R. Chris Davis
I am a native Texan, born in Houston and raised in Humble. I earned a BA in English from the University of St Thomas, then served two years in the Peace Corps in Romania. After completion of my Peace Corps service, I studied at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, where I earned an MA in Cultural Studies. I continued my graduate work at the University of Oxford, St Antony's College, where I earned an MSt in Historical Research and a PhD in Modern History.
Currently, I am a Professor of History at Lone Star College, where I teach History and Humanities. I have also taught as a visiting lecturer at Romania's National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, in Bucharest.
My current research interests include the cultures and histories of central and eastern Europe, with a focus on minorities, religion, and historiography. My book Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority’s Struggle for National Belonging, 1920–45, published by the University of Wisconsin Press (2019), won the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies’ Barbara Jelavich Book Prize for “distinguished monograph published on any aspect of Southeast European or Habsburg studies since 1600, or nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ottoman or Russian diplomatic history.”
My scholarship has been supported by Fulbright, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) grants and fellowships. I have also worked as a research assistant at the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Univ. of Oxford; a research fellow at both the Centre for Advanced Study (Sofia, Bulgaria) and New Europe College (Bucharest, Romania); and a consultant and editor for a number of research projects and working groups in east central Europe, including the European Network for Research and Cooperation on Roma (Gypsy) Issues. Since 2013, I have served as the book-reviews editor for H-Romania, an H-Net (Humanities & Social Sciences Online) Network.
Supervisors: Prof. Robert Evans
Currently, I am a Professor of History at Lone Star College, where I teach History and Humanities. I have also taught as a visiting lecturer at Romania's National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, in Bucharest.
My current research interests include the cultures and histories of central and eastern Europe, with a focus on minorities, religion, and historiography. My book Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority’s Struggle for National Belonging, 1920–45, published by the University of Wisconsin Press (2019), won the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies’ Barbara Jelavich Book Prize for “distinguished monograph published on any aspect of Southeast European or Habsburg studies since 1600, or nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ottoman or Russian diplomatic history.”
My scholarship has been supported by Fulbright, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) grants and fellowships. I have also worked as a research assistant at the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Univ. of Oxford; a research fellow at both the Centre for Advanced Study (Sofia, Bulgaria) and New Europe College (Bucharest, Romania); and a consultant and editor for a number of research projects and working groups in east central Europe, including the European Network for Research and Cooperation on Roma (Gypsy) Issues. Since 2013, I have served as the book-reviews editor for H-Romania, an H-Net (Humanities & Social Sciences Online) Network.
Supervisors: Prof. Robert Evans
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Book by R. Chris Davis
Davis's highly illuminating example is the case of the little-known Moldavian Csangos, a Hungarian- and Romanian-speaking community of Roman Catholics in eastern Romania. During World War II, some in the Romanian government wanted to expel them. The Hungarian government saw them as Hungarians and wanted to settle them on lands confiscated from other groups. Resisting deportation, the clergy of the Csangos enlisted Romania's leading racial anthropologist, collected blood samples, and rewrote a millennium of history to claim Romanian origins and national belonging—thus escaping the discrimination and violence that devastated so many of Europe's Jews, Roma, Slavs, and other minorities. In telling their story, Davis offers fresh insight to debates about ethnic allegiances, the roles of science and religion in shaping identity, and minority politics past and present.
Praise
“An authoritative examination of nation building and minority politics during some of Europe's most difficult years. Davis brings together so many significant historical themes that the story of these few villages makes us rethink modern European history.”
—Roland Clark, author of Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania
“This transnational case study makes larger, comprehensive arguments about Central and Eastern European nation building. It powerfully employs theory from history, anthropology, political science, and sociology to disentangle the conundrum of identity.”
—Calin Cotoi, University of Bucharest
“A remarkable combination of microhistorical richness and interpretive acumen, this is a beautifully written study of one of the 'little peoples lost to history,' caught between more powerful states' self-interested attempts to dictate their identity. It prises open the deceptively simple question 'who do you think you are?' to reveal startling contests over the meaning of identity in politics, language, and lived reality.”
—Jane Caplan, University of Oxford
“Introduces fundamental questions of identity and belonging, asking us to consider the importance of language, religion, territory—and, no less, tradition and bias—as both building blocks and obstacles to ethnic community. An indispensable contribution to the investigation of modern nationhood.”
—Keith Hitchins, University of Illinois
“A major contribution to debate on the meaning of collective identity and its deployment for political ends. Eloquent, original, sophisticated, and persuasive.”
—Dennis Deletant, Georgetown University
Papers by R. Chris Davis
Research in Romanian archives and a number of journals published in wartime Romania suggests that biopolitical discourse was not limited to government and intellectual circles; it also had direct and indirect impacts on Romanian’s minority communities, penetrating their political and even religious discourse. In an increasingly nationalist environment, Romania’s ethnic minorities were seen as incompatible with the homogenous nation-state. What then, was to be done with them? For Romania’s ardent nation builders the answer was unequivocal: either dispatch the dysgenic minority groups or else incorporate them into the national ethos and ultimately the national body.
Taking into account these discourses and policies in wartime Romania – and their effects on Romania’s minority communities – we can arrive at a more holistic understanding of localized events such as those involving the Catholic communities in Moldavia. In this way, we re-examine the appropriation and instrumentalization of ethnicity and national identity and the representation of communal national self-consciousness.
A romániai levéltárakban folytatott kutatások, valamint a háború alatti sajtóanyag azt sugallja, hogy a biopolitikai diskurzus használata nem korlátozódott a kormányra és az értelmiségi körökre, hanem közvetlen vagy közvetett hatással volt a romániai kisebbségi közösségekre, beférkőzvén ezek politikai, sőt vallásos diskurzusába. Egy egyre fokozódó nacionalista környezetben a romániai nemzeti kisebbségeket nem tekintették kompatibilisnek a homogén nemzetállam létével. Hát akkor mi is lenne a teendő velük? Románia szenvedélyes nemzetépítői számára a válasz egyértelmű volt: vagy kitoloncolni a fajilag „nem tiszta” kisebbségi csoportot, vagy beolvasztani a nemzeti étoszba, és végül is a nemzet testébe.
Számba véve az említett diskurzusokat és politikákat, amelyek Romániában a háború idején léteztek – és ezek hatását a kisebbségi közösségekre –, közelebb kerülünk a lokális események (mint pl. a moldvai csángókkal kapcsolatosak) holisztikusabb megértéséhez. Ekként újra vizsgáljuk az etnicitás és nemzeti identitás helyénvalóságát és instrumentalizálását, valamint a közösségi nemzeti öntudat reprezentálását.
[articolul continuă la website Cotidianul, legat de mai sus...]
Few people like Bucharest on their first visit. By the second visit, they usually hate it. But move here and stay four seasons or longer, and things change. You change. The little things that once annoyed me I've now grown quite fond of – that gypsy lady wailing down my street at 7 a.m. every morning, "fiiiaaaree vechi... fiiiaaaree vechi cuuuumpaar." Bucharest is a city of discontinuities, a palimpsest of times and places – visibly nineteenth century, interbellum, socialist, capitalist kitsch. Dirty. Swank. Ramshackle. Expensive. Cheap. It's a city best recounted through impressions, rambling down its many winding streets.
For original English version, please visit http://bucharestbabylon.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/de-ce-iubim-bucurestiul/
Book Reviews by R. Chris Davis
Teaching Documents by R. Chris Davis
Davis's highly illuminating example is the case of the little-known Moldavian Csangos, a Hungarian- and Romanian-speaking community of Roman Catholics in eastern Romania. During World War II, some in the Romanian government wanted to expel them. The Hungarian government saw them as Hungarians and wanted to settle them on lands confiscated from other groups. Resisting deportation, the clergy of the Csangos enlisted Romania's leading racial anthropologist, collected blood samples, and rewrote a millennium of history to claim Romanian origins and national belonging—thus escaping the discrimination and violence that devastated so many of Europe's Jews, Roma, Slavs, and other minorities. In telling their story, Davis offers fresh insight to debates about ethnic allegiances, the roles of science and religion in shaping identity, and minority politics past and present.
Praise
“An authoritative examination of nation building and minority politics during some of Europe's most difficult years. Davis brings together so many significant historical themes that the story of these few villages makes us rethink modern European history.”
—Roland Clark, author of Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania
“This transnational case study makes larger, comprehensive arguments about Central and Eastern European nation building. It powerfully employs theory from history, anthropology, political science, and sociology to disentangle the conundrum of identity.”
—Calin Cotoi, University of Bucharest
“A remarkable combination of microhistorical richness and interpretive acumen, this is a beautifully written study of one of the 'little peoples lost to history,' caught between more powerful states' self-interested attempts to dictate their identity. It prises open the deceptively simple question 'who do you think you are?' to reveal startling contests over the meaning of identity in politics, language, and lived reality.”
—Jane Caplan, University of Oxford
“Introduces fundamental questions of identity and belonging, asking us to consider the importance of language, religion, territory—and, no less, tradition and bias—as both building blocks and obstacles to ethnic community. An indispensable contribution to the investigation of modern nationhood.”
—Keith Hitchins, University of Illinois
“A major contribution to debate on the meaning of collective identity and its deployment for political ends. Eloquent, original, sophisticated, and persuasive.”
—Dennis Deletant, Georgetown University
Research in Romanian archives and a number of journals published in wartime Romania suggests that biopolitical discourse was not limited to government and intellectual circles; it also had direct and indirect impacts on Romanian’s minority communities, penetrating their political and even religious discourse. In an increasingly nationalist environment, Romania’s ethnic minorities were seen as incompatible with the homogenous nation-state. What then, was to be done with them? For Romania’s ardent nation builders the answer was unequivocal: either dispatch the dysgenic minority groups or else incorporate them into the national ethos and ultimately the national body.
Taking into account these discourses and policies in wartime Romania – and their effects on Romania’s minority communities – we can arrive at a more holistic understanding of localized events such as those involving the Catholic communities in Moldavia. In this way, we re-examine the appropriation and instrumentalization of ethnicity and national identity and the representation of communal national self-consciousness.
A romániai levéltárakban folytatott kutatások, valamint a háború alatti sajtóanyag azt sugallja, hogy a biopolitikai diskurzus használata nem korlátozódott a kormányra és az értelmiségi körökre, hanem közvetlen vagy közvetett hatással volt a romániai kisebbségi közösségekre, beférkőzvén ezek politikai, sőt vallásos diskurzusába. Egy egyre fokozódó nacionalista környezetben a romániai nemzeti kisebbségeket nem tekintették kompatibilisnek a homogén nemzetállam létével. Hát akkor mi is lenne a teendő velük? Románia szenvedélyes nemzetépítői számára a válasz egyértelmű volt: vagy kitoloncolni a fajilag „nem tiszta” kisebbségi csoportot, vagy beolvasztani a nemzeti étoszba, és végül is a nemzet testébe.
Számba véve az említett diskurzusokat és politikákat, amelyek Romániában a háború idején léteztek – és ezek hatását a kisebbségi közösségekre –, közelebb kerülünk a lokális események (mint pl. a moldvai csángókkal kapcsolatosak) holisztikusabb megértéséhez. Ekként újra vizsgáljuk az etnicitás és nemzeti identitás helyénvalóságát és instrumentalizálását, valamint a közösségi nemzeti öntudat reprezentálását.
[articolul continuă la website Cotidianul, legat de mai sus...]
Few people like Bucharest on their first visit. By the second visit, they usually hate it. But move here and stay four seasons or longer, and things change. You change. The little things that once annoyed me I've now grown quite fond of – that gypsy lady wailing down my street at 7 a.m. every morning, "fiiiaaaree vechi... fiiiaaaree vechi cuuuumpaar." Bucharest is a city of discontinuities, a palimpsest of times and places – visibly nineteenth century, interbellum, socialist, capitalist kitsch. Dirty. Swank. Ramshackle. Expensive. Cheap. It's a city best recounted through impressions, rambling down its many winding streets.
For original English version, please visit http://bucharestbabylon.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/de-ce-iubim-bucurestiul/