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Home > Graduate Studies > Areas of Graduate Study : Modern European History

Modern European History

Nicole Phelps: The University of Minnesota is a phenomenal place to study modern European history, and especially central European history—both German and Habsburg. Most importantly, the faculty members in the area make excellent advisors, as they all care deeply about their students and are actively engaged in departmental, university, and professional organizations and debates. They are acutely aware of the resources available to their students, and they go out of their way to connect their students with those resources. The University hosts several centers that benefit modern Europeanists, including those for Holocaust and genocide, European, and Austrian studies. The Austrian History Yearbook is also produced here. Because of the University’s commitment to excellence in modern European history, the libraries have extensive and impressive collections in the field.

The study of European history since the era of the French Revolution addresses concerns that reverberate throughout the modern world.

Europe’s development of industrial capitalism restructured the global economy through markets and imperialism. The emergence of the nuclear family system and the reconstruction of gender relations that typified nineteenth-century middle-class ideals have also had far-reaching consequences.

Modern European political development has been marked by the construction of "public spheres" and civil societies with their concomitant notions of limitations on government, but also by the institution of the nation-state with its potential for totalitarianism and racism.

Indeed, at the center of much scholarship in modern European history, including that of our own faculty, are the tensions between the impulse to question and remake human institutions that has been characteristic of European culture and politics since the Enlightenment, and the equally prevalent impulse toward domination and control.

Participating Faculty

  • Anna Clark's emphasis is on political culture, gender, and sexuality in modern Britain and Ireland.
  • David Good's research and teaching focuses on modern Austrian and central European economic history.
  • M.J. Maynes works on social history, family history, and women's history especially in Germany and France.
  • Patricia Lorcin specializes in modern France Cultural and social hegemony in colonial and post-colonial settings.
  • J.B. Shank is a specialist in the French Enlightenment and the era of the Revolution.
  • Theo Stavrou's emphasis is on the religious and cultural history of modern Russia and Greece.
  • Eric Weitz works on twentieth-century Germany and comparative political culture.
  • Tom Wolfe holds a joint degree in history and anthropology and works on journalism in the Soviet Union and Russia and on the comparative history of the media.
  • Jennifer Alexander, a science historianwhose work has centered on industrial technology and medicine in twentieth-century Germany, is a  German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and supplements our faculty.
  • Gary Cohen directs the Center for Austrian Studies. His research focuses on social and political development in modern Austria and the Czech lands. His teaching focuses on social and political change in Austria and Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
  • Patricia Lorcin teaches French and modern European history in the global context and post colonial studies. Her research interests include French imperialism and colonialism, women and gender in the colonies, and the colonial Magreb.

Affiliated Departments, Centers, & Programs

Students in modern European history draw on the strengths of many other departments, centers, and institutes in the social sciences and humanities and also:

Graduate Features

Graduate Studies
Rachel Ayers
1130 Heller Hall
271 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Phone: 612-624-5840
Email: histdgs@umn.edu

  • 'Best Dissertation' Arts and Humanities

    Congratulations to Nicole Phelps for winning this year's 'Best Dissertation" Award in the Arts and Humanities for her dissertation, "Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the New Liberal Order: US-Habsburg Relations and the Transformation of International Politics, 1880-1924."

    Nicole will receive an honorarium of $1,000 and a special certificate. She will also be honored during a luncheon and ceremony at the Campus Club in early June.

     May 14th, 2008

  • 2007-08 Fulbright Scholarships

    Tovah Bender (Italy), Aeleah Soine (Germany), and Elizabeth Swedo (Iceland) were awarded Fulbright scholarships to support their dissertation research abroad during this academic year. Congratulations!

    To read more, visit the Graduate School Announcement.

     January 25th, 2008

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