molly mckew

Dr Tamson Pietsch will be in conversation with the HCV's Dr Yves Rees about her impressive work The Floating University: Experience, Empire and the Politics of Knowledge on Thursday, 29 August at the Wheeler Centre, State Library of Victoria. In 1926, New York University professor James E Lough — an educational reformer with big dreams — embarked on a bold experiment he called the Floating University. Lough believed that taking five hundred American college students around the globe by ship would not only make them better citizens of the world but would demonstrate a model for responsible and productive education amid the unprecedented dangers, new technologies, and social upheavals of the post–World War I world. But the Floating University’s maiden voyage was also its last: when the ship and its passengers returned home, the project was branded a failure — the antics of students in hotel bars and port city back alleys that received worldwide press coverage were judged incompatible with educational attainment, and Lough was fired and even put under investigation by the State Department. In the new book, Tamson Pietsch excavates a rich and meaningful picture of Lough’s grand ambition, its origins, and how it reveals an early-twentieth-century America increasingly defined both by its imperialism and the professionalisation of its higher education system. Join us at the Wheeler Centre for a fascinating discussion and an opportunity to ask questions after the talk.