European History Commons^™

Freed From Fascism: Berlin's Gallery Culture In The Aftermath Of World War Ii, Brooke Fessler

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

In post-World War II Germany, the city of Berlin was left in ruin after six years of war. A nation ripped apart both physically and at its governmental core was finally freed from Nazi fascism in 1945, and the German people were finally able to reconstruct their culture. Born out of years of strict regulation of the German art world, a new type of art was put on display. Focusing specifically on gallery culture in Berlin in the post-war years, one can see how twelve years of classically influenced Nazi art gave way to a push towards the avant-garde. The …

Introduction To Richard Nixon And Europe : The Reshaping Of The Postwar Atlantic World, Luke A. Nichter

Presidential Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

The U.S.-European relationship remains the closest and most important alliance in the world. Since 1945, successive American presidents each put their own touches on transatlantic relations, but the literature has reached only into the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1963-9). This first study of transatlantic relations during the era of Richard Nixon shows a complex, turbulent period during which the postwar period came to an end, and the modern era came to be on both sides of the Atlantic in terms of political, economic, and military relations.

Nazi Looted Art: View Of A Dutch Square Through Time, Rosita Saul, Bryleigh Sue Blaise

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

After World War II, many Jewish families and their possessions were displaced or seized by German forces, only to resurface after the war. The case of the Kraus family and their painting, View of a Dutch Square, confiscated by the Nazis in 1941, raises particular questions about restitution laws. Our project traces the origin of the painting and displays how the restitution process fell apart when the Bavarian government, charged with the responsibility of returning stolen art to its rightful owners, failed to follow through on their commitment: even returning missing art pieces to the very Nazis who stole them. …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

From A Chat In The Parlor To Viral Music Videos: An Analysis Of Music As A Social Occasion, Emma Plotnik

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Imagine an intimate room filled with people playing cards and casually chatting, while one of Chopin’s piano sonatas plays elegantly in the background. This scenario is characteristic of the atmosphere surrounding Classical and Romantic European salons. Salons served as havens of musical discourse from the Baroque era to the early twentieth century. However, with the advancement of technology from the mid-twentieth century to the present, there has been a decline, or, arguably, even a cessation of salon life.

The aim of this project was to recreate the salon environment through the generation of the online discussion forum, "Music Soirée." To …

Introduction. Stars, Water Wings, And Hairs. Bernini’S Career In Metaphor, Claudia Lehmann, Karen J. Lloyd

Art Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Examining Bernini's works from 1665 on, from Paris and Rome, this book demonstrates the wealth of material still to be drawn from close visual and material examination, archival research, and comparative textual analysis. On the whole, this collection deals with Bernini's position as the leading creator of portraits - in oils, marble, monumental architecture, and metaphor - of some of the most powerful political players of his day. These studies speak to the growing distance of Gallic absolutism from the fading dreams of papal hegemony over Europe, and to the complexities of Bernini's role as mouthpiece, obstacle, and flatterer of …

Moving Back To The 18th Century View's Of Women's Role And Perception Of Their Lives: The Case Of Motherhood, Yelena Liepelt

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project will explore the role of French women of the 18th century, and specifically the problems they faced due to their gender. I will analyze the obstacles that made it difficult for strong women, such as physicist and author Madame du Châtelet, to obtain happiness. These include the complicated identity of educated and ambitious women who lived within a strict gender binary system.

I will compare Châtelet’s concept of happiness from a female perspective to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s view of women’s happiness and maternity. Rousseau believed women played an important role in society; however, their existence was always relative to …

Biography Of Sergio De Benedetti, Vera De Benedetti Bonnet

Sergio De Benedetti Manuscript

A brief biography of Sergio De Benedetti, who wrote a memoir concerning his life in Fascist Italy.

Maestros De La Manipulación: Titiriteros De La Memoria Histórica En No De Pablo Larraín Y La Niña De Tus Ojos De Fernando Trueba / Master Manipulators: Puppeteers Of Historical Memory In No By Pablo Larraín And The Girl Of Your Dreams By Fernando Trueba, Polly J. Hodge

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Se exploran dos obras cinematográficas, No de Pablo Larraín y La niña de tus ojos de Fernando Trueba, en función de sus raíces literarias y el concepto de la memoria histórica. Las obras basadas en eventos históricos intensos y violentos tienen la capacidad de retratar la dialéctica entre la memoria y la amnesia histórica. De esta manera se estimula el impulso por desenmascarar los sistemas de poder y dialogar con la sociedad actual. En el proceso, se descubren soluciones alternativas a la violencia para tratar los problemas políticos.

Jewish Resistance To ‘Romanianization’, 1940-44, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

In this chapter, Jewish legal resistance to the Antonescu regime is investigated, focusing on the use of the law to bypass the Romanianization of businesses and urban real estate. Despite multiple attempts, Antonescu’s government failed to completely expropriate Jewish urban buildings in favor of the state and subsequently distribute those properties to ethnic Romanians. The Romanianization of businesses yielded similar results.

Bobby Sands And Public Perception, Reed Burke

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research is going to focus on the 1981 Hunger Strikes during the period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The focus of this peaceful protest in the media was on Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer Bobby Sands. He was the first protestor of the hunger strike that started on March 1st, 1981. The focal point of my research is going to be focused on analyzing newspapers from different areas of Ireland and Great Britain to comprehend the differences in sentiments towards Sands and the hunger strike. I will be analyzing Pro-Republican newspapers from Northern Ireland and comparing them to …

The British Conceptualization Of Belgium, 1914, Maci Reed

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The complicated political agendas surrounding the various nations’ decisions to enter World War I have led to an ongoing debate about the war’s actual cause. This research project will investigate the effect that Germany’s invasion of Belgium had on Great Britain’s decision to enter the war. I will use the Hansard transcripts of debates in the British Parliament to investigate the extent to which the defense of Belgian neutrality was involved in the pre-war deliberations. A comparison between the transcripts from 28 June to 3 August and those from 4 August will illustrate the change, if one exists, or the …

Perceptions Of Identity In Post-Famine Irish Return Migrants, Brittany Walsh

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The Irish census records from 1841 and 1851 demonstrated a nearly 20% drop in population over the course of the Great Famine, accounting for both death and emigration during that period. Among this drop was the community of nearly 1.5 million emigrants who left during the decade, a number accounting for half of the citizens leaving Ireland in the nineteenth century. While most of this community were permanent migrants, an estimated 10% of those who emigrated to the United States returned to Ireland during the second half of the century. This research will analyze the construction of Irish emigrant identity …

Walking In A Burnt Hole, Sophia Friedman

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Holocaust stems from the Greek word “burnt hole,” but when the word Holocaust is mentioned today it refers to the rise of Nazi Germany in 1933 until the fall in 1945 (Skloot). More specifically, the Holocaust refers to the 11 million persecutions through concentration camps. The Holocaust is widely studied for various reasons, but the biggest reason is that “’we are seekers of understanding in the territory defined by those events” (Skloot 9). Through written work, such as poetry and plays, the Holocaust is brought to life in a more realistic way.

Through art we are able to connect to …

Legal Tools Instead Of Weapons: Jewish Resistance To The State Takeover Of Urban Real Estate And Businesses During The Antonescu Regime, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"I will investigate the different forms of Jewish resistance to the Antonescu regime, focusing on the use of legalities to bypass the process of Romanianization or Aryanization or state takeover of businesses and urban real estate, a process that aimed to exclude Jews from the local economy and, ultimately, from society.¹ The use of legal tools, mainly sabotage and judicial contestation by tens of thousands of Romanian Jews, was resistance to the Holocaust at its best.² If the seizure of Jewish properties, businesses, and jobs, as envisioned by Romanianization’s social architects, had succeeded, it would have meant starvation, …

Printing And Protestants: An Empirical Test Of The Role Of Printing In The Reformation, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The causes of the Protestant Reformation have long been debated. This paper seeks to revive and econometrically test the theory that the spread of the Reformation is linked to the spread of the printing press. I test this theory by analyzing data on the spread of the press and the Reformation at the city level. An econometric analysis that instruments for omitted variable bias with a city's distance from Mainz, the birthplace of printing, suggests that cities with at least one printing press by 1500 were at minimum 29 percentage points more likely to be Protestant by 1600.

Stalin's Russia: Visions Of Happiness, Omens Of Terror, Mark Konecny, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Creative Works – Exhibitions

"In 1970 an American high school teacher began a thirty-year journey into Stalin’s Russia. The items you see here were selected from more than 8,000 artifacts conserved on that journey.

Tom Ferris (the teacher) began collecting early, and he collected just about everything. But in 1970 Tom found a focus for his collecting and a new love and passion – Russia herself...

Tom’s dream was that his collection of Russian memorabilia be preserved, kept safe, and made available for study so people could understand how Stalin came to be; so Soviet history would be real, not abstract; so future generations …

Call To Duty: Women And World War I, Jennifer D. Keene

History Faculty Articles and Research

"Watching loved ones depart, uncertain if they would return—this was an experience that women around the world shared during the Great War. The continual scene of women sending men off to fight was troubling; paradoxically, it was also a familiar, traditional ritual that reinforced gender roles within western societies. "

3rd Place Research Paper: The Descent Unseen: Greece’S Unappreciated Place In British Political History, Kenneth Schneider

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

For hundreds of years, Great Britain possessed an empire and military that gave it an almost unrivaled power in international politics. However, as World War II drew to a close, it became increasingly evident that Great Britain no longer possessed the power it once had. In Greece, communist protest, and eventually insurrection, began as a result of disagreements in regards to the place of King George II of Greece and the future of free elections in the country after the departure of the German forces. “The Descent Unseen: Greece’s Unappreciated Place in British Political History” examines the time from outbreak …

Political Legitimacy And Technology Adoption, Metin M. Coşgel, Thomas J. Miceli, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A fundamental question of economic and technological history is why some civilizations adopted new and important technologies and others did not. In this paper, we analyze the effect that new technologies have on agents that legitimize rulers. We construct a simple political economy model which suggests that rulers may not accept a productivity-enhancing technology when it negatively affects an agent’s ability to provide the ruler legitimacy. However, when other sources of legitimacy emerge, the ruler will accept the technology as long as the new legitimizing source is not negatively affected. We use this insight to help explain the initial blocking …

Perpetrators, Bystanders, And Rescuers: Popular Attitudes Towards Ottoman Christians During The Armenian Genocide, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article explores the popular attitudes of Ottoman Muslims (mainly Turks and Kurds) and foreign residents (German, US, British, so on) towards their Christian (mainly Armenian and Syriac) friends, neighbours, and countrymen during the tragic events that occurred in WWI Ottoman Empire, known in Western scholarship as the Armenian genocide. Overall, the attitudes of Ottoman Muslims and foreign residents towards local Christians fit into the perpetrators/ bystanders/rescuers paradigm and varied from active persecution to indifference, opportunism, and sometimes help and rescue.

The Dynamic Concepts Of Resistance And Collaboration In Post-Holocaust Remembrance. Revisiting The Personal Narratives Of Jewish Survivors From Romania, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines how the Holocaust survivors from Romania represented and reinterpreted the notions of resistance and collaboration. Overall, it seems that the treatment of the Holocaust in post-WWII public opinion and scholarship influenced the way survivors represented the Holocaust. For many years, resistance was equated with ‘heroic’ armed struggle. Gradually, the perspective of the Holocaust began to change, and new interpretations enlarging the concept of resistance have since emerged. The issue of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis has also triggered heated debates. Due to changing social and political contexts, new interpretations focusing on the difficulties and moral dilemmas faced …

An Army Of Housewives: Women’S Wartime Columns In Two Mainstream Israeli Newspapers, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

At the height of Israel's 1948 war, women's columns in the newspapers Ha'aretz and Ma‘ariv offered readers advice, stories, and letters. They focused on domestic practices such as preparing food, sewing clothes, dressing fashionably and providing comfort. At first glance, they completely ignored the war raging around them. However, this essay shows that the columnists portrayed housewives' roles, no less than men's front-line fighting, as an important part of the nation's wartime effort. The columnists and their responding readers took the housewives' domestic practices, which made them seem so unfit for battle and turned them into a battlefield of their …

Holocaust Si Gulag – Variante Ale Conceptului De Genocid? Intre Dreptul International Si Teoriile Contemporane Privind Violenta Colectiva [Holocaust And Gulag – Varieties Of The Concept Of Genocide? Between International Law And Current Theories Of Collective Violence]., Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines the concept of genocide from the point of view international legislation, its applicability to the mass violence phenomena known as Holocaust and Gulag, the difficulties of interpretation and the various solutions proposed by contemporary scholars. It seems that there is a need for a change in the definition of genocide in the international law, in the sense of updating this definition to the political and social developments in the world. The current concept of genocide, regulated by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide poses a series of impediments that makes …

The Boom Of Testimony After Communism: The Voices Of The Holocaust Survivors In Romania: 1989-2005, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

"In this article I intend to deal with the relation between Jewish survivors and Holocaust remembrance in post-communist Romania. Therefore I will investigate the consequences of the Holocaust experience on Jewish survivors from the perspective of how, when and why they remember the catastrophe. My investigation will not particularly focus on the level of the trauma and sufferings they have to live with, but rather on how the political, social and cultural factors have managed to influence the public recollection of the war sufferings and the survivors’ attitude towards Holocaust remembrance. I am interested in discovering mainly the way these …

Review Of "A Fraternity Of Arms: America & France In The Great War" By Robert B. Bruce., Jennifer D. Keene

History Faculty Articles and Research

This is a review of Robert B. Bruce's "A Fraternity of Arms: American & France in the Great War."

Review Of "Understanding The Great War" By Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau And Annette Becker, Jennifer D. Keene

History Faculty Articles and Research

This is a review of Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker's "Understanding the Great War."

Review Of "Red Diapers: Growing Up In The Communist Left" Ed. Judy Kaplan And Linn Shapiro, Jennifer D. Keene

History Faculty Articles and Research

This is a review of "Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left" editied by Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro.

The Solomenko Embroidery Workshops, Wendy Salmond

Art Faculty Articles and Research

This article reevaluates the Solomenko Embroidery Workshops in the context of late nineteenth century Russia's rapid establishment of art colonies and centers dedicated to restoring the handicraft industries of the kustar.

Sergio De Benedetti Manuscript (English Translation), Sergio De Benedetti

Sergio De Benedetti Manuscript

The autobiography of a young physicist who left Italy after the passage of the Racial Laws in 1938. Written in 1941, this account covers the tumultuous years between the two world wars. English translation.