Frank Costigliola, D.Phil.
Distinguished Professor, Department of History | University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT, UNITED STATES
Distinguished Professor specializing in modern history, United States foreign relations, and the United States in the 20th century.
Biography
Frank Costigliola grew up in Spring Valley, New York, the son of Italian immigrants who for economic reasons had to drop out of school after the fifth grade. At the age of 25, he completed his Ph.D. from Cornell and became an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island. His first year at URI, he began carving a homestead out of 20 acres of woodland, clearing land for a garden and pasture for a milk cow and steers. He helped build first a yurt, then a house, barn, and other outbuildings. He has been at UConn since 1998.
Costigliola’s first book, Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-33, helped introduce culture as a topic in foreign relations history. His second book, France and the United States: The Cold Alliance since World War II, also dealt with the intersection of cultural with political and economic relations while suggesting how nations and their policies could be gendered as a way of valorizing or delegitimating them. His third book, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War, explored the intersection of personal and political relations, and the role of emotions, in the diplomacy of the Allied leaders who won World War II and then lost the peace.
Costigliola has lectured throughout the United States and Europe and has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute. In 2009 he served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
Areas of Expertise (6)
Modern History
American History
Twentieth Century History
U.S. Foreign Relations
History
Historical Political Figures
Education (3)
Cornell University: Ph.D. 1973
Hamilton College: B.A 1968
Universtat Munchen: B.A 1966
Affiliations (2)
- Historical Review Panel of the Central Intelligence Agency [advises Director of CIA on CIA’s declassification programs]
- Invited consultant to Department of State Policy Planning Staff
Accomplishments (18)
Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor (professional)
2016
UConn Humanities Institute Fellowship (professional)
2014-2015
Institute for Advanced Study Director's Visitor (professional)
2011
Institute for Advanced Study/National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (professional)
2009-2010
UConn Humanities Institute Fellowship (professional)
2009-2010
President, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (professional)
2009
UConn Chancellor’s Excellence in Research Award (professional)
2002
UConn Humanities Institute Fellowship (professional)
2002-2003
UConn Alumni Assn Excellence in Research Award (professional)
2002
Nobel Institute Fellowship (Oslo) (professional)
1999
Guggenheim Fellowship (professional)
1995-1996
Harvard Warren Center (professional)
1995-1996
NATO Fellowship (professional)
1994-1995
Harry S Truman Library (professional)
1994
Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation Grant Research (professional)
1992
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (professional)
1986-1987
National Endowment for the Arts Grant (professional)
1982
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship (professional)
1977
Links (2)
Media
Publications:
Documents:
Videos:
Audio/Podcasts:
Media Appearances (5)
George Kennan: The Cold War Architect Who Opposed The War
Letters & Politics with Mitch Jeserich online
2023-05-02
Guest: Frank Costigliola is the author of Kennan: A Life between Worlds. He is also a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.
On the Life of George Kennan, Divided Between the United States and the Soviet Union
LitHub online
2023-01-23
Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. In this episode, Andrew talks to Frank Costigliola, author of Kennan: A Life Between Two Worlds.
Here's Every Time Russian or Soviet Spies Tried to Interfere in US Elections. How Does 2016 Compare?
Politifact
2017-06-20
"Now who knows if Russia didn’t somehow fund one candidate or another," said Frank Costigliola, a history professor at the University of Connecticut. "But it’s unknown."...
What Would Kennan Say to Obama?
The New York Times
2014-02-27
“I don’t really even need George Kennan right now,” Barack Obama volunteered to David Remnick in a recent interview. Obama got it wrong. He, and we as a nation, do need Mr. Kennan now, as much as at the dawn of the Cold War...
'Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances' by Frank Costigliola
The Boston Globe
2011-12-25
Franklin Roosevelt’s dozen years as president saw him battle the Great Depression, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany. In Frank Costigliola’s view, Roosevelt was necessary for one more imposing task: preventing the Cold War. The tragedy was that FDR did not live long enough to complete it...
Articles (8)
Kennan’s Warning on Ukraine
Foreign Affairs2023-01-27
George Kennan, the remarkable U.S. diplomat and probing observer of international relations, is famous for forecasting the collapse of the Soviet Union. Less well known is his warning in 1948 that no Russian government would ever accept Ukrainian independence. Foreseeing a deadlocked struggle between Moscow and Kyiv, Kennan made detailed suggestions at the time about how Washington should deal with a conflict that pitted an independent Ukraine against Russia. He returned to this subject half a century later. Kennan, then in his 90s, cautioned that the eastward expansion of NATO would doom democracy in Russia and ignite another Cold War.
“Personal Dynamics and Presidential Transitions: The Case of Roosevelt and Truman”
Cornell University Press, 2015Brian Balogh and Bruce J. Schulman
2015
“Roosevelt’s Body and National Power,”
Duke University PressEmily S. Rosenberg
2014
“Kennan Encounters Russia, 1933-37,”
RoutledgeChoi Chatterjee and Beth Holmgren
2013
“Pamela Churchill, Wartime London, and the Making of the Special Relationship
Diplomatic History2012
“Archibald Clark Kerr, Averell Harriman, and the Fate of the Wartime Alliance,”
Journal of Transatlantic Studies2011
“After Roosevelt’s Death: Dangerous Emotions, Divisive Discourses, and the Abandoned Alliance,”
Diplomatic History2010
“The Foreign Policy of Kennedy and Johnson in the Cold War”
Cambridge History of the Cold WarOdd Arne Westad and Melvyn P. Leffler
2010
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