Growing up in 1970s Phoenix was hardly an obvious starting point for a career as a historian of Modern Europe. In formal terms of American history, Arizona was one of the newest political entities of the New World, having only acquired statehood in 1912, the last territory in the contiguous United States to do so,…
Category: Formation Essay
H-Diplo Essay 390- Jacques E.C. Hymans on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
This is the story of the winding path from my arrival at grad school to my dissertation and first book, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy.[2] My hope is that a step-by-step account of my journey will serve as useful comparative data for young scholars embarking on their own paths.
H-Diplo Essay 387- Charles E. Neu on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
I was brought up in a small town in west-central Iowa, where my father was a lawyer and long-time mayor. He was a conservative Republican, critical of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal; Charles Tansill’s Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, was his favorite book.[1] Politicians would seek him out in…
H-Diplo Essay 386- Vladislav Zubok on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
H-Diplo asked me to contribute to this new series about the formative years of scholars who do diplomatic and political international history. As I was thinking about my assignment, it occurred to me that I was one of the very few and privileged who grew up and studied in the Soviet Union at the end…
H-Diplo Essay 383- Waren I. Cohen on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
Columbia College did not require a major when I was an undergraduate. I didn’t take my first history course until my junior year, although I had worked earlier with Peter Gay, the great scholar of modern Europe intellectual history, when he was an assistant professor in the Government Department teaching Contemporary Civilization in Columbia’s core…
H-Diplo Essay 380- Christopher R. Browning on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
My parents were both raised and educated in California. My father, with ABD status at UC Berkeley, was hired as an instructor in the Philosophy Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1940 but—as a Norman Thomas socialist, anti-segregationist, and pacifist—was dismissed from that job two years later. He quickly took…
H-Diplo Essay 378- Stephen G. Rabe on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
I start with a cliché. I was destined to be a historian of international affairs. An early memory I have is sitting on my father’s lap, while he read the evening newspaper and smoked. This would be about 1953. I was five years old. My father had spent the day in hard physical work as…
H-Diplo Essay 376- Robert J. Lieber on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
Reflecting on a scholarly career that began more than a half century ago, I’m struck by the confluence of social and historical context, personal inclination, and serendipity. Unlike friends and colleagues who were part of the post-World War II baby boom, I was born just weeks before U.S. entry into the conflict. The war engaged…
H-Diplo Essay 374- John Prados on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
Many of my colleagues have contributed essays revisiting their graduate school days, full of commendations to friends and collaborators. I could do that too—and, in fact, my friends include many of the very authors of these essays—but I thought it more useful to spend this time on tools and methods. As I sit to write…
H-Diplo Essay 372- Kathryn Stoner on Learning the Scholar’s Craft
I was supposed to be a lawyer. That’s what my parents had told me; I was good at arguing, I liked school, and I was really interested in politics. But something went terribly wrong (or right, depending on your perspective) and my professional life took another path into political science and specifically the study of…
