Professor of History
Director of the Institute for Military History
Andrew Orr
Office: 201-A Calvin Hall
Email: aorr1@ksu.edu
Andrew Orr is a global military historian of the modern era. He received his B.A. from Claremont Mckenna College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. His work focuses on the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries and explores identity and conflict, civil-military relations, gender and conflict, and the politics of war with an emphasis on France and the United States. His books have explored the experiences of women in the French Army, the Franco-Turkish War of 1919-1921, and Orientalism’s effect on contemporary American and European views of Islam and the Middle East. Dr. Orr has also published on intelligence history, imperialism, civil-military relations, the history of French Communist Party, and contemporary U.S. and European foreign and defense policy. His current projects include a book on the 1919 Black Sea Mutiny and a book on the evolution of military identity.
Dr. Orr accepts graduate students in European History, European and American Military History, and Security Studies.
Selected Publications
Books:
Facing the Victorious Turks: How the French Misread the Turkish War of Independence (Series: Modern War Studies) University Press of Kansas, 2024.
The Gay Girl in Damascus Hoax: Progressive Orientalism and the Arab Spring (Series: Transnational Queer Histories) De Gruyter, 2023.
Women and the French Army during the World War, 1914-1940 (Indiana University Press, 2017)
Articles and Chapters:
“Who is a Soldier? Using Trans Theory to Rethink French Women’s Military Identity in World War II” in Women, Children, and the Collective Face of Conflict in Europe, 1900-1950) eds. Sandra Dawson and Nupur Chaudhuri (Vernon Press, 2023)
“Winning by Outlasting: The United States and Ukrainian Resistance to Russia” Military Review, (With Marc DeVore and Ash Rossiter) (July-August 2022)
“Plan Z: The Popular Front, Civil-Military Relations and the French Army’s Plan to Defeat a Second Paris Commune, 1934-1936” The International Journal of Military History and Historiography, Vol 39, Number 1, April 2019.
“The Myth of the Black Sea Mutiny: Communist Propaganda, Soviet Influence and the Re-Remembering of the Mutiny” French History, Vol 32, Number 1,March 2018.
“‘Too Numerous to be Controlled’: Women, Professionalism, and Anti-Republicanism in the French Army, 1914-1928” French Historical Studies, Special Issue on France and the Great War, Vol. 39, Number 2, April 2016
“‘The Consequences Would Certainly be Fatal’: Voting Rights and the French Army 1920-1928” Journal of the Western Society for French History Vol 39.
“‘We Call You to Holy War’: Mustafa Kemal, Communism, and Germany in French Intelligence Nightmares, 1919-1923” Journal of Military History, October 2011.
(In Press) “Ethnic Cleansing, 1920-2000” in A Cultural History of War in the Modern Age Volume 6, War in the Modern Age (1920-Present) eds. Cindy Brown and Lisa M. Todd (Bloomsbury).
Classes Taught
Dr. Orr’s undergraduate courses include World History II, World War I, and World War II. His graduate courses include courses on the World Wars, Modern European Warfare, European Security Studies, and African Security Studies.