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Amber N Nickell

Fort Hays State University, History, Faculty Member

Purdue University, History, Graduate Student

University of Northern Colorado, History, Alumna

Odessa National I. Mechnikov University, Department of History, Fulbright Graduate Student Researcher

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Amber N. Nickell earned a Ph.D. in Central and Eastern European history from Purdue University (2021). Amber also received an MA in American history (2013) and a BA in European history (2011) from the University of Northern Colorado. She has presented her work at numerous local, national, and international conferences, workshops, and symposia and received several awards for her writing, research, service, and teaching. She regularly publishes and actively reviews in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Ukrainian Studies. Her most recent article, “From Babyn Yar to Bohdanivka: Holocaust Topographies and Memoryscapes in Ukraine,” is forthcoming in the Radical History Review, and her book, “Brotherlands to Bloodlands: Ethnic Germans and Jews in Southern Ukraine, Late Tsarist to Postwar,” will appear on Indiana University Press in Fall 2026. Additionally, she is a recipient of several research grants and fellowships, among them the Charles E. Scheidt Faculty Fellowship in Atrocity Prevention, the Saul Kagan Fellowship for Advanced Shoah Studies, the Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellowship, and the Fulbright Fellowship (Ukraine). Amber is, first and foremost, a publicly engaged scholar and teacher. She is dedicated to public Holocaust education and awareness in her community. She is a podcast host for New Books Network Jewish Studies, Eastern Europe, and Ukrainian Studies and serves as an editor for H-Ukraine.
Supervisors: Rebekah A. Klein-Pejšová, William G. Gray, Steven Seegel, and Jennifer Foray

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Université du Québec à Montréal

Gervase Phillips

Manchester Metropolitan University

Aspen E Brinton

Virginia Commonwealth University

Petra Hendrickson

Northern Michigan University

Johanna R Vollhardt

Clark University

Maggie Campbell Obaid

Clark University

Timothy Waligore

Pace University

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Papers by Amber N Nickell

Amber Nickell, review of “Our Work with the Masses is not Worth a Kopeck….”: A Document Collection on German and Polish Rural Soviets in Ukraine during the NEW, 1923-1929 by Frank Grelka and Stephan Rindlisbacher, Revolutionary Russia (Fall 2022).

"Time to Show the Kremlin America's Full House": The Committee for Human Rights in the Soviet Union, Rabbi Gedalyah Engel, and their Refusenik Adoptees, 1977-1992

Yearbook of Transnational History , 2018

Cultivating 'Roots': Towards a Diasporically Imagined Transnational Community, The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1968-1978

Hardly definitional, conceptions of diaspora changed dramatically over the course of the 20th cen... more Hardly definitional, conceptions of diaspora changed dramatically over the course of the 20th century, continually expanding and evolving as diasporic groups became increasingly deteritorrialized, homelands were reclaimed and lost, and diasporic members grappled with two or more – often competing – national identifications. Triggered by historical forces in their new homes and the homeland, diasporic groups formed mutual aid societies and ethnic organizations to assist with the diasporization process. Using The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) as a case study, this article examines the Society’s many uses of historical memory and preexisting networks in constructing a diasporic identification and space, which transcended geographical borders.

Book Reviews by Amber N Nickell

Amber Nickell, review of “Our Work with the Masses is not Worth a Kopeck….”: A Document Collection on German and Polish Rural Soviets in Ukraine during the NEW, 1923-1929 by Frank Grelka and Stephan Rindlisbacher, Revolutionary Russia (Fall 2022).

Amber Nickell, review of The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland: History vs. Geography by Volodymyr V. Kravchenko, Russian Review (19 April 2023).

In this book, Volodymyr V. Kravchenko examines the interplay between historic and geographic unde... more In this book, Volodymyr V. Kravchenko examines the interplay between historic and geographic understandings of Ukrainianness and Russianness along the Ukrainian-Russian borderland, specifically in the historic region known as Sloboda Ukraine. Kravchenko upends several of the larger historiographical debates waged between Ukrainian and Russian studies scholars, who tend to emphasize the tensions between empire and nation, which increased over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He sidesteps this decades-long historiographical debate, predicated on assumptions of organic Ukrainian nationality and Great Russian chauvinism. As opposed to taking sides in the increasingly charged either-or debates surrounding this borderland, Kravchenko instead opts for a both-and approach. He treats Sloboda Ukraine as a Ukrainian and Russian contact zone and a nested geography. In doing so, Kravchenko expertly illustrates how both Ukrainian nation-building projects and Russian imperial ambitions have turned this contact zone and much of the historical terminology surrounding it into "object[s] of rivalry" (p. 5). This approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of the Ukrainian-Russian borderland, where the forces of nationalism, imperialism, and what Kravchenko dubs "imperial nationalism" jockeyed for supremacy within the Russian-Ukrainian borderland and extended far beyond any real administrative and temporal boundaries. These borderland discourses became part and parcel of Ukrainian-Russian discourses past and present. Kravchenko structures the book into two parts, each with a separate introduction. The first part focuses on the intellectual genealogies of the Ukrainian-Russian borderland. This section hones in on the contested nature of historical terminology in Ukrainian-Russian discourses, where language and words have served and continue to serve as battlegrounds of imperial and national contestations. Kravchenko takes up a series of geographic and national terms in this section, ranging from "South Russia" to "Great Russia," locating Ukraine both geographically and intellectually within the turbulent linguistic landscape of the borderland. His address of the term Malorossiia (Little Russia) is particularly strong, as he teases out the contemporary connotations of the term and historical ones, which almost universally understood the identity to be something distinct from Rossiia (Russia). Intellectuals and nobles from within Malorossiia had their cultural discourses which were simultaneously distinct from Rossiia and part of Rossiia at the same time. This distinctiveness became the cultural fodder for Romantic nationals like Taras Shevchenko to build the Ukrainian nation in the century that followed. Even non-Malorossiia scholars, like Mykola Markevych, grasped this phenomenon, in which "one patrimony-rodina 'motherland'-and Russia as another-otechestvo 'fatherland'-did not contradict one another, but neither did they merge" (p. 81). In the second part, Kravchenko uses the historic city of Kharkiv and Kharkiv University as case studies to understand the mappings and re-mappings of Sloboda Ukraine in the Russian Empire, Soviet

Amber Nickell, review of Being German Canadian: History, Memory, Generations, Alexander Freund, ed., Canadian Jewish Studies v.35 (Spring 2023).

Review of Brenden McGeever, "Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution"

H-Net Reviews, Jewish Studies , 2022

Review of "The Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine: an Anatomy of the Holodomor" by Stanislav Kulchytsky

Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2019

Review of Steven J. Zipperstein, "Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History"

H-Judaic, 2019

Review of Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America: Identity Transitions in the New Odessa Jewish Commune, Odessa, Oregon, New York, 1881-1891 by Theodore H. Friedgut, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 34, no. 1 (Fall 2015): 136-138.

Conference Presentations by Amber N Nickell

" The Evil Itself… Descended on the Earth " : Mapping Manmade Famines and Ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, 1921-1922 & 1932-1933

This project compliments a historical paper, which examines the 1921/22 Volga famine and the 1932... more This project compliments a historical paper, which examines the 1921/22 Volga famine and the 1932/33 Holodomor as experienced by Soviet Germans and understood by their co-ethnics in the West. Using German, Russian, and English language primary document this project nuances the current historiographies of both famines via analysis of the German experience. Several scholars have accurately demonstrated the class motivations for and genocidal nature of the Soviet terror famine(s). However, this paper extracts the underlying, often obscured, ethnic experiences of and motivations for class based genocide. The argument is two-fold. As part of its program against kulaks and unruly nationals, Soviet officials targeted ethnic German colonies for grain requisitions, resulting in a subsequent ethnocide(s). Secondly, the paper implies that 1921 famine in the Volga region may have served as a training ground for its successor—the Holodomor. One stark difference remains. Lenin, realizing the catastrophic consequences of his policies, allowed the West to offer aid during the 1921 famines. Stalin, fully aware of the 1921 context, refused Western aid and blocked foreign intervention.

The GIS element of this project demonstrates the geographic relationship between the famine zones and ethnic German populations. Moreover, it seeks to analyze the impact of the famines at the village level. Data for population analysis is incomplete; however, remnants of the 1897 Russian census, village censuses conducted prior to 1921, and the 1926 census of the Soviet Union remain. Unfortunately, the Soviet government postponed the 1933 census, which was completed in 1937. After which, the government ordered its destruction. Several scholars have speculated that this was an attempt to obscure population losses after forced collectivization and the Holodomor which numbered in the millions. The multi-village Am Trakt settlement and the Volga Mother Colonies serve as examples of this methodology.

Teaching Documents by Amber N Nickell

HIST 600 / 600G: THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDES

This course examines the historical, social, political, and ethical aspects of the Holocaust and ... more This course examines the historical, social, political, and ethical aspects of the Holocaust and other genocides in the twentieth century and their aftermaths. Using historical and interdisciplinary approaches, students will examine the Herero and Nama, Armenian, Cambodian, Bosnian, Rwandan, and Guatemalan Genocides, in addition to the Holocaust and the Holodomor. Lectures, readings, and other materials in the course emphasize the social, political, and cultural causes of systemic discrimination and crimes against humanity. Students will learn about the experiences of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers during these genocides and their afterlives. Themes include trauma and resilience, memorialization processes, human rights regimes, truth and reconciliation, and prevention. At the end of this class, students will have developed a sophisticated understanding of these genocides' historical nuances and their lasting effects. They will also have the analytical skills necessary to challenge prejudice and discrimination, critically evaluate historical accounts, and actively work to advance social justice, empathy, and tolerance both within and outside of their communities.

Syllabus: History of Global Human Rights (Summer 2023)

This course traces the major global historical developments in Human Rights over the course of th... more This course traces the major global historical developments in Human Rights over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the ideological motivations and philosophical contributions to early Human Rights theories and applications to the formation of international Human Rights regimes in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, to several major Human Rights challenges and dilemmas in the twentieth century. The case studies addressed in this class will include slavery in Brazil, the Nuremberg Trials, colonial atrocities in the Congo and Namibia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the dictatorship in Guatemala, and the Rwandan Genocide (among others).

Syllabus: Modern World History (Spring 2023)

Syllabus: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust (Spring 2023 Virtual)

Syllabus: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust with Study Abroad (Spring 2023)

For centuries before the Holocaust, Central and Eastern European empires and nation-states were h... more For centuries before the Holocaust, Central and Eastern European empires and nation-states were home to millions of Jews from differing religious, national, and social backgrounds. Major Jewish thinkers, artists, architects, and entrepreneurs contributed to the rich fabric of European life. Internally, Jewish communities developed an astounding cultural and material heritage. After the Holocaust, the Jewish population had been demographically, economically, and psychologically devastated. Those who remained struggled to rebuild their lives in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere, grappling with the memory, trauma, and other legacies of the Holocaust. Courses focused solely on the Holocaust tend to overlook Jewish life before and after the Holocaust. The result: we develop an understanding of how Jews died and forget how they lived. This course examines Jewish experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust, focusing on their twentieth-century lives and deaths in Central and Eastern Europe.

Syllabus: Modern World History (Fall 2022)

The Earth we saw rising over the battered grey lunar surface was small and delicate, a magnificen... more The Earth we saw rising over the battered grey lunar surface was small and delicate, a magnificent spot of color in the vast blackness of space. Once-distant places appeared inseparably close. Borders that once rendered division vanished. All of humanity appeared joined together on this glorious-but-fragile sphere.-Bill Anders Earthrise, 1968 Course Description This course serves as an introductory survey of the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments in world civilizations from approximately 1500 C.E. to the present day. Among the themes to be explored are developments in economics, politics, culture, science, technology, war, philosophy, and the arts. Each student should emerge with not only a knowledge of these subjects, but an awareness of various interpretation of them as well. Modern societies increasingly understand that the problems they face-the environment and development, health and disease, conflict and insecurity, poverty and abundance-are urgent and global. The sometimes-competing goals of freedom, democracy, equity, justice, and peace play out across

Syllabus: Historical Methods (Fall 2022 Online)

Learn more about this photo when we read excerpts from Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre an... more Learn more about this photo when we read excerpts from Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History) Course Description Historical Methods acquaints history students with major philosophical concepts and problems underlying their discipline and directs them through the steps of historical research methods to the final product of publication. Course Objectives In this course, students will: 1.) Understand different approaches to history; 2.) Understand the problems that historians have faced and some solutions to these problems; 3.) Develop critical reading and analytical skills for both primary and secondary sources; 4.) Become familiar with the sources for history research that are available at Forsyth and other institutions; 5.) Learn how to research, organize, and write an original historical paper, including how to select sources, take notes, organize material, make an argument, and write effectively; 6.) Edit, analyze, and critique the research and writing of fellow students;7.) Learn the mechanics of documentation according to the Chicago Manual of Style; and 8.) Effectively and responsibly gather, evaluate, and use information for scholarship and problem solving. Outcomes for Information Literacy Students will: 1.) Design a research plan that: a. incorporates a clear research question; b. Identifies appropriate information resources; 2.) Produce a research log that clearly demonstrates the application of appropriate keyword search criteria, such as Boolean operators, source types, and filters; and 3.) Write an annotated bibliography that: a. Critically analyzes the context, relevance, and authority of an information source, particularly in light of new perspectives, additional voices, and changes in schools of thought; b. Applies appropriate disciplinary conventions of citation.

Syllabus: Soviet History (Fall 2022)

Soviet History Syllabus , 2022

Every morning Rabinovich pics up a copy of Pravda at the newspaper kiosk, looks at the front page... more

Syllabus: Modern World History (Spring 2022)

The Earth we saw rising over the battered grey lunar surface was small and delicate, a magnificen... more The Earth we saw rising over the battered grey lunar surface was small and delicate, a magnificent spot of color in the vast blackness of space. Once-distant places appeared inseparably close. Borders that once rendered division vanished. All of humanity appeared joined together on this glorious-but-fragile sphere.-Bill Anders Earthrise, 1968 Course Description This course serves as an introductory survey of the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments in world civilizations from approximately 1500 C.E. to the present day. Among the themes to be explored are developments in economics, politics, culture, science, technology, war, philosophy, and the arts. Each student should emerge with not only a knowledge of these subjects, but an awareness of various interpretation of them as well. Modern societies increasingly understand that the problems they face-the environment and development, health and disease, conflict and insecurity, poverty and abundance-are urgent and global. The sometimes-competing goals of freedom, democracy, equity, justice, and peace play out across

Amber Nickell, review of “Our Work with the Masses is not Worth a Kopeck….”: A Document Collection on German and Polish Rural Soviets in Ukraine during the NEW, 1923-1929 by Frank Grelka and Stephan Rindlisbacher, Revolutionary Russia (Fall 2022).

"Time to Show the Kremlin America's Full House": The Committee for Human Rights in the Soviet Union, Rabbi Gedalyah Engel, and their Refusenik Adoptees, 1977-1992

Yearbook of Transnational History , 2018

Cultivating 'Roots': Towards a Diasporically Imagined Transnational Community, The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1968-1978

Hardly definitional, conceptions of diaspora changed dramatically over the course of the 20th cen... more Hardly definitional, conceptions of diaspora changed dramatically over the course of the 20th century, continually expanding and evolving as diasporic groups became increasingly deteritorrialized, homelands were reclaimed and lost, and diasporic members grappled with two or more – often competing – national identifications. Triggered by historical forces in their new homes and the homeland, diasporic groups formed mutual aid societies and ethnic organizations to assist with the diasporization process. Using The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (AHSGR) as a case study, this article examines the Society’s many uses of historical memory and preexisting networks in constructing a diasporic identification and space, which transcended geographical borders.

Amber Nickell, review of “Our Work with the Masses is not Worth a Kopeck….”: A Document Collection on German and Polish Rural Soviets in Ukraine during the NEW, 1923-1929 by Frank Grelka and Stephan Rindlisbacher, Revolutionary Russia (Fall 2022).

Amber Nickell, review of The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland: History vs. Geography by Volodymyr V. Kravchenko, Russian Review (19 April 2023).

In this book, Volodymyr V. Kravchenko examines the interplay between historic and geographic unde... more In this book, Volodymyr V. Kravchenko examines the interplay between historic and geographic understandings of Ukrainianness and Russianness along the Ukrainian-Russian borderland, specifically in the historic region known as Sloboda Ukraine. Kravchenko upends several of the larger historiographical debates waged between Ukrainian and Russian studies scholars, who tend to emphasize the tensions between empire and nation, which increased over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He sidesteps this decades-long historiographical debate, predicated on assumptions of organic Ukrainian nationality and Great Russian chauvinism. As opposed to taking sides in the increasingly charged either-or debates surrounding this borderland, Kravchenko instead opts for a both-and approach. He treats Sloboda Ukraine as a Ukrainian and Russian contact zone and a nested geography. In doing so, Kravchenko expertly illustrates how both Ukrainian nation-building projects and Russian imperial ambitions have turned this contact zone and much of the historical terminology surrounding it into "object[s] of rivalry" (p. 5). This approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of the Ukrainian-Russian borderland, where the forces of nationalism, imperialism, and what Kravchenko dubs "imperial nationalism" jockeyed for supremacy within the Russian-Ukrainian borderland and extended far beyond any real administrative and temporal boundaries. These borderland discourses became part and parcel of Ukrainian-Russian discourses past and present. Kravchenko structures the book into two parts, each with a separate introduction. The first part focuses on the intellectual genealogies of the Ukrainian-Russian borderland. This section hones in on the contested nature of historical terminology in Ukrainian-Russian discourses, where language and words have served and continue to serve as battlegrounds of imperial and national contestations. Kravchenko takes up a series of geographic and national terms in this section, ranging from "South Russia" to "Great Russia," locating Ukraine both geographically and intellectually within the turbulent linguistic landscape of the borderland. His address of the term Malorossiia (Little Russia) is particularly strong, as he teases out the contemporary connotations of the term and historical ones, which almost universally understood the identity to be something distinct from Rossiia (Russia). Intellectuals and nobles from within Malorossiia had their cultural discourses which were simultaneously distinct from Rossiia and part of Rossiia at the same time. This distinctiveness became the cultural fodder for Romantic nationals like Taras Shevchenko to build the Ukrainian nation in the century that followed. Even non-Malorossiia scholars, like Mykola Markevych, grasped this phenomenon, in which "one patrimony-rodina 'motherland'-and Russia as another-otechestvo 'fatherland'-did not contradict one another, but neither did they merge" (p. 81). In the second part, Kravchenko uses the historic city of Kharkiv and Kharkiv University as case studies to understand the mappings and re-mappings of Sloboda Ukraine in the Russian Empire, Soviet

Amber Nickell, review of Being German Canadian: History, Memory, Generations, Alexander Freund, ed., Canadian Jewish Studies v.35 (Spring 2023).

Review of Brenden McGeever, "Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution"

H-Net Reviews, Jewish Studies , 2022

Review of "The Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine: an Anatomy of the Holodomor" by Stanislav Kulchytsky

Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2019

Review of Steven J. Zipperstein, "Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History"

H-Judaic, 2019

Review of Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America: Identity Transitions in the New Odessa Jewish Commune, Odessa, Oregon, New York, 1881-1891 by Theodore H. Friedgut, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 34, no. 1 (Fall 2015): 136-138.

" The Evil Itself… Descended on the Earth " : Mapping Manmade Famines and Ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, 1921-1922 & 1932-1933

This project compliments a historical paper, which examines the 1921/22 Volga famine and the 1932... more This project compliments a historical paper, which examines the 1921/22 Volga famine and the 1932/33 Holodomor as experienced by Soviet Germans and understood by their co-ethnics in the West. Using German, Russian, and English language primary document this project nuances the current historiographies of both famines via analysis of the German experience. Several scholars have accurately demonstrated the class motivations for and genocidal nature of the Soviet terror famine(s). However, this paper extracts the underlying, often obscured, ethnic experiences of and motivations for class based genocide. The argument is two-fold. As part of its program against kulaks and unruly nationals, Soviet officials targeted ethnic German colonies for grain requisitions, resulting in a subsequent ethnocide(s). Secondly, the paper implies that 1921 famine in the Volga region may have served as a training ground for its successor—the Holodomor. One stark difference remains. Lenin, realizing the catastrophic consequences of his policies, allowed the West to offer aid during the 1921 famines. Stalin, fully aware of the 1921 context, refused Western aid and blocked foreign intervention.

The GIS element of this project demonstrates the geographic relationship between the famine zones and ethnic German populations. Moreover, it seeks to analyze the impact of the famines at the village level. Data for population analysis is incomplete; however, remnants of the 1897 Russian census, village censuses conducted prior to 1921, and the 1926 census of the Soviet Union remain. Unfortunately, the Soviet government postponed the 1933 census, which was completed in 1937. After which, the government ordered its destruction. Several scholars have speculated that this was an attempt to obscure population losses after forced collectivization and the Holodomor which numbered in the millions. The multi-village Am Trakt settlement and the Volga Mother Colonies serve as examples of this methodology.

HIST 600 / 600G: THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDES

This course examines the historical, social, political, and ethical aspects of the Holocaust and ... more This course examines the historical, social, political, and ethical aspects of the Holocaust and other genocides in the twentieth century and their aftermaths. Using historical and interdisciplinary approaches, students will examine the Herero and Nama, Armenian, Cambodian, Bosnian, Rwandan, and Guatemalan Genocides, in addition to the Holocaust and the Holodomor. Lectures, readings, and other materials in the course emphasize the social, political, and cultural causes of systemic discrimination and crimes against humanity. Students will learn about the experiences of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers during these genocides and their afterlives. Themes include trauma and resilience, memorialization processes, human rights regimes, truth and reconciliation, and prevention. At the end of this class, students will have developed a sophisticated understanding of these genocides' historical nuances and their lasting effects. They will also have the analytical skills necessary to challenge prejudice and discrimination, critically evaluate historical accounts, and actively work to advance social justice, empathy, and tolerance both within and outside of their communities.

Syllabus: History of Global Human Rights (Summer 2023)

This course traces the major global historical developments in Human Rights over the course of th... more This course traces the major global historical developments in Human Rights over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the ideological motivations and philosophical contributions to early Human Rights theories and applications to the formation of international Human Rights regimes in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, to several major Human Rights challenges and dilemmas in the twentieth century. The case studies addressed in this class will include slavery in Brazil, the Nuremberg Trials, colonial atrocities in the Congo and Namibia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the dictatorship in Guatemala, and the Rwandan Genocide (among others).

Syllabus: Modern World History (Spring 2023)

Syllabus: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust (Spring 2023 Virtual)

Syllabus: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust with Study Abroad (Spring 2023)

For centuries before the Holocaust, Central and Eastern European empires and nation-states were h... more For centuries before the Holocaust, Central and Eastern European empires and nation-states were home to millions of Jews from differing religious, national, and social backgrounds. Major Jewish thinkers, artists, architects, and entrepreneurs contributed to the rich fabric of European life. Internally, Jewish communities developed an astounding cultural and material heritage. After the Holocaust, the Jewish population had been demographically, economically, and psychologically devastated. Those who remained struggled to rebuild their lives in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere, grappling with the memory, trauma, and other legacies of the Holocaust. Courses focused solely on the Holocaust tend to overlook Jewish life before and after the Holocaust. The result: we develop an understanding of how Jews died and forget how they lived. This course examines Jewish experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust, focusing on their twentieth-century lives and deaths in Central and Eastern Europe.

Syllabus: Modern World History (Fall 2022)

The Earth we saw rising over the battered grey lunar surface was small and delicate, a magnificen... more The Earth we saw rising over the battered grey lunar surface was small and delicate, a magnificent spot of color in the vast blackness of space. Once-distant places appeared inseparably close. Borders that once rendered division vanished. All of humanity appeared joined together on this glorious-but-fragile sphere.-Bill Anders Earthrise, 1968 Course Description This course serves as an introductory survey of the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments in world civilizations from approximately 1500 C.E. to the present day. Among the themes to be explored are developments in economics, politics, culture, science, technology, war, philosophy, and the arts. Each student should emerge with not only a knowledge of these subjects, but an awareness of various interpretation of them as well. Modern societies increasingly understand that the problems they face-the environment and development, health and disease, conflict and insecurity, poverty and abundance-are urgent and global. The sometimes-competing goals of freedom, democracy, equity, justice, and peace play out across

Syllabus: Historical Methods (Fall 2022 Online)

Learn more about this photo when we read excerpts from Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre an... more Learn more about this photo when we read excerpts from Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History) Course Description Historical Methods acquaints history students with major philosophical concepts and problems underlying their discipline and directs them through the steps of historical research methods to the final product of publication. Course Objectives In this course, students will: 1.) Understand different approaches to history; 2.) Understand the problems that historians have faced and some solutions to these problems; 3.) Develop critical reading and analytical skills for both primary and secondary sources; 4.) Become familiar with the sources for history research that are available at Forsyth and other institutions; 5.) Learn how to research, organize, and write an original historical paper, including how to select sources, take notes, organize material, make an argument, and write effectively; 6.) Edit, analyze, and critique the research and writing of fellow students;7.) Learn the mechanics of documentation according to the Chicago Manual of Style; and 8.) Effectively and responsibly gather, evaluate, and use information for scholarship and problem solving. Outcomes for Information Literacy Students will: 1.) Design a research plan that: a. incorporates a clear research question; b. Identifies appropriate information resources; 2.) Produce a research log that clearly demonstrates the application of appropriate keyword search criteria, such as Boolean operators, source types, and filters; and 3.) Write an annotated bibliography that: a. Critically analyzes the context, relevance, and authority of an information source, particularly in light of new perspectives, additional voices, and changes in schools of thought; b. Applies appropriate disciplinary conventions of citation.

Syllabus: Soviet History (Fall 2022)

Soviet History Syllabus , 2022

Every morning Rabinovich pics up a copy of Pravda at the newspaper kiosk, looks at the front page... more

Syllabus: Modern World History (Spring 2022)

The Earth we saw rising over the battered grey lunar surface was small and delicate, a magnificen... more The Earth we saw rising over the battered grey lunar surface was small and delicate, a magnificent spot of color in the vast blackness of space. Once-distant places appeared inseparably close. Borders that once rendered division vanished. All of humanity appeared joined together on this glorious-but-fragile sphere.-Bill Anders Earthrise, 1968 Course Description This course serves as an introductory survey of the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments in world civilizations from approximately 1500 C.E. to the present day. Among the themes to be explored are developments in economics, politics, culture, science, technology, war, philosophy, and the arts. Each student should emerge with not only a knowledge of these subjects, but an awareness of various interpretation of them as well. Modern societies increasingly understand that the problems they face-the environment and development, health and disease, conflict and insecurity, poverty and abundance-are urgent and global. The sometimes-competing goals of freedom, democracy, equity, justice, and peace play out across

Syllabus: Nationalism and Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe Seminar (Spring 2022 Online)

Syllabus: Nationalism and Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe Seminar (Spring 2022 In Person)

Syllabus: Modern World History (Fall 2021)

Course Description This course serves as an introductory survey of the major political, economic,... more Course Description This course serves as an introductory survey of the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments in world civilizations from approximately 1500 C.E. to the present day. Among the themes to be explored are developments in economics, politics, culture, science, technology, war, philosophy, and the arts. Each student should emerge with not only a knowledge of these subjects, but an awareness of various interpretation of them as well. Modern societies increasingly understand that the problems they face-the environment and development, health and disease, conflict and insecurity, poverty and abundance-are urgent and global. The sometimes-competing goals of freedom, democracy, equity, justice, and peace play out across multiple and complex cultures. This course introduces students to the breadth of these problems and goals and seeks to show how both are often rooted in the recent human past. Since the United States and the other countries of the modern world have evolved out of that past, this course not only examines how that past has shaped the present but can provide a roadmap for navigating humanity's future.

Syllabus: Europe since 1914 (Fall 2021 Online)

, and By Appointment "A laboratory atop as vast graveyard"-Thomas Masaryk "Raising a Flag over th... more , and By Appointment "A laboratory atop as vast graveyard"-Thomas Masaryk "Raising a Flag over the Reichstag," photo taken by Yevgeny Khaldei on May 2, 1945. Course Description This course offers an advanced overview of the major cultural, social, economic, and political developments in Europe from 1914 to today. Major themes include the transition from empires to nations; imperialism and colonialism; war, violence, and genocide; nationalism, socialism, and communism; migrations and diasporas; Europe at home; and much more. Students will leave this course with a firm grasp of major developments in European history; an understanding of how European history and culture affects their everyday lives, from global developments to local phenomenon; and a clear understanding of historical methods, primary and secondary source analysis, and effective written and verbal communication of historical ideas.

Syllabus: Europe since 1914 (Fall 2021 In Person)

, and By Appointment "A laboratory atop as vast graveyard"-Thomas Masaryk "Raising a Flag over th... more , and By Appointment "A laboratory atop as vast graveyard"-Thomas Masaryk "Raising a Flag over the Reichstag," photo taken by Yevgeny Khaldei on May 2, 1945. Course Description This course offers an advanced overview of the major cultural, social, economic, and political developments in Europe from 1914 to today. Major themes include the transition from empires to nations; imperialism and colonialism; war, violence, and genocide; nationalism, socialism, and communism; migrations and diasporas; Europe in Kansas; and much more. Students will leave this course with a firm grasp of major developments in European history; an understanding of how European history and culture affects their everyday lives, from global developments to local

Syllabus: Introduction to Global History (Spring 2017)

Syllabus: Introduction to Global History Online (Summer 2018)

Syllabus: Introduction to Global History Online (Summer 2020)

This course addresses global history from the mid-fourteenth century (1340s) through today. Clear... more This course addresses global history from the mid-fourteenth century (1340s) through today. Clearly, we cannot cover all of the human and non-human developments that occurred in every corner and crevice of the globe in eight short weeks. Thus, this course will focus on interactions between peoples, environments (built and natural), trends (cultural, political, social, etc.), and other entities as they traversed natural and political borders. Given our recent collective experience with the COVID-19 global pandemic, we will also think about the role of "disease" (real and imagined), in shaping global history more deeply this semester.

New Books Network Podcast

by Katharina Friedla, Markus Nesselrodt, and Amber N Nickell

Interview with Amber Nickell together with Katharina Friedla on our edited volume "Polish Jews in... more