Erez Manela

I specialize in modern international history and the history of the United States in the world, focusing primarily on the twentieth century. I serve as Director of Graduate Programs at Harvard'sWeatherhead Center for International Affairs and, in 2010-11, also as Director of Graduate Studies in the History Department.

My recent book,  The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford, 2007), showed how U.S. attempts to reshape world order in the wake of World War I intersected with the anticolonial upheavals of 1919 in Egypt, India, China, and Korea. The Wilsonian Moment was widely reviewed internationally, including in the London Review of Books and in major venues in India, Egypt, and South Korea. 

More recently, I have sought to cast new light on the evolution of international society through the study of the World Health Organization's campaign for the global eradication of smallpox in the 1960s and 70s within the context of postwar international history. As part of my interest in this period I co-edited The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Harvard, 2010), to which I contributed a chapter on smallpox eradication and the rise of global governance.

I also have longstanding interests in the conceptual, methodological, and historiographical aspects of writing international history, and I am currently at work on a number of essays on these issues.

The tabs to the left will lead you to my "official" bio, selected publications (some with links to full text), and teaching, advising, and contact information. You may also be interested in my departmental page, or in the study of international and global history at Harvard.