Stephanie Truskowski

Biography

Stephanie Truskowski is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History from the University of California, Los Angeles, a Master’s Degree in Modern History from Utrecht University, and a Master’s Degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago.

Geographically, her research focuses on nineteenth-century Central Europe and Latin America, particularly focusing on the relationship between the Habsburg empire and the Americas. Her research also has a global scope; she has presented research on the connections between the Habsburg Empire, North Africa, and the Balkans. She is working on the history of political ideologies, namely liberalism, constitutionalism, and popular sovereignty. Her work critically examines the concept of empire and the state as part of worldmaking in the nineteenth century by asking how new states formed, legitimized claims of popular sovereignty, maintained independence, and protected against bordering empires. She is also interested in how ideological concepts become embedded in diplomatic practice as liberal constitutionalism overtook older state models.
Truskowski’s dissertation, titled The Maximilian Moment: The Transatlantic Ideal of Liberal Monarchy examines the creation of the Second Mexican Empire under the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian as a case study for the idea of liberal monarchy as a stabilizing force and as a part of balance of power politics. On one side, it argues that Mexican actors engaged with the Concert of Europe to make an argument that a stable monarchy would be the only way to protect Mexican sovereignty from the expansion of American empire. This approach gives agency and political initiative to the Mexican monarchists instead of centering French empire as previous historiography has done. On the other side, it argues that there was an undeniably Austrian element to the creation of the Mexican Empire, both through the influence of Metternich’s Concert of Europe as a diplomatic model and through Maximilian’s experience as General-Governor of Lombardy-Venetia. It foregrounds Maximilian’s experience arguing for liberal reform within an Austrian context, which provided a model for creating a liberal, constitutional monarchy in Mexico. This work puts Mexico in conversation with contemporary political crises in Greece and Poland and argues that liberal monarchy was not unique to any of these cases but rather served as a framework for worldmaking in Latin America, the Balkans, and Central Europe.

Her archival research across five countries has been supported significantly by a Fulbright-Mach Award funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Women, Science and Research. She has also received support from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Central European Historical Society.