Past Research

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2022-2023 Transatlantic Research Exchange

2022-2023 Transatlantic Research Exchanges

CGES is focused transatlantic research exchanges such as:

1. Cultures in Motion: Migration, Exile, and Refuge 

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Sonja E. Klocke, B. Venkat Mani, Nâlân Erbil  

The year 2021 marks two ongoing commemorations that further foreground migration, albeit in different ways: 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany and the sixtieth anniversary of the labor recruitment contract between Germany and Turkey. Such celebrations prompt us to think about and re(examine) continuities and ruptures, intersections and disunions in the complexity of historical contexts that form and inform Jewish emigration starting with the 1930’s and the Turkish immigration starting with the 1960’s. Our project seeks to establish migration as a critical framework of thought, as a mode of examination of lived realities and experiences for the so-called host societies. We will bring together scholars, artists, activists, and archivists to engage in cross-disciplinary, transatlantic, inter-institutional conversations about the intersections of migration, culture, and society in Germany’s past and presentBuilding on research that has focused on the cultural impact of migration, our aim is to look at a broad range of contexts for migration – temporal, historical, geopolitical, transnational – and ensuing implications for and interventions into the German cultural landscape. The public lectures as well as two workshops and a related publication we are planning serve to increase the visibility of German Studies in the USA and boost a contemporary notion of Germany as a country characterized by migration.

2. Cultural Transfers and Interdisciplinary Dialogues: German Thought on the Move

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Florence Vatan, Hannah Eldridge, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen  

We seek to explore specific instances of cultural transfers and interdisciplinary dialogue from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries with a special focus on two main areas: 1) We will examine German writers and intellectuals who traveled or emigrated to Europe and the US, either freely or due to forced exile from the failed democratic revolutions of 1848, in the wake of the Nazi grab of power, among other events. The goal will be to trace networks of influence and to examine how these travelers or immigrants contributed to the dissemination of ideas through lectures, translations, interpersonal contacts, personal narratives, or research collaborations both abroad and at home. 2) The second area of investigation will be the interdisciplinary dialogue between literature and other fields of intellectual inquiry, notably philosophy. Here, we will put the emphasis on writers who got scientific or philosophical training (e. g. Musil, Canetti, Bachmann) or who displayed a strong interest in science and philosophy (e. g. Goethe, Rilke). We will examine how these authors draw inspiration from, and incorporate, scientific hypotheses or philosophical insights into their own literary projects. We will also investigate how literary texts challenge scientific and philosophical claims while putting forward alternative modes of knowledge.

3. Border-Crossers in Modern History 

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Brandon Bloch, Giuliana Chamedes, Kathryn Ciancia, Francine Hirsch  

Scholars across the social sciences and humanities have been puzzling over the question of how to study and theorize borders for many years. In the past few decades, they have recognized their own role in prioritizing the nation-state as a historical norm and have begun to explore new ways of thinking about human experiences that span, circumvent, and challenge traditional borders between states. These new approaches have yielded a vast array of innovative works, some looking at international institutions (the League of Nations, the Comintern, the Vatican, the United Nations, and the European Union), others examining individual actors—including migrants, stateless people, refugees, and even far-right nationalists—who live “transnational” lives. But this new wave of scholarship has also raised questions about how best to approach the links between people who are separated by state borders, as well as the challenges that result from such an enterprise. The faculty members leading this investigation have taken transnational approaches to issues of ethnography, religion, economics, politics, human rights, and national identity, placing Europe in a global perspective. 

4. Claiming a Space in the Art World: Visual and Performing Arts in West Berlin 

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Pamela Potter, Daniel Spaulding As Berlin emerged from the traumas of war and division, West Berlin came into a position to reimagine itself as a leading force in artistic innovation. Reclaiming —and sometimes overstating —-the impact of such 1920’s landmarks as the Dada exhibition and the Kroll opera, Berlin’s assigned role as the cultural bulwark against Communist repression offered artists, musicians, and other creative forces opportunities to contribute to establishing the city as a vanguard of freedom, experimentation, and politically charged artistic expression, often in competition with more internationally recognized initiatives in West Germany. The proposed project will explore West Berlin’s growth as a center for artistic activity, examining how innovative movements established elsewhere in West Germany found a home in West Berlin’s increasingly active arts scene. In order to foster the exchange of international perspectives and the transfer of knowledge between members of North American and German institutions of higher learning, this project will establish working collaborations with European and North American scholars to explore the networks of artistic and cultural exchange in postwar Berlin, with an emphasis on experimental visual art, performance, and music during the 1960s.

5. Crime, Immigration, and Local Justice 

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Michael Light  

This theme builds off of our previous theme, “Criminal Justice and the German Refugee Crisis,” and expands it considerably in two important ways. First, it moves beyond the courts to examine paramount questions regarding the criminality of asylum seekers. The dramatic influx of refugees in Germany has raised substantial questions on the link between asylees and crime. This study uses data from the Freiburg Cohort Study – a proprietary, longitudinal data set collected and administered by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law – to offer the first empirical assessment of these questions. Second, the current theme widens the scope of focus to consider more global questions on the application and administration of criminal punishment in an international perspective. Specifically, whether local social arrangements that influence formal and informal case processing criteria produce different case outcomes across criminal courts, regardless of the legal system or country. That is, is local justice a universal feature of law? Both of these projects face considerable data and infrastructure obstacles. Fortunately, the Freiburg Cohort Study meets both of these requirements. In addition, an analysis involving criminal punishment in multiple countries requires more than just the data; it also requires international experts to discuss and develop research strategies and the requisite reference materials to guide and interpret findings. On these points, collaborations with the Max Planck Institute are uniquely well-positioned to advance these projects and will therefore be strengthened further.

6. Political and Economic Crisis and the Rise of Populism 

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Mark Copelovitch, Nils Ringe  

Driven in part by major events like the global financial crisis, the Eurozone crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic – and facilitated by long-term trends like voter dealignment, rising economic inequality, and the social, political, and economic uncertainties brought about by rapid globalization – the rise of populists has been deeply disruptive of established political, economic, and social orders. It poses a tremendous challenge to mainstream political parties, norms, and institution. Established political parties are struggling to counter the messages populists use to attract voters, especially using social media, and the social movements associated with them. Our project will help shed light on populism as one of the primary political, economic, and social challenges of our time. The rise of populism is intimately intertwined with crisis; indeed, the two seem to be closely linked. Our project considers the impact of two types of crises and their relationship with global populism: the COVID-19 crisis and international financial crises.

2019-2020 Transatlantic Research Exchanges

2019-2020 Transatlantic Research Exchanges

CGES is focused transatlantic research exchanges such as:

1. German Musicology’s Global Reach in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Ronald Radano, Tejumola Olaniyan, Pamela Potter

Building on a project initiated in the 2017-2018 grant cycle, this project will explore how concepts of race, ethnicity, and nation developed over the first half of the twentieth century and shaped the central methodologies in musicology in Germany. Biologistic concepts and metaphors can be found in writings dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century in discussions of Western and non-Western musical cultures. These notions even survive subconsciously in a wide range of musical clichés that describe various groups as having musical traits “in their blood”. Additionally, the project is exploring the institutional history of German musicology, focusing specifically on Berlin entities such as the Phonogrammarchiv, Curt Sachs’s music instrument collection, and above all the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, which was expanded in 1936 to annex all musicological research projects throughout the Third Reich. This project intends to investigate the central role of German thought in the foundation of musicological inquiries.

2. Governance and Reform of the European Union

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Mark Copelovitch, Nils Ringe, Elizabeth Covington

Even in times of crisis, the European Union (EU) remains the archetype of successful and sustained regional integration—a profound, ongoing experiment in deep political and economic cooperation among 28 diverse member states. This project will focus on the politics of European governance in the wake of political and economic crises that have shaken the EU in the last decade. Ringe will focus on issues unique to the EU and those that can serve as a basis of comparison with other national and international polities. Much of Ringe’s past work has focused on how EU institutions have profoundly affected and challenged German domestic politics. Professor Copelovitch works on the EU’s impact on global politics and the global economy and continues to study Germany’s role in broader EU monetary issues. Covington will study how the 2021-2027 EU Regional Development Fund and Cohesion Fund and potential incorporation of new rules of governance devised for Western liberal democracies may pit southern and eastern European member states against the West by implying that their use of these funds is not in compliance with Western norms. Germany is perceived, whether rightly or wrongly, to have a powerful voice in this matter.

3. Issues and Problems of Data Protection in Germany

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Linda Hogle, Alan Rubel

From Bismarck’s Krankenversicherungsgesetz, to policy deriving from ideologies of Rassenhygiene and Bevölkerungsbiologie, to the clumsy attempts to transition health institutions and law from the former GDR to West Germany, the roles and relationships of the State and its individuals have been vexed. This is especially the case in matters dealing with human bodies and what may be done with them (or not). When brought to the cellular level, such boundary-crossings resurrect both biological and legal-ethical questions about what constitutes “the human.” Philosophers and ethicists have framed questions about ambiguities in just this way: what is the human in light of contemporary bioscience? One could also ask: what is a human individual? This is where the issues and problems of data protection come into play. Germany has thus far resisted some of the large-scale studies attempting to aggregate genetic and behavioral data on individuals at the population level, as is occurring in the U.S., UK, and Denmark. These have proven to be highly contentious for Germany in light of previous histories of the collection of vast troves of information on individuals, especially in the GDR. Rather than asking long-standing, unresolvable questions of what is the human individual, this project looks instead at the actual practices through which scientists, lawyers, and policymakers attempt to ameliorate such ambiguities.

4. Criminal Justice and the German Refugee Crisis

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Michael Light, Michael Massoglia, Ralph Grunewald, Joseph Conti, Alexandra Huneeus, Sumudu Atapattu

The dramatic increase in forced migration is one of the most significant global changes in the past several decades. According to the UNHCR, there are more than 65 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, more than at any point since World War II. Perhaps no other country has received more attention than Germany, where over two million people sought refugee status between 2008 and 2017, more than triple the number of any other EU country over this period. While much research has focused on Germany’s political response to the “refugee crisis,” the increase in anti-refugee violence, or the criminological impact of the newest wave of migrants, we still know comparatively little about the judicial response. That is, how have migrants been treated in the criminal justice system in Germany in recent years? Answering this question speaks to fundamental issues regarding inequality before the law that are at the heart of Western liberal democracies. It also informs our understanding of how courts respond to major and unexpected demographic shifts and, most notably, whether the sanctioning of immigrant offenders is partially linked to judicial responses to the demographic profile of society.

5. Border Crossers in Modern History

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Kathryn Ciancia, Francine Hirsch, Giuliana Chamedes

In recent decades, scholars across the social sciences and humanities have recognized their own role in prioritizing the nation-state as a historical norm and have begun to explore new ways of thinking about human experiences that span, circumvent, and challenge traditional borders between states. These new approaches have yielded a vast array of innovative works, some looking at international institutions, others examining individual actors—including migrants, stateless people, refugees, and even far-right nationalists—who live “transnational” lives. But this new wave of scholarship has also raised many questions about how best to approach the links between people who are separated by state borders—and the challenges that result from such an enterprise. The three faculty members leading this investigation have each worked on taking various approaches to these questions, looking at ethnography, religion, and national identity in Germany, Europe, and the Soviet Union. This project asks: Why are some fields thinking about internationalism (most notably, Soviet history) and others about transnationalism? To what extent are the approaches pursued in European institutions different from those of North America? How are scholars experimenting with new methodologies for thinking about “doing” history across borders and what are the benefits and challenges of these approaches?

6. The [Un]Documented State: Minorities, Migrants, Refugees in Germany and Beyond

Key UW-Madison Faculty: B. Venkat Mani, Weijia Li

The re-labelling of displaced persons has become particularly prominent after the recent resurgence globally of political populism and nationalism, with the impact of the terms “undocumented,” “minorities,” “migrants,” and “refugees” regaining traction in the larger public discourse and in academic scholarship. What is at stake is the self-representation of the nation and the national community, the question of who belongs, and who does not. While there are a number of research collectives in Germany and elsewhere working on these issues, this project will distinguish itself in four major ways. First, the project will focus on Germany, but in a globally comparative context. Second, by discussing minorities and refugees from the global South, it will challenge the unacknowledged Northern Hemisphere hierarchy of “progressive, enlightened, western” versus “backward, unenlightened, non-Western.” Third, by bringing in the United States as an important point of comparison between Germany/Europe and the global South, the discussions will be relevant for specific local contexts, in which migration is once again, as is has been historically, a volatile and polarizing political topic. Finally, instead of calling human beings “undocumented,” it will question the modes in which states as well as NGOs label, or mis-label, humans as forced migrants, internally displaced people, and asylum seekers.

2017-2018 Transatlantic Research Exchanges

2017-2018 Transatlantic Research Exchanges

CGES transitioned from Research Theme Group-based structures towards more focused transatlantic research exchanges such as:

1. Public Environmental Humanities

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Gregg Mitman, William Cronon, Elizabeth Hennessy, Lynn Keller

The Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE) will collaborate with the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Societyat the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich (RCC) and the Environmental Humanities Laboratory (EHL) in Stockholm to explore new areas in the public environmental humanities.  Along with exchanges between the U.S. and Germany, we proposed to host a summer institute at UW-Madison that would give graduate students hands-on experience in utilizing different media platforms to reach a broader public in environmental issues.

2. The German Language and Migration in the 21st Century

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Mark Louden, Weijia Li

In the wake of over one million migrants to the Federal Republic of Germany last year, the Germans stress the importance of language instruction in promoting social integration.  Understanding the historical and contemporary experiences of linguistic minority groups in successfully maintaining a heritage language while also becoming proficient in the language of the social majority can help Europeans, including Germans, to develop policies and programs to facilitate bilingual and bicultural identities.  The purpose of this project is to investigate successful minority language maintenance in the context of contemporary transnational migration, specifically in regards to the Federal Republic of Germany, the United States, and Canada.

3. U.S./EU Comparative Law Studies

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Heinz Klug, Steven Barkan

For forty years, Wisconsin’s first international partnership–its Sister State agreement with Hessen–has led to multiple educational and business connections.  The most successfully has been through a bi-lateral agreement between the UW-Madison Law School and Justus Liebig University in Giessen for graduate student exchanges, faculty visits and exchanges, and other forms of academic cooperation.  Because of this agreement, UW-Madison Law School faculty and students have developed strong personal and professional ties with members of the Giessen law community.  We hope to increase our active partnership and research activities with our best German partners at the Law School at Giessen and other institutions.

4. Studies in Early German Phonographic Recordings of African Music

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Ronald Radano, Tejumola Olaniyan, Pamela Potter

The study of non-Western musical cultures, known as “comparative musicology”, took its great strides in the first three decades of the twentieth century.  By comparing findings from non-Western musical cultures with those of Western music, pioneers in the field hoped that one could isolate common denominators among music systems and derive generalizations about music perception.  With colonial expansion, the rise of popular interest in exotic peoples, and the opportunities for direct observation offered by the POW camps during World War I, comparative musicologists were able to greatly expand their data collection, leading to the establishment of the phonographic commission at the University of Berlin.  This project will work with the archival holdings of approximately 10,000 phonographic cylinders of African music recorded before World War II and housed at the Phonogramm Archiv in Berlin.  The project leaders plan to launch a study that will position the recordings at the center of an analysis of the European colonization of Africa.

5. Policy-Making Processes and Outcomes in the Institutions of the European Union and Its Member States

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Nils Ringe, Mark Copelovitch

Nils Ringe studies the decision-making processes and outcomes in the four main institutions of the European Union (the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Court of Justice of the EU) and their linkages and interactions with domestic politics in Germany.  Ringe’s research is focused on intraparliamentary special caucuses and agreements intended to “work around” the obstacles created by partisan jockeying inside the German and EU legislatures.  Mark Copelovitch studies the EU’s role in key international issue areas and international institutions, including the intersections of fiscal policy with social policies, and the relations between German monetary policy and the overall outcomes that interventions are expected to produce.  A great deal of his current scholarship focuses on the politics of financial crises.

6. Gender, Society, and Higher Education

Key UW-Madison Faculty: Myra Marx Ferree, Felix Elwert

This research area is divided into three projects.  The first concerns higher education.  University structures are challenged to do a better job at including women especially in the higher ranks, because women scientists are seen as a significant part of the human capital that nations can hardly afford to waste, and because women’s status stands as a symbols of national progress and modernity.  Germany and the U.S. are challenged to advance women more vigorously into leading positions at universities even as the higher education systems of both countries are undergoing other significant restructurings to enhance their visibility, perceived quality, and ability to recruit students internationally.  The second project looks at the consequences of teenage motherhood in Germany, a demographic studied considerably in the United States and Britain but not in Germany.  The third project is a collaboration on a large-scale randomized field experiment to foster college enrollment among disadvantaged German high-school students by identifying and motivating underrepresented students and investigating optimal targeting of guidance counseling.

2015-2016 Research Themes

2015-2016 Research Themes

CGES had three international, interdisciplinary research projects including teaching and outreach elements for 2015-2016:

1. Responding to Contemporary Challenges in Germany

Leader: Myra Marx Ferree, Professor, Sociology, Gender and Women’s Studies

Germany faces a variety of “hot button” political challenges today, ranging from the resurgence of anti-Semitism across Europe, to population shifts due to fertility decline and immigration, to global competition in higher education. Moreover, as the member state with the strongest economy, Germany faces a particular challenge in balancing its national economic priorities with sustaining EU integration and Euro stability. In this theme we look at the nature of the social and economic challenges that face Germany today and the specificity of German history in shaping contemporary political choices.

Full descriptionWorkshop Outcomes

2. Germany and the World: Transformation and Transmission of Ideas, Ideologies, and Identities

Leader: Pamela Potter, Professor, German and Musicology; Director, Center for German and European Studies

Weltanschauung is perhaps one of the best-known German terms to achieve an iconic status in the non-German speaking world. Yet the term itself and its origins encapsulate complecities surrounding Germany’s self-identification, political history, and cultural mission. “Germany and the World: Transformation and Transmission of Ideas, Ideologies, and Identities” extends our current DAAD project “Translation, Transformation, Transposition: Processes of Transfer among Languages, Cultures, and Disciplines,” and engages Wisconsin faculty from the departments of German, History, History of Science, Art History, Law, Scandinavian Studies, Theater, and Music. We will explore the various ways in which German culture and ideals have been developed and ecported to shape widely accepted ways of viewing the world.

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3. Environmental Future

Leader: Gregg Mitman, Professor, History of Science, Medical History, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
Art and science, literature and film, history and policy; all have been important tools upon which to build imagined environmental futures. “Environmental Futures” has brought together scholars in the humanities and social sciences, filmmakers, and writers to explore the intersections of future generations. In the rapidly expanding field of environmental humanities, we have initiated international and interdisciplinary conversation on the material impacts of representational forms and have forged a strong working relationship between our Center for Culture, History and Environment (CHE) and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.

Full descriptionWorkshop Outcomes

2013 Research Themes

2013 Research Themes

CGES had three international, interdisciplinary research projects including teaching and outreach elements for 2013:

1. Environmental Futures

Leader: Gregg Mitman, Professor, History of Science, Medical History, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

Future imaginaries—utopian and apocalyptic—have been critical to environmental discourse and action across the globe. Art and science, literature and film, history and policy, have all been important tools upon which to build imagined environmental futures. Theme 1 brings together scholars in the humanities and social sciences, filmmakers, and writers to explore the intersections of artistic, humanistic, and scientific representations of environmental and societal change for future generations.

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2. Translation, Transformation, Transposition: Processes of Transfer among Languages, Cultures, and Disciplines (Trans3)

Leader: Marc Silberman, Professor, German; Director, Center for German and European Studies; affiliate Department of Theatre and Drama, Department of Communication Arts

Theme 2, called Trans3 for short, will cooperate with and build on the larger, UW campus Mellon-funded seminar that focuses on interarts processes of translation and transfer in the verbal, visual, and performing arts (art history, music, theater, film). Trans3 is more focused as it carves out an area of investigation in German studies to examine the transfer processes that occur at the peripheries and limits of our related disciplines, encouraging combinations of texts, materials, and media of a kind that is rarely nurtured or carried out in an individual department.

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3. Citizenship, Modernity, and Inclusion: How Gender and Nation Matter

Leader: Myra Marx Ferree, Professor of Sociology and Director, European Union Center of Excellence; affiliate Gender and Women’s Studies Department

This theme group addresses the modern German state and its relation to its people from a mix of demographic, political, and social perspectives. The central concern is to illuminate the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion at play in German social and political development in the past hundred years. These challenges are by no means unique to Germany; they are the issues that modernity has created for industrial democracies around the world. However, Germany’s economic power in Europe, as well as its historically-grounded sensitivity to the dangers in political, social, and economic exclusions of particular populations, makes it especially important to understand these processes.

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2008-2012 Research Themes

2008-2012 Research Themes

CGES had four international, interdisciplinary research projects including teaching and outreach elements for 2008-2012:

1. After the Violence: The Work of Memory in German Culture and Society

Leader: Marc Silberman, Department of German, UW-Madison

Contemporary art and literature, the design of monuments and museum exhibitions, commemorative event culture and the visual media contribute to what some have called a memory obsession that saturates the public sphere. This project establishes a network within and outside the University to investigate the relationship between memory and culture, contributing to the increasing complexity of our understanding of memory.

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International, Transnational and Comparative Law (Law 827)
Course: Spring 2011
Instructor: Heinz Klug

This course will serve as an introduction to transnational law which will be defined as incorporating a range of substantive legal fields implicated in the regulation of cross border activity as well as aspects of law that are directly effected by decisions and events that occur or have effects beyond national borders. The course will include a basic introduction to public international law, international economic law, human rights and humanitarian law as well as a more limited exposure to conflicts of law, comparative law and the use of foreign and international law in the domestic courts of the United States.

The Holocaust: Facts, Trials (Law 919/Jewish Studies 625)
Course: Fall 2009
Instructor: Frank Tuerkheimer

Education After Violence (Curriculum and Instruction 675, Section 6)
Course: Spring 2009
Instructor: Simone Schweber

In this communally designed seminar, we have chosen to address what education means, what it can achieve and what it looks like, in the wake of violence, at the individual, familial, societal, trans-national and generational levels. Beginning at the level of family violence, we are asking what trauma-specialists can teach classroom educators. Moving then to look at the impact of ‘natural disasters’ yoked to racist policies, we will examine the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina both for students and education systems. We will be comparing the educational impact of Katrina to the impact of the attacks on 9/11. We then move to look at nationalist violence, focusing on the impacts of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the former Yugoslavia. Here we will look especially at what it means to educate about violence, how such violence is depicted curricularly, and who learns what. Through this comparative approach, we hope to accomplish a variety of objectives simultaneously–mainly, though, to focus on what we can learn from violence in its wake.

Historicizing the GDR
Seminar: Fall 2008
Instructor: Marc Silberman

As the GDR recedes into an ever more abstract, Cold War past, there is a tendency to regard it from the perspective of its collapse in November 1989, blocking an understanding of the hopes and anxieties that accompanied its forty-year history. Although this seminar cannot provide a comprehensive overview of East Germany’s historical development, it will focus on the complex relationship between culture and power in East Germany, a key concern of modern societies. Many scholars have relegated state socialism to a pre-modern phase of social development that prevented the domain of culture from ever achieving autonomy vis-à-vis the state’s political dictates. Indeed, the state attributed a special value to culture, and artists and intellectuals enjoyed many privileges because the socialist party recognized their powerful contribution to changing the consciousness of the masses. Yet despite, or precisely because of the party’s attempts to control artistic production and reception in its own interests, the disparity between socialist vision and reality constantly generated contradictions and fantasies that permeated the literature, theater, and films produced in the GDR. We will examine a limited corpus of such works with a view toward their validity as a source for learning about East German reality, asking whether such works were a stabilizing element or a force of critical intervention.

Memory Discourses and Postwar German Cinema
Seminar: Spring 2008
Instructor: Marc Silberman

This graduate seminar will investigate critical theories and cinematic practices of how experience becomes memory. During the past fifteen years new forms of memory work have entered the public sphere: in literature, theater, monuments, museums, photography, and perhaps most strikingly in the visual media of film, television, and comics. Accompanying these cultural practices, new discourses have emerged that increasingly dominate the field of cultural studies: reflections on how memory shapes mentalities, identities, symbols, texts, and media. While this social and critical memory boom has evolved with strong transnational and interdisciplinary dimensions, the seminar’s focus will be primarily on Germany, which offers a case study not only of extreme “experience” (devastating war, Holocaust, economic collapse, political division) but also arguably of a protracted and rich trajectory of “coming to terms with the past” (Vergangenheitsbewältigung), with instructive blindspots, repressions, repetitions, and illusions. The first goal of the seminar will be to review the some of the major sources of current memory discourses such as “mémoire collective” (Maurice Halbwachs).

2. Positioning ‘Modern’ Germany in the World: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism, Colonialism, Migration

Leader: B. Venkat Mani, Department of German, UW-Madison

Contemporary scholarship on modern Germany reveals an unprecedented attention to nationalism and cosmopolitanism, migration and colonialism. This project investigates these lines of inquiry and “positions” Germany – as a geopolitical unit and as a cultural-linguistic space – within and beyond the boundaries of Europe.

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Fall 2012: Transnational Approaches to German Studies, {3} cr.
German742 (meets with German 804/ French 804/ History 804/ Poli Sci 804/ Sociology 804/)
Tuesdays, 3:30-6:00 PM

Instructor: Professor B. Venkat Mani (bvmani@wisc.edu)
Prerequisites: Open to graduate students in all Humanities and Social Science disciplines with interest in Comparative/German Studies
Language of instruction: English (Knowledge of German appreciated, not Required)]

Course Description: This course seeks to evaluate the term transnational and its efficacy as a qualifier for a discipline such as German Studies, institutionally categorized as a national language and literature department. Through discussions on literary, historical, linguistic/pedagogical, philosophical, political, and sociological texts, the course aims to explore multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives on German Studies in the 20th and 21st centuries. Along with spotlighting key texts that form and inform German self-imagination and German imagination of the non-German/non-European Other,the course collates and examines reactions to German nationalism and cosmopolitanism, migration, colonialism and modernity from outside the geo-cultural boundaries of Europe. In addition, this course discusses contemporary scholarship on the German-speaking world that focuses on nationalism and cosmopolitanism, migration, and colonialism. The course analyses the modes in which the above-mentioned political and ideational phenomena have shaped and informed ‘modern’ Germany, and the actual processes by which migrant, colonial, and cosmopolitan subjects have challenged, innovated, and revised the very definitions of the German nation and modernity. The course situates the discipline of German Studies in the larger investigation of the Humanities through filters of globalization and postcolonialism, in order to surmise new directions for the field. The course is offered in English and is open to interested graduate students from any field/discipline.

This is a reading intensive course. The course reader includes texts by literary authors and critics such as Thomas Mann and Edward Said; historians such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, Friedrich Meinecke, and George Mosse; philosophers and cultural critics such as Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, W.E. B. Du Bois, Jurrgen Habermas, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; socio-political thinkers such as Arjun Appadurai, Etienne Balibar, Ulrich Beck, and Judith Butler; and a few contemporary scholars of German Studies working on cultural studies, history, literature, linguistics, film, sociology, political theory, and theater.

World Literatures Course (Lit Trans 276)
Spring 2010 and Fall 2010
Instructor: B. Venkat Mani

What is World Literature? Is it the master-catalogue of all works of all literary traditions from around the world? Or does the term refer to a select list of “Great Works”? If yes, what are the criteria for designation of these works as “Great Works”? What is the relationship between “national” and “World” literatures? What role do translations play in the conceptualization of World Literature? How do migration, economic globalization, and digital media such as Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony Reader enhance our understanding of World Literature? These questions are central to the course, “Introduction to World Literatures.” The purpose of the course is to develop an understanding of World Literatures—in the plural—within the dynamics of global literary production, circulation, and reception. Through readings and discussions of a wide range of texts, the course aims to promote comparative evaluations of literature on a global scale. The course starts with foundational ideas of World Literature articulated in the German-speaking World [J.W. von Goethe (1827); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848); Hermann Hesse (1929); Eric Auerbach (1952)], and moves to readings and discussions of literary works from around the world.

Transnational Perspectives on German Studies (German/Sociology/Political Science/History 804)
Seminar: Fall 2009
Instructor: B. Venkat Mani

This course seeks to evaluate the term “transnational” and its efficacy as a qualifier for a discipline such as German Studies, institutionally categorized as a “national language and literature” department. Through discussions on literary, historical, linguistic/pedagogical, philosophical, political, and sociological texts, the course aims to explore multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives on German Studies in the 20th and 21st centuries. Along with spotlighting key texts that form and inform German self-imagination and German imagination of the non-German/non-European ‘Other,’ the course collates and examines reactions to German nationalism and cosmopolitanism, migration, colonialism and modernity from outside the geo-cultural boundaries of Europe. In addition, this course discusses contemporary scholarship on the German-speaking world that focuses on nationalism and cosmopolitanism, migration, and colonialism. The course analyzes the modes in which the above-mentioned political and ideational phenomena have shaped and informed ‘modern’ Germany, and the actual processes by which migrant, colonial, and cosmopolitan subjects have challenged, innovated, and revised the very definitions of the German nation and modernity. The course situates the discipline of German Studies in the larger investigation of the Humanities through filters of globalization and postcolonialism, in order to surmise new directions for the field.

Kafka and the Kafkaesque (LitTrans 277/CompLit 368)
Semester: Fall 2009
Instructor: Hans Adler

German Literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries (in German) (German 305)
Semester: Fall 2009
Instructor: Hans Adler

Romantic Visual Culture (English 801)
Seminar: Spring 2009
Instructor: Theresa Kelley

2. Transforming European Governance

Leader: Nils Ringe, Political Science, UW-Madison

The projects for this theme will explore the developing forms of European governance underpinning the EU’s capabilities of generating a dense and expanding web of internal rules and policies, and of projecting them outwards as a regional and global actor, examining key dimensions of the union’s internal and external decision-making processes and policies, including the relationship between them.

Full description

Comparative Regional Integration: The European Union and Beyond (Poli Sci 401)
Fall 2010
Instructors: Nils Ringe and Mark Copelovitch

The Politics of the European Union and its Member States (Poli Sci 948)
Spring 2010
Instructor: Nils Ringe

The European Union (EU) constitutes one of the most complex and intriguing political systems in the world. Its existence, its evolution over time, and its politics raise many theoretical and empirical questions. The objective of this class is to address these questions, to familiarize ourselves with the relevant literatures, to gain a deeper understanding of what the EU is and does, and to examine how studying the EU can contribute to the study of Comparative Politics more generally. The course puts a particular emphasis on investigating the relationship between the EU and its member states, and the EU and its citizens, including questions relating to participation and representation, public opinion, and identity.

European Influences on Modern Foreign Policy Strategy (History 600)
Undergraduate Seminar: Fall 2009
Instructor: Jeremi Suri

Regional Integration and International Governance: The European Union in Comparative Perspective
Seminar: Spring 2009
Instructor: Jonathan Zeitlin

Regional integration is one of the most controversial and widely debated phenomena in international governance and political economy, with the rise of the European Union and the development of other regional organizations and trading blocs such as NAFTA, Mercosur, ASEAN, and the African Union. What are the drivers of regional integration and how extensive are regionalization trends within the global economy? Do regional trade agreements threaten the multilateral trading system, or do they facilitate international economic and regulatory cooperation? Should regional organizations such as the EU or ASEAN be understood as shelters against globalization, challenges to US international hegemony, or building blocks of global governance? How do patterns of integration vary across different world regions, and what accounts for such variations? Are other regions likely to follow the European model, or are looser and more open forms of integration more probable and sustainable elsewhere? This course approaches such questions through a comparative analysis of the European Union, the most highly institutionalized regional organization in the world today.

4. Work, Family and Education in Europe: Challenges of Globalization and Gender

Leader: Myra Marx Ferree, Department of Sociology and Women’s Studies, UW-Madison

Advanced capitalist societies such as the US and Germany are all undergoing transformation in the direction of more flexible labor forces, family forms, educational systems and gender relations. By looking closely at transformations happening in Europe and extending outward to other parts of the world, we intend develop theoretically advanced and methodologically sound analyses of intersectional social change, and substantively will consider the role of gender as it crosses these areas

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World Regions: Problems and Concepts (Geo 140)
Summer 2011
Instructor: Kris Olds
Geo 140 Course Website

Gender, Politics, and Society (Soc 623)
Fall 2010
Instructor: Myra Marx Ferree

Globalizing Higher Education and Research for the ‘Knowledge Economy’
Seminar: Fall 2009
Instructor: Kris Olds
Geo 675/901 Course Website