My Bio
Hello! Welcome to my web page. You can probably get a pretty good idea of who I am from browsing through the various links to the right, but I thought I'd take this opportunity to tell you a little about myself here. (I'm assuming, since you clicked "My Bio" and are still reading this, that you have some interest in my personal history).
I was born on July 4, 1968, in Buffalo, N.Y., at Lafayette Memorial Hospital. Between the date and the name of the hospital and the fact that my father was a professor of Colonial American History, one would assume that I would naturally become an American historian. But of course, I resisted that with all my will. My father was Robert Loyal Ganyard (of the Ashtabula Ganyards) and my mother is Gladys Ann Ganyard. I have a half-brother, Chris Ganyard, who lives in Houston, Texas, and a half-sister, Debra Ann Reilly-Culver, M.D. who lives in Omaha, Nebraska. Since my brother is 18 years older than me and my sister is 12 years older, I was essentially an only child. When I was 6, my family moved to Lockport, N.Y., where I grew up in relative peace and prosperity and received a decent education (due to large extent to two classes I took with Mr. John Koplas). It was also in Lockport where I met my future wife, Paula Conley, and yes, we were high school sweethearts.
After graduation, I decided to attend the State University of New York at Buffalo; this was where the aforementioned Paula Conley was attending school, and it's a decent university to boot. Despite the fact that the fates were aligned against me (date of birth, name of hospital, profession of father, and my mother even earned a history degree), I decided that I wanted to study physics. That lasted for about half a semester. You see, I'm a science fiction fan, and at the time, I wanted to be an SF writer. I was reading Heinlein (an engineer) and Asimov (a chemistry professor) just at that point, and decided that proper preparation for such a career lay in the physical sciences. In reality, the introductory classes in physics and calculus were more involved with mathematical proofs of Newtonian physics, while I was more interested in Einstein, curved space, time travel, and black holes. I also wasn't doing too well. So, I spent the next year looking for a major in something other than natural science. In the end, it came down to English and (go figure) history. I was receiveing Bs in English and As in history, so history became my major. It also helped that one of my first history professors was Orville T. Murphy, a scholar, a gentleman, and an excellent teacher. I decided to study European and German history (my last rebellion against the fates) rather than American history because I'd already seen all of the American historical sites with my dad, and I wanted to see something new. I'd also been studying French and German for some time and had the opportunity to spend a summer in Regensburg courtesy of DAAD (where, in addition to German, I learned about coffee and beer, not necessarily in that order). From there it was all downhill. I graduated in 1991 with a BA in history. That summer I married Paula. And in the fall, I began graduate school, also at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Paula and I honeymooned in Jamaica, which is fabulous. If you ever go to Jamaica, make sure you check out Duns River Falls. Paula decided that she had had enough education for the moment and went to work at a bookstore in town, where she did quite well and managed to keep our little family afloat. I furthered my education at the University at Buffalo, fortunately benefitting from a Teaching Assistantship. The UB History Dept. was going through some interesting changes at that time: many older faculty were getting ready for retirement (my father included), and many new faculty were being hired. As it turns out, this worked to my advantage, since I had the opportunity to study with many excellent historians, including the aforementioned Professor Murphy as well as Professors Pope, Naylor, Iggers, and Allen (the latter two of whom graciously agreed to be on my dissertation committee). Among the newer faculty, I studied with Professor Tamara Thornton, who, although she teaches American history, taught me a great deal about cultural and social history (and who also agreed to be on my dissertation committee), and Professor Jonathan Dewald, who supervised my field in Early Modern European history, taught me even more about cultural history, and introduced me to such figures as Steven Greenblatt and Michel Foucault. It was because of these two teachers that I became more interested in intellectual and cultural history. I managed to earn an M.A. in history by 1994 and was awarded a prestigious DAAD grant to do research in Berlin for one year (well, 10 months). (The DAAD, by the way, is the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, or the German Academic Exchange Service, an excellent service run by the German government to promote cultural and educational exchange between Germany and other countries). My research focused on a right-wing paramilitary/pseudo-political organization in the 1920s and 1930s called the Young German Order. The Order was interesting because even though it was radical and nationalsitic, even anti-Semitic, like the Nazi party, the Order came out in direct opposition to the Nazis, and a few members even resisted the Nazi regime during the 1930s. I learned a great deal in Berlin, including more about German language and culture, met many very interesting people (including Susanne Deimling and Walter Ederer (Hi!) who became good friends of ours, and Alan and Almut Nothnagle and their children Johanna and Adrian), and learned about a Czech beer called Budvar, which has absolutely no relation to Budweiser and makes the same seem like water (funny what my priorities seem to have been), and I found my research evolving from a straight political history to a study of the intellectual development of the Young German Order.
Paula and I returned to the States in August 1995. I returned to the University, where I had the opportunity to teach several classes. And Paula went to work on an MLS (Master of Library Science), which is a good thing, too, since my funding ran out and my dissertation wasn't finished yet. Paula, however, did finish her work and quickly got a job at Keuka College in the Finger Lakes region of New York. We spent 10 months in Geneva, N.Y., which is a charming little tourist trap, but we benefitted from a number of things, not least of which was Finger Lakes wine (if you're in the region, check out Dr. Frank's Vineyard; the Rkatsitelli is excellent) and being relatively close to Ithaca (home of the Moosewood Restaurant). In 1997, Paula was hired to be Library Instruction and Reference Librarian at the Cofrin Library on the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay campus, so we moved to Green Bay, WI., which is a great place! The people here are incredibly friendly and helpful, a fact demonstrated by the fact that, even without my dissertation finished, I was hired to teach first English Composition (!), then several survey courses in the Humanities (Foundations of Western Culture 1 & 2 and Introduction to the Humanities 1 & 2), and two courses in the History department (European Social History and Political and Social History of Modern Europe) here at the University. You can take a look at syllabi for some of my past and present courses on my Courses page. This has been a great experience.
In 2000, I finished and defended my dissertation!
Hope you enjoyed this brief report, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me!
Sincerely,
Clif Ganyard
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