Undergraduate and Graduate Course Offerings, Spring 2023
01 Sunday Jan 2023
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Category Archives: Department News
Policy History at BGSU
22 Thursday Sep 2022
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As the Gary Hess Lecture approaches and our speaker, Bill Allison, is a distinguished graduate of our program, we take the opportunity to share this post of our colleague Dr. Doug Forsyth about the department’s contributions to the field of Policy History —Amílcar E. Challú
Historians Take Over Grand Rapids, Michigan!
17 Saturday Sep 2022
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By Kasandra Fager, BGSU History MA student, edited by Chloe S. Kozal
Imagine the best museum you have visited, whether that was a Presidential Museum, a battlefield, or an art museum. Did it have interactive exhibits, a planetarium, an easy-to-read narrative, or a family-friendly atmosphere? Well, if nothing comes to mind, consider Grand Rapids, Michigan as your next destination!
Continue reading“1972: From the End of the Vietnam War to the Beginning of Watergate”, Dr. Benjamin Greene’s presentation featured in Wapakoneta Daily News
22 Friday Jul 2022
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As we reflect on 50 years since 1972, we contemplate how past events and historical figures impact our present history. Students of Dr. Greene will learn more about this influential period in the HIST 3334/3334H: The Vietnam War course in Fall 2022.
Read the article here
Student Podcasts from Dr. Challú’s Modern Mexico Course
22 Friday Jul 2022
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Podcast links will be updated frequently!
Chloe S. Kozal : Mexican Civilian Protest Art during the 1960s-1980s
Chloe S. Kozal has been passionate about researching how civilians express their political views through art during tumultuous periods of history in Latin America. A continuation of her research and her article (Communication from Far: The Role of Subversive Mail Art During the Argentine Dirty War (1976-1983), this podcast investigates how Mexican artists and mail artists brought change and protest during the Mexican Dirty War.
Nicholas Hartzell- NPR Mexican Debt Crisis Talk
A podcast on the Mexican Debt Crisis in 1982. Listen on Spotify!
Connor Przysiecki- NAFTA, the Economy, and Mexico’s Public Heath Crisis
In Connor’s own words: ” This is my final project for a course I’m taking (Spring 2022) at Bowling Green State University, Modern Mexico. I’ve never done a project in this format. I’m open to civil conversations in the comments, if you’d like more context on a particular subject within this area of study. Enjoy!”
Reminiscences of Don Rowney, by his colleague Doug Forsyth
11 Monday Apr 2022
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As a remembrance of our colleague Professor Emeritus Don Rowney, who recently passed away, we share below Dr. Doug Forsyth’s eulogy with minor edits for brevity. We thank Dr. Forsyth for sharing the text.
As early as my on-campus job interview at Bowling Green, in spring 1996, it became clear to me that Don Rowney was the faculty member at the university who was most interested in having me as a colleague. My wife, Mercedes, and I drove out to northwest Ohio in early summer of 1996, as I looked for a place to live. Don and Susan invited us over for dinner, and I paid my first visit to the Old West End Historical District in Toledo, where Don and Susan were living, where Susan is still living, and where I would go on to live for twenty-four years and counting. I still remember vividly that dinner, on the porch behind Don and Susan’s house, and in particular one detail. Don asked Mercedes, who was and is a professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, why she had accompanied me on the long drive out to the Midwest as I looked for a place to live. ‘Do you think I’m going to leave my husband back here, without making sure it’s a decent place?’ she quipped. Don looked at her with this peculiar expression of delight he sometimes had, when someone said something unexpected, and in his view particularly amusing—it was the first, but not the last time I saw that expression on his face. And that sealed it—he and Mercedes became friends for life. Mercedes and I made life-long friends in the Old West End, and in many cases they were already friends of Don and Susan. I think I owe not just the continuation of my career to Don, but also a good deal of the happiness I’ve derived from living in this part of the world, over the past quarter century.
Continue readingNot Just Another BGSU Alumnus
22 Saturday May 2021
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Author: Brittany Von Kamp, recent graduate from the History M.A. program
When pursuing a publisher for his book manuscript Beyond Truman: Robert H. Ferrell and Crafting the Past (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), author Dr. Douglas Dixon responded with a laugh—that several editors rejected the book’s thrust, saying: “Nobody cares about historians.” Dixon explained that this was a major hurdle in getting the book to readers who, in fact, do care about the challenges faced by past masters in doing history. What challenged Ferrell, as the field evolved into the twenty-first century was postmodernism, the New Left, and social and cultural history. Though Dixon feels Ferrell is an important person to study, the book is much more than merely a study of this important presidential, diplomatic, and military historian, though his biography is central to it. Instead, the author had to find a way to make Ferrell’s world larger than the historian himself, to fit Ferrell into the larger historical narrative – a task that many historians face as they write about their own research. In the end, Dixon says that “the book is not just about Ferrell; it’s about the larger culture of history and doing history,” particularly in the last half of the twentieth century to the present day.
Continue readingNationalism, Newspapers, and Public Opinion in the Civil War: The Cincinnati Daily Commercial, 1864 to 1865
23 Friday Apr 2021
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Author: Kasandra Fager, senior in the History major
Editor: Brittany Von Kamp, second year student in the M.A. in History
This is a public presentation written as part of HIST4001, Professional Practices in History and HIST3265, Civil War.
Continue readingIn a great national crisis like ours, unanimity of action among those seeking a common end is very desirable, almost indispensable, and yet no approach to such unanimity is attainable, unless some deference shall be paid to the will of the majority, simply because it is the will of the majority.
“President’s Message,” Cincinnati Daily Commercial, page 1, 1864
The Damage Propaganda Can Cause
23 Friday Apr 2021
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Author: Jack Abel, senior in the History major
Editor: Brittany Von Kamp, second year student in the M.A. in History
This is a public presentation written as part of HIST4001, Professional Practices in History and HIST4804, Seminar in Diplomatic and Military History .
This image was published by the Psychological Warfare Section of the United States Army. The poster portrays the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, feeding Communist Chinese troops while the people of his country starve. The second image is the back side of the poster which is a caricature of the communist dove of peace. The last image is a documentation sheet which translates the Korean of the poster and gives the prominent information regarding the poster.
The Korean War was the first major conflict in what became known as the Cold War following the conclusion of WWII. The basis of this conflict was the ideological struggle between the two major world powers, the United States which was a capitalist-based economy and the Soviet Union which was a communist-based economy. The war was not a struggle between the two countries head on but was fought with proxy nations who shared similar ideologies with the major powers.
The use of stereotypes towards an opposing force has been a tactic throughout most of human history. Stereotypes have been used to portray the opposite side in a conflict to the civilian people. A racial stereotype, in its basic definition, is when one group takes a characteristic of another group and over dramatize it to make the other side seem almost sub-human. This process is known as othering. Othering is when a person or a group of people view another group in a certain which aims to alienate them or separate them from the larger group.
Continue readingA Mother’s War: An Ohioan Woman and Her Struggle With the Korean War
23 Friday Apr 2021
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Author: Cody Johnston, senior in the History major
Editor: Brittany Von Kamp, second year student in the M.A. in History
This is a public presentation written as part of HIST4001, Professional Practices in History and HIST4804, Seminar in Diplomatic and Military History.
MS-858 Hefner Family Papers Box 4, Folder 1
The Korean War was the first time that the Cold War turned hot. This was due to the increasing tensions between the Capitalist and Communist superpowers of the world after WWII. In fact, this war is one of many firsts. The Korean War is the first proxy war that the United States engaged in. It was the first time that the United Nations (UN) had held a role in a military capacity. These were unprecedented times. Marred by the numerous and complex geopolitics of Asia during the 1950’s, coupled with fears of the conflict escalating to a nuclear holocaust, the Korean War is one that was controversial from the outset. Despite the fear of communism spreading across the United States, the American public did not have much support for the Korean War and it’s goal of containing communism.
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