When I was applying for grad school, my goal was to study interwar Poland or Ukraine, as my family came from that region in that era. However right after applying I went to live in Georgia and reach English for a few months. While living there I started to learn about the country, which I knew little about, and grew really interested in it. That it was not widely studied helped my choice, so when i went to school i switched my topic to there. And ideas just further research and refinement that got me to my ultimate topic, Soviet nationality policy in the Stalin era as it related to the Abkhaz independence movement.

I got my bachelor in political sciences, with a thesis comparing the influence of Pan-Africanism on the post-colonial rules of Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. I always had an interest in history, something I had become a bit notorious for. I finished a course on political leadership with a presentation on Jan van Leiden during the siege of Munster and comparing his behaviour to the literature we read on crisis management. Sadly the master in political sciences at the university I graduated at was very much focused on empirical research, statistics and big data, which I had less of a mind for. Thankfully the university also offered a master's degree in history with the specialisation political culture and national identity.

As for the United States in general, what always fascinated me about its twentieth century political history is the relationship between its citizens and its politicians. Trying to understand why the people who got elected got elected, even if as an outside observer it doesn't always make sense. Coming from a political sciences background I tend to focus a lot on the institutional frameworks within which these processes take shape. Another thing that has always interested me is the way those who for one reason or another feel like the system is limiting their ability to make their voice heard push back against the system, from the far left to the far right. Anything from the Weather Underground to the Oathkeepers fascinates me.

I was always interested in history as a subject of study, and gravitated towards reading as many historical books as a kid. I initially wanted to be a French Revolutionary historian, focusing on perceptions and participation of women in the aristocracy (first year undergrad). What changed my mind was my professor of Early Modern Europe during my second year. He made class fun so I took another class he taught (introduction to the British Empire), and now I am a British historian.

Like many women my age, I got pulled into history through the American Girl franchise. While the books were great, the dolls and their clothing/furniture were as important or more so when it came to the "fandom" - you don't take your box set to your friend's house, you take your doll and her most impressive dress. Obviously. While the dolls' clothing is in some ways inaccurate, the franchise takes care to set the different eras apart from each other, which led to learning how to distinguish them myself. Many years later, after being latently interested ever since, I realized that I didn't just want to study material culture (which I had been building to through anthropology/archaeology in college), I wanted to study dress-related material culture specifically.

It's probably my father watching the Ken Burns Civil War documentary back in the early 90s. I recall developing an interest in the military end of things that went on intermittently through my teenage years before gradually losing interest. Stories about soldiers all got a bit samey after a while and the more I came to understand violence the less it seemed like a grand affair to capture the imagination. Political history sort of did for a little bit and I dallied with books about medieval Europe and nineteenth century Japan.

Then I drifted a bit without much historical stimulation. Miserable time. I got back into thinking about it some more through Ta-Nehisi Coates' writing. Around the same time I wondered out loud about starting a blog, thinking I might write about old comics. A friend said he would really dig it if I wrote a Civil War blog. So I did that.

Only...I don't care much about the war part. After about a week of drifting around with the vague idea that I would explain the origins of the war and move on into the fighting, I decided to start a short series running down the major events getting from A to Sumter. I've made it to the early summer of 1856 so far and the project has steadily expanded. Turns out I'm actually into the white supremacy-slavery-politics intersection and my idea of fun is an increasingly demanding reading schedule culled from comps lists and footnotes.

Age of Empires II

History undergrad, I had known from 4th grade, when my class had a brief unit on "the middle ages" that I wanted to study history. I went through the typical male American child fads of obsession with World War II and the like, but was drawn to ancient history by the time I got to college, thanks mostly to Rome: Total War. My school had a half-baked history program, and by the time I finished it was a toss up as to whether I'd want to go to grad school for history or for english.

Then I started working at a historic site, and I had to read up on the War of 1812 to better talk our visitors through events at the fort. Turns out it was a weird and fascinating little war, and as I read more and more of the accessible pop history and delve deeper into more selective topics, I got more and more fascinated with not only the war but the memory of the war, and the fact that it made so many politician's careers. Given that it was a complete catastrophe from a military standpoint and a total stalemate from a political one, the selective, heroic memory of the Battle of New Orleans is weirdly frustrating but also potentially illuminating.

The militia is what draws most of my attention, but the First Nations involvement was also crucial to the historic site I worked at, and so that's a topic I have a particular interest in. I've been working on my current project for years now, and I'm still not sick of it. That's got to be a good sign, eh?