kotov

I'm kind of working on the formatting, etc. as I go along, and I've already got some of the front matter (abstract, etc.) done. I'm afraid I'm going to spend an entire week figuring out how to get the damn table of contents to look right, but other than that I should be ahead of the game there.

Danke schön! I think I'll be alright, since I've kind of been getting my advisor's feedback chapter by chapter, and will probably do the same with one of the other professors on my committee, who's going to be coming for Germany for the defense. I think I should be okay. I doubt I'll be asked to revise too too much.

Agreed. Jacobs was great. Another I'd recommend in that vein is Mike Davis' Late Victorian Holocausts. I would say it's something like a more transnational version of King Leopold's Ghost, some of the more shocking results of colonialism and some of the non-European empires of the 19th Century (i.e., Brazil and Qing China).

I simmed a game of NCAA football between the two schools and went with the winner. No really, I chose based on money.

Looks like I'm going to have about three or four weeks between my defense and the deadline...gulp.

For a serious answer: 1. Meteorologist 2. Ornithologist 3. Offensive coordinator/football mad scientist 4. ...I guess a history professor, idk, I kind of like my job sometimes.

For the love of God don't rent from United. That's all I can really tell you. Some of your best deals are gonna be things like what my fiancee and I did the second year of my M.A., which was to rent part of a house (we had the upstairs and another couple had the downstairs). It was a little ways away from campus so I had to drive, which wasn't the best, but it was a nice, quiet place to live and was entirely reasonable budget-wise even on a humanities student's stipend... I'll second The Cabin, best pizza in town by far and great drink specials (thankfully it's a reasonable walk from most places). Another couple of places I'd recommend would be The Bird, which is the best bar in Mount Pleasant by far (though it can get crowded and I have seen them have to turn people away because of fire code on the weekends, so don't get there too late) and Mountain Town, where you can get stuff from the brewery and eat on the porch next to the river. Speaking of, tubing or walking or kayaking along the river in the city parks is also a great way to spend an afternoon. The city has a really great park system; personally, I spent a lot of time out there birdwatching, but there's plenty of other stuff to do too. That said, the poster above isn't entirely off base...Mount Pleasant can be boring because of how small it is, the winters are very cold and windy, and most of the area around Mount Pleasant is pretty empty and desolate. If you get bored, Lansing is like an hour away though. You can get to the Detroit area in less than three hours, and some of the more touristy stuff (like Frankenmuth and the Renaissance Fair in Holly) are only a couple hours away as well. I guess one of the main problems is if you need to find sort of dressier clothes (like for a conference or whatever), that can be a problem since Mount Pleasant doesn't really have a mall as such. Like the gangster of love said, though, it really is what you make of it. I did my undergrad in a small college town too, and I'm from a pretty small town in the south, so I enjoyed it. If you're from a big city, maybe not so much.

I taught U.S. to 1865 one semester using one of Foner's textbooks. I thought it was pretty accessible and well-written enough that a non-major could still get through it without much trouble. That said, I hope I never get stuck teaching American again, since I haven't taken an American history class myself since APUSH in 11th grade...

Not an applicant there, but as an alumnus of the AU history department, I just wanted to drop a War Damn Eagle in this thread. Also, if you have any questions about the department, the city, the campus, etc., feel free to message me. Auburn is my favorite place in the entire world and I love it more than my own family.

Alright, sweet, thanks. It makes me sad to see that they're not teaching Romanian either. IU used to teach it during the summers (I took it there a few years ago), but they don't offer it anymore either. I guess Arizona State is basically the only way to do a summer program for it anymore (also did that program and it's great, but not everyone can travel to Romania for a month).

Currently: Hildrun Glass, Deutschland und die Verfolgung der Juden im Rumänischen Machtbereich, 1940-1944 Armin Heinen, Rumänien, der Holocaust und die Logik der Gewalt Ottmar Trasca, "Chestiunea Evreiasca" în documente militare române, 1941-1944 Soon (hopefully): Sebastian Balta, Rumänien und die Großmächte in der Ära Antonescu Turn down for what?

"an historian" makes me want to punch people. The h-deletion only occurs if you use the "an" in the first place; the h-deletion wouldn't naturally occur anywhere else, so it's "a." That linguistics minor comes in handy makes me super anal-retentive.

Lolita is brilliant. There are so many puns and double entendres in the text, it's just incredible to read. And English was the man's third language.

Hi, you're my best friend now.

I think there was a History of Science Fiction or something like that course at Auburn. I never took it, since scifi isn't my thing (I never even saw Star Wars), but it sounded neat in theory. CMU has the History of Rock and Roll.

One of my friends took it in Scotland or something. I don't know who might offer it in the U.S. though. Can't imagine many smaller schools/state schools would. I mostly just need a "decipher Lieutenant Derp-escu's crappy handwriting on this TPS report" class, because 1940s military dudes have some of the ugliest cursive I've ever seen.

Oh yeah, Germany is a great place to travel and study. Everybody in my program gets sent abroad for a year, so I opted for Germany. I was at the University of Jena, but I also spent a couple of months in Freiburg, where the military archives are. I didn't end up doing much actual archival research there, since most of the archival materials I needed were from the Romanian archives, not the German, but there's just so much more variety in course offerings there, etc. There's no way a graduate seminar in the U.S. (at most places anyway) would've been like "here, read Cioran and Codreanu and A.C. Cuza and let's discuss this." It was a blast. Russian populism sounds like tons of fun. I studied Russian history in undergrad and got really into reading about like, Ukrainian nationalism in the USSR and then into stuff like the Holodomor, and I was like, legitimately conflicted about whether I wanted to keep working on that and like, Russian agricultural history, or go more toward fascism/Holocaust studies. I ended up going for the latter, but I'd still love to get to teach on Russia since I honestly probably know Russian history better than German history. That Russia 1861-1939 class I took at Auburn was incredible. I think the professor who taught it when I was there retired a couple years after I graduated (which makes me feel old talking about a class I took from a retired professor), which is a shame, because I don't know if they even have a Russianist there anymore.

As far as getting a job? I have no idea. I'm sure if you're applying for a job in someplace like Florida/Texas/California it'd be good to say "oh and I happen to speak Spanish at a C2 level," but other than that, it's mostly just "do you have the tools to do the research you say you're planning to do?" I haven't found Romanian all that difficult, but I've been studying it for several years now. I'm still not great at speaking it, just because I don't get a lot of chance to practice (as you might imagine), but I can read through texts in it pretty quickly, since basically all of my dissertation sources are in Romanian, with maybe like one or two percent in German and a tiny bit in French. Romanian is probably another one of those that there's no reason to learn if you aren't going to travel to or study the country though, since there's not a lot of practical use for it otherwise. It probably wouldn't be hard for most people with a background in French though, since there are lots of cognates. The grammar is a lot more difficult though. Knowing how to decline nouns from Romanian really helped me with German, as did being used to three genders. I'm still jealous that you started with Hungarian as your native language, since I feel like that's almost the only way anyone would ever become fluent in it. I know a few words from having travelled in Transylvania and then staying in Budapest for a weekend, but other than that, I'm lost.

As far as general tips for reading comprehension go, I would say one of the easiest things to do is just to start reading newspapers, magazines, etc. in your target language. You can get this stuff on line for free and they're generally written at like a high school reading level or so, so you'll get practice with the grammatical constructions and basic vocabulary without having to reach for the dictionary or grammar book every few lines. That said, get yourself a good dictionary and (preferably) a good grammar of the language. I studied linguistics as an undergrad so I think reading grammar books is fun in and of itself, but even if you don't, it's helpful, especially if you want to do something like German where there are substantial differences from English grammar. Probably not so necessary for French or Spanish.

Yeah, I guess that is one thing you have to consider, especially if you're doing some sort of intellectual or earlier political history. If you know there's some author or a certain book or two that's important in your field that hasn't been translated, then your decision is probably made for you. I think French and German are both good options, but German is definitely one you don't take on lightly. It's not a super-difficult language, like another mentioned in this thread, but it's also not nearly as easy or intuitive as French or Spanish, and it does take a while to learn it and master the grammar. Plus, if you're going mostly for reading knowledge for a competency exam, you can get thrown for a loop even if you get to speaking it nearly fluently, since there's always a new compound word you've never seen before (trust me on this). If you're not going to have the time/money to invest in language classes or a professional tutor, then I'd definitely suggest one of the Western Romance languages, most likely French in your case. If you happen to get super interested in Orthodox religion, there are always the summer Slavic language programs at Indiana and Pitt (which are both excellent). I think IU also teaches Arabic and Turkish if you end up going that route.

I really enjoyed the class I took in Germany on Fascist movements and authoritarian regimes during the interwar period. It's not what I write on mostly, but I secretly love the interwar/postwar periods a lot more than the war period itself. Anything on the political stuff during that period would be tons of fun for me. German Revolution? Russian Revolution? Romanian far-right ideologists (oh my God, I took a seminar on this when I was in Germany and it was amazeballs)? Anything like that.

Hungarian ಠ_ಠ I tried, I really did. It's not happening. I feel bad but barring a miracle I'm going to be depending on Romanian/German/French sources for the rest of my life.

Spanish and French are both really easy and there are all kinds of resources, plus you don't have to travel too far to practice your speaking, especially with Spanish. Or, you could be cool and learn a certain other Romance language...