Costigliola selected to edit Kennan Diaries

Noted diplo­matic his­to­rian Frank Costigli­ola of the Uni­ver­sity of Con­necti­cut has been selected to edit the diaries of George F. Ken­nan, the renowned 20th cen­tury diplo­mat, his­to­rian, and pub­lic intel­lec­tual. Pro­fes­sor Costigli­ola holds a Ph.D. from Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity and is the author of the forth­com­ing Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Per­sonal Pol­i­tics Helped Start the Cold War (Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, Jan­u­ary 2012), in addi­tion to two other books and more than two dozen arti­cles, includ­ing an essay on Ken­nan that appeared in The Jour­nal of Amer­i­can His­tory. He is also a past pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety for His­to­ri­ans of Amer­i­can For­eign Rela­tions and has held fel­low­ships from the Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion, the NEH, the Nor­we­gian Nobel Insti­tute, and the Insti­tute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Costigliola’s was one of nine sub­mis­sions received for the project which was announced last Decem­ber with ads in the New York Review of Books and The Chron­i­cle of Higher Edu­ca­tion, as well as on numer­ous list­servs, and the Mudd Man­u­script Library blog. He plans a sin­gle vol­ume of approx­i­mately 600–700 pages and projects a com­ple­tion date of Decem­ber 2014. (See Costigliola’s pro­posal .) Noti­fied of the selec­tion, Costigli­ola com­mented, “I am hon­ored by the oppor­tu­nity to make avail­able to Ken­nan buffs, schol­ars of U.S. and inter­na­tional his­tory, and gen­eral read­ers the mag­nif­i­cent, 80-year-long chron­i­cle of this most gifted diplo­mat, pub­lic intel­lec­tual, and writer.”

The Ken­nan Papers are one of the most used col­lec­tions at the Mudd Man­u­script Library and the diaries them­selves were only opened in 2009. Ken­nan was a diplo­mat and a his­to­rian, noted espe­cially for his influ­ence on United States pol­icy towards the Soviet Union dur­ing the Cold War and for his schol­arly exper­tise in the areas of Russ­ian his­tory and for­eign pol­icy. While with the For­eign Ser­vice, Ken­nan advo­cated a pol­icy of “con­tain­ment” that influ­enced United States rela­tions with the Soviet Union through­out the Cold War, and he served in var­i­ous posi­tions in Euro­pean embassies, as well as ambas­sador to the Soviet Union. His career as a his­to­rian was spent at the Insti­tute for Advanced Study, where he con­tin­ued to ana­lyze the his­tory of Rus­sia, the Soviet Union and United States for­eign poli­cies, and for­eign affairs.