Associate Professor of History & Global Studies

Andrew Kless

Human Studies

(607) 871-2701

[email protected]

Kanakadea Hall , Second Floor

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

Download CV (PDF)

Biography

I am an Associate Professor of History 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 44 countries on five continents and lived abroad for more than three years nonconsecutively in Poland, Germany, and France. As an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, I deployed to northern Afghanistan in 2013-2014, serving as a liaison officer within a NATO Regional Command North Headquarters of the German Bundeswehr. Additionally, as deputy engineer for an Afghan Army and Police Engineer Advisor Team, I helped establish a trade school for Afghan police. I am currently a Cultural Affairs Officer, focusing on cultural property protection; my initial Army Monuments Officer Training at the Smithsonian Institution was profiled by The New York Times and PBS Newshour.

My 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 by 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. My book, Broken Ground: Building Germany's Occupation of Poland in the First World War, has just been published by Peter Lang (Oxford, UK).

Please contact me if you are interested in AU’s History or Global Studies programs, or studying abroad. If you're considering military service after graduation, I'm happy to answer any questions based on my own experience.