Benjamin W. Goossen

I am Assistant Professor of Environmental History and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. My research and teaching encompass European and international history, science and technology studies, and the history of the environment. My current book project, Earthbound: A History of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year, examines the global expansion and contested nature of Earth science during the Cold War and collapse of European empires. Seeking to integrate histories of Earth science and global order, this book draws on multilingual archival research conducted across six continents. This work on planetary thought and Earth science builds on my previous scholarship about nationalism in global history. My first book, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era, appeared with Princeton University Press in 2017.

Support for my scholarship has come from institutions including the American Historical Association, the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHSTM), the Fulbright Commission, the German Academic Exchange Service, NASA, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. My work has received awards from the Council for European Studies, the Kansas Historical Foundation, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, among others. I hold a BA from Swarthmore College and a PhD from Harvard University.

Earthbound

My current book project, Earthbound: A History of the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year, examines the significant expansion and contested nature of Earth science during the retreat of European empires and the reformulation of international order after World War II. To tell this story, I focus on the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-1958, an ambitious global program to understand our planet as a unified environment. The IGY involved tens of thousands of scientists and citizen volunteers from most countries. Its organizers (a team of rivals from both sides of the Iron Curtain) shared stated commitments to scientific progress and economic development while in other respects falling on different parts of a vast political and ideological spectrum. My project asks how Cold War rivalries and processes of decolonization shaped and were, in turn, informed by transnational efforts to acquire comprehensive environmental data—including data related to “extreme” regions like the upper atmosphere, the deep ocean, the poles, and outer space.

In our age of climate concern, the planetary is a crucial scale of engagement. Ways of thinking about Earth that emerged in the context of the International Geophysical Year overlaid and often reinforced seemingly more restricted channels of ideological affinity, military alliance, or national community. Uncovering the history and valences of planetary thought can augment the important work of scientists, political leaders, and members of the public in confronting the environmental and social challenges of our time. I published an article on these themes with the Journal of Global History and a review essay with Contemporary European History.

Chosen Nation

My first book, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era, appeared with Princeton University Press in 2017. This book tells the story of a predominantly rural and historically pacifist religious community that developed complex relationships with German nationalism across three continents in concert with rising transnational sensibilities. Chosen Nation contributes to scholarship that emphasizes the malleability, historical contingency, and socially situated nature of nationalist practices and ways of thinking about national belonging. By adopting global and transnational perspectives, this book examines how insights developed by historians of nationalism travel and refract when viewed through the actions and experiences of one small, densely networked religious group whose members lived and moved across Europe and the world. In 2018, Chosen Nation was shortlisted for the European Studies Book Award, conferred by the Council for European Studies.

Drawing on sources from Poland to Paraguay, this project inspired my passion for multi-continental archival research, and it prompted me to turn the tools of global and transnational history to the study of environmental science and planetary thought. I have published peer-reviewed articles related to this project in German Studies Review and Antisemitism Studies.

Reviews and endorsements for Chosen Nation are available here.

Teaching

My teaching encompasses European and international history, science and technology studies, and the history of the global environment.

I currently teach courses in the Department of History and Art History and in the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University.

Previously, I have taught courses at the University of Chicago in the Core Curriculum and at the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. As a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University, I received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching based on outstanding student evaluations.