Princeton professors launch new open access book at PIIRS Director’s Book Forum

"Inventing The Third World” is an open access book that explores the ways in which the Global South reimagined the future world order at the end of the Second World War, and the cultural and intellectual breakthroughs that these new narratives created. On Wednesday, Feb. 22, the book’s editors — Princeton University professors Jeremy Adelman and Gyan Prakash — discussed how writers, artists, musicians and photographers created new institutions of solidarity, new expressions and alternative narratives to the imperial ones that they had inherited, as part of Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies’ (PIIRS) long-running Director’s Book Forum series.

In her opening remarks, Deborah Yashar, the Donald E. Stokes Professor of Public and International Affairs and director of PIIRS, said, regarding the book: “For me, what stands out, is that it challenges us to think about the post-World War II order and the invention of the ‘Third World’ not just as a moment of geopolitics, but also one filled with imaginations and aspirations and visions of a new beginning and new order even if many have seen it punctuated by a certain end.”

Adelman, the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and Cotsen Faculty Fellow, and Prakash, the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, were joined by Rachel Price, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, as discussant.