In this volume that celebrates the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Czech Agrarian party (later the Republican party), 35 American, Czech, and Slovak historians examined various aspects of the Czech agrarian movement.  My contribution is “Kolonizace jako alternativa pozemkové reformy v prvních letech Československé republiky” (see below).  I was responsible for writing and editing half of the English summaries of the individual chapters, and I wrote the introduction with Mary Hrabik Samal and Jiří Šouša.

“SSA President’s Report for 2018-2019.”  Slovak Studies Association Newsletter (winter 2019-2020): 2.

“From The SSA President ,” Slovak Studies Association Newsletter (winter 2018): 6-7.

“Czechs Are Celebrating Their Country’s Centennial.  We Should, Too.”  History News Network.  28 October 2018.  https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/170307.

“Slovak Ambassadors Viewed International Relations after the American Presidential Election,” Slovak Studies Association Newsletter (winter 2016-2017): 19-23.

“SSA President’s report for 2915-2016.”  Slovak Studies Association Newsletter (winter 2016-2017): 4-5.

“The 2016 SSA Prize for Best Article or Book Chapter.”  Slovak Studies Association Newsletter (winter 2016-2017): 6.

“The Sixteenth Czech Studies Workshop, April 2016.”  Czech and Slovak History Newsletter: Bulletin of the Czechoslovak Studies Association 39 (Spring 2016): 7-9, including two photographs by DEM.

Review of Hitler’s Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss by Laurence Rees. Central European Papers 1/1 (2013): 88-90. A digital edition of the printed journal is available at http://www.slu.cz/fvp/cz/web-cep-en/journal-archive/2013-vol-1-no-1/index_html.

“Appointments to Czechoslovakia’s Provincial Assemblies in 1928: An Exercise in Consociational Proportionality.” Paper for the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) conference in San Francisco, CA, on 24 November 2019.

“Four Patterns of Multiparty Cooperation: Appointments to the 1928 Czechoslovak Provincial Assemblies.” Paper for a workshop on “Democracy and Ethnicity in Interwar Central Europe” at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in Paris, France, on 15 November 2019.

“Continuity and Cooperation in post-Habsburg Czechoslovak Politics.” Paper for the ASEEES summer conference at Zagreb, Croatia, on 15 June 2019.

“Consociational Proportionality in the 1928 Czechoslovak Provincial Assemblies.” Paper at a conference and workshop titled “Habsburg Austria’s Consociational Legacies: New Research on Political Representation in Interwar Central Europe,” School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, UK, on 21 March 2019 (invited participant).

“The 1928 Czechoslovak Provincial Assemblies: A Study in Proportional Representation,” Paper for the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies in Mobile, AL, 15 March 2019.

Discussant, “Security Issues in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic over a Century,” panel at the ASEEES conference in San Francisco, CA, on 24 November 2019.

Chair and Organizer, “The Politics of Cooperation and Competition in Central Europe's Deeply Divided Societies,” a panel at the ASEEES conference in San Francisco, CA, on 24 November 2019.

Discussant, “Explorations in Interwar Eastern Europe,” a panel at the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies in Mobile, AL, 15 March 2019.

Presenter, “Establishment and Legacy of Czechoslovakia,” at the roundtable discussion titled “Czechoslovakia at 100 (II): The Formation (and Fall) of a Multiethnic State,” ASEEES conference in Boston, MA, 7 December 2019.

Chair and Organizer,  “Researching History in Communist Slovakia,” a panel at the ASEEES conference in Chicago, IL, 10 November 2017.  The participants of this panel are contributors to the memoir project that D. E. Miller initiated and is editing.

Chair and Organizer, “Researching in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War,” a panel at the ASEEES conference in Washington, DC, 18 November 2016.  The participants of this panel are contributors to the memoir project that D. E. Miller initiated and is editing. 

Habsburg Austria’s Democratic Legacy and the Czechoslovak First Republic

I am cooperating with Philip J. Howe, a political scientist at Adrian College in Adrian, MI, and Thomas A. Lorman, a historian at the University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, to apply the theory of consociational democracy to the Habsburg Monarchy and to Czechoslovakia.  After a brief introduction to the consociational model, there will be one chapter that accounts for the development of consociational mechanisms in the Austrian portion of the Habsburg Monarchy, a second that explains how consociationalism best accounts for the unusual aspects and what some have termed the undemocratic features of the Czechoslovak system, and a third that examines Slovak politics between the world wars from the standpoint of consociationalism.  A publisher has accepted the manuscript, and we are undertaking final revisions.  See our article, based on this same topic, in the “Publications” section.

The Austrian Academy of Sciences began publishing Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918 in 1973, and its twelfth and final volume, Das Erbe der Habsburgermonarchie in den Nachfolgestaaten: Brüche und Kontinuitäten (The Legacy of the Habsburg Monarchy in the Successor States: Breaks and Continuity) will contain the above-mentioned chapter I am writing with Philip J. Howe, a political scientist at Adrian College in Adrian, MI, and Thomas A. Lorman, a historian at the University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies.  The expected date of publication is 2021.

Recollections from the Dustbin of History: American Historians in Communist Czechoslovakia

The generation of scholars who worked in Czechoslovakia in the communist era from the late 1960s until 1989 is dwindling, and this volume seeks to preserve their experiences.  It will contain chapters from 17 contributors–all American historians, with the exception of one Canadian who studied and taught in the United States and one linguist who did a great deal of archival work.  They are writing about their work in archives and libraries, their contacts with Slovak, Czech, American, and other scholars, and their everyday experiences.  Jaroslav Rokoský, a Czech historian, will write an introductory chapter about academic work from the Prague Spring through the period of Normalization.  I initiated the project, and I will serve as its editor, will contribute a chapter about my experiences in Czechoslovakia between 1976 and 1989, and will draft the conclusion. The other contributors are Hugh LeCaine Agnew, Catherine Albrecht, Gary B. Cohen, James R. Felak, Bruce M. Garver, Todd Huebner, Owen V. Johnson, Hillel J. Kieval, Michael J. Kopanic, Jr., Patricia A. Krafcik, Paul A. Kubricht, †Thomas D. Marzik, Susan Mikula, Clarie E. Nolte, M. Mark Stolarik, and †Stanley B. Winters.  The expected date of completion is 2021.

A former nonpartisan government minister of the Czech Republic graciously has agreed to a series of interviews that will allow me to explore the role of a nonpartisan minister in a mixed cabinet, that is, one with both party affiliates and nonparty experts.  For example, I will consider if being above party politics placed the nonparty expert at a disadvantage or enabled that individual to take sides or mediate cabinet debates.  Social scientists rarely consider the role of experts in cabinets, despite their frequent appearance in many European governments.  Furthermore, nonpartisan experts are important in consociational democracies because they regularly receive cabinet posts to serve as neutral administrators for contested portfolios or to provide a mathematical balance in a coalition.  Understanding such roles of nonpartisan ministers will drive my inquiry, and the article emerging from these interviews will contribute to this small but significant body of literature.  This project has no estimated date of completion.

This monograph examines the colonization program that created new settlements on the lands of the former great estates, part a broader land reform, that included efforts to dilute the German and Hungarian populations in the border areas.  In 1999-2000, I conducted research on this project in the Czech Republic and Slovakia with a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) that included funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) and with a sabbatical from the University of West Florida.  I continued researching the topic in Prague from 2002 to 2008 with four summer grants from UWF.  In 2017, I concluded the examination of the pertinent archival materials.  Given the complexities of this topic and vast amount of archival material, I expect to complete the manuscript in 2022 or afterward.

A Slovak Family’s Tale of Chain Migration and Remigration to America

This book will be a transcription of interviews about one family’s experience with transatlantic migrations from Slovakia to America in the first part of the twentieth century. It is based on interviews with one individual I conducted in the 1990s. The book has no estimated date of completion.

Conference Travel Grants (competitive beginning in 2008), each year from 2008 to 2017 and 2019

Contested Lands: Europe between Germany and Russia in the Twentieth Century (online)

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, formerly American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies–2007 and 2012 Convention Program Committee member for proposals in East-Central European and Balkan history; member 1975-1979 and since 1981

Blackwater Heritage State Trail of Milton, FL–board member, 1994-1997; and member, 1994-1999

Central European Papers–editorial board member, since 2013. This online and print journal appears in English and German and is a publication of the Silesian University (Slezská univerzita) in Opava, Czech Republic.  In 2013-2014, the János Kodolányi University in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, was a joint publisher.

Czechoslovak Studies Association (formerly Czechoslovak History Conference)–officer-at-large, 1998-2004; Name Change Committee member, 2004-2005; member since 1985

Gulf South History and Humanities Conference (formerly Gulf Coast History and Humanities Conference)–UWF board member, 1991-1998; UWF project leader, 1995-1998; and assistant program chairman, 2004-2005.  I organized the 1998 conference and was the co-organizer of the 2005 conference, with June D. Watkins, then a member of the UWF Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal–associate editor, 1995-2000; and board member since 2000

Mobile-Košice Association, Mobile, AL–member since 1999; and vice president, 2000-2002

Nationality Papers–board member, since 1999; and assistant editor, 2000-2009. I recruited and edited an article by James Mace Ward, “‘People Who Deserve It’: Jozef Tiso and the Presidential Exemption,” 30 (December 2002): 571-601, which received special mention in the Stanley Z. Pech Prize competition of the Czechoslovak History Conference for the best article published in 2001-2002 on Czech or Slovak history

Reviewer for “The Age of Western Imperialism” in Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, Frank M. Turner, Western Heritage, 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ, and London: Prentice Hall, 2010. I also have done prepublication reviews for Central European University Press, Carl Beck Papers, BWV Berliner Wissencshafts-Verlag GmbH, and other presses.

Slovak Studies Association–chair of nominating committee, 2003; chair of Awards Committee, 2010-2017; president, 2016-present

Webmaster, CentralEuropeanObserver.com

Date: 7 April 2011-present

Description: CentralEuropeanObserver.com is designed to assist university undergraduate and graduate students with improving their assignments, navigating the historical profession, and learning more about Central Europe with information, advice, and blogs. The section for news, analysis, and commentary about Europe, especially Central Europe, along with occasional items about higher education and the historical profession are of interest to students, scholars, and the general public.

Public Lecture: “Music and the Arts in a Totalitarian Setting”

Date: 12 September 2019

Description: I provided historical background to a UWF public presentation, in Pensacola, FL, titled “Banned and Forbidden: Prohibited Musical Masterpieces,” which included a performance of pieces by Igor Stravinsky, Kurt Weill, and Dmitri Shostakovich as well as poetry by Osip Mandelstam.

Public Lecture: “Germany’s Failures during the Siege of Leningrad”

Date: 31 January 2019

Description: I provided historical background to UWF public presentation titled “Art as Grit: The Siege of Leningrad in Music and Poetry,” which included a performance of the Second Piano Trio by Dmitri D. Shostakovich and poetry by Jonathan Fink.

Public Lecture: “Free Speech, Justice, and Knowledge: The Lessons of the Holocaust”

Date: 20 April 2016
Description: This was a lecture at the 2016 Annual Day of Remembrance that took place at the United States Naval Support Activity Panama City, in Panama City, FL. 

Instructor, Leisure Learning Program, University of West Florida

Date: March and April 2015
Description: I delivered four lectures about the Paris peace treaties that ended the First World War and why the effort to expand democracy in Europe had only limited success.

Keynote Speaker, World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations, XVI Congress in Prague, Czech Republic, “Phenomenon Baroque”

Date: 27 January 2015

Description: The lecture provided a background to Baroque culture, especially architecture, that focused primarily on the Czech Republic. The congress had 333 registered participants from 41 countries.

Public Lecture, “Then and Now Series,” Heritage Park and Cultural Center, Fort Walton Beach, FL, “What Northwest Florida Knew about the Birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918”

Date: 22 February 2013

Description: Presented a lecture, based on articles in the Pensacola Journal, about the adventures of the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia and the creation of the Czechoslovak First Republic (1918-1938).  For the lecture, I also prepared a display of artifacts and publications from Czechoslovakia, mainly from the First World War and the immediate postwar years.

Editing and Translating

Dates: various

Description: I provided editing and translating services to a number of business and nonprofit entities in the Czech Republic, including the Association of Holstein Breeders in the Czech Republic, Aura Prague Guides, European Dairy Farmers, European Pancreatic Society, MADI, Voleman Agency, and the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations.