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).

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.