Presented by Dr. John Deak, associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, and Fellow at Nanovic Institute for European Studies.
In partnership with the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Lecture Series and the Notre Dame Club of Greater Williamsport, Dr. John Deak, Notre Dame associate professor of history, will be our speaker for fall 2018.
The First World War saw the increased use of modern technologies of warfare as its belligerents sought to break the great stalemate that set in at the end of 1914. Airplanes, chemical agents, tanks, submarines, all saw extensive deployment, and together they represented a sea change in how we think about modern, industrial wars.
This talk will examine these larger developments during the First World War, but in a setting that you probably have not yet encountered: the Isonzo Front, fought between the armies of Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy. There, over mountainous terrain and brutal winters, the stalemate of war claimed nearly 1.5 million casualties and saw the limits of modern war stretched and broken in the name of claiming victory.
Dr. John Deak, associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, and Fellow at Nanovic Institute for European Studies, grew up in North Carolina. After he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2009, he landed his dream job at the home of the Fighting Irish. Broadly interested in European history since the Enlightenment, he teaches courses on German History, the Revolutions of 1848, the First World War, and his specialty, the History of the Habsburg Empire.
Dr. John Deak
Science, Warfare, and Technology
Diplomatic Relations and the Start of the War
Isonzo Front