kotov

For Romania, I'd recommend: Adrian Cioroianu, On the Shoulders of Marx: An Introduction to Communism in Romania Vladimir Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons Rogers Brubaker, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town I don't know as much about Hungary, but I enjoyed Tibor Meray's That Day in Budapest about the 1956 Revolution In general, a good read is Anne Applebaum's GULAG: A History. I can probably give you more about Romania specifically, though it'd mostly be about the immediate postwar period, since I'm working on an article about Romanian nationalism and the Soviet importation of forced labor from Eastern Europe.

I'm not really sure. I may just try to pick it up on my own. I think they teach it at SWSEEL at IU, which I'm going to for Romanian this year.

I'm finishing up my first year of my Ph.D. in Modern European History. I'm in a bit of a narrow field, but I can help with a few general things. If anyone is interested in Holocaust studies, I can provide a decent list for that too. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities Michel Foucault, The Order of Things Karl Marx, Das Kapital and Critique of the Gotha Program Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concepts and Contours Carl von Clausewitz, On War Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War Leopold von Ranke, Ferdinand I and Maximillian II of Austria Most of these are just kind of there to trace the origins of history and its methodological progress. It's the kind of stuff you'd have assigned in a historiography class of some sort, I'd figure. It's good to read foundational sort of books in a lot of different schools of thought (Marxist, modernist, postmodernist, etc.) to evaluate their approaches and figure out your own. I guess my approach is a bit more traditional than a lot of students' would be, but that's just me.

I'm planning to pick up Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian and Yiddish during grad school. I have some reading knowledge of Ukrainian but it's very specialized so I didn't list it.

German annieca, kotov Spanish annieca French Hebrew uhohlemonster Italian Latin Greek Russian Polish runaway Romanian kotov

I agree with finding out where your favorite authors teach and working from there; that's how I ended up here. I don't know your field as well as others might, so I can't tell you what the big places would be for that (In my case, the big schools are Indiana and Pitt), but I'd suggest you go ahead and apply to those as well; it's always good to have a couple of "reaches" in your applications. I wouldn't worry so much about the way you brand yourself going into grad school, as long as you get in touch with the people in your field and have some direction on where you want to go with your studies (and hopefully a plan on what you'd like to research). Remember though, in this job market, when you come out, you'll want to make sure you have a broad sort of appeal; in that case, it really is a lot about branding and marketing. In my case, that's something I'm having to work on, trying to get a few presentations/publications outside my very specific geographic/temporal focus (I study a period of about 5-10 years and mainly one smaller country).

I had a book of 524 pages and a book of 431 pages to read for this week. I didn't have any writing due this week, but I'm already done with all of my assignments at this point. I'm only in two actual readings courses this semester (1 lecture, 1 independent study paper). Reading 3 to 4 books a week (plus whatever you have for your own research) is a reasonable expectation. You either have to read a lot faster than I do or be good at "gutting" a book (I posted my method in the new thread on the topic).

I'm finishing up my first year of my Ph.D. program. A professor of mine gave me this format to follow: Read in this order: 1. Preface 2. Intro 3. Conclusion 4. Table of Contents 5. Skim body Identify: 1. Thesis 2. Methodology 3. Argument/Structure This always works well enough for me when I'm just reading to discuss in class. If I'm writing a paper on it, When I'm actually writing on the book, I'll usually just keep a notepad out and keep running notes on the book so that I can get a quick summary in and then be able to tie the author's evidence back to the argument/structure/methodology part. It's worked fine so far for me. I guess my way of note-taking is a bit old-fashioned, but it's what works for me, and it's even helped me when I've been working on lit review for seminar papers, journal articles, etc.

Ohio University funds its MAs and is the #1 party school in the country. I almost took that offer over a funded PhD offer at CMU. Also, things are looking good for them in roundball terms right now too.

I got into Georgia Tech's HST program, but ended up not going for a variety of reasons. I would have been researching either Soviet agricultural history or Polish aviation history. Opted to go a different route. Also, they had no funding for me even though I was apparently like their #1 choice.

I'd add also that you may want to at least have a couple of minor publications under your belt. Try using h-net's announcements to find stuff; oftentimes a lot of smaller journals and conferences will post CfPs there and you can maybe do a couple of book reviews as well. It'd be great if you could get funding to do language study in your area as well, during the summer months or something.

Hey y'all, I've gotten a proposal accepted to contribute to a book project (humblebrag). The problem I'm having is with obtaining permission to use documents which the Bosnian archives have donated to the USHMM collection. I need their permission to make copies of the microfilm to do my research. I've tried emailing, faxing, and snail-mailing them to no avail. I suppose I can try to call them, but that would be problematic as my spoken Bosnian is poor. Does anyone have any experience/advice for dealing with issues with foreign archives? Thanks!

Essentially this.

Pretty much finished doing research reading for the semester. I picked up Charles King's Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams over the weekend so maybe I'll get to that soon.

American History R_Escobar (20th century, American Indian), crazedandinfused (antebellum, intellectual), hopin'-n-prayin' (southern, religious), stevemcn (transnational), Simple Twist of Fate (early American) European History Kelkel (Modern Germany, political), goldielocks (Britain), SapperDaddy (Eastern and Central Europe), kotov (Modern Romania, Holocaust, labor) African History Oseirus, Singwaya18, Safferz Latin American History teachgrad (20th century, Southern Cone), BH-history East Asian History alleykat Near/Middle Eastern History uhohlemonster Atlantic World sandyvanb Jewish History uhohlemonster, hopin'-n-'prayin, kotov (Holocaust) Others???

Hopefully Romania is decently interesting for you. Just trying to spark some interest in an understudied field.

And also, if you're interested in forced migration in the European context, there's a good book I've been reading for the same project, Purifying the Nation by Vladimir Solonari, which is about the deportations and population exchanges that took place in Romania during the war as they tried to remove a lot of the non-Romanians from the population. If you're looking for an underused comparative perspective, anyway.

Oh okay. I mostly study it in the context of the Holocaust, though mainly dealing with Romania, not Germany. My plan for my dissertation is to compare the German and Romanian labor camps in the Dnestr-Bug-Dnepr region during the war.

Not to be petty, but Iran isn't an Arabic country. The people there speak Farsi (aka Persian), which is an Indo-European language.

Dude, I'm totally reading Hitler's Foreign Workers right now too. Do you study forced labor or something?

A clear bottle with Cyrillic writing on it...

My favorite pen is apparently called a "Sanford uni-ball ONYX micro". It's green. Also it was free in the department supply room. So. Yeah.

I'm allowed to take 500-level lecture+research courses, and sometimes we have 400/700 level seminars doubled up. I've only taken one 500-level course which was on the World Wars and the interwar period, which is my time period. I'll be taking some low-level language classes this summer.

I'm pretty unsophisticated. All I really ever take to work is keys+phone+wallet+pen, plus a messenger bag with whatever books/notebooks I took home and my flash drive if I took that home. I have a computer in my office so I don't take my laptop. Sometimes I take my cardinal mug with sweet tea or hot chocolate. That's about it really.

For pleasure? For My Legionaries by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Basically an edict to his fascist revolutionary group in 1930s Romania. For classes? Uh, several. Taner Akcam's A Shameful Act about the Armenian Genocide, Ulrich Herbert's Hitler's Foreign Workers Shirer's Berlin Diary, etc.