World War II Battlefields, Up Close
CAS Prof Cathal Nolan will study World War II battlefields this summer, with the help of a Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship
Cathal Nolan, a College of Arts and Sciences associate professor of history and director of BU’s International History Institute (IHI), recently received a Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship to explore some of the World War II battlefields in France this summer.
The Whiting Foundation awards fellowships to current or prospective teachers who want to improve and enhance their instruction by studying abroad. Nolan will visit Ardennes and Normandy, among other locations. “This fellowship will allow me to visit and study a number of key battlefields and battlefield museums and programs,” he says, “and to bring into the classroom special insights that may be obtained only from on-site exploration.”
Nolan will photograph and film certain sites to use in lectures and for the online digital photo and film database the institute is developing for students and IHI fellows.
Nolan’s research also will contribute to a two-volume encyclopedia of World War II and a monograph titled At All Costs: Allied Victory in World War II. “Allied victory can only be understood as the end result of waging war with a necessary yet extreme ruthlessness and brutal acceptance of the nature of attrition,” he says of his thesis. “Walking major battlefields of that extraordinary conflict and visiting local archives can only enhance both works.”
Rebecca McNamara can be reached at ramc@bu.edu.
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