Michael McGuire

Bio

I joined the Mount in August 2019 as an Assistant Professor of History and Political Science. I have enjoyed meeting and breaking bread with fellow faculty, administrators and staff who have been so helpful in getting me re-acclimated to the Hudson Valley.

My teaching and research interests cover Modern U.S. and Modern European history. I look at the intersection of transatlantic humanitarian aid, international relations and cultural politics in the early 20th century. If that sounds like a mouthful, let me explain it a different way. I am fascinated with the thousands of Americans, half of them female, who offered their time, talents, and treasure to Europeans harmed by World War I. Americans helped the people they fought for and the people they fought against. Americans continued helping Europeans recover from their war wounds even after the U.S. government thought no such work was necessary. There are two particular things that amaze me about this work. First, very few Americans who organized this charitable aid actually had significant experience helping survivors, yet Americans managed to provide foreign aid in foreign lands and foreign tongues with great effectiveness. Second, despite the success of private American humanitarian activity in Europe, few periodicals and published works considered this aid significant. I want to explain why so much effective American assistance for Great War survivors failed to resonate in relevant histories of America, Europe and the First World War.

I believe it is important to understand the past through comparison with the present. What you absorb in my courses will often draw parallels and distinctions between present events and people and their past analogs. I also think that active and appropriately varied teaching experiences are vital to active and inspiring scholarship. Leading a course always makes me consider how anything I am writing – a conference paper, a book chapter, an article, or a manuscript – relates to bigger concerns in the human past. Likewise, my research and writing bring me into contact with issues, events, processes, and concepts that I bring into my curricula, so as to ensure that I put my students on the cutting edge of scholarship and knowledge.

Beyond that, I am a lucky husband and father.

Degrees
Ph.D. History, Boston University
B.A. History, Vassar College

Recent Courses
HIS 1010 US History I
HIS 1012 Nursing American History
HIS 1020 US History II
HIS 1050 Western Civilization I
HIS 1060 Western Civilization II
HIS 3150 The American West
HIS 3180 Emergence of Modern America
HIS 3250 Twentieth-century Europe
HIS/POS 3510 The European Union
HIS 4019 World War I, 1914-1919
HIS 4260 American Political Assassinations