Nick Cullather
- Associate Professor, Department of History
Education
- A.B. at Indiana University, 1981
- Ph.D. at University of Virginia, 1993
Contact Information
|
| Ballantine Hall, Rm. 728 |
| (812) 855-1602 |
Background
I am a historian of United States foreign relations specializing in American ventures in nation-building. My research explores the ways in which the United States uses foreign aid, covert operations, modernization theory, diet, statistics, and technology to reconstruct the environment and social order in countries around the world. My first book, Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942-1960 (1994), explored the process through which a former American colony negotiated its conditional independence. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency developed a capacity to replace unsuitable governments, elected or otherwise, as I show in Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (1999), but the ambitions of nation-builders extended past governments to renovating the most ordinary routines of daily life. My current project, Parable of Seeds: The United States and the Green Revolution in Asia, looks at how American officials and private philanthropies, such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, aimed to change the politics of the cold war by modifying the farming practices, eating habits, and birth rates of millions of peasants in South and Southeast Asia.
Selected Awards
- OAH Distinguished Lecturer
- Editorial Board, Diplomatic History
- Fulbright Fellow to Singapore and the Phillippines
Research Interests
- Diplomatic/military/intelligence history
- Modernization theory
- U.S.-Asian relations
Courses Recently Taught
- "America's Nations": The military occupations of the United States
- The Vietnam War
- World War II
- US Foreign Relations in the Twentieth Century
- American Century Lives: The Twentieth Century in Biography
Publication Highlights
Books
Co-Author with James Oakes, Jan Lewis, Jeanne Boydston, and Michael McGerr, Making A Nation: The United States and Its People. Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. (Brief edition published 2004).
Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. (2nd Edition forthcoming 2005).
Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942-1960. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
Articles
"The Foreign Policy of the Calorie," American Historical Review 122 (April 2007) 2: 337-364
“Miracles of Modernization: The Green Revolution and the Apotheosis of Technology,” Diplomatic History 28 (April 2004) 2: 227-254.
“Damming Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State,” Journal of American History 89 (September 2002) 2: 512-537. Reprinted in History and September 11th, edited by Joanne Meyerowitz. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003. pp. 22-55.
