Essays

“Brother” North: Morocco’s Involvement in the Spanish Civil War

January 4, 2013
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Summary of the essay “El abrazo mortal de Franco: La participación de las tropas marroquíes en la Guerra Civil Española,” which earned an Honorary Mention in the Undergraduate category for the 2012 Watt Award. Although the Spanish Civil war is an extensively studied topic, the role of Spain’s neighboring country Morocco in this conflict...
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Watt Award: U.S. newspapers and the Lincoln Brigade

January 4, 2013
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Watt Award: U.S. newspapers and the Lincoln Brigade

U.S. newspaper coverage of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade reveals the domestic and foreign policy debates that arose in the late 1930s and continued into the late 1950s. I focus on The Cleveland Plain Dealer, which was sympathetic to the cause of the Spanish Republic due to the left-leaning population of the greater Cleveland...
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Watt Award: Canadian veterans and the politics of memory

January 4, 2013
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Watt Award: Canadian veterans and the politics of memory

In the latter half of the 1930s, 1,700 Canadians journeyed to Spain to defend the elected republic against General Francisco Franco’s military revolt. Decades later, as these men approached old age, they began pressing for official recognition from the Canadian government for their service in Spain; they were ultimately unsuccessful. A close analysis...
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Guernica and Guernica in British and American Poetry

September 17, 2012
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Guernica and <em>Guernica</em> in British and American Poetry

What role has poetry played in the way we think about the Spanish Civil War? Along with photography and film, it helped bring home the image of the Spanish Civil War as an idealistic struggle and a tragic catastrophe.
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Canada should recognize its SCW heroes

September 16, 2012
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Canada should recognize its SCW heroes

Quick, identify the Canadian battalion that celebrates its 75th anniversary this month. If you didn’t guess the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion you’re not alone. Few would.
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Why Not Teach the Spanish Civil War?

September 15, 2012
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Why <em>Not</em> Teach the Spanish Civil War?

When taught properly, the Spanish Civil War allows students in a Spanish class not only to learn about a major historical event but to think, write, and talk about political, moral, and cultural questions that are as relevant today as they were 75 years ago.
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California Vets: Del Berg and Jim Benét

July 2, 2012
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California Vets: Del Berg and Jim Benét

Northern California is the fortunate home to two of the remaining Lincoln Brigade veterans: former newspaperman James Benét, now 98, and Delmer Berg, a very lively 96.  Two of the four known living Lincolns today, Berg and Benét, each of whom lives a few hours drive from San Francisco, are mentally fit and living...
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Los voluntarios cubanos en la GCE

July 2, 2012
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Los voluntarios cubanos en la GCE

La originalidad de la participación cubana en la Guerra de España reside en su importancia numérica en relación con la de los países hispanoamericanos, especialmente las islas antillanas de Puerto Rico y de la República Dominicana. En realidad, a la vista de las fuentes consultadas, fueron por lo menos 1.101.
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Unfinished journey: U.S. Spaniards face the Civil War

July 2, 2012
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Unfinished journey: U.S. Spaniards face the Civil War

On March 27, 1938, Avelino González Mallada, former mayor of the Asturian city of Gijón, died in a car crash on a country road in Woodstock, Virginia. The next day, The New York Times explained that “Señor Mallada was in this country on a sixty-day permit granted to him by the Department of Labor after...
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Mauthausen: A Spaniard’s tale

July 2, 2012
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Mauthausen: A Spaniard’s tale

A Spaniard named Carlos Rodríguez del Risco was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen from 1940 to 1945. Although he was sympathetic to the Spanish Republic when he went into exile at the end of the Spanish Civil War, he became hostile to the Republican cause during his deportation and imprisonment. He...
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