Dr. Devlin Scofield

Associate Professor of History

Education

• Ph.D. History; Michigan State University
• B.A. History; Montana State University

Courses Taught

Academic Interests

Research

My research focuses on transitional justice and the manner in which societies and states reconstruct themselves and reintegrate their citizens following periods of violent upheaval.  My current project, The Vanquished among Victors: Veterans and National Belonging in Alsace, 1871-1953 utilizes the context of the Franco-German rivalry to interrogate the notions and practices of German and French citizenship, memorialization, issues of identity, and the growth and limits of the welfare state.  During this period, the province repeatedly changed hands at the conclusion of successive military engagements.  Each transfer of sovereignty left the newly empowered state with a significant population of Alsatian veterans who fought for the opposing power in the previous conflict.  The project focuses on how this nationally ambiguous group attempted to reconstruct postwar lives, relationships with one another and the newly sovereign state, not just once, but four times.

Scholarly Activity

Publications

• “Demarcating the National Family:  French Nation-Building, “authentic” Alsatians, Germans Immigrants, and Alsace, 1914-1920” In Ethnicising Europe: Hate and Violence after Versailles, edited by Raul Cârstocea, Gábor Egry and Éva Kovács, (forthcoming with Purdue University Press in 2024).
• “Finding Belonging in Exclusion: The Interwar Commemorative Practices and Internal Politics of Alsatian Regimental Veterans’ Associations, 1918-1938.”  In Erinnerungsbilder und Gedächtniskonstruktionen: Das Erbe des Ersten Weltkriegs in Zentraleuropa (1918-1939)/ Images of Remembrance and the Construction of Memories: The Legacy of the First World War in Central Europe (1918-1939), edited by Christa Hämmerle, Gerald Lamprecht, and Oswald Überegger. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2024.
• “Radical Reordering along Old-Lines: Population Policy, Citizenship, and Military Service in Occupied Alsace, 1940-1945.”  In German-Occupied Europe in the Second World War, edited by Raffael Scheck, Julia Torrie, and Fabien Théofilakis, 62-80. London: Routledge Press, 2019.
• “The ‘Stepchildren’ of the Kaiserreich: Alsatians in the German Army during the First World War.”  In Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion: Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe, edited by Jason Crouthamel, Michael Geheran, Tim Grady, and Julia Barbara Köhne, 79-107.  Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2018.
• “Corpses of Atonement: The Discovery, Commemoration, and Reinternment of Eleven Alsatian Victims of Nazi Terror, 1947-1952.” In Human Remains in Society: Curation and Exhibition in Post-Genocide and Mass-Violence Contexts, edited by Elisabeth Anstett and Jean-Marc Dreyfus, 139-162.  Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.
• Book Review: Johannes Groβmann, Zwischen Fronten. Die deutsch-französische Grenzregion und der Weg in den Zweiten Weltkrieg, Central European History, (forthcoming September 2024).
• Book Review: Sarah Frenking, Zwischenfälle im Reichsland: Überschreiten, Polizieren, Nationalisieren der deutsch-französischen Grenze (1887-1914), German History, (October 2022). https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghac061
• Book Review: John C. Swanson, Tangible Belonging: Negotiating Germanness in Twentieth-Century Hungary, Canadian-American Slavic Studies 54, (2020): 321-324.
• Book Review: Alison Carrol, The Return of Alsace to France 1918-1939, H-France Review, Vol. 19 (September 2019), No. 189.
• Book Review: Bernd Ulrich and Benjamin Ziemann, ed. German Soldiers in the Great War: Letters and Eyewitness Accounts, First World War Studies, 2015. 

Selected Conference Presentations

• “At the Crossroads of National Belonging: Reordering and Reconstructing French Alsace after World War I.” Society for French Historical Studies and the Western Society for French History, Detroit, MI, March 2023.
• “Imperial Soldiers with Tricolour Hearts: France and the Reconciliation of German Alsatian Soldiers during the First World War.” Enemy Encounters, Imperial War Museum Institute for the Public Understanding of War and Conflict, London, United Kingdom, July 2021, Held online due to COVID.
• “Demarcating the National Family: French Nation-Building and Citizenship Policy in Alsace following the First World War.” Ethnicising Europe: Hate and Violence in Post-Versailles Europe, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI), Vienna, Austria, July 2021, Held online due to COVID.

• “Finding Belonging in Exclusion: The Interwar Memorialization Practices and Internal Politics of Alsatian Regimental Veterans’ Associations.” Images of Remembrance and the Construction of Memories: The Legacy of the First World War in Central Europe (1918-1939), Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bressanone, Italy, November 2019.
• Patriots or Turncoats?: French and German Constructions of Alsatians during the First World War.” Great Lakes History Conference, Grand Rapids, MI September 2019.
• “Unattainable Landscape: The Place of Strasbourg in the Commemorative Practices of Interwar German Veterans’ Associations.” Aftermath: German and Austrian Cultural Responses to the End of the First World War (1918-1933), King’s College, London, United Kingdom, September 2018.
• Seminar Participant. “Germans in the Borderlands: Coexistence, Conflict, and Nation-Building, 1750-Present.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, September 2018.
• “Tricolour Hearts in Field-Grey Uniforms: German Alsatian Soldiers and the Construction of French Patriotic Memory.”  German Studies Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, October 2017.
• Invited Workshop Participant. “World War I Veterans’ History in a Transnational and Comparative Perspective.”  Great Lakes History Conference, Grand Rapids, MI, October 2017.
• Seminar Participant, “German-occupied Europe in the Second World War.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, September 2016.

• “Privileging Service and Sacrifice: Postwar German Naturalizations of “Old” Alsatian Veterans and War Widows, 1918-1922.”  German Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington D.C., October 2015.
• “Sites of Camaraderie, Sites of Conflict: The Internal Politics of Alsatian Regimental Veterans’ Associations.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Kansas City, MO, September 2014.
• “Atoning for the Past by Honoring the Dead: Wiedergutmachung and the Commemoration of 11 Alsatian Victims of Nazi Terror, 1947-1952.”  Corpses of Mass Violence and Genocide Third Annual Conference, Manchester, United Kingdom, September 2014.
• “In Pursuit of Inclusion: Alsatian Expellees and the Politics of Citizenship, 1918-1920.”  Social Science History Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, November 2013.
•  “Claims from Afar: The Interwar Practices of Belonging in Alsatian Regimental Veterans’ Associations.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Milwaukee, WI, October 2012.

Student Group Advisement

• Northwest Missouri State University History Club
• Phi Alpha Theta: National History Honor Society

Other Professional Experiences

Selected Fellowships and Honors

• Michigan State University Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2014.
• Central European History Society Dissertation Research Grant, 2013.
• Michigan State University, Department of History, Muelder-Lowe Graduate Award, 2013.
• Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies Fellowship, 2011-2012.
• Fulbright Institute of International Education (IIE) Award (declined), 2011.
• German Historical Institute Doctoral Research Fellowship, 2011.
• Michigan State University Milton E. Muelder Graduate Fellowship in History, 2011.
• German Historical Institute Archival Summer Seminar in Germany, 2010.
• Michigan State University, Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities, Somers Excellence in Teaching Award, 2009.
• Deutscher Akademischer Austaushdienst Intensive Language Course Grant, 2009.
• Michigan State University David G. LoRomer Fellowship for Students of European History, 2007-2011.
• Phi Alpha Theta (National History Honor Society), 2006.
• Phi Kappa Phi (National Honor Society), 2005.