NewsDr. Chet will give a talk entitled "The Atlantic Maritime Frontier" that will cover his current research at the National Maritime Museum Seminar Series, in London on 8 March 2011. Dr. Richard B. McCaslin made a presentation based on his book on the Fort Fisher campaign in 1864-1865 to the Civil War Round Table of Hawaii in August 2010. He spoke on his forthcoming book on John S. "Rip" Ford at a meeting of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in September, then presented material from his book on Robert E. Lee to the Daughters of the American Revolution in October. On October 16, he spoke on the building of the monument to Hood's Texas Brigade at the Capitol in Austin, on the occasion of the centennial re-dedication of the memorial. He presented this paper again to the Military Order of Stars and Bars in November, and he also spoke to the Austin Civil War Round Table that month on his edited collection of Joseph B. Polley's letters to "Charming Nellie."
Military History Center Discussion Series Dr. Citino just returned from Ft Leavenworth, KS, where he spoke at the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), the U.S. Army's elite school for military planning. He gave a lecture to officers enrolled in the Seminar on the Evolution of Operational Art entitled, "The Future of Operational Art: Too Early to Tell." This summer, Dr. Citino has spoken at all the army's major schools: SAMS, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY and the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle, PA. Dr. Harold Tanner traveled to China this summer to conduct research on the Manchurian theater of China's post-1945 civil war between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist armies and the Chinese Communist Party's forces. Hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Modern History, Harold spent two weeks in Beijing meeting with Chinese colleagues and working at China's National Library. He also spent four weeks in Manchuria, traveling to cities including Jinzhou, Siping, Shenyang, and Dalian to consult sources held in local archival collections, museums and libraries, to interview elderly residents, and to meet with local scholars. His visit concluded with a research presentation at the Institute of Modern History.
28th Annual Alfred & Johanna Hurley Military History Seminar Dr Citino's eighth book, Death of the Wehrmacht has just appeared in Slovak translation as Smrt wehrmachtu: Německá válečná; tažení v rozhodujícím roce 1942 (Jota Publishing). See the page on the publisher's website here. On August 2, Dr. Citino appeared on the program "Radio Smart Talk" on WITF, the National Public Radio Station in Harrisburg, PA. The hour-long program discussed the 20th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, as well as Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. To hear Dr. Citino on "Radio Smart Talk," go here. Dr Citino's eighth book, Death of the Wehrmacht has just appeared in Spanish translation as La Muerte de la Wehrmacht (Barcelona: Editorial Critica). See the page on the publisher's website here. Dr Citino's first book, The Evolution of Blitzkrieg Tactics (Greenwood, 1987), has recently appeared in Polish translation with Tetragon Publishing. The cover photo may be found here. See Tetragon's online interview with Dr. Citino (in Polish). Dr Citino represented the Military History Center at four separate events this past June. He took part in a panel of scholars discussing "Comparative Ways of War" at the Conference of the Historical Society at George Washington University in Washington, DC; gave a lecture entitled "Getting it Right? Military Reform in the Interwar Era" to the West Point Summer Seminar at the United States Military Academy; delivered a lecture entitled "The Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942" at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA, part of the "Perspectives Lecture Series"; and gave a talk entitled "The Inchon Landing and the American Way of War" at the Conference Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Korean War, held at Victoria College in Victoria, TX. Also read Dr. Citino's recent interview by the Washington Post concerning the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. In 2009 Dr. Tanner participated in the critically acclaimed annual conference on China's People's Liberation Army (PLA, titled: "The PLA at Home and Abroad: Assessing the Operational Capabilities of China's Military." The conference commenced with a keynote address by Admiral Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, and explored the broad range of operational capabilities of China's military. The conference was the result of The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) partnering with the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College for a fourth year and with the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University for the second year to convene the 20th annual People's Liberation Army Conference in Carlisle, Pennsylvania from September 25-27, 2009. The 2009 PLA Conference volume was published in June 2010 and features Dr. Tanner's article: "The People's Liberation Army and China's Internal Security Challenges." For more on the NBR, see: http://nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=69 Four of Dr. Citino's graduate students--William Nance, David Musick, Luke Truxal, and Adam Rinkleff-- recently spent a very successful week at the National Archives at College Park and the Library of Congress conducting research in support of their Master's theses and doctoral dissertation (Adam Rinkleff). William Nance conducted research on American mechanized cavalry groups in the US Third Army in World War II. David Musick examined documents relating to American military government during and at the end of the Second World War. Luke Truxal perused the Eaker papers at the Library of Congress, and then records of the 8th Air Force at the archives. Adam Rinkleff analyzed documents of the US First Army and subordinate units during the Second World War. This trip was funded jointly by the Bradley Fellowship for Military History and the Military History Center.
This summer, Dr. McCaslin has been invited to be a Visiting Professor in the University of Hawaii-Pacific's Military and Diplomatic graduate program. He will teach a course on the U.S. Civil War. Drs. Wawro, Citino, McCaslin, Chet, and Leggiere were all on the program of the 77th Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History, which was be hosted by the Virginia Military Academy in Lexington, VA, from 20-23 May 2010. Dr. Tanner presented two papers this Spring. The first, titled "The Battle of Siping (1946), George Marshall, and the Myth of Chiang Kai-shek's "Last Chance" in Manchuria" was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Philadelphia, PA on 27 March 2010. The second, "Nobody Wins: Nationalists and Communists in the Liaoxi Corridor, November 1945" was presented at the annual meeting of the Chinese Military History Society in Lexington, Virginia on 20 May 2010. Dr. Citino traveled to Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming in March to speak as part of the college's "Writers Series." He read selections from his works and discussed the process of writing for both the scholarly and popular audiences. Dr. McCaslin discussed "Rip Ford in the Civil War" at the Fort Worth Civil War Round Table on 9 March 2010, followed by a presentation on "Sam Houston and Secession," to the Dallas Civil War Round Table on 10 March 2010. The Military History Center is pleased and proud to announce that Dr. Citino's student, Mervyn Roberts, won an award at the Texas A&M University 'Betty Unterberger' Graduate History Conference on 6 March 2010 for the best paper by a Master's student. His paper, which he researched and wrote in Dr. Leggiere's Seminar on Warfare during the Enlightenment and Revolution, was titled "Exciting a Spirit of Disaffection: The Propaganda Campaign against German Auxiliaries in the American Revolution." Drs. Wawro, Citino, and Leggiere were all on the program of the 40th Annual Conference of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, which was held in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina from 25-27 February. Dr. Wawro commented on a panel of three papers that discussed the topic of "Technology Transfers." Dr. Citino presented a paper titled "From Disgrace to Redemption: The Prussian Army at Eylau." Dr. Leggiere presented a paper titled: "General Yorck's 'Robber Bands:' The Collapse of Allied Discipline on the Road to Paris, 1814." Dr. Leggiere, a member of the Consortium's Board of Directors, informed the Board that UNT will host the 2013 conference, which will coincide with the 200th anniversary of the German "Wars of Liberation" against Napoleon. The Military History Center is pleased and proud to announce that two of Dr. Leggiere's graduate students, Jonathan Abel and Paul Strietelmeier, were on the Program of the 40th Annual Conference of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era. Mr. Abel presented a paper titled: "Theory and Practice: Guibert and Napoleon Bonaparte's First Italian Campaign," while Mr. Strietelmeier presented a paper titled: "Ideology, Discipline and the Motivation to Kill: A Re-Evaluation of Turreau's Colonnes Infernales." The Military History Center is pleased and proud to announce that Dr. Citino's student, Captain William Nance — one of the West Point Fellows attending UNT — received the 2010 General Omar N. Bradley Research Fellowship in Military History, a hefty financial award. Captain Nance will use this fellowship to travel to the National Archives II in College Park, MD to study the archival documents of four cavalry groups and their parent corps during the Second World War. Also, if necessary, he will travel to the United States Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, PA, for further research of the same groups. Read about Captain Nance's Research On 12 January 2012 Dr. McCaslin gave a talk titled: "J. B. Polley's War," to the Central Texas Civil War Round Table in Granbury, TX. Dr. McCaslin inaugurated the Military History Center's Speaker's Bureau by giving a talk to the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association's North Texas Chapter on 1 December 2009 at The Park City Club in Dallas. Dr. McCaslin discussed the Fort Fisher (North Carolina) campaign in December 1864-January 1865, which was a joint amphibious operation against last open Confederate port east of Mississippi River.  The Military History Center at the University of North Texas is pleased to announce that it will hold the 2nd Annual Air Power Symposium on 20 April 2010 at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History - 1600 Gendy St., Fort Worth, Texas 76107. The title of the program is "Wired for War." The luncheon address will be given by Dr. Peter Warren Singer, a Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Read More» Dr. Citino had two articles appear in print in November 2009. The first was a contribution to a "Forum on the State of Military History," in the November 2009 edition of Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society. The second was "Hitler's Last Airdrop: Dead on Arrival?," the cover story of the Winter 2010 edition of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. On November 16, he traveled to the University of Tennessee to deliver the 10th annual Charles Johnson Lecture on War and Society. The talk, "Pride or Prejudice? Military History and the Academy" marked the 25th Anniversary of the founding of the University of Tennessee's Center for the Study of War and Society.
 See Dr. Tanner's book chapter, titled "Railways in Communist Strategy and Operations in Manchuria, 1945-1948" is forthcoming this November in Bruce Elleman and Stephen Kotkin, eds. Manchurian Railways and the Opening of China: An International History (M.E. Sharpe, 2009). Check it out here. See Dr. Wawro featured in History Makers 2010. Dr. Tanner presented the paper: "The Retreating General: Lin Biao and the Communists on the Run in Manchuria, November 1945-April 1946," at the annual meeting of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies, October 16-17 2009, hosted by The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Citino was honored with an invitation to deliver the keynote address at the international scholarly conference sponsored by the University of Calgary (Canada) in September, entitled "Seventy Years On: New Perspectives on the Second World War." He addressed the opening session of the conference at the Canadian Military Museum, attended by hundreds of scholars, World War II veterans, interested civilians, and the U.S. Consul in Calgary, on the topic, "The War Hitler Won: The Battle for Europe, 1939-1941." On Dec. 1, 2009 the UNT Honors College honored Professor Richard Lowe for "Inspiring Excellence through Honors Teaching." This award was presented in recognition of Dr. Lowe's excellent teaching of the Civil War and other topics on US history. Read Dr. Citino's comments about the state of Military History in David J. Koon's article: Retreat, but no Surrender for Military History Dr. Leggiere was one of three featured speakers invited to the Annual Gunther E. Rothenberg Seminar in Military History, hosted by High Point University on 7 November 2009. The theme of this year's Seminar war "War in Central Europe: From the Thirty Years' War to the Napoleonic Wars." The title of Dr. Leggiere's presentation was: "Phoenix Rising or Myth of a Great Power: The Prussian Way of War during the French Wars." Dr. Wawro's much anticipated Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East is currently in production by Penguin Books with an anticipated release date of Fall 2010. Dr. Chet is on leave during the 2009 Fall Semester to conduct archival research in the United States and United Kingdom concerning the decline of Atlantic piracy. The theme of trans-Atlantic cultural cohesion is at the heart of his second book project, "Frontier Violence in the North Atlantic, 1688-1856," which will examine the decline of Atlantic piracy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Read about Dr. Chet's current research project. Dr. Citino's article, "Dead on Arrival: The German Airdrop on Crete," will be the feature article in the Fall 2009 article of the mass circulation journal Military History Quarterly. Dr. Chet's essay "Colonial Failures, Imperial Triumphs, and the Loss of the American Colonies" will appear as a chapter in Georg Schild's The American Experience of War, which will be published in 2010. His "Assault and Arson: The Quest for Offensive Success Against Fortified Positions" will appear in Veronique Deplanne's Colonial Fortifications in North America 1541-1763 which Johns Hopkins University Press expects to release in 2010. Dr. Lowe is editing the memoir of Confederate general John G. Walker for publication. Walker, commander of the famed Walker's Texas Division, took his family to England immediately after the Civil War, and there he wrote his history of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Read Dr. Citino's American Historical Review article on Military History In mid-October, Dr. Citino traveled to Warsaw, Poland as one of a handful of American scholars invited to address an international conference on the topic, "The Polish September 1939 Campaign: Politics, Society, Culture." His paper, "Case White and the German Way of War," will appear in a forthcoming volume to be published by the University of Warsaw and the Polish Museum of History. Dr. Lowe spoke at a conference entitled "Vicksburg: The Fatal Fulcrum" at the Buffalo Gap Historic Village near Abilene, TX. Lowe's presentation, "The Attempt to Relieve Vicksburg from the West," is based on research done for his 2004 book, Walker's Texas Division, C.S.A.: Greyhounds of the Trans-Mississippi, winner of the Jefferson Davis Award sponsored by the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA. Ed Bearss, historian emeritus at the National Park Service, presented the keynote talk, an overview of the Vicksburg Campaign of 1863. Dr. McCaslin was a member of a panel entitled "CSA Texas" at the East Texas Historical Association's fall meeting on September 26, 2009. McCaslin's presentation was based upon "The Price of Liberty: The Great Hangiing at Gainesville," his chapter in The Fate of Texas: The Civil War and the Lone Star State, an anthology edited by Charles D. Grear. This chapter presented new evidence uncovered since the 1994 publication of McCaslin's book on the Great Hanging, entitled Tainted Breeze, which won the Tullis Award from the Texas State Historical Association and was an Alternative Selection for the History Book Club. Dr. Leggiere completed research on volume II of his The Fall of Napoleon by conducting research in May and June 2009 at the Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, Château de Vincennes, Paris, France. This second volume, The War in France, 1814, begins with Napoleon taking command of the French field army on the banks of the Marne River on 25 January 1814 and ends with the Emperor's First abdication and exile later that year. Dr. Chet was a guest speaker at a conference hosted by the University of London titled "1759 Revisited: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Perspective," September 17-19, 2009. He was invited to speak on Britain's use of light infantry in North America during the French and Indian War (1754-63). His conference paper "Light Infantry and the Narrative of American Exceptionalism: Competing Interpretations of Conventional Warfare in British America" dealt with the European origins of light infantry and the role of the British light infantry in the debates on "American tactics" among early-American military historians. Dr. McCaslin presented a talk titled "Rip Ford in the Civil War" to the Dallas Civil War Round Table on June 10, 2009. His presentation was based upon his forthcoming book on John S. "Rip" Ford, entitled Fighting Stock. At the same meeting, the organization presented its 2009 Grady McWhiney Award of Merit to McCaslin for his contributions in Civil War scholarship. Dr. Leggiere gave a presentation titled "From Wars of Kings to Wars of Nations: The Military Culture of the French Revolution" at the 2009 Teaching of History Conference. Hosted by the Department of History at UNT, the conference theme was "The Influence of War on Society." Dr. McCaslin presented a paper on "J. B. Polley's Civil War" to Hood's Texas Brigade Association at its meeting on June 6, 2009, at Baylor University. His paper was based upon his research for his book, A Soldier's Letters to Charming Nellie, which was published in 2008 by the University of Tennessee in its acclaimed series, "Voices of the Civil War." |
