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SHERMAN, TEXAS—Austin College Professor of History Hunt Tooley will present a lecture, “Interning Enemy Civilians and Other Origins of the Modern Prisoner State, 1900-1950” at 4:30 p.m. April 10 in Wright Campus Center, Room 231, preceded by a 4 p.m. reception in the adjoining Johnson Gallery. The lecture is free and open to the public.
The lecture, based upon his study in a recent sabbatical, is presented by Austin College’s Robert and Joyce Johnson Center for Faculty Development and Excellence in Teaching. The professor spent a sabbatical two years ago researching the origins of mass internment of civilians “finding themselves in the ‘wrong’ country during World War I,” he said.
Tooley explained that these individuals were called “enemy aliens,” and all the countries involved in the war interned at least some. World War I, he said, was simply the start of the story of wide-scale internment in the 20th century and after. His talk will concentrate mainly on two internment sites, one in France and one in the United Kingdom, on the Isle of Man. Those sites since have been recycled as more than one kind of internment site.
This particular study is part of Tooley’s long-term project on the modern state's development of concentration camps, internment camps, refugee camps, and other emerging forms of state control in what he describes as “the brutal 20th century.”
During the lecture, he will discuss internment and prison camps in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the United States. He will briefly include his related archival research on the origins of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, related in certain ways, he said, to the enemy alien camps.
The Johnson Center for Faculty Development and Excellence in Teaching advances the mission of Austin College by encouraging the exploration of intellectual frontiers and by fostering intellectual dialogue within and across academic disciplines. The Center supports faculty initiatives that explore questions fundamental to the vitality of the liberal arts tradition at Austin College. The center also facilitates colloquia exploring questions vital to the liberal arts as well as interdisciplinary reading groups; faculty participation in regional, national, and international liberal arts conferences; and informal gatherings devoted to intellectual inquiry and exchange.
Bernice Melvin, professor of French and a member of the Austin College faculty since 1980, serves as director of the Johnson Center. Committee members include Lance Barton, associate professor of biology; Stephanie Gould, assistant professor of chemistry; Todd Penner, associate professor of religious studies; and Frank Rohmer, associate professor of political science.
Austin College is a leading national independent liberal arts college located north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas. Founded in 1849, making it the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under original charter and name, the college is related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA). Recognized nationally for academic excellence in the areas of international education, pre-professional training, and leadership studies, Austin College is one of 40 schools profiled in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges That Change Lives.
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