Alison Frank Johnson

Alison Frank Johnson

Professor of History
Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
alison_joshnson

Alison Frank Johnson's teaching and research focus on the history of German-speaking Europe and the Habsburg Monarchy. Her first book, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (2005), was awarded the Barbara Jelavich 2006 Book Prize, the Austrian Cultural Forum 2006 Book Prize, and the Polish Studies Association 2006 Orbis Book Prize. She is currently working on a book about the de-memorialization of alleged ritual murder sites in Germany and Austria in the postwar period. This project examines popular religiosity, longstanding prejudice against Jews and the work to fight its literal and symbolic relics. Additional research interests include environmental history, capital punishment, the Alps, and the Mediterranean slave trade. She offers general exam fields in German-speaking Europe, Eastern and Central Europe, and European Environmental History.
 

Selected Publications

  • “István Deák’s Caste Honor,” Journal of Austrian-American History 7, no. 1 (2023), 44-51
  • “Europe without Borders: Environmental and Global History in a World after Continents,” Contemporary European History 31 (January 2022): 129-141
  • “Waiting for the Executioner: Regime Change and the Case for Clemency,” The Public Seminar, 21 January 2021. https://publicseminar.org/essays/waiting-for-the-executioner-in-1848-austria/
  • “The Strange, Sad Case of the ‘Bosnian Christian Girl’: Slavery, Conversion, and Jurisdiction on the Habsburg-Ottoman Border,” Austrian History Yearbook 51 (April 2020), 39-59
  • “The Bureaucracy of Honor: The Habsburg Consular Service and the History of Emotions,” Administory: Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsgeschichte/Journal for the History of Public Administration 3 (December 2018), 164-184
  • “The Children of the Desert and the Laws of the Sea: Austria, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mediterranean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review 117, no. 2 (April 2012), 410-444
  • “The Air Cure Town: Commodifying Mountain Air in Alpine Central Europe,” Central European History 44, no. 2 (June 2012), 185-207
  • "Continental and Maritime Empires in an Age of Global Commerce," East European Politics and Societies 25, no. 4 (November 2011)
  • “Environmental, Economic, and Moral Dimensions of Sustainability in the Petroleum Industry in Austrian Galicia,” Modern Intellectual History 8, no. 1 (April 2011)
  • "The Petroleum War of 1910: Standard Oil, Austria, and the Limits of the Multinational Corporation," American Historical Review 114, no. 1 (February 2009)
  • “The Pleasant and the Useful: Pilgrimage and Tourism in Habsburg Mariazell,” Austrian History Yearbook 40 (2009)
  • Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (2005)

 

 

Contact Information

Center for European Studies
Room 404
27 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: 617-495-4329

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