Dr. Douglas T. McGetchin

Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
Associate Professor
Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Scholar, 2013-14, Kolkata (Calcutta), India
http://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/pjhr/
https://www.sewha.org/

Areas of Expertise

  • World History
  • Modern Europe
  • Modern Germany
  • Indian History

Email: dmcgetch@fau.edu
Twitter: @DougMcGetchin
Office Phone: (561) 799-8226

faculty photoProfessor McGetchin specializes in the modern history of international connections between Europe and South Asia.  He teaches classes in world history, modern Germany, modern Europe, and ancient and modern South Asia.  His current book project examines the interconnections between three struggles for social justice,  Internationalist and anti-imperial politics in Great Britain and Germany, the Indian Independence movement, and the pan-African movement that included the Civil Rights struggle in the United States, though geographically separate, all had parallel experiments with similar challenges as well as shared a common network of anti-imperial, anti-racist activists. His publications include Indology, Indomania, Orientalism: Ancient India's Rebirth in Modern Germany (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), examining the historical context of Indology (the study of South Asian texts, literature, and culture) and the diffusion of this knowledge about ancient India within modern Europe, especially Germany, in the period 1790-1914.  Other publications include the edited volumes by Joanne Miyang Cho, Eric Kurlander, and Douglas T. McGetchin, eds. In Transcultural Encounters between Germany and d India in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Kindred Spirits (New York: Routledge, 2014) and Douglas McGetchin, Peter K.J. Park, and Damodar SarDesai, eds; Sanskrit and "Orientalism": Indology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, 1750-1958 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), as well as several articles including: "Indo-German Connections, Critical and Hermeneutical, in the First World War," The Comparatist 34 (2010): 95-126; "Wilting Florists: The Turbulent Early Decades of the Société Asiatique, 1822-1860," Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2004): 565-580; and The Whitney Müller Conflict and Indo-German Connections" in Mapping Channels Between Ganges and Rhein: German-Indian Cross Cultural Relations, ed. Jörg Esleben, Christian Kraenzle and Sukanya Kulkarni, 29-50 (Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.

Professor McGetchin has presented papers at academic conferences in North America, Europe, and India, including the German Studies Association, the World History Association, the University of California, the international Conference of Asian Scholars (Berlin), South and Central Asia Fulbright Conference (Chennai), as well as specialized conferences organized at the South Asian Institute (Heidelberg, Germany), the India International Centre (New Delhi, India), University of Hawaii at Mānoa, University of Calcutta, Gurudas College (Kolkata, India), University of Toronto (Canada), University of California Los Angeles, and Harvard University.  He served as Director of the FAU Peace Studies Program 2012-13 and President of the Southeast World History Association (SEWHA), 2014-15.  He reviews books for scholarly journals including German Studies Review, German Studies Quarterly, German Historical Institute London Bulletin, The Historian, and Francia.

His grants include a U.S. Fulbright-Nehru Scholar Program Research Fellowship to Kolkata, India, 2013-14, and a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Annual Grant for dissertation research to Leipzig and Berlin, Germany, 1999-2000.  His teaching awards include FAU's university-wide Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2010, and Exceptional Faculty Award of the Northern Campus in 2011 and 2013.

Courses

Undergraduate Courses

  • History of Modern Germany
  • History of Modern India
  • Asia and the West (new course added to FAU catalogue)
  • Indian Civilization
  • Independence Movements in S. Asia
  • Hitler and Nazi Germany
  • The Holocaust
  • Twentieth-century Europe to WW2
  • Age of Nationalism and Reform
  • British Empire
  • World War II
  • Introduction to Peace Studies
  • History of Civilization 1
  • Introduction to Historical Study: Global Connections
  • Introduction to Historical Study: Weimar, Germany
  • Senior Seminar: The Road Back: Memory and the Great War
  • Senior Seminar: Struggle for Independence in Colonial South Asia
  • Hitler and Gandhi

Graduate Courses

  • Readings in World History
  • Seminars in European History
    • Europe in a Global Context:  Orientalism and Imperialism
    • Peace Movements and Nonviolent Struggle

Curriculum Vitae (Available upon request)