Emeriti Faculty

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John T. Alexander

Email: jatalex@ku.edu

Prof. Emeritus (Ph.D. Indiana, 1966; M.A. Indiana, 1963; B.A. Wesleyan [Conn.], 1961).

Russian Empire, Soviet Union, 18th-century Russian social history, Medieval Russia. Research on Political, economic, and social developments in early modern Russia, esp. popular unrest, epidemics and public health, court institutions, and cultural policies.

Publications include:

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Surendra Bhana

Phone: (785) 864-9445

Office: 3026 Wescoe Hall

Email: bhana@ku.edu

Prof. (Ph.D., Kansas 1971). 19th and 20th-century South Africa with special reference to Asians; Asian-American experiences. Publications include, United States and Puerto Rican Status Question (1975), Documentary History (1984), Setting Down Roots (1991), Indentured Indian Emigrants (1991), and Gandhi's Legacy (1997).

I teach a course entitled Rise and Fall of Apartheid. Having lived in South Africa for over 40 years under this system, the subject has been of great interest to me personally. My teaching brings many personal observations about growing up in South Africa. My knowledge of English, Afrikaans, Gujarati, and some Zulu has been very useful in that experience. It has been an interesting journey in which I have witnessed White supremacy and Black consciousness merge into a multi-racial and democratic South Africa in 1994.

My research too has been shaped by my stay in South Africa. It relates to Asian immigrant experiences. While most of my research has involved Asian immigrants in South Africa, I am interested in comparing similar groups in the U.S. and other parts of the world. Asian immigrants from places like China, Japan, and India migrated in significantly large numbers from about 1880 to industrially developed parts of the world or their offshoots. Asians who migrated assimilated yet retained large parts of their ethnic identities. In South Africa, this happened as White supremacy was being established; in the United States exclusion helped to shape ethnic orientations.

Currently I am completing a study that focuses on cultural and religious transformations among Asians in South Africa in the early years to understand the persistence of ethnicities in the 1990s. I am also reexamining the role played by Mohandas K. Gandhi (later Mahatma Gandhi) in creating newer forms of identities while he was in South Africa. My interests include the study of institutions and leadership in the U.S. and their ethnic orientations. I introduce some of these perspectives in the U.S. survey courses I teach.

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Anna M. Cienciala

Email: hanka@ku.edu

Professor Emerita of History and Russian and Eeast European Studies (Ph. D. Indiana 1962; M.A. McGill, 1955; B.A. Liverpool, 1952). East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries; Poland from the partitions to the present, Communist nations; 20th Century Polish, European and Soviet diplomacy 1919–45. Professor Cienciala has published 2 books, edited 4, and published around 40 academic articles in U.S., Polish, and German historical journals.

Born in the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk, now in Poland), educated in Poland, France, England, and the U.S., she taught at the University of Ottawa and the University of Toronto before coming to the University of Kansas in 1965. For examples of work on interwar and wartime Polish diplomacy and international relations, see: Anna M. Cienciala, Poland and the Western Powers in 1938–1939. A Study in the Interdependence of Eastern and Western Europe (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London; University of Toronto Press, 1968; Anna M. Cienciala and Titus Komarnicki, From Versailles to Locarno. Keys to Polish Foreign Policy 1919–1925, (University Press of Kansas, 1984); “The Munich Crisis of 1938: Plans and Strategy in Warsaw in the Context of the Western Appeasement of Germany”, in: The Munich Crisis, 1938. Prelude to World War II, edited by Igor Lukes and Erik Goldstein, (Frank Cass, London, Portland, OR, 1999, pp. 48-81); “Poland in British and French Diplomacy in 1939: Determination to fight—or avoid war?” in: The Origins of the Second World War, edited by Patrick Finney, (Arnold, London, New York, etc., 1997, pp 413–433); “The View From Poland,” in: Victory in Europe 1945. From World War to Cold War, edited by Arnold A. Offner and Theodore A. Wilson (University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2000, pp. 47–76); “The Nazi—Soviet Pact of August 23, 1939: When did Stalin Decide to Align with Hitler, and Was Poland the Culprit?” in: Ideology and Politics in East Central Europe, edited by M.B. Biskupski, (University of Rochester Press, 2003, ISBN 1-58046-137-9 and pb. 1-58046-155-7, pp. 147–226.) This book was dedicated to Professor Piotr S. Wandycz to honor him for his contributions of East European History.

Other recent publications include “La politique étrangère de la Pologne dans la période de l'Appeasement et des revisions des traités. Les vues et la politique du maréchal PiŁsudski et du colonel Beck, 1933–1939,” in: La Pologne et l'Europe. Du partage à l' élargissement (XVIIIe-XXIe siècles), red. Par Isabelle Davion, Jerzy Kłoczowski et Georges-Henri Soutou (dir), (PUPS Paris 2007: 119–146); “The Foreign Policy of the Polish Government-in-Exile, 1939–1945: Political and Military Realities versus Polish Psychological Reality,” published with other conference papers in New York, September 2007, in a volume titled: Reflections on Polish Foreign Policy, edited by John S. Micgiel and Piotr S. Wandycz, pp. 47–88. (ISBN 0-9654520-7-7). These are the proceedings of a conference sponsored by the East Central European Center, Columbia University and the Jòzef Piłsudski Institute for Research in the Modern History of Poland, held at Columbia University on 17 November 2005. She has also published articles and review essays on Polish-Jewish relations in World War II in The Polish Review, and recently a review essay of a book on Polish deportees to the USSR, “An Unknown Page of History: The Poles Deported to the USSR in 1940–1941,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 22, 2009, pp. 301–314.

Her latest major work was done for Katyn. A Crime without Punishment (Yale University Press, 2007). This is a volume of Russian documents in English, which she co-edited with Dr. Natalia S. Lebedeva, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, and Professor Wojciech Materski, Director Polish Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. The book consists of 122 documents selected from the Polish and Russian language editions jointly edited by Lebedeva and Materski, published in 2 vols. in Moscow (1997, 2000) and Warsaw (1995–2006). Cienciala wrote new, extensive, historical introductions to each of the three sections, wrote short prefaces to each document, and added new material to the end notes.

(Note: Professor Cienciala's Polish language publications are not listed in this bibliographical sketch.)

Professor Cienciala is a member of several professional associations in Poland, the U.K., and the U.S. In the course of her academic career, she has received awards from the NEH, Fulbright, IREX, ACLS, and the Hall Center at KU.

In June 2000, Professor Cienciala was honored for her scholarly publications on Polish History by the History Institute of Gdansk University and the City of Gdansk. Also, as a member of the Board of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, she was awarded the Polish Cross of Merit for scholarly cooperation with Poland by the President of Poland. On November 28, 2007, at the Awards Ceremony held in the Polish Consulate General in New York, she received from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America the Distinguished Achievement Award for her editing work on the book Katyn. A Crime without Punishment.

Professor Cienciala retired in June 2002, but remains strongly involved in the educational mission of the History Department and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at K.U. She is at present revising and updating her internet course on the history of Modern East Central Europe, titled: “Nationalism and Communism in East Central Europe,” including an extensive English language bibliography. The course, which is utilized in Wikipedia, can be accessed at http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/hist557.

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Norman Saul

Office: 3636 Wescoe Hall
Phone: 864-9468
Email: normsaul@ku.edu

Professor of History and of Russian and E. European Studies (Ph.D. Columbia, 1965; M.A. Columbia, 1959; B.A. Indiana, 1954). Modern Russia, international, military, Volga Germans and Mennonites from Russia.

Professor Saul is the author of War and Revolution: The United States and Russia, 1914-1921; Concord and Conflict: The United States and Russia, 1867-1914 (1996); Distant Friends: the United States and Russia, 1763-1867 (1992); Sailors in Revolt: The Russian Baltic Fleet in 1917 (1978); and Russia and the Mediterranean, 1797-1807 (1970). He also co-edited Russian-American Dialogue on Cultural Relations (1997). Saul has received, among other honors, the Byron Caldwell Smith book award, the Robert H. Ferrell book prize from the Society of American Foreign Relations, the Balfour S. Jeffrey (Higuchi) Research Award, and a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies. His current research focuses on all aspects of Russian-American relations.

Professor Saul taught at Purdue, Brown, and Northwestern before coming to Kansas in 1970. He has conducted research extensively in Russia, Europe, and the U.S. with the support of grants from IREX, the Kennan Inst., Ford Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. He is is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and an honorary member of the Center of North American Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a regular member of KU's Russian and East European executive committee, and has served as president of the Kansas History Teachers Association. He also serves on the editorial boards of Amerikanskii Ezhegodnik, Slavic Military History, and the UMKC Dialogues project.

He teaches a full range of Russian history courses at all levels, and also offers course on undergraduate historical research and methodology. Professor Saul has lectured widely throughout Kansas and the broader region on topics relating to Russia, the Balkans, and Germans from Russia as a charter member of the Kansas Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. For this he received the Council's Public Scholar Award in 1997.

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Charles L. Stansifer

Email: cstan@ku.edu

Professor Emeritus (Ph.D. Tulane, 1959; M.A. and B.A. Wichita State, 1953-54). Republican Latin America, Mexico, Central America and Caribbean area. Research on Central American republics and their relations with the U.S. Publications on Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and U.S.-Central American relations. Professor Stansifer has traveled and researched extensively throughout Latin America, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Provost's Faculty International Leadership Award, and membership in the Academia de Geografia e Historia de Nicaragua.

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John F. Sweets

Email: exprofjfs@ku.edu

Professor Emeritus of Hist.. (Ph.D. Duke, 1972; B.A. Florida State). Modern European History, 19th- and 20th-century French social and political history, Vichy, the Resistance, and Occupied France.

Professor Sweets has been at the University of Kansas since 1972, and taught as visiting professor at University College, Dublin (Ireland), The School of International Studies (Fort Bragg, NC), and at the Universitè de Franche-Comtè, Besançon (France). Professor Sweets has received two NEH Fellowships for his research and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He is author of The Politics of Resistance in France (1976), Choices in Vichy France (1986)—French version, Clermont-Ferrand à l'heure allemande (1996), and has edited four volumes of The Proceedings of the Western Society for French History (1982-85). He is currently collaborating with a French colleague, François Marcot, on a new study of Vichy France to be published by Macmillan Press. His other current research interests are a case study of the Lacemakers of Le Puy in the 19th century and an investigation of France and the Holocaust. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on 19th and 20th-century Europe and on France since the French Revolution.