Matthew Kohstedt

I am currently in my third year of graduate work at GW, which means that I have finished my coursework towards my MA degree, and am now embroiled in reading for my comprehensive exams. My three fields are: the United States in a Global Context with Melani McAlister; Modern Racial Order with Tom Guglielmo; and 20th Century Cultural History with Kip Kosek. Anyone with any knowledge of osmosis-learning techniques should contact me at mak23@gwmail.gwu.edu

My research interests include the role of American social scientists in formulating United States policy towards the Middle East during and after World War II, as well as pre-U.N. efforts to conceptualize how to deal with human rights abuses and refugees. Accordingly I am enamored of a long lineage of scholars from Hannah Arendt to Giorgio Agamben. I will be putting together my dissertation proposal in Spring 2009.

As a Graduate Writing Preceptor, I am currently teaching my first semester of University Writing, the required writing-intensive course for GW students. My course, generically titled Sports and Society, explores sport and its relationship to: space (stadiums); drug doping (Lance and Barry); race (Jack Johnson and Jackie Robinson); and gender & sexuality (Title IX, Lisa Leslie, etc). I am very excited to have taken a weekend trip to see Yankee and Shea Stadiums before they closed and to be able to call it "work."

I graduated in 2002 from Northwestern University with a degree in Radio/Television/Film. Between college and grad school I worked in advertising, taught English in France, and fundraised for Georgetown's library.

If you have any questions about the American Studies program, my research, or my class, please email me at mak23@gwmail.gwu.edu