Research
MEMORY ACTIVISM
Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2017) is the outcome of over a decade of research about grassroots activism in German memory politics from 1945 to the present. The book examines civil society and social movement efforts to shape the landscape of commemoration - from Holocaust survivor groups and expellees, to left-wing history workshops and initiatives to recall the East German dictatorship after 1989.
Together with Yifat Gutman (Ben Gurion University), I am also planning a collaborative project that will compare memory activism in different parts of the world. In November 2018, we are holding a workshop, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, at Columbia University, which will result in a Handbook on Memory Activism.
Together with Aline Sierp, I am in the final stages of editing the volume Agency in Transnational Memory Politics, which will be published with Berghahn Publishers in 2019. This represents a multi-year collaborative process during which we and the authors developed a systematic mode of comparing cases of transnational memory politics.
COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF MEMORY
My newest book project will examine the comparative politics of remembering family separation and public responsibility. Research will involve the development of a data base of cases of family separation and child removal, as well as in-depth case studies such as of the "Stolen Generation" of Aboriginal children in Australia, the Residential School System in Canada, the tearing apart of families due to slavery in the United States, and the forced adoption of children of dissidents in East Germany, Argentina, and Spain. In the process, I hope to develop a rigorous, yet sensitive, framework for comparing the politics of memory. Stay tuned for more.
Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2017) is the outcome of over a decade of research about grassroots activism in German memory politics from 1945 to the present. The book examines civil society and social movement efforts to shape the landscape of commemoration - from Holocaust survivor groups and expellees, to left-wing history workshops and initiatives to recall the East German dictatorship after 1989.
Together with Yifat Gutman (Ben Gurion University), I am also planning a collaborative project that will compare memory activism in different parts of the world. In November 2018, we are holding a workshop, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, at Columbia University, which will result in a Handbook on Memory Activism.
Together with Aline Sierp, I am in the final stages of editing the volume Agency in Transnational Memory Politics, which will be published with Berghahn Publishers in 2019. This represents a multi-year collaborative process during which we and the authors developed a systematic mode of comparing cases of transnational memory politics.
COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF MEMORY
My newest book project will examine the comparative politics of remembering family separation and public responsibility. Research will involve the development of a data base of cases of family separation and child removal, as well as in-depth case studies such as of the "Stolen Generation" of Aboriginal children in Australia, the Residential School System in Canada, the tearing apart of families due to slavery in the United States, and the forced adoption of children of dissidents in East Germany, Argentina, and Spain. In the process, I hope to develop a rigorous, yet sensitive, framework for comparing the politics of memory. Stay tuned for more.
NETWORKS OF MEMORY
This project, begun under the auspices of the Berlin Program for Advanced German & European Studies, combines social network analysis with qualitative research to examine the social underpinnings of European memory politics. The idea is to study the actors and relationships that shape the saliency and meaning of particular narratives about the past and thus determine memory political outcomes in the European Union. I presented the first results of this research at the 37th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Denver, October 3-6, 2013 and published some of them in the Jahrbuch for Politik und Geschichte in 2016 (in German). I am currently working to expand this approach to global memory networks.
MEMORY STUDIES
I am interested in how an academic discipline becomes recognized as such. In October 2013, I organized the Berlin Program Alumni Roundtable on the topic of "Studying Memory: Methodologies and Tools for Research" at the German Studies Association conference in Denver. The debate we had at the Roundtable compelled me to do more in this direction. Also, my colleague Anamaria Dutceac-Segesten and I conducted an online survey of self-described memory scholars. Based on our interesting results, as well as a content analysis of scholarship about memory, we have written about the state of the memory studies field (forthcoming in 2017 in Memory Studies, but already available on the journal's website).
This project, begun under the auspices of the Berlin Program for Advanced German & European Studies, combines social network analysis with qualitative research to examine the social underpinnings of European memory politics. The idea is to study the actors and relationships that shape the saliency and meaning of particular narratives about the past and thus determine memory political outcomes in the European Union. I presented the first results of this research at the 37th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Denver, October 3-6, 2013 and published some of them in the Jahrbuch for Politik und Geschichte in 2016 (in German). I am currently working to expand this approach to global memory networks.
MEMORY STUDIES
I am interested in how an academic discipline becomes recognized as such. In October 2013, I organized the Berlin Program Alumni Roundtable on the topic of "Studying Memory: Methodologies and Tools for Research" at the German Studies Association conference in Denver. The debate we had at the Roundtable compelled me to do more in this direction. Also, my colleague Anamaria Dutceac-Segesten and I conducted an online survey of self-described memory scholars. Based on our interesting results, as well as a content analysis of scholarship about memory, we have written about the state of the memory studies field (forthcoming in 2017 in Memory Studies, but already available on the journal's website).
Jenny Wüstenberg (far left), chairing a panel at the Regions of Memory conference in Warsaw, November 2012
