European History Commons^™

His 242.C301 – Contemporary European History From The Global South / Third World Perspective, Soheil Asefi

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus for HIS 242: Contemporary European History builds on a course taught in Lehman College’s History Department in 2025 and has been revised for Fall 2027. It approaches European history from the French Revolution to the present through Global South perspectives, emphasizing empire, class struggle, migration, anti-colonial movements, gender, and sexuality. Combining primary sources, scholarship, digital archives, and multimedia, the course encourages historical analysis through discussion and student presentations. Developed through the Open Knowledge Fellowship, this Zero Textbook Cost syllabus brings together open educational resources, open-access materials, and CUNY library resources.

Silent Awakening: Female Agency And Societal Moral Contradiction In Victorian Art And Literature, Jayden S. Crespo

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

The Victorian era was marked by rapid technological, religious, and societal modernization that impacted the art and literature of the time. Queen Victoria, whose name became an eponym for her sixty-three-year reigning period from 1837 to 1901, was a figure who demonstrated domestic propriety and moral responsibility during this time of rapid change. However, while social morality and familial traditional roles were highly esteemed, marital infidelity began to increase as prostitution rose in rapid numbers. With traditional ideals placing women on fragile angelic pedestals that would shatter with any sexual relations outside marriage, consensual or not, Victorian society was faced …

The Heroic Behaviors Of Havka Folman-Raban, Courier In The Warsaw Ghetto, Beth S. Dotan

Heroism Science

This article analyzes the elements of heroic behavior of Havka Folman-Raban during her experiences as a courier in the underground of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Drawing on numerous missions she completed prior to being arrested in Kraków, Poland, and others made during her internment at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Auschwitz subcamp Harmęże, this assessment considers!how Havka Folman-Raban’s wartime activities and convictions that continued throughout the rest of her life align with four commonalities of heroism identified in heroic behavioral sciences. We consider how Havka’s participation in the Socialist Zionist Pioneering Movement influenced her actions. To understand the breadth …

German Jewish Integration And The Illusion Of Permanence, 1781–1933, Matthew M. Larian

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

This paper argues that German Jewish integration from the late eighteenth century through the Weimar Republic was a genuinely successful project, and it was that success itself, not failure of foresight, that left the community unprepared for the Nazi rupture. The paper reframes the standard question: instead of asking why German Jews failed to predict Nazism, it asks how the success of integration itself narrowed the imagination of what was possible.

“Promotion And Persuasion”: The Propaganda That Helped Colonize America, Lillian Matthews

Best Integrated Writing

This essay seeks to review the literary devices used to manipulate the English population in favor of colonizing North America. The differences in techniques used for social classes ranging from peasantry to royalty are highlighted and compared. The promises of expanding the empire, easing widespread fears, and financial gains are all emphasized as motives for this so-called “Promotional Literature.”

Best Integrated Writing Fall 2026 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.

The American Ethic: Happy 250th Anniversary!, Matt Walker

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The American Ethic: Two hundred fifty years ago, In 1776, the American colonies faced a pivotal decision: whether to remain under British rule or to assert their independence. The Founding Fathers chose to separate from Great Britain and proceeded to clearly articulate both their justification for independence and the fundamental principles of liberty and justice upon which the new nation would be built. The Declaration of Independence, drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson, was far more than a proclamation of political separation, it also presented the framework for a novel rights-based ethical system which made the extraordinary claim of universal individual …

Silk And Authority: The Political Meaning Of Elite Women's Fashion In Europe, Kaylee S. Rupasinghe

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Fashion for women has not always been about personal style and fashion trends, but women's fashion among the elite has served in ways to express a woman's identity, authority, and wealth to the public. By analyzing Elizabeth I, Marie Antoinette, and Victoria, noticeable differences and outcomes occur based on what they wore, how they wore their clothing, and the self-portraits they released to the public. This analysis suggests that elite women in European history went beyond fashion trends with their clothing choices and shaped a society with the clothing they wore.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Consuelo Vanderbilt And Transatlantic Marriages In The Gilded Age, Katie M. Cassady

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Between 1865 and the onset of World War I, wealthy American women increasingly married titled European men. These marriages played a critical role for both parties: the newly moneyed elite asserted its claim to social status, and depleted European nobility regained the funds so essential to their longevity. By 1915, 454 American heiresses had married into the European aristocracy. In one famous example, Consuelo Vanderbilt was forcibly wed to the ninth Duke of Marlborough. As the Vanderbilt family labored to assimilate themselves into old-money New York society, the opportunity to tie their family name to English nobility could catapult the …

Beethoven, Caspar Peucer’S Commentarius, And Enchanted Nature, Nicholas Chong

The Beethoven Journal

The posthumous inventory of Beethoven’s library includes a late Renaissance treatise by Caspar Peucer (1525–1602) entitled Commentarius de præcipuis generibus divinationum (Commentary on the main types of divination). Peucer’s text is concerned mainly with methods of predicting the future through such practices as magic, astrology, and the reading of oracles. Neither Peucer nor his treatise is mentioned in any other source associated with Beethoven. The composer also had a limited knowledge of Latin and his copy of Peucer’s text was more than two centuries old.

Previous scholarship has not explored Beethoven’s ownership of this book in any detail, except to …

J.R.R. Tolkien And G.B. Smith: With Wind In Our Ears, Edited By Guiseppe Pezzini, Mercury Natis

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

Oxford At War: “Leaf By Niggle” As A Wartime Work, Part 1, Josh B. Long

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

J. R. R. Tolkien suggested that "Leaf by Niggle" was written around 1938-1939; however, Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull argue that it was actually composed in 1942. This corrected date changes how one reads the story: often viewed as an autobiographical allegory of art and faith, “Leaf by Niggle” falls into place as a wartime work, informed and transformed by the World War II pressures of Tolkien’s Oxford—the city and the University. This article situates the story within WWII and analyzes how that context influenced the imagery, characterization, symbols, and motifs of "Leaf."

The French Revolution And Napoleon: The Beginnings Of A Modern World Order, S Trent Dunkin

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, roughly 1789 to 1815, witnessed the fall of the Ancien Régime in France and the foundation of the French Republic. However, this larger period can be divided into three smaller periods: (1) the French Revolutionary Period (1789-1799); (2) the Napoleonic Era (1799-1814); and (3) the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). This article discusses these three periods individually and their respective contributions that helped to usher in a political order more familiar to the contemporary world. Specifically, this article will explore the following things: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, the …

Border Fascism And The Fascistization Of Society, Nicholas P. De Genova

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The massive destruction and social dislocation wrought by capitalist crisis has culminated, historically, in the brutal cataclysms of fascism and other forms of authoritarian rule. Today, across the globe, we are confronted with the aggressive advance and entrenchment of a variety of such authoritarian political projects. Anxious discourses about ascendant fascism have become perfectly mainstream. These developments command our acute attention and critical analysis. This essay addresses these dire questions and the conceptual vexations surrounding the concept of fascism, particularly as it has been elaborated in various Marxist analyses.  Specifically, much of the debate around fascism as an analytical category …

Editor's Introduction, Brent H. Otto S.J.

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Pageantry In The Skies: Changes To The Hendon Raf Aerial Pageant Throughout The Interwar Years In The United Kingdom, Amy Zhou

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The Hendon RAF Aerial Pageants were held in Britain in the Hendon Aerodrome from 1920 to 1937. Initially established to promote airmindedness in the British public and legitimize the Royal Air Force so that it could remain an independent service, aerial theatre was utilized extensively to transform flight into a spectacle. As the interwar years progressed, the pageant developed complex “set pieces” that showcased elaborate simulations of military maneuvers such as strategic bombing against industrial and imperial targets, eliciting a mixture of awe and fear in the face of aviation’s destructive potential. By the mid-1930s, the focus had shifted to …

'A Hundred Times A Man': Chastity, Martial Culture And Manhood In Franco's Spain, Ava M. Golde

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Using the military as a case study, this essay seeks to understand how chastity became a symbol of complete regeneration for Spanish society, both in terms of a physical revival of a soldier’s health but also a moral and spiritual reawakening of the Catholic soul. In analyzing military magazines, instructional pamphlets, and the memoirs of soldiers, this paper unpacks the relationship between enforced male chastity and Francoist military masculinity, demonstrating how ideas of manhood were deliberately altered to fit a nationalist project of regeneration. Finally, I place this conception of the “New Spanish Man” within the broader context of militarized …

From Humanitarian Aid To “Counterrevolution”: Foreign Assistance To Pentecostals In Soviet Ukraine And Its Criminalization By The Gpu–Nkvd, 1932–1935, Oleksandr Korotaiev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article examines foreign assistance to Pentecostal communities in the Ukrainian SSR and the mechanisms of its criminalization by Soviet state security agencies in 1932–1935. Drawing on GPU–NKVD criminal investigation files, secret police reports, party-state documentation, personal correspondence, and memoir sources, the study reconstructs transnational channels of humanitarian support, practices of resource distribution, and the transformation of survival strategies into objects of political repression.

Particular attention is devoted to two distinct models of foreign assistance. The Odessa case demonstrates a centralized system connected to the former leadership of the All-Ukrainian Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith and transnational Pentecostal networks …

Female Perpetrators In Nazi Germany: The Effects Of Nazi Ideology And Radicalization On Three Female Concentration Camp Perpetrators, Stephanie Afonso

Graduate Masters Theses

The Second World War in Germany saw the largest number of civilian German women participating in brutal violence against Jewish peoples. The combination of sources used aids in presenting a broader image of these women both within the concentration camps and during their trials. This thesis argues the effects of Nazi ideology and radicalization on the three main subjects, Irma Grese, Maria Mandl, and Ilse Koch. Equally as important is how the American public perceived them and their roles during their respective post-war trials--which looked at them through the lens of femininity and sexuality. Within that violence came the transgression …

From Print To Film: Political Censorship And Nationalism In Nineteenth And Twentieth-Century Central Europe, Kartik Joshi

The Ozark Historical Review

From Print to Film: Political Censorship and Nationalism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Central Europe examines the relationship between emerging media technologies, state censorship, and nationalist political movements in Central Europe. Focusing primarily on Austria, the German states, and Hungary, this article traces how governments employed increasingly sophisticated systems of press regulation to suppress nationalist and subversive political discourse while political actors developed their own methods for circumventing those restrictions. The article considers censorship of newspapers, satire, lithographs, and other printed materials before examining the transformative effects of cinema in the twentieth century. As film became increasingly difficult to regulate through …