Sean Silverman began his UMBC journey as a computer science major. After taking several programming classes in high school, he was ready to pursue a career in data science while also enrolling in history courses to foster his love of history. However, by his second semester, Silverman’s passion for history inspired him to switch majors during his sophomore year. It is a common misperception among incoming students that they must commit to one path, but UMBC is a place where students can explore careers across disciplines and have the support needed to shift gears and equip themselves with the tools to succeed academically.
Silverman’s initial interest in history was sparked by his older sister’s trips to Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries and then by the deep dive into that region’s intricate past. At UMBC, he found a mentor in Brian Van Wyck, assistant professor of history, who shared a similar academic trajectory. During the fall semester of his senior year, Silverman completed his 30-page history capstone research paper on the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946 – 1948. As he looks forward to graduation, Silverman reflects on how he rose to meet the challenge of his successful capstone project with the support of Van Wyck.
Learning the skills as you go
Van Wyck, who has been at UMBC for nearly five years, shares Silverman’s enthusiasm for learning about places, events, and languages vastly different from his own experiences and history. Like Silverman, he did not travel abroad or become fluent in a second language during his undergraduate years. It wasn’t until after college, when Van Wyck worked and lived in Turkey, that he began learning Turkish and German. These skills flourished through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program in the Turkish immigrant community of Detmold, in northwestern Germany, and the support of the Turkish Critical Language Scholarship. Van Wyck’s willingness and curiosity to immerse himself in Detmold’s linguistic, cultural, and political crossroads shaped the trajectory of his research and influenced his teaching, including Silverman’s capstone course.
“I like the complexity and challenge of research, putting different kinds of sources in different languages in conversation with one another to find surprising answers to important questions relevant to understanding problems and injustices in our contemporary world,” says Van Wyck, who promoted opportunities for UMBC, faculty, and students to study and research in Germany as a 2023 – 2024 DAAD Research Ambassador.
(right)While conducting research at the Atatürk Library in Istanbul, Van Wyck consulted a 1966 news article from the Cumhuriyet, the oldest Turkish daily newspaper, about Turkish migrant workers’ attempt to organize religious services in West Germany. (Image courtesy of Van Wyck)
A diverse tool kit for humanities and social science research
Silverman’s capstone class first learned about the post-WWII Nuremberg Trial of 1945 – 1946 and the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946 – 1948, then students chose an aspect of one of the trials for further research. With Silverman’s keen interest in Asian history, the Tokyo War Crimes Trials intrigued him. His passion and dedication helped him find elusive dates, names, references, and footnotes, which led to a domino effect of ideas about the 11 presiding judges representing 11 countries from North America, Europe, and Asia that shaped his thesis, “Presupposed Justice: How Orientalism Affected the Tokyo Trial.” An Orientalism framework analyzes how the West negatively perceives, stereotypes, and exerts power over the East, often through colonialism, racism, and the sexualization of Asian people.
For students with little experience researching international topics, Van Wyck’s expertise in international and multilingual research helped bridge that gap. He has spent over a decade studying migration from Turkey to West Germany, starting in the 1960s. His current research was spurred by a long-forgotten banned Turkish public school textbook, created by Germany, to teach Turkish students their language and culture without input from Turkey.
“There was little information, but I found some copies. I spent a great deal of time reading and coding the information and conducting a quantitative analysis of the topics according to geography, the authors in each section, and those cited,” says Van Wyck who also took advantage of UMBC’s interlibrary loan service to access law books in Dutch from the 1980s, original pamphlets in German from the 1970s, and Turkish-language memoirs written by imams and theology professors. “I used government documents and archives. Then, I tracked down the project’s administrators and authors and conducted in-depth interviews. By using humanities and social science research methods, I was able to tell the story of this unique and broad textbook project that was, in the end, canceled.”
Silverman faced similar obstacles in his research throughout the semester. “The Tokyo Trials are not covered as well as the Nuremberg Trial and less so through an Orientalism framework,” says Silverman. To help students move beyond the general knowledge of the trials, Van Wyck noted databases and archives that were less familiar to students. He first pointed Silverman to the University of Virginia Law School International Military Tribunal for the Far East Digital Collection. Then, Silverman navigated the databases of the Library of Congress and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s War Crimes Documentation Initiative
“Professor Van Wyck suggested a document written in French that related heavily to the Tokyo Trials and Orientalism. He knows some French and helped me translate it.” Silverman also made the most of his budding Japanese skills to further his project. He was in search of the dissent by the only judge who wanted to acquit all the Japanese leaders charged with war crimes. “I couldn’t find much in English. My one semester of Japanese came to the rescue,” says Silverman. “I found the dissent by looking up his last name in Japanese, which ended up being in the title of a book.”
The trail didn’t end there. Silverman struck gold among the 690,000 physical books in the Albin O. Kuhn Library, where he found two books in the political science and international law sections that profoundly shaped his paper. The Tokyo Trial and Beyond: Reflections of a Peacemonger is a collection of interviews with one of the sitting judges and the Sugamo Prison, Tokyo: An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a U.S. Participant, describes life inside the American-guarded prison. With a wide array of resources, Silverman began to write.
Writing history
After the research is complete, students begin analyzing the facts. However, this part of the process shifts from a solitary task to a communal experience. Students read each other’s papers, ask questions, and suggest changes several times before Van Wyck gives feedback. Four to five drafts later, students turn in a final product—Silverman received an A. It’s a moment Silverman didn’t foresee when he started at UMBC.
“Switching to a history major two years into my college career, I felt a little behind for a while, especially with my research skills. Wanting to go to graduate school, I knew I needed to work on that and build the skills over the years,” says Silverman. “The extensive research and synthesizing writing skills have been the most valuable skills I’ve gained, not just in this class but from all my history classes at UMBC. They will serve me well as I continue further into my academic career in graduate school and make plans to travel to Asia.”
“I became a historian because the questions that interested me take place predominantly in the past,” says Van Wyck. He will return to Germany this summer as a visiting research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and at the International Youth Library. “I think it’s important for historians and undergraduate history majors to gain access to a broad and diverse toolkit.”
In fall 2025, Van Wyck will teach HIST 372: Nazi Germany, HIST 210: Migration in World History, a new course he developed.
Learn more about the UMBC History Department‘s degree programs, faculty research, and events.
Tags: CAHSS, CAHSS_research, History, International, Research
