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UMass Amherst Cooperation with the Zentrum für zeithistorische Forschung (ZZF)During the academic year 2000-01, the DEFA Film Library, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst worked together with researchers and administrators at the Center for Contemporary Historical Research (Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung) in Potsdam, Germany, to establish a transatlantic cooperation for teaching and research at the two institutions. Over the decade since German reunification, the ZZF has become the premier center for research into the cultural and social history of the former German Democratic Republic and of East/West German relations. The ZZF/UMass Amherst cooperation is grateful for the support of the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD. Teaching at UMass Spring 2004 • Dr. Monika Albrecht taught an undergraduate course on German Colonialism and a graduate seminar on Race and the Exotic in German Culture. She also participated in the Modern European Studies faculty seminar and gave a lecture entitled The Trouble with Post-Colonialism. Dr. Albrecht is an authority on German contributions to postcolonial theory and has lectured and published widely on the topic. She is also a world authority on the challenging and significant work of the 20th-century Austrian author, Ingeborg Bachmann, and editor/author of several books on the subject, including a definitive Bachmann handbook. Fall 2003 • Dr. Lars Karl taught an undergraduate course on World War Two Germany and a graduate seminar on History and Film: the European Case (cross-listed with the Interdisciplinary Program in Film Studies). He also gave a talk on his research on The Representation of WWII in Soviet Film and its East German Reception. Spring 2003 • Dr. Mario Kessler taught an undergraduate course on Modern Anti-Semitism (cross-listed with Judaic and Near Eastern Studies) and a graduate seminar on European Labor Movements (cross-listed with the Labor Relations and Research Center). He also gave a lecture on his research on Zionism and the International Labor Movement. • Dr. Kessler is the most senior scholar we have hosted to date, with a long list of German publications including: Exile and Beyond: Twentieth-Century Refugee Intellectuals (2002); The Exile Experience in Scholarship and Politics: Re-emigrated Historians in the Early GDR (2001, U.S. edition in preparation); Zionism and the International Labor Movement, 1897-1933 (1994); Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and Socialism: the International Labor Movement and the "Jewish Question” in the 20th-Century (1993). Fall 2002 • Dr. Lu Seegers taught an undergraduate course on Women in the Cold War (cross-listed with Women's Studies) and a graduate seminar on Representations of the City in 20th-Century Germany. She also gave a lecture on her research on Gender Roles and the German Radio Magazine Hör Zu! Spring 2002 • Dr. Annette Weinke taught an undergraduate course on Mastering the Nazi Past and a graduate seminar on History and Memory in Postwar Germany. She also gave a talk on her research on the Judicial Assessment of the Nazi Legacy in the Two Germanies. • Dr. Weinke also participated in a panel discussion sponsored by the Modern European Studies Program, entitled Why Memory? The Contemporary Importance of Memory across Disciplines and Cultures, along with Professors James Young of Judaic Studies, Max Page of Art History and Elizabeth Krause of Anthropology. Fall 2001 • Dr. Burghard Ciesla taught an undergraduate course on Science, Technology and Cold War Economy in German Culture and a graduate seminar on Economic and Social History of East Germany. He also gave a lecture on his research on Wernher von Braun and participated in a DEFA Film Library workshop for the American Association of Teachers of German on Representation of the Wild West in East German Westerns. Research Exchange Spring 2003 • Dr. Barton Byg, Associate Professor in the UMass Amherst Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Interdisciplinary Program in Film Studies, and Director of the DEFA Film Library, was invited to the ZZF to do research and lecture on a variety of topics, including: • Family of Man? Langzeitdokumentarfilme als Formen "öffentlicher Geschichtsschreibung," • Kunst ist Waffe! Künstlerische Moderne im Kalten Krieg, • and talks on the reception of East German films in the USA and his research on the East German Wolf family. Fall 2001 • Dr. Thomas Lindenberger of the ZZF came to UMass Amherst to work out details of the UMass Amherst/ZZF cooperation, to participate in the UMass Amherst Modern European Studies Program faculty seminar and to give several lectures, including: • Re-Writing European History: Old Discourses and New Trajectories, • Divided Past, Multiple Histories? Recent Developments in Postwar German Historiography, • and Xenophobia in East Germany and the Legacy of Communist Rule: Explorations and Explanations from a Historical Perspective. Dr. Lindenberger is one of five Research Team Leaders at the ZZF and is currently directing a comparative research project on media and the Cold War funded by the DFG. His own work has focused on state authority and contestation in public spaces. His most recent publication in English is "Creating State Socialist Governance," in Konrad Jarausch's edited volume, Dictatorship as Experience (Berghahn 1999). He has also recently co-edited Sterben für Berlin? Die Berliner Krisen 1948-1958 with Michael Lemke and Burghard Ciesla, who taught at UMass Amherst in the Fall 2001 semester. © 2003-2007 University of Massachusetts Amherst. Site Policies. |
