Daniel Riches

Daniel Riches

Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies

Education

  • PhD, University of Chicago, 2007

Research Areas

  • European History
  • Military and Naval History

About

Research Interests

  • Early Modern European History (especially Central and Northern Europe)
  • Military and Diplomatic History
  • Interaction of Religion and Diplomacy
  • Interpersonal Networks
  • History of Higher Education

Current Projects

  • Pan-Protesant Networks and the Post-Westphalian State. Monograph project in progress.
  • “Bengt Skytte’s Universitas Gentium and Swedish Historiography.” Article manuscript in preparation.
  • “Dynastic and Religious Ambitions in Johan III of Sweden’s Marriage to Katarina Jagellonica.” Article manuscript in preparation.
  • “Diplomacy and Cosmopolitanism.” Article manuscript in preparation.

Courses Taught

  • Western Civilization to 1648 (HY 101)
  • Honors Western Civilization to 1648 (HY 105)
  • The Thirty Years’ War (HY 483)
  • Early Modern Germany (HY 451/500)
  • War and Diplomacy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (HY 481)
  • War and Religion in the West (HY 482)
  • Undergraduate Research Seminar in Early Modern Europe (HY 430)
  • Teaching History (HY 600)
  • Literature of European History (HY 603)
  • Proseminar in Early Modern European History (HY 631)
  • Proseminar in European Religious History (HY 635)
  • Seminar in European History (HY 682)

Awards and Honors

  • University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences College Academy of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity research grant (2014)
  • University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Commitment to Students Award (2014)
  • University of Alabama Research Grants Committee Award (2011)
  • University of Alabama Research Grants Committee Award (2008)
  • Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study Aurora Borealis Prize (2007)
  • Von Holst Prize Lectureship, Department of History, University of Chicago (2003)
  • Dissertation Teaching and Research Fellowship, University of Chicago (2002-2003)
  • DAAD Scholarship for research and study in Germany (1999-2000)
  • Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, United States Department of Education (1997-2002)
  • Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies (1996-1997)

Selected Publications

  • Protestant Cosmopolitanism and Diplomatic Culture: Brandenburg-Swedish Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
  • “Eberhard von Danckelmann and Brandenburg’s Foreign Policy, 1688-1697,” in Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World, ed. Paul Dover (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016): 254-272.
  • “The Rhetoric of Difference: The Marriage Negotiations between Queen Christina of Sweden and Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg,” in Mixed Matches: Transgressive Unions in Germany from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, eds. Mary Lindemann and David Luebke (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2014): 119-133.
  • “Conversion and Diplomacy in Absolutist Northern Europe,” in Conversion and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Germany, eds. David M. Luebke, Jared Poley, Daniel C. Ryan, and David Warren Sabean (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2012): 87-100.
  • “A New Paradigm for Studying the Thirty Years War.” Discussion piece (featured, extended review) on Peter H. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy – A History of the Thirty Years War (London: Allen Lane, 2009). In German History 29:1 (2011), 102-107.
  • “Italian Travel and the Professors of the University of Frankfurt/Oder in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Italien und Deutschland. Austauschbeziehungen in der gemeinsamen Gelehrtenkultur der frühen Neuzeit, eds. Emilio Bonfatti, Herbert Jaumann, and Merio Scattola (Padua: Unipress, 2008): 219-246.
  • (with Susan Lewis Hammond and Erik Thomson) “Emulation and Competition. Introduction: Early Modern Scandinavian Transformations of European Examples.” In Scandinavian Studies 77 (2005), Nr. 3, 327-330. Introduction to a group project that I co-organized.
  • “Early Modern Military Reform and the Connection Between Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia.” In Scandinavian Studies 77 (2005), Nr. 3, 347-364. My contribution to “Emulation and Competition: Early Modern Scandinavian Transformations of European Examples.”
  • “The Rise of Confessional Tension in Brandenburg’s Relations with Sweden in the Late-seventeenth Century.” In Central European History 37 (2004), Nr. 4, 568-592.
  • “The Swedish Reception of Early Modern Dutch Military Reform and its Transmission from Sweden to Brandenburg.” In Proceedings of the American Historical Association, 2004. Ann Arbor, Michigan: ProQuest, 2004.