This morning the History Department held their first "Coffee and Conversation" for the Fall semester in the HOB courtyard.  History professors and students got together to relax a moment and chat about their studies.  There will be future meeting so stay tuned!  Everyone is welcome! 

Congratulations to Dr. Sean Wempe (Assistant Professor, Department of History, California State University—Bakersfield) on the July 2019 release of his first book, Revenants of the German Empire. Colonial Germans, Imperialism, and the League of Nations, with Oxford University Press.

Exactly 100 years ago, the Treaty of Versailles stripped Germany of its overseas colonies. Wempe’s book explores how this sudden transition from empire to a post-colonial nation forced the men and women invested in German imperialism to adjust to their new circumstances, as repatriates to Weimar Germany or as subjects of the War's victors in the new African Mandates. Remnants of an earlier era, these “Colonial Germans” adapted to a new “international imperialism” and exploited any opportunities they could to recover, renovate, and market their understandings of German and European colonial aims as ongoing participants in European imperial projects.

Dr. Wempe also presented parts of the research from his book at a centennial conference for the Treaty of Versailles. The conference, "The Making of a World Order: A Reappraisal of the Paris Peace and the Treaty of Versailles at 100," took place at the American University in Paris, France from 23 May-26 May 2019. Dr. Wempe took some time on the trip to visit the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, just outside Paris, where the peace settlement ending the First World War was partially negotiated and signed. He was, as you can see from the picture, ecstatic about seeing this historic site.