Interview with Romano Prodi

On the occasion of the Conference on the State of Italy, held at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies on 29–30 October 2013, David Kertzer interviewed former two-time Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Their focus was on the evolution of Prodi's involvement in Italian government and politics. This first in what is planned to be two such interviews examines Prodi's initial move from an economics professor at the University of Bologna interested in the study of political economy and industrial policy, to a major figure in implementing industrial policy in Italy. It looks at his brief stint as Minister of Industry under Giulio Andreotti, his founding of the influential industrial study group Nomisma, and then his presidency of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), Italy's giant holding company. With the crisis of the Italian political system in the early 1990s, Prodi was central to the creation of a new centre-left coalition, named L'Ulivo (the Olive Tree), an experience he recalls here, along with his first experience as Prime Minister, from 1996 to 1998.     

Interview with Jeanne Hyvrard

Born in Paris in 1945, Jeanne Hyvrard published her first novel, Les Prunes de Cythère (Minuit), in 1975, and her subsequent work ranges from prose novels to short stories, poetry, essays, and experimental texts which exceed the bounds of conventional genre definitions. Hyvrard claims to be articulating the emergence of a new organisation of thought, la tierce pensée, which will enable us to understand and to manage the economic changes brought about by the increasing globalisation of trade and by technological advances. She is an economist by training, and her writing manifests a deep concern with relationships of production, exchange and consumption between individuals, at the heart of which is the possibility of a renewed ethical relationship between the self and the other. This ethical stance influences Hyvrard's thought on themes as diverse as psychology, gender, education, literature, environmentalism, and immigration; and her holistic vision of the world, as structured by networks of interconnected relationships, is now attracting growing critical attention, as it strikes a chord with contemporary concerns about the effects of economic and cultural globalisation.     

Interview with Paul Sweet

Paul R. Sweet is a retired Foreign Service Officer and professor emeritus of the Department of History at Michigan State University. Dr. Sweet received his B.A. degree from DePauw University in 1929 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1934. He has taught at Birmingham-Southern College, Bates College, the University of Chicago, Colby College, and Michigan State University. From 1948 to 1959 he served with the U.S. Department of State and from 1953 to 1963 at the U.S. Embassy in Bonn; from 1963 to 1967 he was U.S. Consul General at Stuttgart. He co-authored The Tragedy of Austria (1948), and is the author of Friedrich von Gentz: Defender of the Old Order (1941), and Wilhelm von Humboldt: a Biography 1767–1808 (1978). He and his wife live in East Lansing, Michigan, where this interview was conducted by Linda Cooke Johnson in October 1996.     

An Interview with Merrick Posnansky

Professor Merrick Posnansky has made numerous influential contributions to archaeology and African Studies during the last half century. Foremost among these is his holistic and inclusive archaeological initiatives that have developed informed representations of Africa and Africans in long-term historical perspective and in the present. He helped shape the early development of historical archaeology in Africa and African diaspora archaeology in the Atlantic world. Posnansky also developed university archaeology programs and reoriented museums in Uganda, West Africa, and the Americas, making them living institutions with a mandate to serve the public. He spent two decades in Africa, primarily in Uganda and Ghana, and later worked as Professor of Anthropology and History at UCLA and, for a period, directed the UCLA Center for African Studies. This interview outlines Posnansky’s life, career, and contributions to archaeology and African Studies across three continents. In addition, Posnansky reflects on contemporary archaeology and the discipline’s future prospects and challenges in Africa.     

Interview with Mary Beth Norton

Born in Michigan in 1943, reared and educated in Indiana, Norton earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and her master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. She has written and edited many works that deal mainly with women and gender in the intellectual, political, and social life of North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Besides being the editor of the massive new American Historical Association Guide to Historical Literature and a co-author of the best-selling U.S. history text, A People & a Nation, Norton has held leading positions in the American Historical Association, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, International Federation for Research in Women's History, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She taught for two years at the University of Connecticut before she joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1971. The recipient of many fellowships, honorary degrees, and prizes, she has been Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History since 1987. This interview was conducted in Norton's office on the Ithaca, New York campus in April 1997 by Roger Adelson.     

An Interview with Leland Ferguson

Historical Archaeology -     

Interview with Sara Margaret Evans

Born in 1943 in South Carolina, Evans graduated from high school in Dallas, Texas, and received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Duke University and her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She began teaching at the University of Minnesota in 1976 and has been Distinguished McKnight University Professor since 1997. Her Personal Politics related U.S. women's liberation to the Civil Rights and New Left movements. Her Born for Liberty: A History of American Women is in its second edition and has been translated into a number of foreign languages. A noted activist, feminist, and teacher, Evans has coauthored books on women's history, consulted on several video productions, participated in national review panels, and served on the boards of various professional organizations. She has a 31-year-old son and a 19-year-old adopted daughter from Korea. This interview was conducted in Evans's office at the University of Minnesota by Roger Adelson in March 2000.     

Interview with Darlene Clark Hine

Born in Missouri in 1947, reared and educated in Illinois, Hine earned her bachelor's degree in history at Roosevelt University, Chicago, and her master's and doctoral degrees from Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio. She has written about African-American women by focusing on the intersections of race, gender, and class. In the past fifteen years, Hine has edited forty volumes (including a two-volume historical encyclopedia, Black Women in America), published three award-winning books, and produced over forty articles and essays (some just collected for the book, Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History). As John A. Hannah Professor of History at Michigan State University since 1987, she has developed a new doctoral field in Comparative Black History. Hine has one daughter, Robbie Davine. This interview was conducted at the Southern Historical Association meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, in November, 1994, by Roger Adelson.     

Interview with Gilbert C. Fite

Born in 1918, reared and educated in South Dakota, Gilbert C. Fite took his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri. He is a historian of U.S. agriculture, particularly the impact of technology, economics, and politics on midwestern and southern farming since the late nineteenth century. He has written nine books, co-authored seven more, edited three volumes, and published over sixty articles. Former president of Eastern Illinois University, the Agricultural History Society and the Southern and Western Historical Associations, Fite has long been very active in Phi Alpha Theta and served as its president from 1981–1983. He taught at the University of Oklahoma for twenty-six years and held the Richard B. Russell Professorship of American History at the University of Georgia for a decade. He and his wife, June, were married in 1941, have two sons, and live in Bella Vista, Arkansas, where this interview was conducted by Roger Adelson in August 1993.