Andrew Kless

Education

• PhD: History, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 2020
• MA: History, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 2016
• MA: History, Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 2010
• BA: History and Political Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 2008

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor of History and Global Studies and Director of AU’s Global Studies program. I offer courses in contemporary Europe, Asia, and Africa and co-lead a yearly (Winter) Allen Term study abroad program to Germany.

Travel and service inform my teaching and desire to help students think globally. I have been to 41 countries on five continents and lived abroad for more than three years nonconsecutively in Poland, Germany, and France. As a former officer in the US Army Reserve, I deployed to northern Afghanistan in 2013-2014, serving as a NATO liaison officer within the German Bundeswehr Headquarters and as an Afghan Army and Police Engineer Advisor. For helping establish a trade school for Afghan police, I was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

In May 2022, I accepted a direct commission back into the US Army Reserve as a Captain in Civil Affairs branch as a Military Government Specialist, following the path of the WWII "Monuments Men." Our recent training at the Smithsonian Institution was profiled by The New York Times and PBS Newshour.

My current research centers on the building of a German occupation in Poland during the First World War amidst the disintegration of the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. It has been supported with a US Dept. of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for Polish, two research fellowships by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and a doctoral fellowship by the German Historical Institute (Washington, DC). Among other awards, my dissertation was named winner of the Peter Lang 2020 Young Scholars Competition in the History category for German Studies in America; I will be publishing with Peter Lang (Oxford, UK) in 2023.

Please contact me if you are interested in AU’s History or Global Studies programs. I’m happy to supervise an independent study or senior thesis project. If you're thinking about AU's Study Abroad or Army ROTC programs, feel free to reach out!

Courses Taught

• HIST 107: The World in the 20th Century
• GLBS 101: Intro to Global Studies
• HIST 320: Ukraine: Between Putin and the West
• HIST 340: Southern Africa between Mandela and Mugabe
• HIST 360: Historian's Craft (Team Taught)
• HIST 300: Empire: 1415-Present
• HIST 300: Putin's Russia
• HIST 300: Crisis Europe: Refugees, Neo-Nazis, and Political Disintegration
• HIST 321: The History of Fascism
• HIST 358: Modern China
• HIST 300: West Africa