2019 Ena H. Thompson Distinguished Lecturer
The Pomona History Department is delighted to welcome Kate Brown to campus as the 2019 Ena H. Thompson Distinguished Lecturer. Kate Brown is a prize-winning author and Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose work explores the transformations and legacies of twentieth-century modernity. From Central Asia to Eastern Europe to the American West, Brown has sought to recover the experiences of people and places affected by war, displacement, and environmental devastation. Her books have won recognition for the way they tell stories that cross national boundaries and combine rich archival research with personal narrative.
Brown's first book, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Harvard University Press, 2004) won the American Historical Association's prize for the best work of European international history. It traces the upheaval of nation-building, war, expulsion, and revolution in a multiethnic region straddling the Polish-Ukrainian border from World War I through World War II. Brown's second book, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2013), compares the lives of people in Richland, Washington and Ozersk, USSR, two cities separated by the Iron Curtain but united in the production of plutonium in the service of superpower competition. For its creativity and rigor in uncovering the hidden, shared costs of Cold War militarization, Plutopia received widespread acclaim. Besides two prizes from the American Historical Association, it won prizes from the American Society for Environmental History, the Organization of American Historians, the Western History Association, the Association for Women in Slavic Studies, and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
Brown's forthcoming book is Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019). In it, Brown uses archival research and interviews to investigate the long-term costs of radioactivity generated from nuclear energy and weapons testing. She also exposes international efforts to cover up those costs. Research from this project will form the basis of her Ena H. Thompson Lectures at Pomona College.
Kate Brown has been recognized with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Social Science Research Council, among other distinguished institutions. Her work has appeared in both academic journals and media outlets such as Slate Magazine, Aeon, and The Times Literary Supplement. Dr. Brown received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
About the Lectureship
Endowed in 1980 through the generosity of Ena H. Thompson, these annual lectures encourage a broader understanding and appreciation of history. Generally held in the spring semester, the lectureship brings a distinguished historian to the Pomona College campus for a week of intensive interaction with students, faculty, and alumni. The visiting lecturers are elected both on the basis of their past contributions to the discipline and of the importance of their current research in advancing the field. Typically, they offer two public lectures on campus during the week of their residency and another lecture for alumni at a dinner event in the greater Los Angeles area.
Past Ena H. Thompson Distinguished Lecturers
2018 Andrew Bacevich
2017 James C. Scott
2016 Greg Grandin
2015 Kasia Cwiertka
2014 Tiya A. Miles
2013 Gail Hershatter
2012 Fred M. Donner
2011 Gilbert Gonzales
2010 Thomas R. Metcalf
2009 Louis A. Pérez, Jr.
2008 Patricia H. Smith
2007 David Roediger / Stanley Nelson
2006 Patricia Ebrey
2005 Dominick La Capra
2004 Robin D. G. Kelley
2003 Gilbert M. Joseph
2002 Patricia Nelson Limerick
2001 Linda Colley
2000 Vicki L. Ruiz / Antonia Castańeda
1999 Allan Bérubé
1998 Lynn Hunt
1997 Peter Brown
1996 Tetsuo Najita
1995 Ramón Eduardo Ruiz
1994 John Higginson
1993 G.W. Bowersock
1992 John H. Elliot
1991 Bernard Bailyn
1990 Ramón Gutiérrez
1989 Wolfgang J. Momsen
1988 Jonathan P. Spence
1987 A.W.B. Simpson
1986 Keith Thomas
1985 Natalie Zemon Davis
1984 Carl E. Schorske
1983 Richard Pipes
1982 Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
1981 Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie
1980 Peter Gay