With U.S., Russia and China relations peaking more in the news, two experts from the US Naval War College (USNWC) will speak at the Bosworth Lecture Series on Thursday, January 11 at 7 p.m. at the Rogers Free Library. The event is free and open to the public.

China professor Kristin Mulready-Stone, Ph.D. and her husband, Russian professor David Stone, Ph.D., both of the USNWC in Newport will take on the recent history and current status of US relations with the two Asian superpowers.

"Russia and China are in the news more frequently," Dr. Mulready-Stone said, noting Russia in Ukraine, China in the S. China Sea, and questions of Russia meddling in the U.S. election and China's role with N. Korean nuclear weapons. "All these issues make people wonder what it means for Americans as individuals and for the United States as a country," she said.

She and David Stone will provide context with a brief history of U.S. relations with China and Russia. "No one can predict the future," she said, "but history helps us understand what is happening today and what might come next." In 2016 Kristin Mulready-Stone joined the USNWC as Associate Professor and Director of the Writing Center teaching the History of East and Southeast Asia. Her primary focus is the history of twentieth-century China, specifically the role of youth organizations in the first half of the twentieth century. Her recent research has focused on Shanghai from 1920-1945. She also teaches current East Asian Security through the lens of history. Her areas of expertise include Asia-Pacific, China, Southeast Asia, Vietnam, The Cold War, Vietnam War and WWII.

In 2015 David R. Stone was appointed Professor of Strategy and Policy at USNWC teaching The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917. He wrote a comprehensive history of the Russian experience of the First World War. In 2012 he won the Moncado Prize of the Society for Military History for his article "Misreading Svechin: Attrition, Annihilation, and Historicism."

He received his B.A. from Wabash College and his PhD in History from Yale Univ. He has taught at Hamilton College and Kansas State Univ. His first book Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union (2000) won the Shulman Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society.

He has also published A Military History of Russia (2006), and The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (2015). He edited The Soviet Union at War, 1941-1945 (2010). He is the author of several dozen articles on Russian / Soviet military history and foreign policy. His areas of expertise include The Cold War, India, Russia, WWI and WWII.

The Roswell S. Bosworth, Jr. Lecture Series is presented by the Men's Club, a Bristol organization that pays tribute to its founding member and former editor/publisher of the East Bay Newspapers with lectures of general interest.