Thomas J Cragin

Professor, History
History
484-664-3538

[email protected]


Education

  • B.A. in History and Economics, Trinity University, San Antonio, 1987
  • M.A. in History, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1989
  • Ph.D. in History with Honors, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1996


Teaching Interests

teach courses on Modern Europe, including specific courses on France, Italy, Germany, World War One, World War Two, and the Holocaust.  Some of my courses also study the representation of history in film.


Research, Scholarship or Creative/Artistic Interests

Myearliest scholarship examined popular print culture in 19th-Century France and Italy.  After writing a series of articles, I published my first book, Murder in Parisian Streets: Constructing and Marketing Crime, Justice, and Social Order.  Bucknell University Press, 2006. All that worked stressed the importance of popular culture and specifically, the popular press, as an indicator of the ideas of the masses.  Since coming to Muhlenberg, most of my scholarship has focused on the representation of World War Two in the films and literature of France and Italy.  I have published a series of articles in this area and an edited volume, Resistance, Heroism, Loss:  World War II in Italian Literature and Film.  Co-edited by Laura Salsini. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2018. Again my emphasis is on the power of popular culture, site of ideas that move the masses.  My current book project,   Beyond the Open City: Italy’s Early Cinematic Re-Creation of World War II, 1945-1949, explores the remarkable remaking of World War Two in Italian memory by means of popular films.


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