Conference Group for Central European History
Newsletter
Fall 2001


Conference Group for Central European History at the AHA 2002

 Dear Colleagues,

I look forward to seeing you at the Conference Group's  business meeting and Bierabend, Saturday, January 5, 2002.  Both events will take place at the American Historical Association convention in San Francisco (Thursday, January 3 to Sunday, January 6, 2002).  The business meeting will convene at 5:00 p.m. in the Monterey II Room, Nikko Hotel.  Business to be conducted includes the election of new officers (current officers are listed below) and the announcement of the winner of the biennial article prize.  There will also be continuing discussion of the search for a new editor and home of CEH.  As most of you know, editor Ken Barkin has announced his retirement as of June 2004.  The Bierabend will begin at 6:00 p.m. in the adjacent Monterey I Room, Nikko Hotel.   I am pleased that the Conference Group is the co-sponsor of eight sessions on Central Europe at this year's AHA meeting and the direct sponsor of four additional panels. You will find links to these sessions as well as a panel jointly co-sponsored with the SAAH below. 

Kees Gispen



Contents
2002 AHA meeting
    Joint sessions of the CGCEH and the AHA
   
Sessions of the CGCEH
    Joint session of the CGCEH and the SAHH
Conference Group for Central European History
    Current Officers
    Archives Committee
    Nominations Committee
    Editorship of Central European History to become vacant
Announcements
    Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar
    Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize winners


Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association

 I.  Joint Sessions of the CGCEH and the AHA

The Conference Group is pleased to co-sponsor the following, joint sessions with the American Historical Association.

Friday, January 4, 9:30-11:30 a.m.
AHA Session 22. Overcoming the Physical Frontier, Reerecting the Mental Frontier: New Perspectives on German Reunification

Parc 55, Barcelona II

Chair: Konrad H. Jarausch, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Papers: The Fall of the Berlin Wall
Hans-Hermann Hertle, Zentrum fur Zeithistoriche Forschung Potsdam
Myths, Images, and Self-Images: The Protagonists of German Unification
Alexander von Plato, Fernuniversität Hagen
The Exchange of Elites in the East and German Reunification
Dolores L. Augustine, St. John’s University
The International Consequences of German Reunification
Mary Elise Sarotte, University of Notre Dame

Comment: Charles S. Maier, Harvard University

Friday, January 4, 9:30-11:30 a.m.
AHA
Session
27. Sound Film and the Politics of National Stereotyping in Interwar Central Europe
Nikko, Monterey I

Chair:

Linda Schiele Schulte-Sasse, Macalester College

Papers: Aristocrats, Gypsies, and Cowboys All: Film Stereotypes and Hungarian National Identity in the 1930s
David S. Frey, Columbia University Czechoslovakia and the Politics of National Stereotyping in Early Sound Film
Nancy M. Wingfield, Northern Illinois University
Vamps, Girls, Mothers, Wives—Stereotypes of Womanhood in National Socialist Entertainment Films
Jana Bruns, Stanford University

Comment: Robert Brent Toplin, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Friday, January 4, 2:30-4:30
AHA Session 36. Roundtable: The Alsatian Frontier in the Imagination of France and Germany

Hilton, Union Square 5/6

Chair: Peter G. Wallace, Hartwick College
Panel: Samuel H. Goodfellow, Westminster College
Rebecca McCoy, Lebanon Valley College
Wendy L. Norris, University of Chicago
Anthony J. Steinhoff, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga


Saturday, January 5, 9:30-11:30 a.m.
AHA Session 60. Tearing Down Walls: New Approaches in the History of East and West Germany

Nikko, Mendocino I

Chair: Robert G. Moeller, University of California at Irvine
Papers: German History as Post-War History: War, Memory, and Citizenship in the Two Germanies after 1945
Frank Biess, University of California at San Diego
One Film—Two Audiences—Many Messages: Wolfgang Staudte’s Movies in East and West Germany
Ulrike Weckel, Technical University Berlin and University of Michigan
Between the Blocs: “The East” and “the West” in the Perceptions of the West and East German Generations of “1968”
Detlef Siegfried, University of Copenhagen

Comment: Uta G. Poiger, University of Washington at Seattle

Saturday, January 5, 2:30-4:30 p.m.
AHA Session 103. New Perspectives on the Third Reich and the Holocaust

Nikko, Monterey I

Chair: Patricia Heberer, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Papers: New Approaches to the History of the Holocaust
Peter B. Black, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Writing the Business History of the “Third Reich”
Gerald D. Feldman, University of California at Berkeley
Rethinking the “Climate of Fear” and “Environment of Terror” in Nazi Germany
Robert Gellately, Clark University

Comment: Jonathan Petropolous, Claremont McKenna College

Sunday, January 6, 8:30-10:30 a.m.
AHA Session 109. Witnesses to Empire: Germans and European Imperialism before 1871

Hilton, Union Square 17/18

Chair: Suzanne L. Marchand, Louisiana State University
Papers: Ex-centric Observers: Germans in Dutch, Russian, and British Imperial Service, c. 1660–1860
Juergen K. Osterhammel, Konstanz University and Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
The Anxieties of Empire and German Culture: Herder’s 1769 Journey to France
Lynn Zastoupil, Rhodes College
Castigating Company Raj: Georg Forster and Matthias Sprengel on British Colonialism, 1781–1802
Gita Dharampal-Frick, Independent Scholar

Comment: James J. Sheehan, Stanford University

Sunday, January 6, 8:30-10:30 a.m.
AHA Session 118. Symbolism, Festivity, and Identity at the German-German Frontier

St. Francis, Elizabethan Room B

Chair: David Clay Large, Montana State University
Papers: “Reach Out to Each Other in Brotherhood”: History and Identity at the 1956 German Gymnastics and Sports Festival in Leipzig
Molly Wilkinson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contested Terrain: The Brandenburg Gate, the National Flag, and Competing German Identities, 1956–59
Margarete Myers Feinstein, Indiana University South Bend
Playing Politics: Division, Détente, and the Munich Olympics of 1972
Noel D. Cary, College of the Holy Cross

Comment: Doris L. Bergen, University of Notre Dame

Sunday, January 6, 11:00 a.m. -1:00 p.m.
AHA Session 136. Questions of German Modernity: Governance, Colonialism, and Social Reform

Hilton, Union Square 21

Chair: Jean Quataert, State University of New York at Binghamton
Papers: Governing the Social in Wilhelmine Germany: Rethinking German Modernity
Dennis Sweeney, University of Alberta
Neither Singular nor Alternative: Modernity and Narratives of the German Welfare State
Young-Sun Hong, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Settlements, “Inner Colonialization,” and Visions of Greater Berlin in Late Imperial Germany
Kevin D. Repp, Yale University

Comment: Jean Quataert


II.  Sessions of the CGCEH

The Conference Group is pleased to sponsor the following sessions 

Friday, January 4, 9:30-11:30 
CGCEH Session 1.  1968: Then and Now
Nikko, Mendocino II
Chair: Jeremy P. Varon, Drew University
Papers: The Language of the Political - The Politics of Language in 1970s West Germany 
Martin Geyer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
68 as Success? A Perspective from the Women’s Movement
Sibylla Flügge, Fachhochschule Frankfurt a. M.
Political Theater as a New Social Movement?
Belinda Davis, Rutgers University
Comment: Michael Grüttner, University of California at Berkeley

Friday, January 4, 2:30-4:30 p.m. 
CGCEH Session 2.  The West German 1960s

Nikko, Mendocino II

Chair: Michael Geyer, University of Chicago
Papers: Bolt from the Blue or Historical Antecedents? The Evolution of Liberal Democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s  
S. Jonathan Wiesen, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Holocaust Memory and Transatlantic Public Relations in the 1960s
Elizabeth Peifer, Troy State University
From the Weimar Reformers to the West German Sex Wave
Elizabeth Heineman, University of Iowa

Comment: Alan E. Steinweis, University of Nebraska at Lincoln

Saturday, January 5, 9:30-11:30 a.m. 
CGCEH Session 3.  The Frontier in the Fascist Imagination:
Boundary-Making and Boundary-Breaking in German National Socialism

Hilton, Union Square 19

Chair: Richard Bessel, University of York
Papers: The Mystique of the Eastern Frontier in Nazi Germany
David Blackbourn, Harvard University
A Global Dominion? The Limitless Frontiers of Hitler’s Germany
Norman J. W. Goda, Ohio University
“Beefsteak Nazis” and “Brown Bolshevists”: Boundaries and Identity in the Rise of National Socialism
Timothy S. Brown, University of California at Berkeley

Comment: Doris Bergen, University of Notre Dame


Ssunday, January 6, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. 
CGCEH Session 4.  Cold War Cultures and Mass Media: Eastern Perspectives in Comparison

Nikko, Mendocino II
Chair: Heide Fehrenbach, Emory University
Papers: National Cinema under Cold War Conditions: The Case of East Germany’s DEFA Company, 1950s and 1960s
Thomas Lindenberger, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam
The End of the World as We Know It: Cold War Science Fiction, East and West
Patrick Major, Warwick University
From Roosevelt to the G.I.: The Images of the American in Soviet Films about World War Two from Stalinism to the Thaw
Carola Tischler, Humboldt University, Berlin

Comment: Heide Fehrenbach

III.  Joint Session of the CGCEH and the SAHH

The Conference Group and the Society for Austrian and Habsburg History are jointly co-sponsoring the following session: 

Saturday, January 5, 2:30-4:30 p.m.
AHA Session 97.  Real and Imagined Frontiers in Habsburg Central Europe

Hilton, Union Square 1/2
Chair: Scott Spector, University of Michigan
Papers: The “Imagined Territory” and Its Boundaries: Discourses on Borders and National Space in Czechoslovakia, 1918–38
Peter Haslinger, Collegium Carolinum in Munich
Europe’s First Theme Park? Making the “Language Frontier” Visible in Imperial Austria, 1880–1914
Pieter M. Judson, Swarthmore College
Negotiating the Frontier: The Changing Meaning of the German-Czechoslovak Borderlands after World War I
Caitlin Murdock, Stanford University

Comment: Andrea Komlosy, University of Vienna

The full 2002 AHA program can be found on line, at the following address: http://www.theaha.org/annual/program/index.html


Conference Group for Central European History

Current Officers (January 2001-January 2002)
President: Konrad Jarausch: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Potsdam 
Vice-President: David Crew, University of Texas at Austin
Vice-President Elect: David Blackbourn, Harvard Univesity 
Immediate Past President: Mary Jo Maynes, University of Minnesota
At-Large Member (exp. January 2002): Pieter Judson, Swarthmore College
At-Large Member (exp. January 2003): Doris Bergen, University of Notre Dame
At-large Member (exp. January 2004): Peter Black, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Editor of Central European History, Kenneth Barkin, University of California, Riverside
Executive Secretary and Treasurer, Kees Gispen, University of Mississippi

Archives Committee
David Barclay (Kalamazoo College), Chair (contact David at: barclay@kzoo.edu)
John Connelly, University of California at Berkeley
Carole Fink, Ohio State University
Geoffrey Giles, University of Florida (ex officio)
Alan Steinweis, University of Nebraska at Lincoln 
Gerhard Weinberg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Nominations Committee 
The Conference Group’s nominating committee is made up of the executive committee.  The committee nominated Jonathan Sperber, University of Missouri-Columbia, for the position of Vice-President Elect and Dagmar Herzog, Michigan State University, for a three-year term on the executive committee.  These nominations will be voted on at the January business meeting in Boston.  The executive committee welcomes members' suggestions for officers of the Conference Group.  The Executive Secretary recommends that Gerald Feldman and Roger Chickering once again be renominated to continue serving as the Conference Group’s delegates to Friends of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.  These or other nominations will be discussed at the January business meeting, which will elect officers for 2002.

Editorship of Central European History to become vacant
The editor of Central European History, Ken Barkin, will complete his current and last term of office in the spring of 2004.  The Executive Committee welcomes suggestions from members and readers of CEH for a new editor.  This matter will again be discussed at the January business meeting.



Announcements

Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar 2002
"German History 1945-1990"
Potsdam, May 1-4, 2002

The GHI, the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University, and the Conference Group for Central European History are pleased to announce the Eighth Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History. The 2002 seminar will take place at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam May 1-4, 2002.

The seminar will bring together young scholars from Germany and North America who are nearing completion of their doctoral degrees. We plan to invite eight doctoral students from each side of the Atlantic to discuss their dissertation research projects. We welcome proposals on any aspect of German history during the years 1945 to 1990. Doctoral students who are working on comparative topics, projects in related fields-such as art history, legal history, and the history of science-or on the history of Austria or German-speaking Switzerland are also encouraged to apply. The discussions will be based on papers (in German or English) submitted in advance of the conference. The seminar will be conducted bilingually, in German and English. The organizers will cover travel and lodging expenses.

We are now accepting applications from doctoral students whose dissertations are at an advanced stage but who will be granted their degrees after June 2002. Applications should include a short (2-3 pp.) project description, a curriculum vitae, and a letter of reference from the dissertation adviser. Questions may be directed to Dr. Richard Wetzell by e-mail at r.wetzell@ghi-dc.org

Applications must be postmarked by December 1, 2001, and should be sent to:

German Historical Institute
Young Scholars Forum
1607 New Hampshire Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20009
Tel. (202) 387-3355
Fax. (202) 483-3430
E-mail: b.thomas@ghi-dc.org


Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize Winners

The Friends of the German Historical Institute are pleased to announce the winners of this year's Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize:  

Eva Giloi Bremner, Princeton University 
 Ich kaufe mir den Kaiser! Royal Relics and the Culture of Display in 19th-Century Prussia

and

Jonathan Zatlin (University of California, Berkeley)
The Currency of Socialism: Money in the GDR and German Unification, 1971-1989




The editor of this Newsletter may be reached at the following address:
Department of History
University of Mississippi
University, MS 38677
662-915-7148
662-915-7033 fax
hsgispen@olemiss.edu



This page was last edited on 12/24/2001