Assistant Professor of History Zbysek Brezina holds degrees from Zapadoceska Universita in the Czech Republic, where he received an M.A. in history and literature, and Boston University, where he received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in history. He has significant experience teaching at the college preparatory and college levels in both Europe and the United States. Furthermore, as someone who grew up behind the other side of the Iron Curtain (now nonexistent Czechoslovakia) and who actively participated in the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he can offer his students unique political, economic, cultural, and religious perspectives that will broaden their understanding of modern European history. He believes that history is not about the amount of information that students must memorize. Rather, he views the discipline of history as being about understanding and analyzing events and people’s actions through the reading of primary and secondary sources, discussion, writing, and traveling. Based on this philosophy, he is organizing a trip to take history students through Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, and France in January 2009. His teaching and research interests include general world history, European (including Russian) history, American foreign policy, the history of the Roma people, and genocide and ethnic cleansing. He is married to Susan Cantrell, a business writer and researcher. They have a son named Edward and a French bulldog named Belle.
PUBLICATIONS
Zbysek Brezina, introduction in Ve službì smrti: Od ruského nihilismu k islámskému terorismu (At the Service of Death: From Russian Nihilism to Islamic Terrorism)by Anna Geifman (Brno: Stilus Press, publication date: Fall 2008).
Zbysek Brezina, “William McKinley,” in U.S. Presidents Foreign Policy: From 1789 to the Present ed. Carl C. Hodge and Cathal J. Nolan (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2007)
Zbysek Brezina, rev. of Torture: A Collection by Sanford Levinson ed. Perspective on Political Science 2 (2005): 113.
Zbysek Brezina and Pavel Palecek, epilogue in The History of the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees by Vojtech Jerabek (Brno: Stilus Press, 2005).
Zbysek Brezina , rev. of Ethics and Foreign Intervention by Chatterjee, Deen K., and Don E. Scheid, eds. Perspectives on Political Science 1 (2004): 52-53.
