European history

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• 4/11/2021
  

  Making Religious Peace in Afghanistan

  by Wayne Te Brake

  American policymakers must recognize the distinctly religious components of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, and learn from European wars of religion: the key to ending war is brokering a political agreement that protects religious diversity. 

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• SOURCE: Public Seminar
  4/8/2021
  

  Why Weimar is an Imperfect Mirror

  by Helmut Smith

  Peter Gay's "Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider" became a key text for understanding the Weimar era as an allegory for understanding political conflict when it was published in 1968. But his psychoanalytical approach can be an impediment to understanding the historical specificity of the era. 

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• SOURCE: Altoona Mirror
  2/1/2021
  

  Penn State Professor Studying Stories of Spanish Flu Survivors

  An accidental archival discovery led John Eicher to examine testimonials of European survivors of the 1918 influenza pandemic; the subsequent COVID pandemic made his developing research suddenly relevant to the news. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  1/27/2021
  

  Minorities and Myths: Antisemitism in Europe after 1919

  by Eileen Kane

  New scholarship complicates the narrative that Jews in the Soviet Union between the wars enjoyed full citizenship rights. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/11/2021
  

  Ex-Friends: Anne Applebaum and the Crisis of Centrist Politics

  Critic David Klion considers the unexamined relationship between the late 20th Century rise of market-oriented liberalism and the 21st century rise of authoritarian nationalism (or, "why so many of her once-close friends have turned out to be fascists").

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  12/8/2020
  

  Europe’s Most Terrible Years

  World War II was bookended by the infliction of mass suffering on Poles at the war's beginning and on German civilians at the war's end, with the worst years of Europe's history in between. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/19/2020
  

  What Did Europe Smell Like Centuries Ago? Historians Set Out to Recreate Lost Scents

  An ambitious project seeks to make museums a more immersive experience by using big data to mine primary sources for references to scent and use chemistry and perfumerie to recreate the mix of odors characteristic of a time and place. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  11/16/2020
  

  The Impresarios of Trent: The Long and Frightening History of the Blood Libel (review)

  Magda Teter's new book examines the history of the pernicious antisemitic myth, its cultivation by Christian authorities, and its amplification by the growth of print and literacy in renaissance Europe.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/2/2020
  

  Searching for Refuge After the Second World War

  New books by David Nasaw and Paul Betts examine the uncertain fate of Jewish Holocaust survivors in postwar Europe, the problem of massive human displacement, and the tension between interpreting Europe's refugee problem in universal terms or focusing on the specific consequences of anti-Jewish policies and prejudice. 

• 
• 10/18/2020
  

  Fraught Family Reunification After the Holocaust

  by Rebecca Clifford

  "A tenth of Europe's pre-war population of Jewish children survived the Holocaust. Many sought and achieved reunification with their families, but reunification did not usually end the trauma endured by this "fragment of an entire generation."

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• SOURCE: Datebook
  10/1/2020
  

  Teaching the Racism of European Art Head-On

  by Letha Ch'ien

  "Race and European Art set out to examine our racial history clearly, without sidestepping  the ugly and uncomfortable parts of our heritage. I got lucky, because the students who signed up wanted to do the same work. And boy, was it depressing. I joked that I had become the professor of 'Bum You Out Studies'."

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  9/8/2020
  

  Centrists Are Pining for a Golden Age that Never Was (Review)

  A review of Anne Applebaum's "Twilight of Democracy" argues that the author focuses on the role of nostalgia and personality in driving authoritarianism and breaking up the center-right coalition, but ignores the fact that that the center failed to deliver an improved standard of living to the broad public. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  6/6/2020
  

  Coronavirus Depletes the Keepers of Europe’s Memory

  The pandemic has hastened the departure of witnesses to the wrenching conflicts of the last century, allowing rising political forces to recast history.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  4/7/2020
  

  What Were the Origins of the Holocaust?

  A review of German historian Gotz Aly's new book "Europe Against the Jews: 1880-1945."

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian Magazine
  3/2/2020
  

  Experience 1930s Europe Through the Words of Two African American Women

  by Ethelene Whitmire

  In the pages of the “Chicago Defender,” the cousins detailed their adventures traversing the continent while also observing signs of the changing tides.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/1/2019
  

  Michael Howard, Eminent British Military Historian, Dies at 97

  A decorated soldier in World War II, he helped reshape the study of war and was knighted in 1986 for his academic work.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  November 30, 2019
  

  The Narwhal Tusk Has a Mystical History. A New Chapter was added on London Bridge.

  by Miriam Berger

  For centuries Europeans sought out the “unicorn horn” of the arctic-dwelling narwhal whale. 

• 
• 10/13/19
  

  International Resistance in World War 2 Europe

  by Olivier Wieviorka

  While national histories of wartime resistance are plentiful, the European dimension of the shadow army has rarely been taken into account.

• 
• 9/22/19
  

  The Separation of Church and State is About Freedom For Religion not Freedom From Religion

  by Christopher Binetti

  History shows that the State is more of a threat to the Church than vice-versa.

• 
• 9/8/19
  

  Sir Ian Kershaw on His Latest Book, Brexit, and the Future of Europe

  by David O’Connor

  "The EU has come a long way and, as Brexit shows, the networks built up over previous decades are extremely complex."