Sarah Van Beurden
Ph.D. Candidate (ABD)
sarahvb@sas.upenn.edu
Education
B.A. and M.A. in History from University of Leuven (Belgium); M.A. in American Studies from Lehigh University
Fields
Modern U.S. history (Transatlantic focus), comparative imperialism (focus on Africa), cultural history
Dissertation
"Showing Independence? The cultural politics of western images of central Africa during a time of transition, 1955-1975"
Dissertation Committee
Personal Statement
My undergraduate years were spent at the University of Leuven in my native Belgium, where I wrote a thesis on the decline of the Belgian Communist Party (1960-1980.) After obtaining my B.A. in Leuven, I accepted a semester exchange at Lehigh University in PA. One semester turned into many and in 2001 I came to the Penn Department of History, after completing an M.A. in American Studies at Lehigh University.
My interests center around the new transatlantic history. I am currently researching my dissertation on western representations of Central Africa in the period of decolonization, in which I combine a history of cultural politics in the west with a comparative approach, focusing on the U.S., Belgium and Congo (DR). My research takes me to a wide variety of places, which include the Africa archive of the Belgian ministry of foreign affairs, the Royal museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress in Washington DC, the Hampton College archives in VA, the National Archives in Kinshasa, Congo (DR), etc.
