Nicholas Ostrum

My research deals with postwar German energy, development and trade policy, especially as they pertain to the Global South. I am currently working on a manuscript based on my dissertation, “The Black Chimera: West Germany and the Scramble for Arab Oil, 1957-1974,” which examines West German petro-relations with several key petroleum producing states in the Middle East and Africa, namely Syria, Libya, and Nigeria. It asks how the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) overcame its domestic crude oil scarcity through foreign trade, foreign investment and development outreach, in addition to direct diplomacy. In the process, it traces the non-military complex interdependencies generated between the FRG and the aforementioned producing states, as well as the entanglement of economic, domestic-political, and geopolitical considerations that motivated all sides. Recent publications related to this project include “Interdependency and Economic (Ir)rationality: West German-Libyan Petrorelations in the Early 1970s”  in the International History Review (2021) and ‘”Which Germany Do You Come From?”: Contending German Legacies and Trade in Postcolonial Libya' in the collected volume After the Imperialist Imagination: 25 Years of Research on Global Germany and its Legacies (Peter Lang, 2020).

Regarding the classroom, I have taught a wide range of courses both in line with my research - the Cold War, Nazi Germany, the Holocaust – and beyond it - American History, Latin America, The Twentieth Century World, Western and World Civilizations. I begin my tenure at Kent State with surveys in World History and Postwar Europe as well as graduate seminars dealing with topics such as Energy in the Twentieth Century World.