TEACHING
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The transnational approach that shapes my research also informs my teaching. I encourage students to think about local and regional issues in broad geographic, political, and cultural contexts. To accomplish this, I draw on a variety of professional experiences—as a college-level instructor in the US and Europe, a docent in an art museum, an elementary school teacher in France, and a volunteer in a graduate-level history program for incarcerated women. Through each of these endeavors I have honed my pedagogical skills and discovered new ways of rendering complex ideas accessible to a wide variety of students.
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UNDERGRADUATE SURVEYS
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New Men? East Europe since 1800
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How do states, political regimes, and ideologies shape individuals’ identities? How do they impact people’s ties to various communities based on kinship, geography, religion, and language? And to what extent do they dictate dynamics among these groups? In this course, students explore these questions through an examination of East European history from 1800 to the present. While at the beginning of this period, most East Europeans were subjects of multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious empires, by the end of World War I, they had largely become citizens of nation-states. New laws, cultural forms, and social norms accompanied these political changes, altering how people understood themselves and their place in larger social and political formations. During the better part of the twentieth century, many East Europeans lived under state socialist regimes that sought to reconfigure human relations and individuals’ interactions with the state. As they investigate this history, and the post-communist period, in the second part of the semester, students consider whether or not state socialism successfully transformed people’s identities and why certain notions of belonging, especially those based on nationalist ideologies, have persisted into the twenty-first century.
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Introduction to Modern France: France as a Political Laboratory
In May 1789 the Estates General met in Versailles to vote on the tax reforms proposed by Louis XVI’s minister. By mid-June the delegates to this body had voted to transform themselves into the National Assembly, vowing not to separate until they had ratified a French constitution. Meanwhile a mob, or “the people,” took to the streets in protest a few miles away in Paris, storming the Bastille on July 14. We often refer to the conjunction of these two incidents as the start of the French Revolution, an event that looms over the history of not just modern France but the world. The French Revolution was just one in a seemingly never-ending series of revolutions, coups, and political upheavals that punctuated the last two and a half centuries of French history. Since the end of the eighteenth century, the French have lived under an absolutist monarch, an array of revolutionary regimes, two emperors, a constitutional monarchy, five republics, a socialist and an authoritarian regime. They also conquered and colonized other peoples, making them subjects of the French state. In many ways we can think of modern France as a political laboratory where forms of government were debated, attempted, and discarded. In this course students study the history of France from the perspective of its changing political regimes. They explore how the political, social, and economic impact one another. They discuss why various French governments proved to be so unstable in the end and whether or not this means that they were “failures.” They look at how politicians, theorists, and activists shaped and responded to the political landscape. They ask to what extent did these changing regimes shape France? Finally, they locate these discussions in a broader European and global context, investigating how world events impacted French history and how French actors, regimes, and ideas altered the course of affairs abroad.
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Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe: Universal Visions, Particular Realities
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In this course students explore the period from 1780-1850 in Europe as well as the transatlantic reach of continental events and actors. While initial lectures and discussions focus on France, the narrative quickly moves to consider the short- and long-term impact of the Revolution and Napoleon’s Empire across the continent. During the semester students return to two themes central to the study of the period (and history more broadly). First, they investigate the relationship between the universal and the particular: how local and regional actors across Europe reacted to French ideologies and ambitions—adopting, reinterpreting, and/or rejecting them over time and space. Second, they consider the place of individuals in history. Focusing the person of Napoleon, they ask to what degree individuals, even charismatic people in positions of power, can shape their times and to what extent events and movements beyond their control make or break their fortunes. These questions are hashed out in an interactive final debate.​
UNDERGRADUATE TOPICS COURSES & SEMINARS
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Slavery, Nation, and Race in Nineteenth-Century Southeast Europe
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In this course students examine the rise of nationalism and modern citizenship in Southeast Europe during the long nineteenth century. They explore how and why nation-states developed in these lands formerly ruled by empires. They trace the creation of national identities in the nineteenth century and their dissemination, particularly through educational institutions, the press, and other cultural tools. The course addresses the development of modern (male) citizenship and electoral freedom. It discusses the emancipation and enfranchisement of serfs, Roma, and Jews. Building on a new trend in the historiography of Southeast Europe, students consider practices of slavery in the region in a global context. They investigate how actors inside and outside of Southeast Europe, from Adamantios Korais to Jules Michelet, drew comparisons between European Christians in the Balkans, black populations in the Americas, and Muslim peoples in the Ottoman Empire to legitimize political demands. They consider how global debates over slavery and minority rights impacted regional discussions about Roma and Jewish emancipation. More broadly, explore the place of the Balkans in the articulation of civilizational hierarchies based on race, religion, and nationality as well as the rise of both modern antisemitism and islamophobia.
A Different Kind of Empire: Cultural Diplomacy, Mass Media, and the Cold War in Europe
During the Cold War the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies deployed a myriad of technologies to compete with one another. While the race for space and the atomic bomb come to mind; film, radio, television, modern kitchens, and educational exchanges were equally important tools during the Super-powers’ half-century standoff. This class explores the history of the Cold War, primarily in Europe, through the lens of cultural diplomacy and propaganda. Students analyze and study feature films, radio broadcasts, propaganda movies, cultural exchange programs, and daily practices in the United States, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe. In doing so, students hone important media literacy skills.
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We Are All Greeks: The Greek War of Independence and Nineteenth-Century Philhellenism as a European Phenomenon
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Beginning in 1821 people began to arrive in the Peloponnesus and on the Aegean Islands. They came from neighboring regions, such as the Italian Peninsula and the Danubian Principalities, and from European countries farther afield, including France, England, Germany, and Poland. Some even made the journey across the Atlantic to reach this corner of the Mediterranean. They had all come to volunteer in the Greek War of Independence. This conflict, fought for a country that did not yet exist, captured the attention of politicians and diplomats, writers and artists, bankers and engineers around the world and led to the creation of a small, independent state, which was formally recognized by the European powers in 1831. The Greek War of Independence serves as a case study to think about the intersection of the local, regional, and global and investigate the relationship between culture and politics. Over the course of the semester, students examine how events on Europe’s southeastern fringe shaped and were shaped by incidents, actors, and processes across the continent and around the world. To explore these issues, they use a range of primary sources including literary, philosophical, and political texts as well paintings, architecture, and fashion trends. Secondary works by historians, art historians, anthropologists, literary critics, and other scholars supplement these readings.
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GRADUATE COURSES
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Transnational Nineteenth-Century Europe
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This graduate seminar explores the advantages and challenges of writing transnational history and provides students with an overview of recent transnational research concerning nineteenth-century Europe and the world. During the first few weeks of the semester, students compare the practices of transnational history with related subfields. They assess what makes a study transnational rather than comparative, and what distinguishes this approach from diplomatic or international history. In the second part of the term, students explore the methodologies and historical traditions that contributed to the development of transnational history from large-scale Braudelian studies to micro-histories and from Actor-Network Theory to critical geography. During the final weeks of the course, students gain familiarity with new work in transnational history. Students are asked to pay particular attention to the sources used in these texts. They examine how the use of different types of materials provides transnational historians with means to refocus hegemonic narratives and decolonize discourses. Students interested in geographical areas beyond Europe gain theoretical knowledge.
Provincializing the West
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This seminar offers an interdisciplinary introduction to postcolonial studies, suitable for any student wishing to apply this approach in their coursework or research. Through close reading and discussion, two central activities of the course, we explore the relationship between the West (in the broadest sense) and the rest of the world from the Enlightenment to the present day. We examine how contact between Westerners and non-Westerners has shaped European academic, political, and identity discourses. We study how Eurocentric ideas persist in Western universities and politics. We will also analyze concepts often taken for granted, such as Western civilization, and how they structure both politics and science. This seminar will encourage students to reflect on the intersection of theory, history, and politics.
History of Globalization: The Rise of the Liberal Order
What is the liberal order? Why is the world organized the way it is? How did the political ideology of liberalism and the economic system we call capitalism become global norms? How do these structures contribute to global economic, political, and biopolitical inequalities? In this course, students will examine these questions, both historical and contemporary, to better understand the world today. By reading and analyzing the work of scholars in diverse disciplines (political science, history, economics, anthropology, sociology, geography, etc.) written between the eighteenth century and the present, students discover the long-term processes that have shaped relationships between actors on a global scale. They investigate the origins of the liberal and capitalist world. They put into perspective how institutions, policies, and social and economic practices have reproduced these systems both explicitly and implicitly. Students consider how individuals in the past and present have understood the world and their place within it.
​Peripheral Perspectives: Histories of the Margins
This seminar prompts students to reflect critically on who has the right to speak for and write about marginalized societies, giving them an opportunity to consider their own subject position as scholars and authors. While East Europe is a central focus, the seminar is configured to be useful to students with a wide range of geographic interests. Students consider the role of academic infrastructure, funding schemes, and politics in creating hierarchies of knowledge production. They explore how their own backgrounds make them well suited to analyze the histories of other societies and cultures as well as the potential pitfalls they might face as scholars with specific view points and forms of training.