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On July 20th, 1969, over half the world’s population witnessed Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon. While often remembered as a scientific
and technological feat, the ambitions of the Apollo program aimed far beyond the Moon. Through spaceflight, America sought to win hearts and minds, foster alliances, and shape the political trajectories of newly independent nations. Drawing on a rich array
of untapped archives and firsthand interviews, Operation Moonglow knits together a story of politics and propaganda; diplomacy and spaceflight; decolonization and globalization to reveal the political
forces that not only sent humans to the Moon but also attracted the largest audience in history.
Panelists:
Teasel Muir-Harmony,
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Asif Siddiqi,
Fordham University
Teasel Muir-Harmony is the curator of the
Apollo Collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. She earned a PhD from MIT’s Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society. Muir-Harmony is the author of
Apollo to the Moon: A History in 50 Objects (2018), a co-editor and contributor to a special issue of the
Pacific Historical Review on science and technology in Japanese-U.S. relations (2019), and an advisor to the television series
Apollo’s Moon Shot. She co-organizes the Space Policy & History Forum, serves on the Executive Council of the Society for the History of Technology, and teaches in Georgetown University’s Science,
Technology and International Affairs program.
Asif Siddiqi is a professor of history
at Fordham University in New York. He is the author of many books and articles on the history of spaceflight, including
The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2010). He is currently working on a book titled
Departure Gates: Postcolonial Histories of Space on Earth, under contract with MIT Press, that explores the displacement and violence caused by the ground infrastructure built across the postcolonial
world to support spaceflight activities during the Cold War. He will be a Visiting Fellow at the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University in the 2021-22 academic year.
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