Connelly completed his BSFS at Georgetown and his MA and PhD at Harvard. He is the author of three books: Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945-1956 (2000), which won the George L. Beer Prize of the American Historical Association in 2001; From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1965 (2012), which won the John Gilmary Shea Book Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association in 2013; and most recently From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe (2020).
0:00: Introduction
1:10: Connelly's attraction to Central Europe
2:10: Experiences and cultural interests in West Germany, the Soviet Union, and Poland
3:30: Anecdotes and conversations with people living in East Germany, complications with speaking publicly about the regimes and people’s internalized expectations about their behavior
5:05: Border changes over time and states' control over citizens
6:35: Differences between Germany and Poland in attitudes toward the state and beliefs about the state
7:35: Customs authority as politicized vs. not politicized position in Germany vs. Poland
8:00: Different attitudes toward the past; existence of a unified German state vs. unified Polish state
8:30: Differences in material conditions of Poland/East Germany
9:00: Infrastructure that made it possible for him to live in Germany/Poland
10:20: Grad school in the US and summers researching in Europe
11:00: People who influenced Connelly's intellectual development in 70s and 80s, relevant courses
13:25: Center for European Studies
13:50: Lessons learned from mentors--a critical approach to German history, a mental map of the East European past, accurate and painstaking approach to source criticism
16:00: Linguistic skills of other scholars, most East European scholars know at least Slavic languages
16:30: People with multiple languages
18:20: Shifts in historiography toward intellectual preoccupations (i.e. nationalism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism)
19:10: Shift away from totalitarian theory especially after 1989 in Germany and Central Europe
20:20: Nationalism studies since the 70s/80s
21:30: Shatter zones
22:10: Critical attitude to Yugoslavia
23:00: Nationalism constructed
24:00: Herderian influences in Europe
24:50: Development of ideas of nationalism
25:30: How historiography feeds off trends
26:00: Nationalism as the history of ideas, social history
27:00: Earlier writings of nationalism and subsequent corrections
27:40: Historical events as red herring or fruitful reevaluation
28:00: Wars in Yugoslavia and their impact on views of extreme nationalism
29:20: Historical work, the emergence of populism, the 1920s assumption that democracy would take root naturally
31:00: Liberalism
32:00: Nazi Germany's economics of fascism and the legacy of war
33:00: Tim Snyder on neo-populism, inequality
34:00: German fascism in Bohemian Austria, Nazi party creation, Romania and Hungary
35:30: Italy, the Depression, the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany
36:25: Poland's current political situation, the blind spot of the liberal elite, market economy, election
38:00: Origin of research projects; multinational contexts
39:00: Science and Stalinism in Poland
41:00: 3-country comparison, Harvard advisor
41:30: Emphasizing differences within comparative history
42:00: Afterlife of the model
43:20: Cross-border studies
45:10: Current book project, From Enemy to Brother, origins
47:00: Converts from Judaism in the Czech Republic
47:50: Austro-fascism
48:20: Relationship between historiography and morality
49:00: Evolution of Catholic thought away from anti-Judaism
51:00: Narrative arc of intellectual interests: questions of identity, groups/individual
52:40: Motivations for writing the history of Eastern Europe
54:30: Nationalism as a political phenomenon and movement
57:20: Progress of the book
57:50: Chapter on the 19C, Congress of Berlin
59:30: Areas in the field that could benefit from more development
1:00:30: Liberal nationalism, why does this produce Fascist/not-Fascist outcomes
1:01:40: Philosophy of history, Church history, technology
1:04:20: Graduate training, strategies
1:06:00: Accessible writing for East European history
1:07:00: Area studies trajectory and significance for field of history
1:08:40: East Europeanists' dominance in European field and implications
