Kelly Hammond, associate professor of history and a member of the Asian Studies Program in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, recently won a nationally competitive course-development grant from the Stanton Foundation to design a new course on the history of modern Asia through the lens of nuclear security. The grant is part of the Foundation's Course Development Program, which seeks, according to their website, "to create a more broadly informed public" by promoting courses on nuclear security issues. It provides approximately $50,000 to support development work for new, sustainable courses designed for undergraduates and first-year graduate students. 

The Stanton Foundation was founded by Frank Stanton, former CBS network president and chairman of the Rand Corporation. The foundation supports research and teaching on international security, with a strong emphasis on nuclear security, which includes nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation, nuclear weapons, nuclear force posture and other security issues related to nuclear energy.

Hammond's proposed course is titled, "From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Nuclear Security in Asia." It provides a comprehensive overview of Asian history in the late 20th and early 21st centuries with an emphasis on the intersections between the region's economic, political and social transformation and its experience with the emergence of nuclear technology and nuclear conflict from the end of the Second World War through the decades after the end of the Cold War. As Hammond explains in the proposal, "By focusing on the development and acquisition of nuclear weapons, the testing of nuclear weapons and the development of nuclear energy from Pakistan to the Marshall Islands, we will develop new insights into an era of internationalism, decolonization and environmentalism that is often overshadowed by the superpower rivalry."

"This course will be a welcome addition to our program, and it should be of interest to many students on our campus," said Laurence Hare, chair of the Department of History. "By emphasizing the role of security and technology, it offers an innovative new way for students to explore Asia in the classroom, and it promises to show them how a historical perspective is essential to understanding the challenges we face in the world today." 

Hammond is an expert on the history of modern China and Japan, and her research focuses on Islam and politics in Asia during the 20th century. She is the author of China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II, published by the University of North Carolina Press, and she is currently conducting research for a new book project, Islam and Politics in the East Asian Cold War. Hammond will publish a new article, "Cold War Mosque: Islam and Politics in Nationalist Taiwan," in the journal Twentieth-Century China later this spring.