Last week, Ben Goossen '13 returned to campus to deliver a lecture, History with a Future. In his talk, Goossen, discusses his new book, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era (Princeton University Press, 2017). 

Chosen Nation tells the story of a Christian religious group's entanglement with German nationalism through Hitler's Third Reich and the Holocaust. Goossen shares his experiences researching this history of complicity and cover-up, a journey that began at Swarthmore College and led to Old World Europe, seized Nazi archives, and a remote "religious state" in rural Paraguay.

At Swarthmore, Goosen double majored in history and German studies and was a four-time recipient of the College's A. Edward Newton Award. He also received a 2012 Beinicke Scholarship. 

Goossen, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, has held fellowships from the Fulbright Commission and the German Academic Exchange Service. He has received awards for excellence in scholarship from the Kansas Historical Foundation, the Associated Church Press, the Canadian Church Press, and Swarthmore College and his essays and reviews have appeared in Nova Religio, Waging Nonviolence, and the Journal of the History of Ideas blog, among others.