2026-2028 Transatlantic Research Exchanges
CGES is focused transatlantic research exchanges such as:
1. Looking for Work: (In)Visible Labor in Times of Migration and Globalization
Key UW-Madison Faculty:
Sonja E. Klocke, Professor, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic + & Director, Center for German and European Studies
Zach R. Fitzpatrick, Assistant Professor, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic +
Mary Hennessy, Assistant Professor, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic +
This theme will explore the way work shapes and makes lives, how it both reproduces and relies on social, racial, gender, class, and national inequalities, and how it upholds systems that both depend on and disavow certain forms of labor. Work—from concrete work situations and histories to its aesthetic representation—offers German studies scholars a rich archive to consider the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, race, dis/ability, nationality, and more in the different political systems Germany has experienced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this project special focus will be centered on the labor practices of those in highly precarious, challenging, and taxing situations as depicted in various media ranging from literature, film, TV and internet series to the arts, museums, and monuments. The team will trace changes and continuities in the meaning and the significance of “work” from Wilhelmine Germany, the Weimar Republic, and Nazi Germany to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) both before and after the fall of the Wall.
The key UW-Madison faculty members involved in this project bring a range of perspectives to the study of “Work:” Professor Fitzpatrick is working on a new book project about Vietnamese German cultural production of the 2020s. Building on his earlier research analyzing Asian representation in German fictional films, he examines how young artists are expanding and self-determining what it means to be diasporic Vietnamese in 21st-century Germany, always keeping in mind how hidden labor and material conditions shape the works. By highlighting an emerging community of artists and activists, this project diverges from earlier sociological monographs about Vietnamese migration to Germany (e.g. Bui; Su). Using Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “narrative plenitude” as a frame will contribute to a deeper understanding of the diversity of Germany’s contemporary postmigrant media landscape, thereby shedding light on a lesser-known part of the global Vietnamese diaspora. Professor Hennessy is working on a book project—tentatively titled Vanishing Mediators—that interrogates the relationships among gender, labor and media in Weimar Germany. The book explores the intersections of women’s labor and new communication and mass media technologies to challenge prevailing understandings of women as consumers and spectators of modern media. It further reveals women’s multiple (often hidden) labor in media production. Professor Klocke is currently working on a monograph entitled Dressing Up Behind the Iron Curtain: Fashion and Politics in the GDR. Based on historical research on GDR consumer culture, fashion theory, media theory, and gender theory, and buttressed by archival materials, the book analyzes the presentation of East German women’s fashion and its production conditions in the nationally owned companies (VEBs) and in prisons in GDR and post-GDR films, photography, magazines, and literature. What emerges is a highly troubling discrepancy in GDR politics: while progressive with regards to gender politics, the exploitation of migrant workers in the VEBs points to rather problematic politics concerning racial discrimination and exploitation. Since the filmic materials in particular shed light on the abuse not only of Vietnamese seamstresses but also political prisoners, racial discrimination and political suppression emerge as part and parcel of the fashion industry in the GDR.
2. Confronting Otherness
Key UW-Madison Faculty:
Florence Vatan, Professor, Department of French and Italian
Hannah Vandergrift Eldridge, Professor, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+
Theme II will examine how writers, philosophers, ethnologists, and artists in German-speaking and European countries confronted the “Other,” i.e., non-European cultures and societies, diasporic communities, or minorities that have historically been subject to discrimination and repression from the 18th to the 21st century. Through specific case studies, UW-Madison theme leaders will explore the conceptual and methodological frameworks used to account for these communities as well as the epistemological challenges and ideological biases inherent in such efforts. They will trace the genealogy of concepts such as “race,” “cultural development,” and “primitive mentality,” and critically assess their use in the context of Eurocentric assumptions and colonial expansion. The investigation will focus on both strategies of “othering” and sincere, empathetic attempts to understand and represent these other communities. This research group will also consider the role of translation and technologies – such as photography, film, and audio recordings – in shaping encounters with other cultures. This contextualized and interdisciplinary approach will allow them to identify patterns of continuity and change over time.
Professor Florence Vatan is investigating the collaboration between the ethnologist Richard Thurnwald and the Gestalt psychologist and musicologist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel during their research expedition to the Solomon Islands (1906-1909). Her work examines the challenges both researchers faced in their efforts to understand, document, and preserve vanishing oral and musical traditions within the context of a scientific mission aligned with Germany’s colonial agenda. Professor Eldridge is working on a book project interrogating the mutual formation of theories of race and theories of literary genre, particularly the lyric, in the Germanophone world between roughly 1770 and 1830, as well as the implications of this interrelation up to the present day. Bringing together critical whiteness studies, postcolonial theory, and contemporary theories of the lyric.
3. Political Economy and Transatlantic Relations
Key UW-Madison Faculty:
Mark Copelovitch, Professor, Department of Political Science & La Follette School of Public Affairs, Director, European Studies, and Jean Monnet Chair, European Union and the Global Economy
Mariel Barnes, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea & Director, Center for Communication and Civic Renewal
Michael Wagner, Assistant Professor, La Follette School of Public Affairs
Nils Ringe, Robert F. and Sylvia T. Wagner Chair, Comparative Politics, & Professor, Department of Political Science
The EU’s role in this new world, and what its economic and security policies should look like going forward, will be the most urgent topic of research and policy debate in the years ahead. Indeed, this new era of economic and geopolitical uncertainty presents scholars and policymakers of European politics and transatlantic relations with four key questions: How are these crises and changes shaping (and shaped by) domestic politics on both sides of the Atlantic? What do they tell us about the future of transatlantic economic and security relations? What is the future of American hegemony and world order, and what is Europe, and particularly Germany’s, place in this new geopolitical and geoeconomic era? How will these developments shape the future domestic and international politics of European integration? The key faculty research draws on multiple methodologies and draws insights from political science, public policy, sociology, economics, history, and anthropology. As individuals, they apply a diverse set of qualitative and quantitative methods, ranging from archival and historical case study analysis to cutting-edge computational techniques and statistical analysis.
Work will focus on several core fields of inquiry, including 1) Mass public opinion on inflation and the economy in Germany and the United States (Copelovitch and Wagner); 2) Transatlantic relations and the future role of the dollar and euro in global finance (Copelovitch); 3) Crises, shocks, and their impact upon gendered violence and the Manosphere in Europe (Barnes); and 4) Populism and legislative policy networks in Europe (Ringe).
4. Migration and Memory in Postwar and Contemporary Europe
Key UW-Madison Faculty:
Brandon Bloch, Assistant Professor, Department of History
Liina-Ly Roos, Assistant Professor, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic +
Leonie Schulte, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+
This research group aims to move beyond the polemics that have surrounded Europe’s most recent wave of memory wars, asking more basic questions about why debates about migration policy are frequently carried out as contests over historical memory. How have competing historical narratives (of World War II-era genocide and expulsion, postwar labor migrations, Communism, decolonization, and/or EU expansion) shaped elite and popular attitudes toward migration policy in Europe? How do current anxieties surrounding migration to Europe mirror or depart from cycles of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee backlash since 1945? How do recent immigrants to Europe engage with, adapt, and resist dominant historical narratives in their countries of residence? Scholarship that links migration controversies in Europe with colonial legacies and with the study of race, gender, and sexuality will be featured from an interdisciplinary focus. Core faculty organizers are working on research projects related to European migration from the perspectives of history, anthropology, and literary and media studies. Brandon Bloch is launching a new project on the international human rights activism of German-speaking refugee and expellee organizations in West Germany and Austria, from 1945 through the post-Cold War era. His research will examine how German and Austrian activists internationalized the memory of ethnic cleansing in Central Europe and thereby shaped key categories of modern international law, including the “right to the homeland,” “right against expulsion,” and “right of return.” Leonie Schulte’s current project explores the ways in which Germany’s language and integration policies impact newcomers’ access to the labor market, showing that language-based requirements for employment significantly slowed down rather than accelerate access to work (as was initially intended). Leonie Schulte’s work thus explores the lingua-temporal dimensions of migration, displacement, and policy-in-practice, exploring themes of temporal disruption, uncertainty, waiting, stuckness, and boredom. Liina-Ly Roos continues work on her project that explores how Baltic cultural texts deal with questions of whiteness, white privilege, and migration in a region that has defined itself primarily as a victim of Communism, but in the twenty-first century has realigned itself with Western Europe.