I recently did the 130 miles on Skyline Drive. This was the third year in a row to do this ride. It was lots of fun, and lots of pain. I purchased a brand new cyclo-cross bike and got it the day before the ride. That was a bad mistake. Take a bike that you’ve been on a few times…
I had a few troubles with the brakes and front derailleur, but all in all it was a great trip. We stayed overnight in Waynesboro.
We went 66.8 miles on Friday, from Hawkes Bill Gap to Waynesboro, and 65.3 back the next day, for a total of 132.1 miles. I averaged about 6 or 7 miles an hour, and as you can see from the elevation profile, that was usually the speed up the hills. I got up to 40 miles/hour on one of the down hills.
Highlights of the trip: much nicer bike to ride than previous years, seeing a bear, turkey, and deer, speaking German to a couple from Germany, being interviewed by a news lady (someone had driven off the side of a cliff on Skyline Drive the day before), surviving 130 miles!
I was definitely worn out by the end of the ride. I’ll have to be in much better shape next year.
Thanks to Don and Taylor, two good buddies for making the trip possible.
Since then, I’ve already been out on a quick 14 mile ride (in only one hour).
I’ve just spent too much time figuring this out. I’ve had to piece it together from many other sites.
I need to set up Trac .12 on CentOS 5, but want to do that without interfering with the current setup of Trac and Subversion on the system.
So in comes virtualenv. This allows you to create a virtual environment for python. Like a separate install. The beauty is, once this is set up you can install different versions of python packages (like Trac and Subversion) that don’t have to interact with each other.
To install virtualenv was pretty simple. With root permissions do
easy_install virtualenv
Now, as your normal user, you can install a virtual environment.
virtualenv --no-site-packages foo
This will create a new folder called foo with a virtual environment for python. It won’t reference any of the other installed python packages (like the old Trac version).
Now upgrade the Genshi package with
easy_install --upgrade Genshi
Then, to install Trac do
easy_install Trac==0.12
That’s the part that always hung me up. I would just do easy_install Trac which would cough up this ugly error:
Searching for trac
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/trac/
Reading http://trac.edgewall.org/
Reading http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDownload
Reading http://trac.edgewall.com/
Reading http://projects.edgewall.com/trac
Reading http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/wiki/TracDownload
Best match: Trac 0.12.2
Downloading ftp://ftp.edgewall.com/pub/trac/Trac-0.12.2.zip
Processing Trac-0.12.2.zip
Running setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir trac-dir/trac/egg-dist-tmp-JmdQXW
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/ammon/foo/bin/easy_install", line 7, in ?
sys.exit(
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 1712, in main
with_ei_usage(lambda:
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 1700, in with_ei_u
sage
return f()
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 1716, in <lambda>
distclass=DistributionWithoutHelpCommands, **kw
File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/distutils/core.py", line 149, in setup
dist.run_commands()
File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/distutils/dist.py", line 946, in run_commands
self.run_command(cmd)
File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/distutils/dist.py", line 966, in run_command
cmd_obj.run()
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 211, in run
self.easy_install(spec, not self.no_deps)
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 446, in easy_insta
ll
return self.install_item(spec, dist.location, tmpdir, deps)
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 476, in install_it
em
dists = self.install_eggs(spec, download, tmpdir)
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 655, in install_eg
gs
return self.build_and_install(setup_script, setup_base)
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 930, in build_and_
install
self.run_setup(setup_script, setup_base, args)
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 919, in run_setup
run_setup(setup_script, args)
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/sandbox.py", line 61, in run_setup
DirectorySandbox(setup_dir).run(
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/sandbox.py", line 105, in run
return func()
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/sandbox.py", line 64, in <lambda>
{'__file__':setup_script, '__name__':'__main__'}
File "setup.py", line 110, in ?
File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/distutils/core.py", line 110, in setup
_setup_distribution = dist = klass(attrs)
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/dist.py", line 260, in __init__
self.fetch_build_eggs(attrs.pop('setup_requires'))
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/setuptools/dist.py", line 283, in fetch_build_eggs
for dist in working_set.resolve(
File "/home/ammon/foo/lib/python2.4/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c12dev_r88795-py2.4.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 569, in resolve
raise VersionConflict(dist,req) # XXX put more info here
pkg_resources.VersionConflict: (Genshi 0.6dev (/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/Genshi-0.6dev-py2.4-linux-x86_64.egg), Requirement.parse('Genshi
>=0.6'))
Notice the last line referencing a version conflict with the “old” Genshi at /usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages. That’s the system-wide default install. So making explicit that you want to install Trac==0.12 is the way to get it installed in a virtual environment.
Now I just need to figure out how to configure Trac and Subversion using this virtual environment, and copy over a live older version of each.
I spent the day researching grants and reading about how to properly put together a proposal. I also spent a bit of time plotting out my todo list for this semester, creating a checklist of tasks and when they are due. I made the list in my Google Calendar, so it’s not available to be embedded on this site. I’ll have to work on finding a replacement or something.
One of the places I’ll be applying to for a research grant is the Social Science Research Council (http://www.ssrc.org). They happen to have a short paper on how to best write a proposal for their competitions, and being no dummy, I know I can apply these tips to all the proposals I write. So here are some tips from their paper, “On the Art of Writing Proposals.”
Purpose of Proposals is to Persuade
The main thing to realize when writing a proposal, is that you are trying to persuade the approval committee that your project is better than all the others. The trick is to do it in as short a space as possible—in the first paragraph, or at least the first page—while including all of the points the readers are looking for. In the end you want the readers to associate you with your project (Billy’s the guy researching blind Algerian water cave fish with telepathic properties), rather than other mundane tidbits (Jane is the gal from New York City, right?). It truly is an art.
What do they want?!
All scholarly projects require three basic merits: “conceptual innovation, methodological rigor, and rich, substantive content.” Additionally, the readers are going to be asking three questions that the proposal needs to answer:
What are we going to learn?
Why do we need to know?
How do you prove it?
And this all needs to be done initially very clearly, succinctly, and as forcefully as possible in the shortest amount of text.
Let me be clear about this…
It’s important to keep in mind that the individuals in the approval committee come from varying disciplines. Therefore, the proposal needs to be clear, free of the jargon typical of your discipline, all the while explaining the boundary pushing or unique way your project approaches your field. Keep the focus of the proposal on the ideas and leave the technical aspects to an appendix. Make the first page explain as clearly as possible what the topic is about, and what the readers—essentially, what the granting committee—is going to learn from this.
So What!
This is the crux of the whole matter. Why in the world does anybody need to know about this? What’s the point? Who cares? Why?! This is sometimes the hardest part to figure out. I know it is for me. I continually mull this point over. Do I really have a convincing and compelling reason. It seems for the time being, for me, that my biggest compelling reason, my “so what?” is because it hasn’t been researched before. While that may be a valid reason, be careful. Others may conclude that there is adequate justification for there to be no scholarship in the first place. There are other aspects that make a research topic important and valid. “Turning points, crucial breakthroughs, central personages, fundamental institutions, and similar appeals to significance of of the object of research are sometimes effective, if argued rather than merely asserted.
Apply the topic to current political, economic or social debates. How is your research not only timely but currently urgent, such that it provides a new way to view current issues, or turn the direction of current understanding?
Also try to be fresh and appealing in your approach. Promote the apparent contradictions, extrapolate on puzzles, and catch the readers off guard with surprises. Take the less traveled path. If current trends lean towards one area of research, but your topic can gyrate towards a new and fresh approach, take it!
Oh Yeah? Prove it!
It is important for the proposal committee to know the methodology of your approach. Do not just tell them what you will discover, but how you intend to discover it. What types of sources, what means of debate, what technology will be employed? But don’t just list out your tasks and how you’ll do them, argue why this is the best course of action to achieve the results you intend to acquire. Because some readers may be from interdisciplinary fields, take the time to explain “what parts of your methodology are standard, and which are innovative.” Some ideas to cover:
Activities you plan to undertake to collect information
Techniques you will use to analyze the data
Tests of validity you will apply
Specify the archives, sources, and respondents
Finally, proposals should describe the end product. Will the grant help to complete a dissertation chapter, a book, a digital project? Be specific as to what the proposed outcome of this supported project will be.
End with the Beginning in mind…
And begin with the ending in mind, of course. It takes a long time to write a decent proposal. Start early. Give yourself several weeks, or months if possible. Write a first draft and set it aside for a day. Then revise and set aside again. Ask others to take a look at it. Revise it again. Make sure your opening paragraph is succinct, to the point, and effective.
The closing of your proposal should reference the beginning. If you mentioned a story or a specific and compelling reason for the research, reference it again. The effect is to try and tie it all up in a neat little package.
Now, get back to work!
Well, that all sounds really good. Now if I can just apply it to my proposals!
I have now achieved a major milestone in my academic career. I passed the oral exam in October, and the dissertation prospectus and presentation in December. With that I am now advanced to candidacy, meaning all that I have left to do is the dissertation research and writing! To go along with this announcement is the launching of the website that I will be doing in connection with my dissertation.
On the first day of this year (2011), I was visiting some museums in D.C. when I noticed the piece of the Berlin Wall in the Reagan Building with some very appropriate graffiti for me!
As part of my Duty To God study, I have been studying about gratitude. The Church has a nice site dedicated to the topic of gratitude (http://lds.org/topic/gratitude/) which provides some nice resources. I actually independently found all of the talks listed under the “Articles” section, and read those and based my notes off of those talks.
The biggest impression I have had about gratitude, is that it is not just something done occasionally, but it is a way of life. You may think of people having a cheery disposition, or of being a pessimist or optimist. The same can be said of gratitude. It can be a defining characteristic of an individual’s nature. We need to develop an attitude of gratitude. We need to put ourselves in a frame of mind, in a state of being, that we are grateful.
Well, easier said than done. How do we go about turning ourselves into a being of gratitude? Here are some thoughts from several talks.
Thomas S. Monson, "An Attitude of Gratitude", Ensign, February 2002.
There is a lot wrong and bad in the world, but there is also so much that is right and good. “We can lift ourselves, and others as well,” says President Monson, “when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude.” Gratitude is among the noblest of virtues. Gratitude is what helps us focus on the good.
Often when gratitude is spoken of, the story of the ten lepers who came to Jesus to be healed, and only one returned to give thanks, is referenced. Certainly the nine lepers felt gratitude. But it was the one who made an effort to show his gratitude who was “made whole”. The nine were physically healed, but the one who showed gratitude was healed both body and spirit. There is a sense from this scripture that when we physically do more that is righteous, then we are blessed more. Also this story points out that gratitude is not just a feeling, but a feeling that moves to action in order to be complete.
Henry B. Eyring says that gratitude is a “change in our very natures”. It is not just a thing to do, it is a way to be. We become a different person when we focus on gratitude. The Holy Ghost fills us with perfect love. He fills us up with the best stuff as we choose to let go of the bad stuff within us.
Elder Henry B. Eyring, "Remembrance and Gratitude", Ensign, November 1989.
Elder Eyring relates the story of Orderville, the town that was founded to live the United Order. He tells how they forgot their poor and meager beginnings, and states that this is a problem we must solve, too. “We so easily forget that we came into this life with nothing. Whatever we get soon seems our natural right, not a gift. And we forget the giver. Then our gaze shifts from what we have been given to what we don’t have yet.” Remembering God as the giver of all that we have and remembering our past trials and poverty help us to have gratitude. We need to focus on what we have already, and not on what we don’t have.”Remembrance is the seed of gratitude which is the seed of generosity.” Every week we can take the sacrament, and in that action we covenant to “always remember [Jesus Christ].” As Eyring says, “gratitude for the remission of sins is the seed of charity.”
James E. Faust relates similar ideas about gratitude in his 1990 General Conference talk “Gratitude as a Saving Principle“. Gratitude is a way of life, it’s more than a thing to do, it’s a way to be. “As with all commandments, gratitude is a description of a successful mode of living.” You can be happy or optimistic by “nature”, it is said. You can also be grateful. And it’s something that can be learned and cultivated. Being happy and optimistic are habitual traits, meaning you become that way by always acting that way. The same is true with gratitude.
Robert D. Hales explains how gratitude is related to repentance in a 1992 General Conference talk entitled “Gratitude for the Goodness of God“. He applies gratitude to repentance again and again. They seem to be in some kind of relationship. He says that our faith and repentance are based on the goodness of God and Christ and their forgiveness when we show thankfulness to them. “Gratitude is also the foundation upon which repentance is built…. Gratitude is a state of appreciation.” Gratitude leads to humility because we are focused on what others have done for us, rather than on our own selfish desires. Expressing gratitude brings peace to our souls, “a peace which allows us to not canker our souls for what we don’t have.” When we have gratitude, we don’t qualify that with what we had in the past or hope for in the future. We should not base our gratitude upon past possessions or hoped for desires in the future, but gratitude should be independent of all other requirements and qualifications.
Google has some interesting additions to their search results. You can now see ‘Related Searches’, a ‘Wonder wheel’, and a ‘Timeline’. I think the timeline may have been there for a while. It was for Google News, at least.
Anyhow, while checking the RSS feeds today, I noticed the Google doodle for today is about Veterans Day. I clicked the ‘Timeline’ to see what it had to offer. You first see a timeline with the number of web pages referencing the search result for a particular time. What first caught my eye were two large spikes in the timeline corresponding to 1919 and 1954. Second was a much larger result after 1984, and an increasingly greater result through 2009, with a drastic drop in 2010 (probably because it’s today and people are still posting about it).
Anyhow, using this timeline from Google allows to ask three questions and dig into the history of Veterans Day. The answers can be pulled from the links provided by clicking on the timeline for the year of interest.
1. Why the spike at 1918-1919? Well, as it turns out this was the first time Veterans Day occurred. It was set apart as a national holiday on November 11, 1918, to mark the end of World War I, which ended on that date. It was originally named Armistice Day.
2. Why the spike at 1954? In 1953 the town of Emporia, Kansas named their yearly parade the “Veterans’ Day Parade” in honor of all the veterans in their town. A bill introduced by that state’s congressman led to renaming the national holiday to Veterans’ Day!
3. Why the increased interest in 1984? This one was a surprise. On November 11, 1984, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated and accepted by President Ronald Reagan as a United States memorial. There’s even a link to a newspaper article.
Each year also shows an interesting little bump in May, which corresponds with Memorial Day in that month.
There’s no data in for November 2010, so it will be interesting to see if the trend continues and there are more pages for Veterans’ Day in 2010 than there was in 2009.
Do you see any other bumps or bulges in the timeline? What happened there to spark interest in Veterans’ Day?
This is an essay I wrote for a Directed Readings course in Fall 2009, with Marion Deshmukh.
The Sonderweg of German History
Before 1940s there was a positive Sonderweg thesis that promoted favorably the differences of Germany from other Western nations.[1] This is similar to what every nation does, showing their best side, why they are better or, in a good sense, different than other nations. These are typical self-promotion tactics that help one feel good with ones’ self, and to help others see the virtues they would like them to see. This thesis is more appropriately termed the “German divergence from the West” in English. Sonderweg was mainly a derogatory term used by its critics.
After 1940, the positive Sonderweg was no longer developed or used. A critical Sonderweg took the place of the positive reflection of German history, with the new one attempting to answer one prominent question; How did Germany produce a society and political atmosphere where National Socialism could come to power? Proponents of this Sonderweg thesis have been Ernst Fraenkel, Hans Rosenberg, George Mosse, Fritz Stern, Karl-Dietrich Bracher, Gerhard A. Ritter, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Heinrich August Winkler, Helmut Plessner, Leonard Krieger, Kurt Sontheimer, John Maynard Keynes, Fritz Fischer, Wolfgang Mommsen.[2]
Those who argued for a critical Sonderweg put forth the following points for seeing Germany’s special path to National Socialism.
Sonderweg proponents were cautious about asserting a “necessary relationship between long-term developments in German History and the triumph of National Socialism,” but in the end were specifically looking for peculiarities in German politics that hindered a liberal democracy from developing.[3]
Germany had a relatively late attempt at creating a nation state. France and the United States of America formed, or attempted to form, a nation in the late eighteenth century. It was nearly one hundred years, finally in 1871, that Germany was able to form a federal government.
Sonderweg proponents hearken back to the Kaiserreich government’s oppressive practices that limited parliament and caused what parties that did form to be rigid and fragmented.
German defeat in World War I is seen as an important part of the German Sonderweg. The devastating defeat in the First World War left German confidence in tatters. Coupled with the limiting and demeaning restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, Germany seemed anxious to prove to themselves and Europeans that they were a nation of worth. The defeat also led Germany into a new phase of government different, full parliamentary constitution with no monarchy or empire.
Germany’s political culture tended to be conservative. This made it difficult for liberal parties to be effective.
The “Junkers-the large agrarian landowners east of the Elbe River” (similar to the English gentry) retained much of their power. Whereas other nations had developed a parliament with representative leaders, much of Germany’s power still lay with landed aristocrats.
Bismarck’s forming the nation-state with “Blut und Eisen”–“blood and iron” which put emphasis on the military, and left them unchecked by parliament. This gave a militaristic approach to German government that lasted through the Weimar Republic and into National Socialism.
The unbourgeois-ness of the bourgeoisie. They never really revolted against the aristocratic society and political culture. There was no middle class of people to rise up in rebellion as there were in other Western states. As a result Germany was left without a tradition of successful revolutions and a history of top-down reforms. Combined with pressure from the peasants, the middle classes were politically weak.
Germany experienced a strange mixture of social and economic modernization and industrialization and capitalism on one hand, but maintained the old power relations, pre-industrial institutions, and cultures. It was an odd combination of old powers, cultures and organizations in charge of new social and economic conditions and ways of production.
All of these “long-term patterns” came to a head with the “short-term factors” of 1920s and 1930s, and help to explain the collapse of the Weimar Republic and rise of National Socialism.[4]
“In a nutshell, the critical Sonderweg thesis claimed to indentify long-term structures and processes that, under the influence of numerous other factors (from the consequences of defeat in World War I through the class conflicts of the 1920s to the peculiarities of Adolf Hitler’s personality), contributed to the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the triumph of National Socialism”.[5]
Historians opposed or critical of the Sonderweg have based their critiques partly on methodology. Opponents to the Sonderweg thesis have been Thomas Nipperdey, David Blackbourn, Geoff Eley, Ernst Nolte, Jürgen Kocka, François Furet,Friedrich Meinecke.
Their opposition consists of the following points:
There are several historical continuities to be seen in German history. For example the Kaiserreich is also a prehistory of the Federal Republic of Germany. This line of reasoning suggests that as National Socialism fades farther into the past, it becomes less of a clear case that the collapse of the Weimar Republic led to National Socialism. Supporting a Sonderweg assumes there is a “normal path” that Germany could have taken. To define what a “normal” path is, is much to subjective a “value judgment,” and the belief in the superiority of “the West”.[6]
A research in Bielefeld has shown that the aristocratic influence (or dominance) over the middle class was no greater in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany than in other western European nations. International comparisons have shown, contrary to Sonderweg hypothesis, that the educated German middle class was “strong and clearly contoured”.[7] It was a widespread European trait for the bourgeois to turn from liberalism in nineteenth century.
The Kaiserreich did show signs of modernism. It was “full of modern dynamism, for example in the areas of science and scholarship, art and culture”.[8]
Intensive recent research seems to point to National Socialism as a modern phenomenon, rather than the results of past traditions.
Some core aspects of the Sonderweg have been supported, though, through recent research in three ways:
1. Three of the basic developmental problems of modern societies showed themselves at the same time only in Germany. 1) Formation of the nation-state, 2) decision to have a constitution (parliament) or no, 3) issues with society brought by industrialization. Other countries dealt with these individually, that is, with generations, or at least decades, of time in between to iron out difficulties.[9]
2. While issues with the middle class, the bourgeoisie, cannot be discounted, they did have less of an effect on Germany society than in other European countries.[10]
3. Germany had a “bureaucratic tradition” of a strong authoritarian state. Such power in the hands of the state blocked parliament from functioning, provided effective services to the people, and weakened middle class liberalism. When a democratic government finally did have power, after World War I in the form of the Weimar Republic, the inability of the leaders to provide a stable economy and society meant Germans were eager, or at least willing, to go back to a strong authoritarian state. Important to realize, though, is that the rise of National Socialism should be seen separate from the fall of the Weimar Republic. National Socialism was too new to have broken apart the Weimar Republic; it merely picked up the pieces.
With the Federal Republic the Sonderweg ended for West Germany. It became a “normal” western nation. East Germany, continued the Sonderweg, much altered of course, until its collapse in 1989-90.[11]
Sonderweg Bibliography
Proponents
Bracher, Karl Dietrich, ed. Deutscher Sonderweg, Mythos Oder Realität? München: R. Oldenbourg, 1982.
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. 1st ed. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998.
Fischer, Fritz. Griff Nach Der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik Des Kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914-18. 2nd ed. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962.
Fritzsche, Peter. Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1996.
Kocka, Jurgen. “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg.” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (February 1999): 40-50.
Krieger, Leonard. The German Idea of Freedom; History of a Political Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Pr, 1972.
Mommsen, Hans. Alternative Zu Hitler: Studien Zur Geschichte Des Deutschen Widerstandes. München: Beck, 2000.
Mommsen, Hans, ed. The Third Reich Between Vision and Reality: New Perspectives on German History, 1918-1945. German historical perspectives v.12. Oxford: Berg, 2001.
Mosse, George L. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York: Schocken Books, 1981.
Plessner, Helmuth. Die Verspätete Nation; Über Die Politische Verführbarkeit Bürgerlichen Geistes. 2nd ed. Stuttgart]: W. Kohlhammer, 1959.
Rosenberg, Hans. Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660-1815. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
Sontheimer, Kurt. Antidemokratisches Denken in Der Weimarer Republik; Die Politischen Ideen Des Deutschen Nationalismus Zwischen 1918 Und 1933. München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1962.
Stern, Fritz Richard. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. California library reprint series. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
Wehler, Hans Ulrich. The German Empire, 1871-1918. Providence, RI: Berg Publishers, 1993.
Winkler, Heinrich August. Germany: The Long Road West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Opponents
Blackbourn, David, and Geoff Eley. The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Furet, François. Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews. 1st ed. New York: Schocken Books, 1989.
Kocka, Jurgen. “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg.” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (February 1999): 40-50.
Meinecke, Friedrich. The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.
Nolte, Ernst. Die Weimarer Republik: Demokratie Zwischen Lenin Und Hitler. München: Herbig, 2006.
[1] Jurgen Kocka, “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg,” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (February 1999): 41.
Whew! That was fun. Marion Deschmuk, Dina Copelman, and Sean Takats are great faculty to work with. And I would not have been able to do it without the mentoring of Steve Barnes this semester. Also, it wouldn’t be possible without the support of my wonderful wife Jessica, and the prayers and encouragement from family! Only two more hurdles to go, prospectus in December will put me at ABD (all but dissertation), and then the simple matter of research and writing a dissertation.
To finish off these posts about the orals, I’m posting some images of documents I made to help me conceptualize the books in their proper time periods. It’s basically back to the notecard system and arranging them chronologically. Each “card” has the title, a list of themes, a note about sources, and the main thesis of the book. This was extremely helpful in getting a grasp of the books. I created these in a Mac application called OmniGraffle. What would be even cooler, though, is if Zotero had a way to create this type of notecard type display with the ability to drag and drop the cards to organize in themes or chronologically.
British Bibliography by Chronology
French Bibliography by Themes
French Bibliography by Governments
French Bibliography by Chronology
German Bibliography by Chronology
German History – Dealing with the knot of Nazi Past
Here’s the bibliography I have to draw from for the oral exam. My final preparation task is to make sure I know something about each book, it’s importance (historigraphically, methodologically and historically) and thesis. No biggie, right?
William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945, Rev. ed. (New York: F. Watts, 1984).
Götz Aly, Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006).
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).
Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945, Studies on the history of society and culture 42 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
Volker Rolf Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, 2nd ed. (New York, N.Y: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
Lenard R Berlanstein, ed., The Industrial Revolution and Work in Nineteenth-Century Europe (London, [England]: Routledge, 1992).
Richard Bessel, Germany After the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
David Blackbourn, Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Wurttemberg Before 1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980).
David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press, 1984).
Rita S Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust: From Ideology to Annihilation, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Education, 2004).
Christopher R Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, 1st ed. (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998).
Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918, 2nd ed., New approaches to European history (Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Alon Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy, Studies on the history of society and culture 28 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
Caroline C Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Christopher E Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood, The Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science 121st ser., 2 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1st ed. (New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1998).
Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998).
Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008).
Mary Fulbrook, Twentieth-Century Germany: Politics, Culture and Society 1918-1990 (London: Arnold, 2001).
Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1990).
Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 1996).
Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1998).
Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity After World War II, Inside technology (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998).
Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
E. J Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution [Europe] 1789-1848 (New York: New American Library, 1962).
E. J Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875-1914, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987).
E. J Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: Viking Press, 1978).
Lynn Avery Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
Konrad Hugo Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Konrad Hugo Jarausch and Michael Geyer, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2003).
Eric Thomas Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-1944 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2001).
Marion A Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Studies in Jewish history (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Michael H. Kater, Doctors Under Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
Padraic Kenney, A Carnival of Revolution–Central Europe 1989 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2002).
George O Kent, Bismarck and His Times (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978).
Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family , and Nazi Politics, 1st ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).
Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2003).
Rudy Koshar, Germany’s Transient Pasts: Preservation and National Memory in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Maurice Larkin, France Since the Popular Front: Government and People, 1936- 1986 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
Kristie Macrakis, Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Kristie Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Peter Mandler, ed., Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
A. James McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
John McManners, Church and State in France, 1870-1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).
Jan-Werner Müller, ed., Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Philip G Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
Robert A Nye, Crime, Madness, & Politics in Modern France: The Medical concept of National Decline (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Robert O Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, Columbia University Press Morningside ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
Pamela M Pilbeam, The Constitutional Monarchy in France, 1814-48, Seminar studies in history (Harlow, England: Longman, 2000).
Koppel Shub Pinson, Modern Germany; Its History and Civilization, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1966).
Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-2004, 4th ed. (Harlow, Essex, England: Pearson/Longman, 2004).
David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920 (Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Jean H Quataert, Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885-1917 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1979).
Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker, Science, Technology, and National Socialism (New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1998).
Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991).
Edward W Said, Orientalism, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
Carl E Schorske, Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, 1st ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1981).
Robert R Shandley, ed., Unwilling Germans?: The Goldhagen Debate (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
James J Sheehan, German History, 1770-1866, Oxford history of modern Europe (Oxford [England]: Clarendon Press, 1989).
Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race Across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Rebecca L Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Jonathan Sperber, Rhineland Radicals: The Democratic Movement and the Revolution of 1848-1849 (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1991).
W. B Stephens, Education in Britain, 1750-1914, Social history in perspective (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
Matthew Stibbe, Women in the Third Reich (London: Arnold, 2003).
Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Raymond G Stokes, Constructing Socialism: Technology and Change in East Germany 1945-1990 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
E. P Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964).
Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).
F. M. L Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Judith R Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, Women in culture and society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
R. K Webb, Modern England; from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1968).
Eugen Joseph Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1977).
Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s, 1st ed. (New York: Norton, 1994).
Hans Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire, 1871-1918 (Providence, RI: Berg Publishers, 1993).
Eric D Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2007).
Martin J Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980, 1st ed. (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979).
I will invariably get a few questions about how I would teach modern European history as a professor. To prepare for these types of questions I wrote down (actually, I typed them all in, no pencil or paper used 🙂 ) the three nations I’m looking at and some themes, events, and books I would like to use in a course. I struggled with which people, if any to focus on.
A theoretical question I could be asked is: Say you have to teach a course on (Modern England, Modern France, Modern Germany, Modern Europe, World Wars in Europe, etc). What themes, events, people would you focus on and what books would you include? What would be the layout of the course?
I focus on individual countries below, and for a general European course, I would just draw from each of the countries. The books I pull from are only the ones on my Orals reading list. I would most likely supplement with other books after doing some research if I were really teaching a course.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that I probably would never just go chronologically through a time period to hit big events and “important” people. History is very subjective. We look back on events and information with a certain set of “filters” on. For example we view Germany with political filters, focusing on governments and politicians. Or we may focus on France with cultural filters, looking at food, society, entertainment and arts. It’s impossible to get a full picture or sense of the past. Just as it’s impossible to gain a full sense of the present. There’s just too many people, too many viewpoints, too many sides to the same story, and too many filters to encompass everything. What’s the point, then? The point is to do what we can. Find what interests you and study the past through that filter. There’s nothing wrong with learning about one slice of the pie, as long as we don’t think our slice represents the whole thing. With that said, then, I would probably pick a few themes and have the books, discussions and (unless totally unavoidable) lectures focus on those themes. See the very bottom of this post for a couple of teaching ideas.
Trafalgar Square, London, England. 1915
England
Themes:
Industrial Revolution (political and economic changes), gender issues, education and society (state vs individual), nationalism, modernization, imperialism
Events:
Industrial Revolution
Chartists
Imperialism (changes)
Boer Wars
WWI – inter war – WWII
post-WWII
People:
Books:
Thompson, E. P.: Read sections to show the idea that class was created through Industrialization. Shows argument about quality versus quantity, and averages dilute the results.
Berlanstein: shows importance of Industrial Revolution and the different ways historians view the past based on present circumstances. Shows how historical works are influenced by current situations.
Thompson, Dorothy: Shows the beginnings of political uprisings supported by the common people.
Davidoff & Hall: Shows the beginning of the Victorian ideals, the separation of men and women spheres, and the “traditional” gender roles. Gender and economy seen to influence each other (gender roles determined by occupation, work and public sphere influence gender roles).
Porter: A good look at imperialism/British colonialism, the change from economical to ideological. Shows colonialism as a European power struggle. Addresses the masculinity of imperialism and fears in rise in feminism (Boer Wars)
Mandler: Brings up issue of state control versus individual liberty and accountability.
Eiffel Tower, Paris, France. 1900
France
Themes:
Political revolutions, class changes, colonialism, gender, religion, memory, nationalism, antisemitism
Events:
French Revolution
Political changes through 1870 (republics, monarchies, and empires)
Third Republic
Colonialism
Dreyfus Affair
WWI – interwar – WWII
Fourth Republic
Algeria
Fifth Republic
People:
Napoleon, Dreyfus, de Gaulle, Petain,
Books:
Ford and Weber: compare different ways of looking at nationalism in France. Bottom-up and Top-down show many ways and nationalism was sculptured.
Hazareesingh: Argues that concepts of citizenship and a weaker state government were first established during Second Empire, rather than in Third Republic. Sources based on elite writings, so it shows what they wanted, not necessarily what happened, since there was much restriction of local governments and individual rights.
Nord: Unique way of looking at how Third Republic lasted so long, not how it could end in Vichy. Shows how Third Republic implemented political ideas that Hazareesingh shows the Second Empire wanted to use (decentralized govt., create sense of citizenship, etc). Shows building of “traditional” Victorian ideals about gender, public/private spheres, middle-class bourgeois life shaped by and influenced politics in France.
McManners: to show the decline in religion, the issues of church and state (infalibility of pope)
Forth (or other book on Dreyfus Affair): Discuss why Dreyfus Affair was so influential in France and elsewhere. The issues of antisemitism in places other than Germany, and the masculinity complex in France and Europe.
Prochaska: To show importance of colonies, especially Algeria, to France. Stresses that Algeria was France, so issues there were similar to issues in France. Perhaps also read with Horne about the Algerian wars and end of France occupation to show the story from occupied and occupiers.
Weber: Show the interwar years as decisive in France allowing Nazis so much influence in France.
Paxton and Rousso: Show the involvement of Vichy with Nazis, and the national conundrum that places on French narrative.
Hecht: To address the issue of France dealing with their national image and turning to technology and technocrats as the source of narrative building.
Kent: Show the unification of Germany and the role Bismarck played in shaping German politics and culture in nineteenth century.
Chickering: Discuss the reasons for WWI and Germany.
Bessel and Gay: Bessel for a traditional account of Weimar, Gay for a look at the social impact.
Allen: Look at the rise of Nazis.
Kershaw: Look at the mythos and sensationalism surrounding Hitler
Koonz: Look at women and their roles in Nazi Germany.
Kaplan: Look at the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Unique look from the bottom up, from the woman and mother’s viewpoint.
Fullbrook: formation and existence of East Germany.
Jarausch & Geyer: How to deal with Germany’s past, and how best to interpret and write history. Also a good book to address methodology, how should historians write, there are too many ways to explain and recount history than just political. OR Koshar for the same reasons, but he focuses on buildings as monuments which provides a tangible reference to the discussion rather than the theoretical discussion by Jarausch & Geyer.
Europe
Themes and events to focus on for European history:
Nationalism is the biggest one. Look at political change, republics, democracies, socialism, and communism.
Decline in religion and the increased reliance in science. Modernization.
Economies of scale. Global markets and capitalism vs socialism vs communism. Role of Industrial Revolution and colonialism, class and gender.
Colonialism/imperialism as economic, political and cultural motivators.
Gender issues. Defining gender in Victorian period, creation of “traditional roles”, affect of industrial revolution and capitalism on changing role of occupations. Changes in legal rights for women and men.
Rise in class consciousness, workers unions, political movements. Failure or success of communist ideals.
Teaching in a classroom.
Teaching Ideas
History Filters
Study of history is always dependent upon the “filter” through which you want to look at it. It would be fun to divide the class into sections, and each group take a specific “filter” (gender, culture, politics, economy, class, race, etc). Each group either gets their own reading list or they have to pull the specific themes from a general list. Then each class period, each group takes a turn discussing history viewed through their filter. Have the other groups not presenting write one question before class and one question after for the presenting group to answer about their “filter.” (Questions could be done on a blog.)
Timelines
Have students make a timeline of the time period the class will be studying. Then in the first lecture share what my points are and argue them. Have the students keep their timeline throughout the semester. They will argue their points, especially if they change them, taking ideas from the texts. Final paper is a well argued timeline.
