholm University (2015), where he was a doctoral student in the Research School for Studies in Cultural History (FoKult). In 2017–2020, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University, and at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin (as a postdoc in cultural history at SU, and through the international postdoc program of Vetenskapsrådet). He has previously taught at the history departments at Stockholm and Uppsala, and been a visiting scholar at George Washington University and the University of Minnesota. Since 2021, I am the associate editor of Swedish-American Studies (formerly the Swedish-American Historical Quarterly). He has served as the president of the Swedish Association for American Studies (SAAS) in 2016-2020, and as Sweden's representative on the executive board of the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS). He is the recipient of the Loubat Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquity, and the 2015 Orm Øverland Prize from the Nordic Association for American Studies. His research deals with American cultural heritage and cultural memory, and 20th and 21st century Swedish-American relations.
(This event is cosponsored by the UMD History Program.)
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The US Presidential Election from a Swedish Perspective
Wednesday, April 23 - 5:00 pm - KAM Library 4th Floor Rotunda
Presented by Dr. Dag Blanck
Professor of North American Studies, The Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS), Uppsala University
Director, Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center and Honorary Professor of Swedish-American Studies, Augustana College, Illinois
“The interest in the United States is intense in Sweden, not least in the 2024 election. The Swedish interest provides a good example of how the U.S. and its politics are perceived outside the country, through non-American glasses. There are some interesting differences.”
Dag Blank
Dr. Dag Blanck teaches American history, in particular American immigration history. He regularly teaches introductory and advanced courses in American history in the American Studies program at SINAS. He has also taught in the areas of Swedish history and general migration history. His research interests include American immigration and ethnic history, with special emphasis on Swedish migration to North America; transnational cultural influences, with special emphasis on the relationship between Sweden and the U.S., and the nature and dynamics of multicultural societies. He has written and edited a dozen books and written some fifty articles. My current research focuses is on a book-length study of the trans-Atlantic Swedish-American cultural and social relationships since 1850. Dr. Blank's academic and administrative assignments include membership on the Board of Directors and the Publications Committee of the Swedish-American Historical Society (Chicago), and chair of the Uppsala University’s Committee on Ethnic and Social Diversity. Hi is the past President of Nordic Association for American Studies, and since 2015, the President of the American Studies Network (ASN). Since 1987, he has arranged some fifteen academic conferences and symposia in the U.S. and Sweden. His undergraduate degrees are from Augustana College, (B.A., Phi Beta Kappa) and Stockholm University (fil. kand), and his graduate training is from Uppsala University (Ph.D. 1997, docent 2005), with study and research periods at the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota and at the Stanford University Humanities Center.
(This event is cosponsored by the UMD History Program.)