Christopher Schaefer
I am a Postdoctoral Affiliate in the History of U.S. and the World, with a particular interest in U.S. market empire and the evolution of global media. My dissertation, entitled "Covering the World with the International Herald Tribune” provides an intellectual and social history of the first global newspaper before the digital revolution. I have a Master’s degree in Hispanic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, where I worked with noted historian of the book Roger Chartier.
From 2021 until 2023, I was managing editor of Tocqueville 21, the online platform of the Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville, where I curated book forums on new works by major historians such as Samuel Moyn, Sarah Shortall, Nicholas Mulder, Olivier Zunz, William Novak, Emily Marker, and Megan Brown.
I have a chapter in Cold War Liberalism, a forthcoming volume from Cambridge University Press edited by Michael Brenes and Daniel Bessner.
I am a historian of the United States and the World. My research attempts to provide a new transnational account of American journalism as a constituent part of American market empire from the end of Marshall Plan attempts to use the International Herald Tribune as a tool of American soft power, through technological and neoliberal transformations, up to the end of the Cold War and the digital revolution.
Given the constraints created by the Covid-19 pandemic, oral history became a huge part of my research toolkit. Beginning in 2020, I expanded an already existing oral history project to almost 200 interviews for my dissertation. The connections forged through these interviews allowed me to gain access to a dozen privately-held collections, which significantly expanded my archival basis and allowed me to complete my dissertation in circumstances that were less than ideal.
- North American History since 1865
- Historical Argument and Practice: Concepts and Problems
I am currently supervising an undergraduate dissertation, which links developments in modern medicine with the rhetoric of McCarthyism during the Cold War.
Outside of Cambridge, I have also taught 20th century World History and the Latinx Experience in the United States.
“Glamour to Nostalgia: International Print Media and the Digital Revolution,” Memory and Emotions Workshop, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, May 22, 2023.
“Race in the Washington Post Newsroom since Integration: a 50-Year Case Study,” American Journalism Historians Association Annual Convention, Memphis, TN, October 1, 2022.
“The International Herald Tribune at the End of History,” Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA, June 18, 2022.
“In the Shadow of Hanford: Reflections on Growing Up in a Nuclear City,” Historians of the Twentieth Century United States Winter Symposium, The Manhattan Project at 80, Liverpool, UK, March 12, 2022.
“An American Newspaper in Europe in the Shadow of the Marshall Plan,” Modern European History Workshop, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, October 21, 2021.