Political History Commons^™

Review Of Levis Sullam, Simon, The Italian Executioners: The Genocide Of The Jews Of Italy, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

A book review of Simon Levis Sullam's The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy.

Keith Haring: Silence = Death, Nellie Jalalian

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The American aids crisis is one of the most important epidemics of the contemporary world, yet many americans do not know the severity of the crisis or the true lasting effects on recent society. In my project I will go over personal accounts of individuals directly affected by the illness, like famed artist Keith Haring, to give it a more human perspective. I will also reflect on the art that was created at the time, and how that was reflective on the people affected. Aids is an immunodeficiency virus that has been proven difficult to diagnose in the early on …

Review Of The Revolution Of '28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, And The Coming Of The New Deal, Robert A. Slayton

History Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Robert Chiles' The Revolution of '28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal.

A Roundtable On Robert K. Brigham, Reckless: Henry Kissinger’S Responsibility For The Tragedy In Vietnam, Amanda Demmer, Richard A. Moss, Scott Laderman, Luke A. Nichter, David F. Schmitz, Robert K. Brigham

Presidential Studies Faculty Articles and Research

A set of reviews of Robert K. Brigham's Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam, with a response from the author.

3rd Place Contest Entry: Aesthetic Activism: Protest Art In The Delano Grape Strike, Felicia Viano

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Felicia Viano's submission for the 2019 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won third place. It contains her essay on using library resources, a three-page sample of her research project on the use of art as a social movement tactic by the United Farm Workers during the Delano Grape Strike, and her works cited list.

Felicia is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in History and Peace Studies. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Robert Slayton.

1st Place Contest Entry: Countering The Current: The Function Of Cinematic Waves In Communist Vs. Capitalist Societies, Maddie Gwinn

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Maddie Gwinn's submission for the 2019 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains her essay on using library resources, a three-page sample of her research project on how the Czech New Wave and New Hollywood cinema are defined by their agency in preserving and prescribing cultural meaning across their societies while being bound to their economic systems, and her works cited list.

Maddie is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in Film Production. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Carmichael Peters.

H-Diplo Roundtable Xx-20 On Matthew J. Ambrose. The Control Agenda: A History Of The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Scott Kaufman, Ronald J. Granieri, John Maurer, Luke A. Nichter, David Tal, Matthew Ambrose

Presidential Studies Faculty Articles and Research

A set of reviews of Matthew J. Ambrose's The Control Agenda: A History of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, with a response from the author.

Spanish California Missions: An Economic Success, Lynne Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Starting in 1769, the Spanish established missions in Alta California. A small band of soldiers, Franciscan priests and volunteers walked from Baja California to San Francisco Bay through semi-arid, scarcely populated land stopping occasionally to establish a location for a religious community. Usually two priests, a few soldiers and a few Indians from Baja California settled at the spot. Their only resources for starting an economy were themselves, a few animals and a nearby source of water. They attracted the local Indians to join the community and perform the work necessary to create a strong economy. After only a few …

Review Of Deletant, Dennis, British Clandestine Activities In Romania During The Second World War, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

A review of British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War by Dennis Deletant.

Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description Of Marginalized Histories, Annie Tang, Dorothy Berry, Kelly Bolding, Rachel E. Winston

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Influenced by the radical archives movement, panelists discuss their (re)processing projects for which they wrote or rewrote descriptions in culturally competent approaches. Their case studies include materials regarding underrepresented peoples and historically oppressed groups who are marginalized from or maligned in the archival record. Targeted to processors, this session aims to teach participants to apply their cultural competencies in writing finding aids through an introduction to cultural competency framework, the case study examples, and a short audience-participation exercise.

H-Diplo Article Review 780 On “Nuclear Weapons, Coercive Diplomacy And The Vietnam War.”, Luke A. Nichter

Presidential Studies Faculty Articles and Research

A review of The Journal of Cold War Studies's Forum on Nuclear Weapons, Coercive Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War: Perspectives on Nixon’s Nuclear Specter by Robert Jervis and Mark Lawrence.

Review Of Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom, Nubar Hovsepian

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Norman G. Finkelstein's Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, published by University of California Press.

Mass Media And The Diffusion Of Collective Action In Authoritarian Regimes: The June 1953 East German Uprising, Charles Crabtree, Holger L. Kern, Steven Pfaff

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

A growing literature attributes the rapid diffusion of domestic collective mobilization against authoritarian regimes to foreign mass media broadcasts. We examine this relationship in the context of the June 17, 1953, uprising in East Germany, the first national rebellion against communist rule in Eastern Europe. The uprising involved an extraordinarily swift and wide-ranging diffusion of antiregime collective action. Observers on both sides of the Iron Curtain attributed the revolt to Western media broadcasts, particularly news broadcasts by the Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) of Berlin. While historians have strongly endorsed this view, social scientists have never quantitatively tested it. …

Using Wikipedia In Israel Studies Courses, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

Instructors of Israeli history or literature, like professors in other areas, complain about students’ use of Wikipedia—and with good reason. Unlike peer-reviewed scholarship, many Wikipedia articles contain information that is both incomplete and wrong. Most instructors will warn their students that relying on Wikipedia is a sure recipe for failing assignments. Yet there is a way to mobilize this giant encyclopedia for pedagogical purposes. When students in Israel Studies classes are assigned to edit Wikipedia articles, they achieve multiple goals: they gain critical reading skills, shape public knowledge about Israel, and engage in active learning. This article explains how to …

Civil Liberties And The Dual Legacy Of The Founding, John W. Compton

Political Science Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter will argue that the framers’ dual legacy in the area of civil liberties has cast a long historical shadow. Since the early republic, Americans have invoked constitutional civil liberties provisions to challenge customary forms of authority. Yet establishing the abstract legitimacy of one's claim – that it comports with a particular conception of religious liberty or the freedom of speech, for example – has typically been insufficient to prevail in the courts."

Review Of Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why The West Got Rich And The Middle East Did Not, Lynne P. Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Jared Rubin's Rulers, Religion, & Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not.

Mansplaining Vietnam: Male Veterans And America's Popular Image Of The Vietnam War, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Articles and Research

Of the more than 3 million Americans who deployed to Southeast Asia during the United States' involvement in the Vietnamese civil war, only some 7,500 were women. Thus, it seems reasonable that memoirs, novels, and film would privilege the male experience when remembering the Vietnam War. Yet in the aftermath of South Vietnam's collapse, Americans' memory of the war narrowed even further, equating the conflict as a whole to the male combat veteran's story. This synthetic literary review examines some of the more lasting works sustaining the popular narrative of Vietnam, one that was constructed, in substantial part, by veterans …

The German Plunder And Theft Of Jewish Property In The General Government, David M. Crowe

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Th e German conquest of Poland in the fall of 1939 unleashed the full horror of Nazi racial ideals that saw the gradual evolution of policies that ultimately led to the mass murder of 90 percent of prewar Poland’s 3.3–3.5 million Jews. The geographical center for what the Germans would ultimately call the Final Solution—a plan that Alfred Rosenberg explained meant 'the biological eradication of the entire Jewish people'—was the Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete (General Government for the Occupied Areas of Poland). Over time, the General Government would become not only Nazi Germany’s principal racial laboratory but also …

H-Diplo Roundtable Xix, 14 On Dynamic Détente: The United States And Europe, 1964-1975, Thomas Schwartz, Werner Lippert, Luke A. Nichter, Kenneth Weisbrode, Stephan Kieninger

Presidential Studies Faculty Articles and Research

A set of reviews of Stephan Kieninger's Dynamic Détente: The United States and Europe, 1964-1975, with a response from the author.

Italy’S Jews From Emancipation To Fascism, Shira Klein

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

How did Italy treat Jews during World War II? Historians have shown beyond doubt that many Italians were complicit in the Holocaust, yet Italy is still known as the Axis state that helped Jews. Shira Klein uncovers how Italian Jews, though victims of Italian persecution, promoted the view that Fascist Italy was categorically good to them. She shows how the Jews' experience in the decades before World War II - during which they became fervent Italian patriots while maintaining their distinctive Jewish culture - led them later to bolster the myth of Italy's wartime innocence in the Fascist racial campaign. …

Quantitative Historical Analysis Uncovers A Single Dimension Of Complexity That Structures Global Variation In Human Social Organization, Peter Turchin, Thomas E. Currie, Harvey Whitehouse, Pieter François, Kevin Feeney, Daniel Mullins, Daniel Hoyer, Christina Collins, Stephanie Grohmann, Patrick Savage, Gavin Mendel-Gleason, Edward Turner, Agathe Dupeyron, Enrico Cioni, Jenny Reddish, Jill Levine, Greine Jordan, Eva Brandl, Alice Williams, Rudolf Cesaretti, Marta Krueger, Alessandro Ceccarelli, Joe Figliulo-Rosswurm, Po-Ju Tuan, Peter Peregrine, Arkadiusz Marciniak, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Nikolay Kradin, Andrey Korotayev, Alessio Palmisano, David Baker, Julye Bidmead, Peter Bol, David Christian, Connie Cook, Alan Covey, Gary Feinman, Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Axel Kristinsson, John Miksic, Ruth Mostern, Camero Petrie, Peter Rudiak-Gould, Barend Ter Haar, Vesna Wallace, Victor Mair, Liye Xie, John Baines, Elizabeth Bridges, Joseph Manning, Bruce Lockhart, Amy Bogaard, Charles Spencer

Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information …

Martin Luther’S Spiritual Practice Was Key To The Success Of The Reformation, Marion Goldman, Steven Pfaff

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Germany’s Wittenberg Castle Church and inadvertently ushered in what came to be known as the Reformation.

In his theses, Luther explicitly attacked the Catholic Church’s lucrative practice of selling papal indulgences that promised individuals they could purchase absolution from their sins and hasten their way into heaven.

This was far more than a simple critique of the indulgence trade. Luther challenged the Church’s overall authority. Over the next century, Luther’s ideas seeded upheavals and transformed the Western world by diminishing the Church’s power and introducing new …

Withdrawal: Reassessing America's Final Years In Vietnam, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Withdrawal is a groundbreaking reassessment that tells a far different story of the Vietnam War. Daddis convincingly argues that the entire US effort in South Vietnam was incapable of reversing the downward trends of a complicated Vietnamese conflict that by 1968 had turned into a political-military stalemate. Despite a new articulation of strategy, Abrams's approach could not materially alter a war no longer vital to US national security or global dominance. Once the Nixon White House made the political decision to withdraw from Southeast Asia, Abrams's military strategy was unable to change either the course or outcome of a decades' …

“A Disconnected Dialogue: American Military Strategy, 1964-1968,” Oklahoma Humanities, Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall-Winter 2017., Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Articles and Research

"The admission, supported by a careful reading of the historical record, begs larger questions: How do we remember American strategy in Vietnam? What language do we use to describe a war that proved so tragic, not only for the United States but, perhaps more importantly, for the millions of Vietnamese who lost their lives in a decades-long civil war? In coming to grips with a complex war, Americans, then and now, have relied on a series of tropes to streamline their conversations about a distasteful war."

Review Of Dumitru, Diana, The State, Antisemitism, And Collaboration In The Holocaust: The Borderlands Of Romania And The Soviet Union And Geissbühler, Simon, Ed., Romania And The Holocaust: Events, Contexts, Aftermath, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

Reviews of The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union by Diana Dumitru and Romania and the Holocaust: Events, Contexts, Aftermath, edited by Simon Geissbühler.

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.

3rd Place Contest Entry: “Cry ‘Havoc!’ And Let Slip The Dogs Of War!”: The Canine Experience In The A.E.F., Amanda Larsh

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Amanda Larsh's submission for the 2017 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won third place. She wrote about the experiences of canine units in the American military during World War I. ou can read the final essay that came out of her research here.

Amanda is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in History and News & Documentary studies. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Leland L. Estes.

Anime And War, Carol Sun

Honors Papers and Posters

This poster examines the growth and development of anime in Japan in post-World War II Japan, particularly its ability to make audiences question the trajectory of humanity and society and to "critique the society that relies on technology...as a means to prevent or discourage war and conflict".

3rd Place Research Paper: “Cry ‘Havoc!’ And Let Slip The Dogs Of War!”: The Canine Experience In The A.E.F., Amanda Larsh

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

For thousands of years man and canine have hunted, fought, and survived together, eventually strengthening their relationship and reaching the bond experienced in modern times. Although scientists remain unsure as to when canine domestication began, modern dogs are dramatically different from their ancestors in more ways than merely the size of their snout.^[1] While World War I signaled a new era of warfare for humans, the role dogs played was not new or unfamiliar. Dogs battled alongside humans since the Stone Age, performed sentry duty under Napoleon’s rule of Alexandria and acted as scouts in the Spanish-American War.^{[2] …}

The Nixon Administration And American Foreign Relations, Luke A. Nichter

Presidential Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Assessments of President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy continue to evolve as scholars tap new possibilities for research. Due to the long wait before national security records are declassified by the National Archives and made available to researchers and the public, only in recent decades has the excavation of the Nixon administration’s engagement with the world started to become well documented. As more records are released by the National Archives (including potentially 700 hours of Nixon’s secret White House tapes that remain closed), scholarly understanding of the Nixon presidency is likely to continue changing. Thus far, historians have pointed to four …