Scholar of the Month
Holiday Season 2007-08
© Copyright 2006-08 British Scholar. All rights reserved.
British Scholar is proud to present the Holiday Season 2007-08
Scholar of the Month Eric G.E. Zuelow.  Zuelow is Assistant
Professor of History at West Liberty State College.  His published
works include:

- Making Ireland Irish: Tourism and National Identity since the Irish
Civil War  (Syracuse:  Syracuse University Press, forthcoming, 2008)

- Nationalism in a Global Era: The Persistence of Nations. Co-editor
with Mitchell Young and Andreas Sturm. (London:  Routledge, 2007)

- “‘Kilts versus Breeches’: The Royal Visit, Tourism, and Scottish
National Memory,” in Journeys: The International Journal of Travel
and Travel Writing 7.2 (2006): 33-53.
1.  Where, when, and why did you become interested in British history?

EZ:  I developed an interest in British history during a trip through Britain
with my folks when I was eleven or twelve years old. While it might be a little
cliché, imagining what it was like to inhabit an Anglo-Saxon hill fort, an
Edwardian castle, or an eighteenth-century estate was addicting.  Once I
started thinking seriously about life in the past, it was hard to stop.

My transition to academic history came later, in the shadow of York Minster.  
A friend and I were enjoying a pint before taking one of the ghost walks that
are now ubiquitous in York.  A Scottish couple came in and the four of us
started talking about various things.  At some point I asked them about their
opinion of Scottish nationalism. The man became extremely animated and
he was clearly pro-SNP.  This event took place in the early 1990s before
American politics became really divisive and I had never seen such political
passion.  From that point forward I wanted to understand the dynamics of
identity in the British Isles.  I've spent most of my time since then exploring
the matter.

2.  Who most influenced your academic development?

EZ:  This is really an impossible question to answer definitively—there have
been so many influences going back to high school and even before.  Most
relevant to British Scholar, my research and teaching was shaped
principally by people that I worked with at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison. George L. Mosse, Rudy Koshar, Robert Kaiser, and my advisor
James S. Donnelly, Jr. to name a few.  Mosse was both a brilliant historian
and a splendid man.  There is often an assumption among academics that
you can be either a teacher or a researcher.  Mosse was both. He genuinely
cared about students, just as he cared about understanding the history of
nationalism, racism, and gender.  On an intellectual front, Mosse's work
demonstrated to me that culture plays a pivotal role in shaping national
consciousness.  Rudy Koshar perpetually asks interesting questions and
helped me realize the potential of social and cultural history. Finally, Bob
Kaiser and Jim Donnelly both helped me craft my approach to research
questions—each in his own way.  Bob taught me a tremendous amount
about nationalism and he really helped me to shape my dissertation project.  
Jim taught me an incredible amount about Britain and Ireland, as well as
about how to write history in a compelling way.  When I sit down to write, I
constantly ask myself: "What would Jim do?"  

3.  If you hadn’t become a historian what career path would you have
chosen?

EZ:  Before making the decision to pursue history, I was actively chasing a
journalism or public relations career.  During college I wrote for a Seattle-
area cycling newspaper. After graduation, I worked for a public relations and
advertising firm during the early days of Internet advertising while also doing
pro-bono work for major cycling events in the Pacific Northwest.  It was great
fun and I'm sure that I would have enjoyed a career as a foreign
correspondent or even as an event promoter, but the truth is that I love what I
do.  I get to learn new things every day and to share these things with
students and colleagues.  Can you imagine doing anything that is more fun?

4.  What project are you currently working on?

EZ:  My major project at the moment, and for the next few weeks, involves
preparing my first monograph, Making Ireland Irish: Tourism and National
Identity since the Irish Civil War, for Syracuse University Press.  The book
traces how tourism-related discourse helped to shape Irish national identity
from 1924 through 2007. Tourism-centered debate began shortly after
independence when people from across Irish society considered whether
tourism development should be a top priority during a period when much of
Ireland’s infrastructure lay in ruins and when the country remained deeply
divided over its recent civil strife.  As more and more people agreed upon
the importance of tourism, Gaelic language activists, historians, interested
citizens, politicians, and others used tourism as a tool for advocating their
own particular views of Irishness.  The result was an ongoing dialogue about
the meaning of Irish identity that assured the perpetual evolution and
vibrancy of Irish national consciousness while also creating new traditions,
re-shaping the Irish landscape, and creating a widely acceptable version of
the Irish past.

5.  What projects do you see yourself working on in the near future?

EZ:  At present my research agenda is moving in two directions.  My first
project examines how English immigration into Scotland sparked a radical-
nationalist backlash during the 1990s that, in turn, largely reshaped the
national discourse about Scottishness. The article, detailing the so-called
“White Settler” incident, will explore how Scots, both active nationalists and
others, dealt with the perception of being an “internal colony,” the concern
about the loss of native culture, and the desire for political independence.  
Where once debate focused on economic issues, now many Scots
articulated difference with England in racial terms that echoed nineteenth-
century conceptions of race.

My second new project, which I had the chance to talk about at the recent
British Scholar Conference, is entitled Drinking to Remember: Real Ales
and the Public House in English Memory, 1800-2006. This book will
challenge the thesis that average English men and women imagined their
identity through the ideas and institutions created for them by their social
superiors. Ultimately, this project examines how groups within England
sought to physically reshape identity by perpetually recasting the pub to
reflect changing ideas about nation, gender and class, while also illustrating
the role played by a larger trans-national dialogue about the national
differences embodied in English, Irish, Scottish, Belgian, and even
American drinking establishments.  

6.  Of your academic projects, which one has proven to be most fulfilling?

EZ:  My Irish tourism research was really enjoyable.  I had the opportunity to
interview fascinating people such as Kevin O'Doherty, who was 92 years old
when I talked with him in 2002.  His parents were Irish revolutionaries during
the War for Independence and he told me about coming home to find
Michael Collins in his kitchen, to say nothing of myriad other stories.  
Beyond that, I loved going to the archives every day where every box
contained new treasures.  

7.  Where do you see the field of British history heading in the next few
years?

EZ:  Of course, this is an impossible question to answer.  Historians are
pretty good with the past and much less reliable predicting the future.  As a
graduate student I took numerous European history courses and was always
struck by how rarely Europeanists engaged with any British or Irish
historiography. E.P. Thompson's Creation of the English Working Class
was always mentioned, of course, as was Trevor-Roper's essay on Scottish
tartanry.  Linda Colley's Britons came up.  Judith Walkowitz's City of
Dreadful Delight caught people's attention, but that was about it.  
British/Irish history was considered parochial.  I think that this is starting to
change because British and Irish historians are engaging with
historiographical issues that are of interest well beyond the British Isles in a
way that I don't think was as true in the past.  There's more environmental
history being done, more on identity, more on consumer culture, more on car
culture, more on collective memory, etc., etc.  There seems to be more
engagement with new and very interesting historiographical approaches as
well.  This can only be a positive trend.    

8.  What advice do you have for graduate students and beginning
academics about finding a topic of interest and publishing on it?

EZ:  At the risk of sounding like Joseph Campbell, you need to follow your
bliss.  Listen to the advice of your mentors, read extensively around subjects
that interest you, and then settle on something that you are absolutely
passionate about.  You will be intimately involved with your topic for at least
5-10 years.  Remember that even when you're done researching and writing
you will still need to "sell" your project to a publisher and then undertake
required editing and revision.  It's a long process.  If you get tired of your
subject, those years will not be as much fun as they should be.  I feel very
fortunate to have hit upon a topic that I still find utterly fascinating, even six or
seven years after I initially started researching it.