Conference Program
The program for Great Lakes History Conference 2024 is now available. Please click on the button below to download a copy or view!
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“Intoxicated Warfare: Psychoactive Substances, Violence and Trauma”
Great Lakes History Conference, Sept 27-28, 2024
Grand Valley State University
Organized by Jason Crouthamel (Grand Valley State University) and
Julia B. Köhne (Humboldt University in Berlin)
Loosemore Auditorium and Regency Room
DeVos Campus, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Keynote Times:
Friday 4:00-5:00 PM: Edward B. Westermann
“Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol, Masculinity and the Intoxication of Mass Murder”
Saturday 9:30–11:00 AM: Peter Andreas “Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs”
Saturday 1:45–3:15 PM: Dessa Bergen-Cico
“How War and Drugs Escalate in Response to One Another: A Historical Overview from the Opium Wars to Today”
Friday, Sept 27
Coffee and Registration, 9:15–9:45am,
Welcome and opening remarks – Jason Crouthamel and Julia B. Köhne, 9:45–10am
Panel 1 – Soldiers and Stimulants in Wars of the 19th Century
10:00–12:00pm
Chair: Grace Coolidge (Grand Valley State University)
Jonathan S. Jones (James Madison University, Virginia)
“Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and the Legacies of Opioid Addiction in the Late-19th and early-20th Century U.S.”
Sarah Siff (Central State University, Ohio)
“Amok in Mexico: Soldiers and Marihuana in an Era of Revolution”
Ben Roy (University of Georgia)
“‘The Ideal Pleasures of Dreamland’: The Experience of Tobacco in the Civil War Era”
Lunch: 12:00–1:30pm
Panel 2 – Managing Soldiers’ Bodies and Minds
1:30–3:00pm
Chair: Julia B. Köhne (Humboldt-University in Berlin)
Łukasz Kamieński (Jagiellonian University, Kraków)
“Military Neuroenhancement: The Continuation of Psychopharmacology by Other Means”
Ulrich Koch (George Washington University)
“The heroin epidemic that wasn’t: Returning Vietnam veterans, controversies over methadone maintenance, and the future of rehabilitation, 1970–1974”
Reception: Hors d’oeuvres, 3–4pm
Keynote
Edward B. Westermann (Texas A&M University-San Antonio)
“Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol, Masculinity and the Intoxication of Mass Murder”
Dinner (for panelists) 6:00pm
Saturday, September 28
Keynote
9:30–11:00am
Peter Andreas (Brown University)
“Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs”
Coffee break: 11:00–11:15am
Panel 3 – Alcohol, Trauma and Memory
11:15–12:45pm
Chair: Jason Crouthamel (Grand Valley State University)
Peter Leese (University of Copenhagen)
“Traumatic Memory, Coping, and Alcohol: The Small Back Room (1949)”
Jonas Weaver (University of California, Irvine)
"‘A red mist’: Alcohol, Sexual Violence, and Postwar Memory in Wolfgang Koeppen's Death in Rome"
Student Panel: Great Lakes History Conference, 11:15-12:45
Chair: Alice Chapman (Grand Valley State University)
Daisy Soos: “Nursing from 1840-1980: How Educational and Professional Developments Drew Inspiration from First and Second Wave Feminism”.
Nicholas Kehrig: “Making Michigan: How natural resources transformed the Great Lakes State in the late nineteenth century”.
Drew Johnson: “Two Klans for Two Americas: How American Society shaped the Ku Klux Klan”.
Lunch: 12:45–1:45
Keynote
1:45–3:15pm
Dessa Bergen-Cico (Syracuse University)
“How War and Drugs Escalate in Response to One Another: A Historical Overview from the Opium Wars to Today”
Coffee break: 3:15–3:30pm
Panel 4 – Drugs, Alcohol and the Perpetration of Violence
3:30–5:00 pm
Chair: Sarah Siff (Central State University, Ohio)
Leonard Kleiber (University of Heidelberg)
"Rethinking Pervitin: Narratives, Scope of use and military value of amphetamines in the German army in the Second World War”
Baizoumi Wambae Sylvain (University of Maroua, Cameroon)
“Alcohol, Drugs and Pastoral Criminals in Northern Cameroon”
Conclusion, “Intoxicated Warfare,” 5:00–5:15pm
Great Lakes Latin American History Workshop, Saturday Sept. 28, 3:30-5:30pm
Paper Contributors:
Marlon Londoño, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: “Bipartisan Shame: The Battle of Palonegro and the Pyramid of Human Skulls”
Elizabeth Shesko, Oakland University: “Encouraging Separatism: Cruceño Prisoners and Paraguayan Propaganda during the Chaco War”
Paper Commentators
Robert Niebuhr, Arizona State University
Kevin Chrisman, Grand Valley State University
Andrew Schlewitz, Grand Valley State University
Michael Wroblewski, Grand Valley State University
Bios of keynotes:
Edward B. Westermann received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is a Regents Professor of History and a Piper Professor of 2023 at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. He has published extensively on the Holocaust and military history, and he is the author of Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest (Oklahoma, 2016), Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East (Kansas, 2005), and Flak: German Anti-aircraft Defenses, 1914–1945 (Kansas, 2001). He is a former Fulbright Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, a three-time fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service, a Fellow of Keene State College’s Genocide Studies and Prevention Program, and a J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Fellow at the USHMM. His latest book, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany appeared with Cornell University Press in 2021 and received the 2023 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research.
Dessa Bergen-Cico, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Public Health, a core faculty in the Renee Crown Honors Program, faculty member in and Neuroscience, and Coordinator of the Addiction Studies programs at Syracuse University. In addition, Bergen-Cico is an Affiliated Investigator of the Veterans Healthcare Administration, Fellow of the American Academy of Health Care Providers in the Addictive Disorders, and Certified Addiction Specialist (CAS). Bergen-Cico has been received two Fulbright Scholar awards which embedded her in the Republic of Georgia, Thailand, and Cambodia. Since 2010, she has worked in collaboration with the Council of Europe to provide education and trainings in drug policy and the impact of conflicts and geopolitics on substance use across Europe. Her areas of teaching and research focus on alcohol, other drugs, and addictive behaviors and geo-politics of drug policy in addition to evidence-based interventions for veterans and civilians PTSD and substance use disorders. She has authored more than 50 scholarly publications, including the book War and Drugs: The Role of Military Conflict in the Development of Substance Abuse.
Peter Andreas is John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown University. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited eleven books, including Drug War Politics (University of California Press, 1996), Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2006), Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America (Oxford University Press, 2013), Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Cornell University Press, 3rd edition, 2022), and Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs (Oxford University Press, 2020). Andreas is currently completing the book, The Illicit Global Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know (under contract with Oxford University Press). Andreas has also presented congressional testimony, given frequent media commentary, and published essays and op-eds for a variety of outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Time Magazine, Slate, The New Republic, Harpers, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs.
We are grateful for support from:
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dean’s Office
Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies, GVSU
Department of Political Science (Joseph Stevens Freedom Endowment Fund), GVSU
Department of Sociology, GVSU
Department of Psychology, GVSU
Department of History, GVSU