Research

The Center is researching the history of the German-American cultural exchange regarding schooling and education from the 17th century to the present.

Some of our current research projects are also published in the series "Studies in German-American Educational History". The series’ first volume, New Perspectives on German-American Educational History, was published in early 2017. It contains contributions to the first lecture series of the 2015 summer semester, "German-American Educational History: Topics, Trends, Fields of Research". The second book was published in 2020, Show, Don't Tell. Education and Historical Representations on Screen and Stage in Germany and the USA, with the papers presented at the second lecture series in the 2018 summer semester Public History, Popular History or Historical Edutainment – Representations of German and American History in Theatre, Cinema and Television.

Among many research methods and methodological points of view, the Center is especially concerned with "New Historicism", the Berkeley and Harvard-inspired methodological approach which can lend momentum to historical writing, particularly that concerned with educational history.

Teaching

CURRENT SEMESTER: SUMMER TERM 2022

SEMINAR, Apr 14 - Jul 14, 2022
History Wars in the Classroom: History Education Controversies in the US, 1990-2022

SEMINAR, Apr 12 - Jul 12, 2022
The American Public University since 1945: From the GI Bill to the Neoliberal University

 

PAST SEMESTERS:

SEMINAR, Oct 21, 2021 - Feb 3, 2022
Multidirectional Memories? Public History, Memory, and History Education in Germany and the United States

SEMINAR, Oct 19, 2021 - Feb 1, 2022
The New Deal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and American Education during the 1930s

LECTURE SERIES, Oct 21, 2021 - Feb 3, 2022
Environmentalism, Sustainability, and Climate Change as Educational Challenges: Lessons from the Past and Present in America and Germany

SEMINAR, Apr 21 - Jul 21, 2021
The History of the Homeschooling Movement in the United States

SEMINAR, Apr 22 - Jul 22, 2021
Down South: Education in the Jim Crow Era

SEMINAR, Nov 3, 2020 - Feb 2, 2021
An Educational Classic: John Dewey's "Democracy and Education"

SEMINAR, Nov 5, 2020 - Feb 11, 2021
Imperialism in the Classroom: Colonialism and Education in the German and American Empires, 1871-1918

SEMINAR, Nov. 4, 2020 - Feb 10, 2021
Lies my Teacher Told Me? - American History Education in the Trump Era

SEMINAR, Apr 16 - Jul, 16, 2020
Jim Crow in the Classroom: Education in the twentieth-century American South

SEMINAR, Apr 14 - Jul 14, 2020
Unmasterable Pasts: Memory Culture and Education in the United States and Germany

SEMINAR, Oct 17, 2019 - Jan 30, 2020
Das gelobte Land oder ein Paradies voller Schatten? - Flucht, Bildung und Exil in den USA, 1933-1950

SEMINAR, Oct 15, 2019 - Jan 28, 2020
Mass Culture after Auschwitz: Holocaust Education through Film, Literature, and Public Space

SEMINAR, Oct 17, 2019 - Jan 30, 2020
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and the Philosophy of Education in the Age of Enlightenment

SEMINAR, Apr 18 - Jul 17, 2019
German-American Identity and Education from the Civil War to World War I

SEMINAR, Apr 9 - Jul 9, 2019
Historienfilme und politische Bildung in Deutschland und den USA

SEMINAR, Apr 11 - Jul 17, 2019
Contested Memories: Public History and Education in Germany and the United States

SEMINAR, Oct 11, 2018 - Jan 31, 2019
Teaching Patriotism: Schools, Immigration, Race, and the United States, 1865-1945

SEMINAR, Oct 9, 2018 - Jan 29, 2019
Homeschooling und häuslicher Unterricht in Deutschland und Amerika: eine komparative Geschichte

SEMINAR, Apr 10 - Jul, 17, 2018
Schools after the Storm: post-Katrina New Orleans and the Privatization of American Education

SEMINAR, Apr 12 - Jul, 19, 2018
Screening the Past:Teaching History with Dramatic and Documentary Films

LECTURE SERIES, Apr 12 - Jul, 19, 2018
Public History, Popular History or Historical Edutainment - Representations of German and American History in Theatre, Cinema and Television

SEMINAR, Apr 16 - Jun 11, 2018 - CONFERENCE, May, 24 - 26, 2018
Transatlantische Bildungsgeschichte(n) – Begriffe, Konzepte und Fallbeispiele aus deutsch-amerikanischer Perspektive

SEMINAR, Oct 11, 2017 - Feb 2, 2018
Explaining the Unexplainable: Using Film to Teach Difficult History

SEMINAR, Oct 9, 2017 - Jan, 29, 2018
The German Question in Education: The Second Generation of Refugee Historians in America, 1945—the Present

SEMINAR, Apr 24 - Jul 24, 2017
Weimar on the Pacific, Weimar on the Hudson: 'Bildung' in American Exile

SEMINAR, Apr 20 - Jul 27, 2017
John Dewey's "Democracy and Education" (1916): Reading an American Classic

SEMINAR, Oct 20, 2016 - Feb 9, 2017
Benjamin Franklin on Education: Reading an American Classic

SEMINAR, Oct 22, 2015 - Feb 11, 2016
Minority Education in the US

SEMINAR, Oct 21, 2015 - Feb 10, 2016
Public History im deutsch-amerikanischen Vergleich

SEMINAR, Oct 20, 2015 - Feb 9, 2016
Geschichte und Praxis der „Democratic Education“: Von der Aufklärungspädagogik bis zur Sudbury Valley School

LECTURE SERIES, Apr 8, 2015 - Jul 8, 2015
German - American Educational History - Topics, Trends, Fields of Research

SEMINAR, Apr 13 - Jul 13, 2015
The Spirit of 1848 (?) - German Immigration to the US in the 19th century

LECTURE, Oct 8, 2014 - Feb 4, 2015
Grundzüge der Entwicklung der US-amerikanischen Hochschulen und Universitäten: Von ihren Anfängen im Kolonialzeitalter bis zum 21. Jahrhundert

INAUGURAL LECTURE PROF. DR. JÜRGEN OVERHOFF, Nov 6, 2014
Benjamin Franklin und die Erziehung zur Freiheit: Von der Bedeutung der Aufklärung für die Historische Bildungsforschung

SEMINAR, Oct 15, 2014 - Feb 4, 2015
For what it’s worth – Finanzierung universitärer Bildung im 20. Jahrhundert im dt-amerikanischen Vergleich

SEMINAR, Oct 15, 2014 - Feb 4, 2015
"Remember the Ladies" – Republican Motherhood und die Anfänge höherer Bildung für Frauen in den USA