International Security Studies Spring 2024 Colloquium Series presents
Madelyn Lugli, a Kissinger Visiting Scholar Predoctoral Fellow at the Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy:
“The Middlemen: A New History of 1919’s New Diplomacy, Told From “The Middle.”“
“The Middlemen” explores the Paris Peace Conference, not from above or below, but rather from the middle. It considers the perspective of the young, mid-level participants, such as William Bullitt, Harold Nicolson, and John Maynard Keynes, who came to Paris with, but not as, the Conference’s key decision-makers. The dissertation chapter analyzes the frustrating experiences of these young men during the Conference, as well as their later bombastic reactions to its conclusion.
Lugli is a PhD candidate in History at Northwestern University where she is completing a dissertation that considers the ways in which emotions and personal relationships forged foreign affairs during the interwar period.