PhD in History (2024)
About
Matthew Hershey is a PhD candidate who specializes in the history of the First World War and twentieth-century German history. His dissertation, “Inclination toward Death: Suicide and Sacrifice in First World War Germany,” reconstructs the historically-situated meanings of wartime suicide as part of a broader spectrum of self-destructive behaviors, and situates suicide within the context of Germans’ dynamic socio-cultural, moral, and emotional attitudes towards and experiences with death, violence, and killing. Some of his past work has explored the emotional history of German nationalism among intellectuals from 1914-1924, cultural representations of the East African campaign on the British home front from 1914-1918, and the conceptual history of Britain's mass internment of German civilians between 1914 and 1916. His research has been supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, and the Rackham Graduate School.
Fields of Study
- 20th Century Germany and Europe
- Violence and Warfare
- Cultural and Social History
