A.B., College of William and Mary
M.A. and M.Phil., Yale University
Ph.D., Yale University
cgehrz@bethel.edu
(651) 638-6105
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After
supper [the widow] got out her book and learned
me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in
a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by
she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable
long time; so then I didn't care no more about him,
because I don't take no stock in dead people.
Mark
Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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Courses Taught
Christianity and Western Culture The Cold War Human Rights in International History Modern Europe The Reformations Senior Seminar (spring) World War I
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Research Interests
As someone trained in the history of international relations, I am primarily interested in how individual, groups, organizations, governments, and cultures interact across national borders. I am especially concerned with such interactions at levels other than "high politics" and military conflict. My dissertation, for example, examined the British, French, and American educators who went to occupied Germany in 1945-1949 and tried (without much success) to "modernize" German educational values, policies, and institutions.
Here I am also guided by my growing conviction that peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice, mercy, kindness, and love. This has led me to a growing interest in human rights in international history.
Finally, my interest in education has, of late, expanded to the history and theory of Christian higher education and scholarship. I am currently undertaking a research project on the Swedish-American Pietist understanding of higher education as seen in the Baptist General Conference and the Evangelical Covenant Church and its universities (Bethel and North Park, respectively). In conjunction with this new research interest in Pietism, I am working with two colleagues to coordinate an upcoming Lilly Fellows Program regional research conference, "The Pietist Impulse in Christianity" (at Bethel in March 2009).
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Publications
“Dean Acheson, the JCS and the ‘Single Package’: American Policy on German Rearmament, 1950,” Diplomacy & Statecraft 12 (March 2001): 135-60.
(with Marc Trachtenberg) “America, Europe, and German Rearmament, August-September 1950: A Critique of a Myth,” in Between Empire and Alliance: America and Europe during the Cold War, ed. Trachtenberg (Rowan & Littlefield, 2003), 1-31.
[previously published in Journal of European Integration History 6 (2000): 9-35]
Review of John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (Penguin, 2005), in Fides et Historia 39 (Summer/Fall 2007): 155-57.
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Books that have influenced me as an historian
• The Bible
Long before I was old enough to understand fully
my faith or my field, the Bible was my favorite
history book. I’m afraid that some outstanding
sermons by some outstanding Covenant pastors went
unheard as I sat in the pew paging through the stories
of the Old Testament and the Gospels.
• E.H. Carr, “What
Is History?”
• Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe
Though he is by no means the only (or, I suppose,
the first) to make this point, Carr’s famous
essay contends that history is a project of “imaginative
understanding.” I continue to approach every
class with the goal in mind that students will be
able to imagine themselves in the shoes of people
from different times, places, and cultures. Perhaps the best recent example of historical empathy is Brad Gregory's acclaimed study of Protestant, Anabaptist, and Catholic martyrs in the Reformations. Without taking the side of any one group, he brilliantly captures the beliefs, values, and passions that led so many Europeans to die (or to kill) over questions of faith.
•
John Dower, War
without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War
• John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History
• Michael Hunt, Ideology
and U.S. Foreign Policy
• Emily Rosenberg, Spreading
the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural
Expansion, 1890-1945
Just as international historians are expanding their
scope, so too are historians of U.S. foreign policy
– particularly those who study its cultural
sources and effects and those who insist that its
evolution cannot be studied in the isolation of
one nation’s history.
• Peter Hopkirk, The
Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
• Alistair Horne, The
Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 • Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa •
Alan Furst, Night
Soldiers •
Patrick O'Brian, The
Aubrey-Maturin series (Master and Commander,
etc.)
While I admire many historians for their writing,
too often we think of ourselves primarily as scholars,
rather than storytellers. In this respect,
we have much to learn about our craft from journalists
and historical novelists.
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