This seminar with Catherine Bishop, honorary research fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney, explores an extraordinary programme in New York.
The New York Herald Tribune World Youth Forum was an exercise in idealistic internationalism, cold war propaganda and global citizenship education. For 25 years 30 handpicked teens from around the world spent three months in New York attending US schools, living in American families, meeting celebrities, senators and the occasional president, and debating contentious issues on TV.
Fifteen lucky young Swedes went to New York between 1948 and 1967. Among them were future academics, lawyers as well as an ambassador and a film star. Their experiences, together with those of the other 807 teenagers from 84 countries of their fellow delegates, provide a fascinating case study of the ways in which young people were co-opted into the Cold War as ‘little cold warriors’, to borrow historian Victoria Grieve’s evocative phrase.
Catherine Bishop examines what was typical and what was unique about the Forum, assessing its impact on the delegates, on the Americans they encountered, and more broadly, as a tool of world peace and/or cold war propaganda. It comes from her recent book, which is based on extensive archival research and around 200 oral history interviews.
About Catherine Bishop
Catherine Bishop has had several research grants, including a prestigious Australian Research Council-funded DECRA postdoctoral fellowship. She is the author of numerous articles and several books, including the prize-winning Minding Her Own Business: Colonial Businesswomen in Sydney (NewSouth, 2015).
Primarily a researcher in gender and business history, her most recent publications also included a biography, Too Much Cabbage and Jesus Christ: Australia’s ‘Mission Girl’ Annie Lock (Wakefield, 2021), and The World We Want: The New York Herald Tribune Forum and the Cold War Teenager (ASP, 2024).
About the seminar
The seminar is primarily for researchers in child and youth studies and political science. Open to all.
The seminar will be in English.
No registration required.