Hilde Restad, Ph.D.

hilde.restad@bhioslo.no

Bjorknes University College

Phone: 004748119174

Country: Norway

Website

Social Media:

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About Me:

Hilde Restad is Associate Professor of International Studies at a private college in Oslo, Norway. Before attaining her position as Associate Professor, she was Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). She completed her PhD in Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia in 2010. Her doctoral thesis was on American exceptionalism as an identity and its effect on historic U.S. foreign policy traditions. She published her book American Exceptonalism: An Idea that Made a Nation and Remade the World in 2014. She has written for a popular audience on American exceptionalism and U.S. politics for POLITICO Europe, Starting Points Journal, and has written the entry on "American Exceptionalism" for The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior. She is a Fulbright and Norway-American Association alumna, as well as an alumna of the United World College of the American West (AHUWC).

Research Interests

Foreign Policy

American Presidency And Executive Politics

American Exceptionalism

State Narratives

Foreign Policy Analysis

Presidential Rhetoric

Countries of Interest

United States

My Research:

I am interested in domestic determinants of U.S. foreign policy. Why does the United States act the way it does in the world, and how does its own narratives affect U.S. foreign policy? I can speak to the role the narrative of American exceptionalism has played in U.S. foreign policy throughout U.S. history, as well as discuss U.S. foreign policy traditions ("isolationism", internationalism, unilateralism, and multilateralism). 

Publications:

Books Written:

(2014) American Exceptionalism: An Idea that Made a Nation and Remade the World, Routledge

How does American exceptionalism shape American foreign policy? Conventional wisdom states that American exceptionalism comes in two variations – the exemplary version and the missionary version. Being exceptional, experts in U.S. foreign policy argue, means that you either withdraw from the world like an isolated but inspiring “city upon a hill,” or that you are called upon to actively lead the rest of the world to a better future. In her book, Hilde Restad challenges this assumption, arguing that U.S. history has displayed a remarkably constant foreign policy tradition, which she labels unilateral internationalism. The United States, Restad argues, has not vacillated between an “exemplary” and “missionary” identity. Instead, the United States developed an exceptionalist identity that, while idealizing the United States as an exemplary “City upon a Hill,” more often than not errs on the side of the missionary crusade in its foreign policy. Utilizing the latest historiography in the study of U.S. foreign relations, the book updates political science scholarship and sheds new light on the role American exceptionalism has played – and continues to play – in shaping America’s role in the world.

Other:

(2017) American Exceptionalism, SAGE Encyclopedia

American exceptionalism is a concept connoting the political superiority of the United States.There are mainly two ways social scientists approach American exceptionalism: as a subjective or as an objective concept. This entry provides an overview as well as critiques of both approaches to studying American exceptionalism.