Participant Info
- First Name
- Sarah
- Last Name
- Snyder
- Country
- United States
- State
- DC District of Columbia
- ssnyder@american.edu
- Affiliation
- American University
- Website URL
- http://sarahbsnyder.net/
- Keywords
- human rights, history of U.S. foreign relations; Cold War
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
Sarah B. Snyder is a historian of U.S. foreign relations who specializes in the history of the Cold War, human rights activism, and U.S. human rights policy. She is the author of From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 2018), which explains how transnational connections and 1960s-era social movements inspired Americans to advocate for a new approach to human rights. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded it the 2019 Robert H. Ferrell Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of American foreign relations.
Her first book, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network, (Cambridge University Press), analyzes the development of a transnational network devoted to human rights advocacy and its contributions to the end of the Cold War. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations awarded it the 2012 Stuart Bernath Book Prize by for best first book by an author and the 2012 Myrna F. Bernath Book Award for the best book written by a woman in the field in the previous two years.
In addition to authoring several chapters in edited collections, she has also published articles in Diplomatic History, Cold War History, Human Rights Quarterly, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, European Journal of Human Rights and Journal of American Studies.
- Recent Publications
From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 2018).
Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
The CSCE and the End of the Cold War: Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 1972-1990 (co-editor with Nicolas Badalassi; Berghahn Books, 2018).
“‘Ending Our Support for the Dictators’: Ed Koch, Uruguay, and Human Rights,” Cold War History, https://doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2019.1705790.
“The 1968 International Year for Human Rights: A Missed Opportunity in the United States” Diplomatic History 42: 5 (November 2018): 831–858.
“Americans’ Human Rights Activism in the Long 1960s,” European Journal of Human Rights 2 (2016) 221-33.
“Beyond Containment?: The First Bush Administration’s Sceptical Approach to the CSCE,” Cold War History 13:4 (November 2013): 463-484.
“‘A Call for U.S. Leadership’: Congressional Activism on Human Rights,” Diplomatic History 37:2 (April 2013): 372-397.
- Media Coverage
- On Point, The Hill, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Boston Globe, The Laura Coates Show, Academic Minute
- Social Media
- Country Focus
- Expertise by Geography
- United States
- Expertise by Chronology
- 20th century, 21st century
- Expertise by Topic
- Diplomacy, Human Rights, Politics
