People's Histories of the US Empire: A Trans-Local Approach to Study the Environment and the Cold War

Abstract

This short essay gives an overview of an academic expertise that lies at the crossroads of different historical subfields. It explains how the Department of History and Politics at the University of Bologna has introduced the author to the core tenets of classical political and international history. It also shows how other international academic environments place an emphasis on bottom-up approaches. The combination of these two approaches is ideal to explore the development of cold war's transatlantic relations through the experiences of organized social movements and assess their political effectiveness as well.

Keywords

• cold war
• us empire
• base politics
• transnationalism
• environmental history