Deborah Kisatsky, a doctoral candidate in history, has won a highly prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Bundeskanzler (Federal Chancellor) Scholarship for research on her doctoral dissertation.

Kisatsky's dissertation, "The United States and the Nationalist Right in Europe, 1945-1958," compares American responses to right-wing political nationalism in France, Italy and Germany during the first decade of the Cold War.

The dissertation demonstrates that a central goal of post-World War II U.S.-European policy was to promote West European economic and military unity through such supranational institutions as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for European Cooperation and offers new perspectives on the history of the Cold War.

The award will cover the cost of travel, language training, living and research expenses for one year beginning September 1. Kisatsky will live in Germany to study the German language and to research documents in German archives.

"My goal is to become an outstanding teacher-scholar of U.S.-European relations," says Kisatsky. "This scholarship will greatly enhance my understanding of German-American ties through immersion in German history and culture for a year."

Kisatsky has already completed research in several documentary repositories, including the U.S. National Archives; the presidential libraries of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower; and the manuscript libraries of Princeton University, Yale University, Harvard University and Amherst College.

She plans to use the records of the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz; the political archives of the Foreign Office in Bonn; the archives of the Free Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Christian Democratic party in Bonn; the archive of the Christian Socialist Union in Munich; and the private papers of Konrad Adenauer in Rhondorf and of Thomas Dehler in Bonn.

"By employing these records of the Federal Republic, I can begin to evaluate some of the 'other sides' to a story for which I already have many American voices," Kisatsky says.

Following her stay in Germany and before returning to the United States, Kisatsky plans to make brief visits to archives in Italy, France and the United Kingdom.

"The multi-archival basis of my research, which will benefit from research in American, German, French, British, and Italian sources, will give the study added weight," she says.

Kisatsky is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UConn (B.A., 1990; M.A., 1993). She is also a recipient of the Myrna F. Bernath Research Fellowship from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (1997-98); the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Lubin-Winant Fellowship (1996); and UConn's Edward V. Gant Memorial Scholarship (1995).

Usha R. Palaniswami