European History Commons^™

America’S Best Idea: The Separation Of Church And State, A Review, Michael A. Smith

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This article critically assesses Randall Balmer’s America’s Best Idea, a historical and legal examination of the Jeffersonian principle of church-state separation. Drawing on Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists and Roger Williams’ earlier theological insights, Balmer frames the metaphorical “wall” as both a constitutional safeguard and cultural cornerstone. The review analyzes the book’s treatment of evolving Supreme Court jurisprudence, particularly the shift from strict separationism to accommodationism in recent decisions. It contextualizes this legal transformation within the broader rise of Christian Nationalism, examining the ideological and institutional pressures reshaping civic discourse. While affirming Balmer’s historical rigor and rhetorical …

The Architects Of Consensus: Propaganda, Patriotism, And The Owi’S Battle For The American Mind, Ryan G. Fix

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

During World War II, the Office of War Information (OWI) became the United States' most sophisticated domestic propaganda agency, charged with forging national unity in the face of global conflict. This paper explores how the OWI fused federal authority with private-sector cooperation to influence public sentiment through film, advertising, journalism, and rumor control. Rather than resorting to direct censorship, the agency relied on voluntary collaboration, emotional appeal, and strategic framing to shape a coherent narrative that blurred the line between democratic persuasion and ideological management. Drawing on an extensive range of primary sources, including internal memos, field reports, and public …

Kicking In The Copper Country: The Rise And Fall Of Early Soccer In Michigan's Upper Peninsula 1909-1914, Gabe Logan

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

Near the beginning of the twentieth century, Cornish miners introduced soccer to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. They initially played informal scrimmages and friendlies until 1909 when several mining communities organized the Copper League. This began spirited competition until the Copper Strike of 1913-1914 terminated interest in the sport. Following labor hostilities, many players moved away from the Keweenaw and ended this once promising league.

Spa 619 - Seminar In Studies Of Hispanic And Latin American Cultures, Juan Jesús Payán

Open Educational Resources

SPA619 es un curso diseñado para estudiantes de los programas de maestría en literatura española y educación. En esta clase conocerás o revisitarás de manera crítica conceptos históricos socialmente construidos, pero que habitualmente se dan como realidades objetivas o empíricas. Problematizaremos, por ejemplo, no solo una noción panétnica reduccionista de la “cultura hispánica”, sino también la ficción de diferencia radical generada desde el nacionalismo exclusionista.

Aunque seguiremos un viaje cronológico a través de hitos de la historiografía hispánica, en este curso nos interrogaremos sobre la construcción misma de lo que damos en llamar “historia”. Para ello, no solo tocaremos principios …

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 38. Alfred Russel Wallace's "Revolt Of Democracy": A Critical Analysis Of Early 20th Century Labor Theory And Its Contemporary Relevance, James Williams, Charles H. Smith Editor

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

This article examines Alfred Russel Wallace’s political treatise The Revolt of Democracy (1913), analyzing his theoretical framework for addressing labor unrest and economic inequality in early 20th-century Britain. Wallace's work presents a comprehensive critique of competitive capitalism and proposes systematic government intervention to address structural poverty. Through close textual analysis and comparison with contemporary UK labor conditions, this study evaluates the enduring relevance of Wallace's economic theories and policy prescriptions. The analysis reveals significant continuities between early 20th-century and contemporary debates about living wages, government employment standards, and wealth redistribution, while highlighting both the prescience and limitations of Wallace’s analytical …

One Last Victory: The 1980 Moscow Olympics And The Ussr’S Final Golden Moment, Pablo Boluda

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

While much of the existing scholarship on the 1980 Moscow Olympics focuses on Jimmy Carter’s infamous boycott, a closer examination from the Soviet perspective reveals a distinctive moment in Cold War history. Set against escalating global tensions following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Kremlin capitalized on the Games to project strength, unity, and international legitimacy. Although the Western boycott affected the Games, it created an opportunity for the USSR to showcase socialist athletic excellence and strengthen diplomatic ties with Non-Aligned nations, many of which resisted U.S. pressure to abstain. The Games were transformed into a carefully orchestrated ideological spectacle. …

Healing On The Homefront: Convelescent Homes In England During Wwi, Elizabeth Rogerson

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

This paper explores the response to soldiers needing rehabilitation in World War One and how convalescent facilities impacted the everyday lives of injured men, nurses, and military medicine. During the Great War, there was an influx of the diversity of injuries due to the expanse of biological and machine warfare. Recognizing that field hospitals were insufficient, England’s War Office executed a plan to requisition public facilities and use volunteer forces not only to heal English men but soldiers from across the world. This paper establishes the context for the convalescing system in England and then its accommodation and improvisation for …

Restorative Nostalgia And Religious Nationalism: Lessons From Srebrenica, Noreen Herzfeld

The Journal of Social Encounters

Svetlana Boym uses the term restorative nostalgia to describe a collective nostalgia, based on an idealization of the past that is used by nationalist groups to motivate their followers. When linked with religion, this type of nostalgia is particularly damaging, frequently leading to sharp ethnic or religious divisions, a demonization of the other, and even war or genocide. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina presents an example of such nostalgia on the part of the Serbs. An idealization and its resultant rhetoric on the part of Serbian political and religious figures envisioned an imagined future rooted in nostalgia for a …

Schism And Dialogue In Antioch: Melkite-Orthodox Relations, 1724 – Present, Berge Traboulsi

The Journal of Social Encounters

More than three centuries after the emergence of Uniatism and the 1724 Antiochian schism, deep divisions persist between the Melkite Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches. Despite ecumenical milestones and the official condemnation of Uniatism, full ecclesiastical union remains elusive. Efforts to heal the 1054 schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy likewise continue to encounter significant obstacles. This study examines traditional Melkite–Orthodox relations, academic initiatives, and dialogue efforts within the Antiochian context. It advocates bold, reform-oriented approaches to coexistence and collaboration—grounded in human rights and fraternity—moving beyond polemics toward mutual understanding, reconciliation, and trust.

Historical Note: The Capricious Nature Of Privanzas In Habsburg Spain: 1556-1665, Nathan Harkey

The Ozark Historical Review

The vast reaches of the Spanish Habsburg empire necessitated a change in court politics in order to manage day-to-day issues for the king. The answer to this problem in Spain, as in other European kingdoms, was the emergence of the privado or court favorite as a legitimate official who would ideally manage the influx of state affairs, limiting access to the king that would have been previously attainable through audiences. While the original purpose of the privado was to alleviate the countless duties of an overburdened monarch, early modern privanzas became a form of art in the expression of absolute …

Out Of Orbit? European Space Collaboration In Post-Brexit Europe, Colin Doege

The Ozark Historical Review

This paper explores the historical role of the UK within the European Space Agency in light of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union.

Fashioning A Political Identity: French Women And The White Neoclassical Dress, Michele Dobbins

The Ozark Historical Review

This essay seeks to probe the question of women’s neoclassical dress – how was it represented in art, why did it maintain longevity, and what did it mean for the hundreds of women who decided to wear the ideals of Greek and Rome upon their very bodies?

English King And German Commoner: An Exploration Of Sixteenth Century Clothing And Identity, Bradley Moore

The Ozark Historical Review

There is perhaps no other external article which is more closely tied to one’s sense of identity than clothing. With a quick glance, one can readily gauge a person by their dress. So too, in the sixteenth century; clothing was used to construct identity, and in some cases to deconstruct it as well. This paper seeks to explore how identity and clothing are in many ways, inseparable. Concepts of religiosity, gender, nationalism, and “the other” were all intimately tied to dress and fashion. During the sixteenth century, perhaps even more strongly than now, clothing could be read like a book …

The Italian Colony Of São Paulo: Race, Class, And Cultural Capital In Brazil, Giulia Riccò

Race & Ethnic Studies

WINNER, 2024 ALDO AND JEANNE SCAGLIONE PUBLICATION AWARD FOR A MANUSCRIPT IN ITALIAN LITERARY STUDIES, MODERN LANGUAGES ASSOCIATION

Introduces a way to study migration that privileges literary analysis over and against sociological data and insists on the importance of culture in the production of political identities

This book argues that Italians first became racialized as white in São Paulo, Brazil, at the turn of the twentieth century. Whereas Italians in the United States struggled with xenophobia and were often not fully acknowledged as white, in São Paulo, due to a series of social, economic, and cultural fac­tors, Italians became closely …

The Layers Of Trauma In Gisella Perl’S I Was A Doctor In Auschwitz, Tiffany Sidders

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

Contemporary trauma theory argues that trauma operates in a binary, linear fashion that represents healing from a crisis. As one of the foremost trauma theorists, Cathy Caruth situates trauma within a binary framework of either victim or perpetrator but does not fully account for victims who became perpetrators or those who perpetrated for survival—or for the survival of others. One example of such a figure is Gisella Perl. In her memoir I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, Perl describes multiple layers of trauma that create a deeper connection to her emotions and her lived experience in Auschwitz. Unlike other …

The German Press's Coverage Of The Bavarian Freikorps, Chase Kinder

Research from the Berry Summer Thesis Institute, 2025

The Freikorps (Free Corps) was a German paramilitary group that primarily consisted of former World War I soldiers who experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and continued their military combat by suppressing communist revolutions in Germany throughout the early Weimar Republic. My research investigates how the German press in Munich covered the Bavarian Freikorps’ swift removal of armed communists and their violence against German civilians during the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919. This news coverage influenced how a large portion of German civilians viewed and interacted with German veterans of World War I and the Freikorps after …

A Complex Border: Intractability And The Physical Roots Of Discursive Legitimations In Cyprus, Hilmi Ulas

Peace Studies Faculty Articles and Research

The Cypriot conflict is one of the most intractable conflicts of the modern era, and the collapse of complexity among the actors in the conflict—mainly the Republic of Cyprus, North Cyprus, and Turkey—appears to be the main cause of the continued “no war, no peace” state. Subsequent socio-psychological self-organization among these actors then produces conflict-perpetuating feedback loops and dynamics. These dynamics include identity narratives, narratives of “the other,” and narratives of the nature of the conflict, which, at the grassroots level, can legitimize ongoing engagement in the conflict, whereas peace is painted as an undesirable and undeserved/unjust compromise. Given this, …

Flowing Progress: Transforming The Danube Through Infrastructure, Stefan Dorondel, Luminita Gatejel

Central European Studies

Flowing Progress: Transforming the Danube Through Infrastructure focuses on how different political regimes and forms of governance have imagined and technologically transformed the most international river in the world. Multidisciplinary and drawing on methodologies of history, anthropology of infrastructure, and science, technology, and society, this collection explores the tensions between the river and its natural pulses, the humans that populate its floodplains, state agencies, and infrastructure. The book engages the concept of disturbance to point out the circular and spiraling dynamics between hydrological processes and technopolitical and economic practices. Disturbance denotes a specific type of long-term dynamic between human attempts …

[Review Of] The Trial Of A Nazi Doctor: Franz Lucas As Defendant, Opportunist, And Deceiver By Andrew Wisely. New York, Ny: Berghahn Books, 2024. Pp. Xiv+364. Cloth $150.00. Isbn 978-1-80539-530-0., Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

"While we know a lot about the general framework of the trials of Nazi perpetrators, including of specific professional groups, the field of Holocaust, mass violence, and perpetrator studies still needs more in-depth studies on the careers, crimes, and the postwar whereabouts of individual midlevel Nazi officials who had power of life and death over thousands of inmates of Nazi camps and whose lives and careers were not thoroughly investigated by scholars. That is why the book authored by Andrew Wisely examining the case of the SS doctor Franz Bernhard Lucas as a long durée historical biography, is a much-needed …

From Heaven To Hell: A Reinterpretation Of Comparison Between Germany’S Airborne Fallschirmjäger Operations And The Allied Airborne Operation At Arnhem In World War Ii, Jeremy Herbert

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis examines the legacy of the German paratrooper corps and compares them to similar Allied operations during World War II. Relying on archival documents as well as 80 years of analysis by historians, the thesis argues that the overwhelming consensus among historians of the German Fallschirmjäger as a failed experiment is undeserved, since the pitfalls experienced during their operations pale in comparison to similar British operations. The German invasion of Crete in 1941 serves as the base example for Anglophone historians who favor the idea of German failure solely based on the number of German casualties. In reality, the …

Cultural Vibrations: Student Power, International Exchange, And Black America In Mai 1968, Noah Micheal Roberts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract This thesis examines the prominence of Black Americans in the 68’ student movement in France. May 68’ incorporated a diverse and global network of social movements and political organizations, and had a notable connection to the American student movement. Black Americans had formed a large expatriate community in France which overlapped with many of the transnational connections forged by the student movements of 68’. This community was extremely notable in the French public sphere for popular works of literature and music, but its political contributions have been minimized or understudied. By utilizing student accounts, state and organizational records, and …

Some Corrections To The Record On Lemkin’S Early Years: The Evidence From Poland, Zachary Mazur

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This piece addresses some misunderstandings regarding Raphael Lemkin's early years in Poland, his influences and the development of his ideas. While discussing some of the extent published information, I point out what other archival documents from Poland and the League of Nations have to say about Lemkin's past. One of the main points is that Lemkin was an unreliable narrator on his own life, and this has caused confusion.

Historiography Of The Medieval Tournament: How The Study Of Jousting Reflects Medieval Studies, Maddux L. Mullinax

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

In the modern age, sports are more than just athletes on a field in front of screaming fans; instead, they are dynamic showcases of strategic prowess, cultural expression, and societal values. Long before stadiums and sports arenas became the centers of competition and entertainment, medieval tournaments enthralled audiences with their unique blend of martial skill and pageantry. From the electrifying clash of a joust to the elaborate courtly dances, the history of the tournament weaves a vivid tapestry of medieval life. This merging of chivalry and combat creates an enduring spectacle that has captivated historians and enthusiasts for centuries. The …

Origins Of The Great War: The European Powder Keg, I.B. Landry

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The weakened state of Russia in the years following the Russo-Japanese War offered the best chance for the Schlieffen Plan to work, because Russia was not prepared to fight a general war during this period. Instead, what occurred was a constant rise in tension over competing powers who were not willing to concede on their intransigent foreign policies. While it is true that Germany was aggressive, powers like Britain, France, and Russia imposed limitations on German growth. The arms race and the militarism that grew in tandem did no favors for the competing interests of the European “powder keg.”

The Blurry Line: Examining The Balance Between Feminism And Nationalism For Women In Early 20th Century Ireland, Seamus M. Clune

History Summer Fellows

The early 20th century in Ireland was a complex and confusing period. Between British Imperialism, The Gaelic Revival, World War I, the suffrage movement, and the Irish War of Independence, the period was fast and turbulent. Above the shifting ground, Irish women activists balanced two key political causes: feminism and Irish nationalism. Past scholarship has examined the coexistence of these two ideals. At times, one suppressed the other. At other times, they worked in tandem. This project offers a new interpretation of Irish women's political activity through a close reading of the letters and memoirs of three people: Constance Markievicz …

Habsburg Ruthenian/Rusyn Identities Part Ii: Where Are The Michigan Ruthenians?, Robert Goodrich

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

Ruthenians overwhelmingly came to Michigan between 1900 and 1914 as citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, where their ethnic (national) status was officially recognized and protected (at least formally). Their distinct identity was built around their Rusyn language, Ruthenian Rite Catholicism, connection to a cultural territorial homeland along the Carpathians (Ruthenia), and an overwhelmingly peasant-based village life generally led by sacerdotal families. However, the lack of a single administrative focus within the Monarchy’s multi-ethnicity meant that Ruthenians always showed a high degree of regional variation. With the collapse of the Monarchy in 1918, the polyvalent centrifugal tendencies rapidly accelerated so that …

Ethnicizing Europe: Hate And Violence After Versailles, Éva Kovács, Raul Cârstocea, Gábor Egry

Central European Studies

Ethnicizing Europe focuses on the dynamics of interethnic violence in Europe between the two world wars. The new international system that was enshrined by the Versailles peace treaties after World War I did not bring stability to East-Central Europe. Rather, it resulted in a host of conditions like self-determination, international oversight, revolutionary political ideas, and democratic processes, which eventually gave new meaning to already established conflicts, as well as igniting new conflicts in the region. This book opens with a discussion of the theoretical scholarship on ethnicity before proceeding to specific case studies investigating the different ways in which ethnicity …

The Devil’S In The Details: Opposition To Demonology In Early Modern Europe, Abigail Pickard

The Purdue Historian

Common assumptions that believers of witchcraft in the early modern period were uneducated fanatics overgeneralize the complex interplay of early modern science and theology. The study of demons, known as demonology, was considered a science. It was a respected field that was studied and debated. Theologians scrutinized, defended, and revised demonological theories. Thinkers turned over foundational concepts and split hairs over the fine details of theology. Since educated scholars were considered authorities on demonology, they repeatedly wrote, talked, and theorized about the topic in a similar fashion to other ideologies of the early modern era. Due to this, authors of …

Páginas Del Diario Ruso Del Lingüista Bilbaíno Imanol Agiŕe Durante La Segunda Guerra Mundial, Guillermo Aguirre Martínez

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

En 1941 el lingüista y escritor bilbaíno Imanol Agiŕe (Bilbao, 1913–Madrid, 1983) se integra en la División Azul en calidad de intérprete. En este trabajo se dan a conocer extractos del diario que Agiŕe llevó durante el tiempo que tomó parte activa en la II Guerra Mundial (1941–1942). En el testimonio del autor se recogen escenas significativas abrigadas por descripciones costumbristas, reflexiones sobre la condición humana e incluso, puntualmente, evocaciones literarias –Cervantes, Gógol, Goncharov, Pushkin, Lérmontov o Chéjov–. Como apoyo documental se presentan algunas fotografías archivadas en uno de los álbumes fotográficos de Agiŕe, cuya trayectoria se contextualizará, así como …

De Vente A Alemania, Pepe A ¿Te Has Venido A Alemania, Pepe?: Aspectos Económicos Y Culturales De La Emigración En Dos Generaciones Distintas, Daniel López Fernández

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

En Vente a Alemania, Pepe, el epónimo protagonista decide seguir el camino de muchos de sus compatriotas y abandonar temporalmente España con la intención de ganar más dinero en el extranjero, una esperanza que se ve pronto frustrada. Décadas más tarde, la crisis económica que comenzó en 2008 parece haber dado lugar a una repetición de este capítulo tragicómico de la historia española. No obstante, existen diferencias notables entre ambas generaciones. La migración actual atañe a una generación muy distinta de la que se marchó en los años sesenta y setenta. Se trata, en muchos casos, de inmigrantes con una …