Listen to Owen Bennett-Jones discuss the future of opinion polls with Mark Pack

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German Studies
Jewish Studies May 26, 2022

So They Remember

A Jewish Family's Story of Surviving the Holocaust in Soviet Ukraine

Maksim Goldenshteyn

Hosted by Amber Nickell
When we think of Nazi camps, names such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau come instantly to mind. Yet the history of the Holocaust extends beyond those notorious sites. In the …

German Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Germany about their new books.

General History May 4, 2022

Maria Theresa

The Habsburg Empress in Her Time

Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
Maria Theresa (1717–1780) was once the most powerful woman in Europe. At the age of twenty-three, she ascended to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, a far-flung realm composed of …
German Studies May 4, 2022

Afropolitan Encounters

Literature and Activism in London and Berlin

Anna von Rath

Hosted by Nicole Coleman
Afropolitan Encounters: Literature and Activism in London and Berlin (Peter Lang, 2022), the first book in the new series “Imagining Black Europe,” explores what Afropolitanism does. Mobile people of African …
Grinnell College: Authors and Artists May 3, 2022

Otto Dix and the First World War

Grotesque Humor, Camaraderie and Remembrance

Michael Mackenzie

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Otto Dix fought in the First World War for the better part of four years before becoming one of the most important artists of the Weimar era. Marked by the …
Women's History May 3, 2022

Transforming Girls

The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence

Julie Pfeiffer

Hosted by Renee Garris
Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence (UP of Mississippi, 2021) explores the paradox of the nineteenth-century girls’ book. On the one hand, early novels for adolescent girls rely on gender …
Jewish Studies May 2, 2022

Fighter, Worker, and Family Man

German-Jewish Men and Their Gendered Experiences in Nazi Germany, 1933-1941

Sebastian Huebel

Hosted by Amber Nickell
When the Nazis came to power, they used various strategies to expel German Jews from social, cultural, and economic life. Fighter, Worker, and Family Man (U Toronto Press, 2022) focuses …
Philosophy April 20, 2022

Language, Limits, and Beyond

Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore

Priyambada Sarkar

Hosted by Malcolm Keating
What does a Bengali intellectual and poet have in common with a British-Austrian logician and philosopher? In Language, Limits, and Beyond: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore (Oxford University Press, 2021) …
German Studies April 20, 2022

German Social Democracy through British Eyes

A Documentary History, 1870–1914

James Retallack

Hosted by Lea Greenberg
On the eve of the First World War, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest and most powerful socialist party in the world. German Social Democracy through British …
Jewish Studies April 19, 2022

Belonging and Betrayal

How Jews Made the Art World Modern

Charles Dellheim

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Since the late-1990s, the fate of Nazi stolen art has become a cause célèbre. In Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern (Brandeis UP, 2021), Charles Dellheim …
Economic and Business History April 11, 2022

Agents of Reform

Child Labor and the Origins of the Welfare State

Elisabeth Anderson

Hosted by Javier Mejia
The beginnings of the modern welfare state are often traced to the late nineteenth-century labor movement and to policymakers’ efforts to appeal to working-class voters. But in Agents of Reform …
Sociology April 7, 2022

Housing in the Margins

Negotiating Urban Formalities in Berlin's Allotment Gardens

Hanna Hilbrandt

Hosted by Anna Zhelnina
Housing in the Margins: Negotiating Urban Formalities in Berlin's Allotment Gardens (John Wiley & Sons, 2021) offers a theoretically informed and empirically detailed exploration of unruly housing practices and their …
German Studies March 31, 2022

Violence as Usual

Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa

Marie Muschalek

Hosted by Nicole Coleman
Slaps in the face, kicks, beatings, and other forms of run-of-the-mill violence were a quotidian part of life in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unearthing …
Eastern European Studies March 28, 2022

Forging Germans

Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944

Caroline Mezger

Hosted by Jill Massino
Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 2020) explores the nationalization and eventual National Socialist mobilization of ethnic …
General History March 25, 2022

Allies and Rivals

German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University

Emily J. Levine

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
During the nineteenth century, nearly ten thousand Americans traveled to Germany to study in universities renowned for their research and teaching. By the mid-twentieth century, American institutions led the world …
German Studies March 18, 2022

The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation

Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany

Craig Griffiths

Hosted by Leslie Waters
The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation: Male Homosexual Politics in 1970s West Germany (Oxford UP, 2021) explores ways of thinking, feeling, and talking about being gay in the 1970s, an influential …
Film March 16, 2022

Wim Wenders's Road Movie Philosophy

Education Without Learning

René V. Arcilla

Hosted by Gustavo Gutiérrez Suárez
What is education? Most of the time, we have little patience for this question because we take the answer to be obvious: we identify education with school learning. This book …
Intellectual History March 14, 2022

Permanent Crisis

The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age

Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon

Hosted by Alexandra Ortolja-Baird
The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at the mercy of modernizing and …
Psychoanalysis March 11, 2022

Freud's Pandemics

Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis

Brett Kahr

Hosted by Sebastian Thrul
In his latest book Freud's Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis (Confer Books, 2021), Professor Brett Kahr has used his remarkable skills as experienced psychotherapist and rigorous historian to …
Military History March 10, 2022

The Virtuous Wehrmacht

Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944

David A. Harrisville

Hosted by Stephen Satkiewicz
When Nazi Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, its leadership made clear to the Wehrmacht that it was waging a "war of extermination" against Germany's enemies …
Performing Arts March 10, 2022

Kraftwerk

Future Music from Germany

Uwe Schütte

Hosted by Andy Boyd
Uwe Schütte's Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany (Penguin, 2021) is not your typical rock star biography. Eschewing gossipy interpersonal details, Schütte instead contextualizes Kraftwerk within contemporaneous debates about German cultural identity in …