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Joshua Sanborn, associate professor of history, remembers with great clarity the late Cold War days of the early 1980s, when the threat of nuclear annihilation still loomed large.
“They were scary times,” he says. “Fear of nuclear war was part of the landscape.”
Sanborn, then in preparatory school, became interested in the Cold War’s origins and effects. Later, as an undergraduate student at Stanford University, he focused on international relations, but became more and more interested in history.
“My honors thesis was one of the most rewarding things I did as an undergraduate,” says Sanborn, who examined the 1905 Portsmouth Peace Treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War and won President Theodore Roosevelt a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the process.
More than a dozen years later, Sanborn, who holds a master’s in history and Ph.D. in Russian history, both from the University of Chicago, is looking more deeply at the origins and effects of war as he conducts research for his second academic book.
“I want to look at the impact of violence on societies and political structures,” he says of his current project, tentatively titled Life in the Killing Zone: Soldiers, Civilians and the Ecosystem of the Eastern Front, 1914-1918.
Sanborn also continues to hone the teaching skills he first developed when he spent a year teaching ancient and medieval history at a preparatory school in Texas.
“I wanted to see if I liked teaching and if I was any good at it,” he says.
Shannon Tyburczy ’01, who received a James Madison Fellowship for prospective teachers and is now a history teacher at Northampton Area High School, says Sanborn’s skill and enthusiasm in the classroom helped her decide that she, too, wanted to teach.
“Professor Sanborn really served as a great model for me,” she says. “I got excited when I saw his enthusiasm for a topic and I try to do the same for my students. Professor Sanborn challenges his students; I try to do the same.”
Tyburczy adds that Sanborn was equally enthusiastic and dedicated as her senior honors thesis adviser.
“I can’t even begin to explain just how great he was as an adviser,” she says. “He was always available and always optimistic. I was nervous about using Russian-language sources, but Professor Sanborn urged me to do so. He was honest about my work and kept me working — there was no chance to fall behind. I feel he really was able to get the best out of me and I think he does that for all of his students.”
Sarah Glacel ’01, who spent two years after graduation studying in Russia on a Fulbright scholarship, says Sanborn helped her find the focus she needed to win the grant.
Along with Tyburczy, Glacel, now a senior analyst for Transecur, an international information security company, assisted Sanborn in research for his book Drafting the Russian Nation as an EXCEL Scholar. She also completed a senior honors thesis on the Russian environmental movement.
“I consider Professor Sanborn to be the leading person in my academic life,” she says. “He encouraged me and helped me to understand my own professional and personal interests.”
Highlights
Publications: Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics 1905-1925, Northern Illinois University Press, 2003; “The Short Course for Murder: How Soldiers and Criminals Learn to Kill,” Violent Acts and Violentization: Assessing, Applying and Developing Theories, Lonnie Athens and Eric Lohr, eds., JAI/Elsevier, 2003, 107-124; “The Mobilization of 1914 and the Question of the Russian Nation: A Re-Examination,” Slavic Review 59:2 (2000), 267-289.
Honors: American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 2001-2002; Fellow, Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University, 2001-2002.
Achievements: Lafayette Community of Scholars professor, summer 2004.
Contact: (610) 330-5177; sanbornj@lafayette.edu