Scholars Online
janet Lang
Watson Institute for International Studies – Brown University
Filmed in April 2008.
Who are you and what do you do? [Jim Blight - 0:38]
Who are you and what do you do? [janet Lang - 0:41]
How did many Cubans view U.S. influence in Cuba in the 1950s? [1:24]
What were U.S.-Cuban relations like leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis? [1:42]
What was the Bay of Pigs invasion and why was it significant? [2:11]
What did Kennedy learn from the Bay of Pigs invasion? [1:44]
Why did Cuba align itself with the Soviet Union? [2:24]
How did different national perspectives lead to three names for the crisis? [1:26]
How did Kennedy's thinking change during the crisis? [3:04]
How did Kennedy react to Khrushchev's letters of October 26 and 27? [2:44]
How did Khrushchev react to Castro's letter of October 26? [2:10]
How did Americans, Soviets, and Cubans react to the crisis? [2:40]
What lessons did Cubans take from the crisis? [1:16]
What could have happened if the United States had attacked Cuba?[2:27]
How did Soviet submarines increase the chance of nuclear war? [3:30]
How close did we come to nuclear war? [3:04]
How did Soviet submarines increase the chance of nuclear war? [3:30]
What is critical oral history? [1:32]
What is the value of bringing former adversaries together? [1:23]
What lessons have you learned from critical oral history? [1:41]
What advice did General Curtis LeMay give Kennedy? [1:25]
janet Lang is an adjunct associate professor of international relations (research) at the Watson Institute. She holds PhDs in both experimental psychology and epidemiology and over the past 15 years has also served as co-director with Professor James G. Blight of critical oral history projects on the Cuban missile crisis, the collapse of US-Soviet détente in the Carter-Brezhnev period, and the American war in Vietnam. She has done work on the method of critical oral history, which she and Blight have used at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (1985-1989) and at the Watson Institute (1990-present). She is author or co-author of many articles deriving from these projects, including the seminal piece, "The Burden of Nuclear Responsibility: Reflections on the Critical Oral History of the Cuban Missile Crisis" (with J.G. Blight, in Peace and Conflict, 1995).
