A Death in Davos: The Cult of Honor and the European Press before the First World War

Switzerland

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to Switzerland needed for research on John Deak’s emerging book project and making connections with local historians. The research focused on one of the last cases of Ehrennotwehr, or urgent defense of honor, before the First World War. This case occurred in Davos, Switzerland, in which an Austro-Hungarian officer challenged and later murdered a man from London who had insulted him.

Almudena Carracedo: Director of "El Silencio de Otros" Documentary

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for hosting Almudena Carracedo, director of El silencio de otros. The documentary focuses on victims of the Franco regime who continue to seek justice, and it won the Goya Award for best documentary film in 2018. Carracedo attended Aguilera-Mellado’s class on Spanish film, which held a screening of her documentary and a Q&A session with her.

An Analysis of Porcelain Objects of Cultural Memory in Contemporary European Installation Art and Historic Monuments

Versailles, Sèvres, Paris, and Chartres, France; Basel, Switzerland

This graduate student project studied the concept of historical amnesia and art created as objects of cultural memory, specifically the cultural memory of porcelain objects in the context of historical European monuments and contemporary European installation art. The project focused on recontextualizing eighteenth century porcelain objects that were made right before the French Revolution, juxtaposing them with contemporary forms of semiotics (specifically food and technology) to talk about issues of class and inequality, historically and today. The project investigated historical and contemporary porcelain artworks housed in different exhibits to gain inspiration from these site-specific works as examples of how to create affective environments for housing sculptures.

Faculty Advisor: Bill Kremer

An Examination of International Olympic Game Developments

Rome, Italy; Barcelona, Spain

Temporary by nature, the Olympic Games’ tradition of changing locations poses a problem for architects—how can they impress athletes and visitors with revolutionary structures while preserving local urban characteristics and long-term sustainability? This undergraduate winter break project examines successful examples of Summer Olympics developments as models of sustainability by analyzing the inherent benefits of integrated sustainable design at architectural and urban scales.

Faculty Advisors: Selena Anders, Krupali Krusche

Archival Research on Elisabeth Markstein and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bremen, Germany; Amsterdam, Netherlands

This faculty grant provided funding for archival research in Bremen, Germany and Amsterdam, Netherlands on Elisabeth Markstein, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s main liaison in the West.

Athens and the Birth of Classical Architecture

Athens, Greece

This undergraduate spring break project analyzed the ruins of ancient Greek architecture, the inspiration for the great feats of Roman Classical architecture and many periods since. The project employed methods from the tradition of many great architects from the last two centuries, including on-site sketches, measured drawings, field notes, and watercolor.

Faculty Advisor: Ingrid Rowland

A Wide Wake Closing: Recrafting Homes and Communities with Dressers in 19th-20th Century Rural Connemara, Western Ireland

Connemara, Ireland

This faculty grant aided in funding the conclusion of the Dresser Project, a research project focused on western Ireland. This project combined multidisciplinary approaches to materiality and homemaking to investigate how people in rural Connemara villages sustained their communities after waves of emigration. The project investigated tangible strategies of those who remained in their homes despite the often-overwhelming adversity associated with staying amidst the tumult of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Class Tour of WWI Western Front: The Great War and Modern Memory

London, England; Ypres, Belgium; Péronne and Verdun, France

This faculty grant provided funding for fall break travel as part of an interdisciplinary course on the First World War, entitled “The Great War and Modern Memory.” Twenty students traveled to Europe, visiting principal sites of the war and its commemoration in the United Kingdom and along the Western Front in Belgium and France, including Ypres and Verdun. Students were encouraged to think about the war from the perspective of soldiers on the front lines as they visited museums and explored the battlefields.

Cold War Counterinsurgencies: Britain's Small-War Strategy and Decolonization in Malaya and Kenya

London, England

This undergraduate summer break project explored connections between the strategies and outcomes of British political and military responses to Cold War containment efforts at the end of British empire, focusing on the Malayan Emergency and the Mau Mau uprising as case studies. The project aimed at uncovering how the British understood these uprisings and developed their military strategies, studying what aspects of these conflicts should (or should not) be applied to modern military efforts. The project ultimately compared these conflicts to the development of American counterinsurgency and foreign policy, specifically in the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts.

Faculty Advisor: Paul Ocobock

Course Development, Nazi Germany / Nazi Europe

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for the development of a history course on Nazi Germany. The course aims to go beyond the narrow histories of Germany and open the topic up to its full European dimensions.

Dr. Sabrina C. Agarwal: Medieval Europe and Feminist Theoretical Approaches to Biographies of Past Peoples

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant co-supported a visit from Dr. Sabrina C. Agarwal (UC Berkeley), a preeminent scholar of bioarchaeological research on the anthropological causes and effects of changes in human skeletons over time. During her visit, Dr. Agarwal presented a public lecture on her research on Medieval Europe and feminist theoretical approaches to biographies of past peoples, and she spoke in Meredith Chesson’s “Archaeology and Gender” course.

Educational Bias in Urban Kazakhstan’s (Astana) Upper Secondary Schools

Astana, Kazakhstan

This undergraduate winter break project explored the educational systems in ex-Soviet countries, investigating remnants of Soviet-era biases toward “hard” sciences. The project conducted interviews with educators and reviews of lesson plans to determine whether these biases exist in modern post-Soviet academia and industry.

Faculty Advisor: David Gasperetti

Eugenic Perspectives: An Examination of the Doctors’ Trials at Nuremberg

London, England

Focusing on the T4 euthanasia program that systematically killed an estimated 70,000 people with disabilities and mental ilnesses in Nazi Germany, this undergraduate fall break project explored the complex relationship between the ideologies of Nazi perpetrators and America’s own eugenic beliefs. The project utilized documents in London’s Wiener Library which holds the complete records of the UN War Crimes Commission.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

Evolution of the Forum: From Trajan to Hitler

Munich, Germany

This undergraduate fall break project conducted a comparative study between the urban plans of Munich’s Königsplatz and the Imperial fora of Rome, specifically the Forum of Trajan, to reveal the Königsplatz’ connections to the forum typology and understand how that typology was adapted. The project aimed to understand Paul Ludwig Troost’s motivations for planning the site as he did and gain a deeper knowledge of the reasoning behind the first Nazi platz and those that followed.

Faculty Advisor: Krupali Krusche

Examining the Jurisdiction of International Courts

The Hague, Netherlands

This undergraduate fall break project explored the development and structure of international human rights systems, focusing on how amnesty laws preclude the threat of prosecution in non-domestic courts. The project considers the jurisdiction of the Nuremberg trials and compares its development to the International Criminal Court’s mandate, which includes crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Fighting for Neutrality: Britain’s Efforts to Maintain a Neutral Spain during WWII

London and Cambridge, England

This undergraduate summer break project explored the uneasy neutrality of fascist Spain during World War II and the British struggles to maintain Spanish neutrality. The project studied the intersection of the reality on the ground of Franco’s Spain, contemporary British perception, and actions taken by the British government, through the use of Hoare and the SOE to prevent Spain’s entry into the Axis powers. The project aimed to serve as an example of the gap between expectations and reality in international relations, particularly during wartime.

Faculty Advisor: Rev. Robert Sullivan

Fostering Community and Identity through Berlin’s Architecture

Berlin, Germany

An aging society, consistently low birth rates, and a rising influx of refugees has left the German population to consider what it means to be German, a question they have struggled to answer since the end of World War II and the rejection of Nazism. This undergraduate winter break project explored how architectural design can foster community, artistic creativity, and a sense of individual and national identity in modern Berlin. The project also employed traditional and modern German construction techniques to propose a mass-timber tower, aiming to bring Germany to the forefront of the global sustainability movement.

Faculty Advisor: Kim Rollings

German Translation of “Thomas Mann’s War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters”

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding the German translation of the book Thomas Mann’s War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters. The book focuses on the WWII-era US exile of the German author Thomas Mann and on the ways in which US audiences kept alive (and ultimately shaped) an image of “genuine German culture” during the Nazi period.

Greek Antiquities

Athens, Greece

This undergraduate spring break project followed the footsteps of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, two famous eighteenth century British architects, in understanding Greek architecture. This project compared the approaches, notes, and sketches of Stuart and Revett with those of the researcher, taken in twenty-first century Athens.

Faculty Advisor: Alessandro Pierattini

Greek Dealings with Death and the Potential Clinical Application

Athens, Greece

This undergraduate winter break project explores the question of how to best discuss and process death and dying in a clinical setting, studying how different cultural traditions deal with this process. The project focuses on Ancient Greek culture in conversation with previous research on Irish culture.

Faculty Advisor: Christopher Stevens

Historic Fashion Empirical Research Trip to London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Bath, UK

London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Bath, England

This faculty grant provided funding for an excursion to England as part of the Historic Fashion Research course in the FTT theatre curriculum. The trip offered undergraduate students the unique opportunity to conduct empirical research on historical fashion at renowned archives and report their findings in written essays and oral presentations.

Identity Formation and Mobility of Zazaki Speakers in Germany, Austria, and Turkey

Hessen and Berlin, Germany; Vienna, Austria

This graduate student project explored how community-building takes place among minority migrant populations—spatially and temporally—in relation to the already existing communities in the urban places where migrants settle. The project focused on identity formation from a relational and performative perspective through the lens of place-making, language use and retention, and religious practices among the Zazaki diaspora in Europe and western Turkey. The project sought to answer what the dynamics of identity formation, maintenance, and performance are, and how these Zazaki speakers negotiate and produce/reproduce their identities as shaped by their environment.

Faculty Advisor: Maurizio Albahari

Illustrations & Documentations of Ancient Greece

Olympia, Greece

This undergraduate spring break project followed in the footsteps of the authors of Ionian Antiquities, a landmark architectural book studying Classical Greek art and architecture, to produce a collection of the researcher’s own sketches and documentation. The project placed these sketches in conversation with ideas from Italian engraver Giovanni Piranesi, considering the power of nature over human structures and highlighting this struggle in Greek architecture.

Faculty Advisor: Lisa Lombardi-LoGiudice

Imagined Insurgencies and Heroic Masculinity in Chartist Fiction

London, England

This graduate student project analyzed texts within newspaper publications associated with the Chartist political movement, the largest working-class political movement in nineteenth-century literary studies. The project compiled publications from the British Library’s British Newspaper Archive, seeking to make an original contribution to a subject with growing interest in the scholarly community.

Faculty Advisor: Yasmin Solomonescu

Imagining an Age of Revolution? Interpretations of the American Revolution in the Italian States (1765-1799)

Naples, Italy; Monticello, Virginia

This graduate student project investigated the creation of the “Age of Revolution”—how and when people started thinking they were living in such an age and how the idea of an “age” was constructed in the first place. Taking case studies of the American revolution and the Jacobin Triennium in the Italian States, the project observed how interpretations of revolutionary events changed over the course of the eighteenth century. The project argued that the French Revolution introduced this radically new notion of “revolution”—revolution as a radical break from the past and an occasion to establish a new, truly egalitarian and democratic society—and thereby reframed the narratives of revolution in Europe and the Americas.

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Griffin

Inside Campus Rütli: Successful Educational Integration for Immigrants

Berlin, Germany

More than one-fifth of Germany’s inhabitants are foreign-born or children of immigrants, yet Germany’s educational system often fails to integrate children with these backgrounds. Campus Rütli was founded in 2008 by the government of Berlin to address these growing civil disturbances and disadvantages in the highly diverse district of Neukölln. This undergraduate winter break study sought to better understand Campus Rütli’s policies of immigrant assimilation through education, revealing what is effective in dealing with the social, economic, and local repercussions of hyper-diverse migrant communities.

Faculty Advisor: Steffen Kaupp

Inside the Mind of Schinkel

Berlin and Potsdam, Germany

One of the most prominent architects of German history, Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) had incredible influence on the neoclassical architecture of Berlin and Europe. This undergraduate winter break project examined how Schinkel’s design process changed before and after his travels through Italy to understand his approach and fill a gap in scholarship on the topic.

Faculty Advisor: Krupali Krusche

Learning and Legality: Fritz Bauer and the Frankfurt-Auschwitz Trial

Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, and Bonn, Germany

The Frankfurt-Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965) was designed to force all West German citizens to face their own complicity with the Nazi criminal system, but in reality failed to present the Holocaust as anything but a summation of individual crimes committed for individual reasons. This graduate student project examined the place of the Frankfurt-Auschwitz Trial in post-war Germany’s evolving relationship with domestic law. The project’s archival research informed a dissertation on the same subject.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

London: “The Exhibit”

London and Oxford, England

This undergraduate fall break project investigated the ethical, social, and political issues surrounding public displays of human remains in museums, focusing on museums in London. The project considered how London preserves and celebrates its history, including the issues of the past, and explored London as a setting for a film screenplay in which the research would be used.

Faculty Advisor: Christine Becker

Making Places for People: The French Public Market and Urban Revitalization in America

Paris, Rouen, and Honfleur, France

Since the 10th century when the legendary Market Les Halles was founded, the tradition of the public market has been an essential part of French Culture. This undergraduate winter break project consisted of a study of French market halls to better understand their role in French society and the design factors that encourage community, with the goal of contributing the findings to urban revitalization in America.

Faculty Advisor: Lucien Steil

Mary Shelley and the Spectre of Pandemic: The Origins and Development of Post-Apocalyptic Political Thought in European Plague Literature

United Kingdom; Italy

This faculty grant aided in funding two major research trips to Europe that were delayed or reconceived due to the pandemic. In response to COVID-19, Eileen Hunt retooled her research and reoriented her study of Mary Shelley toward the relevance of the author’s global plague novel The Last Man (1826) for both the development of post-apocalyptic literature and the political theory and social science of pandemics. Hunt’s book on this topic is titled Mary Shelley and the Spectre of Pandemic: How Her Plague Journals Generated the Uncanny Predictions of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.

Meaning at Mealtime in Renaissance Florentine Dining Culture

Rome and Florence, Italy; London, England

This undergraduate spring break project examined the interdisciplinary discussion concerning the historical, cultural, and theological aspects of dining by researching the dining culture and rituals of early-Middle Renaissance Florence. The project focused on the “non-sensorial” nature of meals, studying the physical objects, namely cutlery and dining ware, that fostered authentic depth in a typical Renaissance Florentine meal.

Faculty Advisor: Francesca Bordogna

Norms, Balancing, and U.S.—Soviet Litigation During the Cold War

Washington, District of Columbia

This graduate student project investigated high profile instances of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, questioning why the US chose to litigate some of these incidents while leaving others to be resolved politically. The project generated a journal article on the causal logic behind the litigation attempts, and afterward the research served as the basis for a book project on the diplomatic history of these events. The project sought to advance scholarship on the politics of the early Cold War in Eastern Europe, demonstrating how the string of attempts at international litigation initiated by the US in the 1950s reveals a presidential administration attempting to use law as a bargaining tactic in the European theater.

Faculty Advisor: Emilia Justyna Powell

Paris, Visual Capital: Cinema, Photography, Media. How Paris Was Invented by its Images

Paris, France

This faculty grant supported a course taught in the Notre Dame Summer Study Abroad Program in Paris, “Paris, Visual Capital: Cinema, Photography, Media.” The course examined the convergence of historical and societal factors in select films, photography, and novels. It discussed how works of visual art require readers, listeners, and viewers to adopt a different stance toward visual text and how this is textually a political statement. The course included discussions and on-site meetings with guest speakers.

Passenger Maritime Terminal in Oslo

Oslo, Norway

This Master's thesis project designed and proposed an alternative version of Oslo’s existing port design, particularly its main passenger terminal, that highlights the robust and intimate historical relationship Norway has with the sea. The project sought to combine traditional and contemporary Scandinavian design styles to meld human-made objects with the natural landscape of the area. The project aimed at designing a plan which could transform the port area into a new marine communication hub close to the beautiful northern landscapes epitomized by Oslo.

Political Movements at German Universities Following the Napoleonic Wars

Würzburg and Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

This graduate student project studied the effects of broader political movements at German universities, specifically how these universities interacted with the administration in the decades following the Napoleonic wars. The project focused on the ways in which students at southern German universities grappled with questions of German identity and responded to state-building efforts and major events, including the reconstruction of Germany following the Napoleonic wars. The project sought to contribute to existing scholarship on political movements’ effects on German universities, which primarily focus on the 1930s-1940s.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

Postcolonial Paris: Contemporary French Cultures in Literature and the Arts

Paris, France

This faculty grant supported a course taught in the Notre Dame Summer Study Abroad Program in Paris, “Postcolonial Paris: Contemporary French Cultures in Literature and the Arts.” The course concentrates on the ways contemporary “French” cultures are reconsidered and redefined by writers and artists from outside France. The course explores novels by immigrants and second-generation immigrants, critical articles and book chapters by contemporary scholars and politicians, films, and cultural events including a ballet at the Opéra Garnier.

Presentation and Representation: In Search of the Pathos Inside the Modern and Contemporary Architecture of Spain

Barcelona, Spain

This undergraduate summer break project studied spatial arrangement, material application, and tinctorial architecture—three main aspects of modern architecture. The project focused on sites that represented the most important architectural and design approaches of Spanish modernism.

Faculty Advisor: Selena Anders

Preserving Italian Unreinforced Masonry Churches

Trento, Vicenza, and Perugia, Italy

This undergraduate summer break project analyzed the seismic vulnerability of unreinforced masonry buildings. The project collected data on the structural integrity of over seventy-five medieval Catholic churches and prepared protection and intervention plans for these church parishes to promote public safety and preserve important components of Italian culture and heritage.

Faculty Advisor: Kevin Walsh

Primo Levi’s Cultural Background: Between Literature and Jewish Tradition

Notre Dame, Indiana; Turin and Rome, Italy

This graduate student project examines the life and works of Primo Levi, an Italian Holocaust survivor and a prominent international post-war intellectual figure, specifically how intertextuality influenced Levi’s writing. The project asked why so many international authors are present in Levi’s work and what role this intertextuality plays, focusing on constant Shakespearean references throughout Levi’s works and thought. The preliminary research of this project investigated Primo Levi’s education and encounters with this international literary culture.

Faculty Advisor: Christian Moevs

Printing and Arthuriana in Europe

Mainz, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Paimpont, France

This undergraduate spring break project investigated the history of printing and bookmaking and gathered visual reference material from early printers. The project explored the different approaches that these printers took to binding, the combination of word and image, and the relationship between a book’s content and form from examples located in the Mainzer Minipressen-Archiv and the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

Faculty Advisor: Amy Mulligan

“Profil 14-18”: A Web Documentary on the Experiences of the First World War

Paris, France

This faculty grant supported the completion and outreach campaign of a web documentary entitled “Profil 14-18,” created by Olivier Morel in collaboration with TV5-Monde. The web documentary explored the stories of seventeen people of various nationalities engaged in the First World War.

Website

Re-Building Post-War Experimental Housing Estates of the 20th Century

London, England

This undergraduate spring break project studied London’s social housing blocks, some of Europe’s most successful and innovative housing of its kind, to create a comprehensive pattern book of design techniques and elements employed in the rebuilding of London. The project focused on a typological analysis of British social housing from 1960 to 1980 and sought to identify the elements in planning and design that made these neighborhoods successful.

Faculty Advisor: Selena Anders

Research at Bibliothèque Nationale de France on the French Foreign Legion and Cooperative Meetings

Paris, France

This faculty grant provided funding for research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France on the French Foreign Legion’s activities in Latin America, a topic central to a chapter in Joshua Lund’s current book. The grant also provided the opportunity to continue a conversation with professors at the Institut des Haut Études de l’Amérique Latine (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3) about a range of cooperative endeavors, including research, publishing, and graduate student exchange.

Saving British School: A Study on Cultural Preservation and Adaptive Re-use

Glasgow, Scotland; Edinburgh, Scotland

This undergraduate winter break project examined the lifecycle of university and other educational buildings, with a focus on English and Scottish institutions from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. The project studied how these buildings were designed, how they had been augmented over time, and how their programs had changed after their initial construction, seeking to reveal observable design patterns through which historic facilities adapted to modern needs.

Faculty Advisor: Steven Semes

Sustainability and Heritage Survey of Historic Structures in Ireland: Research Experience for Students

Ireland; Italy

This faculty grant supported a student research experience studying historic Catholic churches and structures in Ireland and Italy. The project aimed at familiarizing students with the general variables, process, and outcomes of infrastructure asset management and community impacts. The research focused on providing students with hands-on experience integrating engineering in a cultural, historical, and sustainable context.

The Beauty of Imperfection: An Architectural Analysis of Lincoln Cathedral

Lincoln, England

This undergraduate spring break project analyzed the Lincoln Cathedral, an influential example of Gothic architecture, through a series of sketches, watercolor renderings, and diagrams. The project aimed to understand the structure within its urban context, as well as detail its design and functions. The project emphasized the collaboration between irregular elements of design, placing the Gothic form in contrast to Classical works.

Faculty Advisor: John Stamper

The Case of the Middle Eastern and African Refugees “Transiting” through Serbia

Belgrade, Serbia

This graduate student project examined the complexity of migration by comparing experiences of transitory refugees encamped in Serbia and Kenya, investigating patterns of integration and exclusion of encamped and transitory refugees within their host communities. Engaging with biological and human cultural concepts, the project sought to understand how refugees, who survived wars, cope with the immense changes brought by forced displacement while struggling to restructure their identity and place at both individual and collective levels. The project aimed to contribute to scholarship on forced/transitory migration and general refugee phenomena, specifically the process of integration, community building, and policies that respond to these crises.

Faculty Advisor: Rahul Oka

The Easter Rising and the Great War as Two Linked Entities

Galway and Dublin, Ireland

This undergraduate spring break project explored the impact of the Easter Rising of 1916 on the historiography about Irish involvement in World War I, focusing on the extent to which the Easter Rising decreased the significance of the Irish contribution to the Great War. The project included research at museums and memorials in Galway and Dublin and interviews with historians of the era.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

The Politics of Football: Fan Culture Under the Dictatorship of Francsico Franco and its Modern-Day Impact on the Spanish Mentalité

Madrid and Barcelona, Spain

Twentieth-century Spain was characterized by the tragedies of civil war and dictatorship, yet as tensions heightened, football became a place where political ideas and attitudes could be expressed. This undergraduate summer break project explored how people’s impressions towards football clubs have affected people’s understanding of the complex issues of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The project focused on how Spaniards used football to communicate their political differences under the Franco dictatorship, from 1939 to 1975.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

The Rest Is Silence: Primo Levi’s Anglophilia during Post-war Reconstruction

Washington, District of Columbia

This graduate student project explored documents related to Italian writer Primo Levi, a scientist and Holocaust survivor, to understand how Levi’s works are influenced by the dominant Anglophone culture of the post-war era. The project conducted archival research on early chapters of Levi’s If This is a Man at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as well as study of the presence of British prisoners in concentration camps, particularly Auschwitz.

World War I in Irish Memory

Galway, Ireland

In the early 1900s, Ireland’s political climate was characterized by tension and turmoil as the country entered a revolutionary period against British rule. Tensions peaked in April 1916 when Irish republicans took advantage of Britain’s preoccupation with the first World War and staged a rebellion on Easter Monday, an event memorialized in Irish memory. This undergraduate spring break project sought to reveal whether World War I is remembered as a distinct moment in Ireland’s history or simply as a catalyst for Irish independence.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak