History Department

Education

• Ph.D., History, Stanford University, 2012
• M.A., History, Stanford University, 2006
• B.A., History, University of California, Berkeley, 2004

About

Adam Zientek is a historian of modern Europe with a focus on France. He is interested in the social history of war, airpower, the history of military medicine and psychiatry, and the history of alcohol and drugs.

Research Focus

Professor Zientek’s research focuses on the experience of trench-fighting in the First World War. He investigates how soldiers mitigated the psychological pressures of fighting by analyzing soldiers’ daily practices and rituals. His book, A Thirst for Wine and War (2024) considers the role that state-sponsored alcohol consumption had in shaping the French experience of the war. He is also interested in using recent research in the neurological and cognitive sciences to help historians make sense of human behavior in the past.

Professor Zientek's current research focus is the strategy and ethics of aerial bombardment in the early 20th century.

Publications

Zientek, A. (2024) A Thirst for Wine and War: The Intoxication of French Soldiers on the Western Front (Montreal: McGill Queen's University Press: 2024).

Zientek, A. (2023) "Energizing munitions for the body: The French army's alcohol policy on the Western Front during the Great War," Journal of Modern History 95, 1 (March 2023).

Zientek, A. (2014) “Affective neuroscience and the causes of the mutiny of the French 82nd Infantry Brigade,” Contemporary European History 23, 3, pp. 505-22.

Teaching

Professor Zientek teaches History 4C (Modern Western Civilization), History 102E (The Experience of War in the Twentieth Century), History 141 (Modern France), History 126 / Human Rights 162 (The History of Human Rights in Europe), History 134A (The Age of Revolution), and Human Rights 200A (The History, Theory, and Practice of Human Rights). 

Awards

• Gargan Award for Best Graduate Student Paper, Western Society for French History, 2011
• Short-term Visiting Scholar, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Minnesota, 2010
• Josephine de Kármán Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2010
• Georges Lurcy Charitable Trust Disseration Research Grant, 2009
• Best Graduate Student Designed and Led Course, Stanford University, 2007
• Collin Miller Memorial Prize in History, University of California Berkeley, 2003