Mar 06, 2026 - Mar 07, 2026
Workshop at University of Colorado Boulder | Conveners: David Ciarlo (University of Colorado Boulder), Thomas Pegelow Kaplan (University of Colorado Boulder), Isabel Richter (GHI Washington | Pacific Office, Berkeley), Raphael Rössel (GHI Washington)
Call for Papers
The call to re-center German history has taken several turns over the last three or four decades, including a shift towards histories from below, the inclusion of feminist and gender-based analysis, the deconstruction of race, and the broadening of identities with regard to definitions of "Germanness." Most recently, the transnational turn has expanded the scope of German history globally (including efforts to incorporate knowledge, practices, and experience originating outside of the West). Meanwhile, approaches like visual history, queer history, and the history of emotions have not only added new topics, but in some cases, altered the very way we write history. These practices have not unfolded in a political vacuum, of course, but in response to rapid changes in transatlantic relations, and in response to new social movements and to profound challenges to the post-1945 global order. As part of this process, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic are revisiting the established narratives of German history.
The 2026 workshop will focus on narratives, on sources, and on methodological questions as they relate to scholarship on modern Germany history in the context of new approaches and shifting transatlantic and global relations. These include a wide range of questions, including a reassessment of how we work with primary sources, and how we might reconfigure the link between our case studies and overarching narratives.
We are inviting graduate students, postdocs, and faculty in the Western United States, the Western Provinces of Canada and Mexico working on German history, Global Germany or German studies to join us at the eighth West Coast Germanists’ Workshop, jointly organized by the German Historical Institute Washington—Pacific Office Berkeley, and the University of Colorado Boulder, where the workshop will take place on March 6 & 7, 2026. The workshop will comprise paper presentations as well as informal gatherings to network and exchange ideas. The event seeks to provide a supportive forum for work-in-progress in the research of German history and culture from the medieval period until today.
We invite scholars to present ongoing work in progress. The presentations could explore the following thematic areas and methodological challenges (among others):
- Interconnectedness of history: How to practice global German histories? How to relate them to national, local, and microhistories?
- How do changing transatlantic relations and global realignments and crises shape the practices of academic history?
- How to write about previously understudied topics? How to engage with overarching narratives while working on a specific case study without re-creating old metanarratives?
- Reassessing the visual and pictorial turns: What is the status of visual histories and has the primacy of the written word really ended?
- Primary sources: Is it time to reconceptualize “primary sources” and how to study them? How to deal with an abundance and/or scarcity of sources?
- How to integrate marginalized historiographies written in languages other than English or German?
- What do the most illuminating interdisciplinary approaches look like? What are the limitations of interdisciplinarity?
- What are the connections and differences between academic cultures in North America and Germany and what is the impact of these tensions on the practices of academic history?
- What will the field of German History look like in the next three decades?
The 2026 workshop will also offer a teaching panel focussing on “Teaching and Learning in Universities under Political and Social Pressure.”
We aim to address the predicament of Germanists in the West, our geographic challenges – our distance from Europe and from each other – as well as the opportunities and possibilities for pursuing German history and German studies in places with abundant resources from German émigrés and thriving German immigrant communities in the arts, business, and technology. We also consider the potential benefits of seeing Germany and Europe from a global perspective.
People interested in attending should use our online portal to register for the workshop by November 14, 2025. Individuals interested in presenting a paper or in contributing to the teaching panel at the workshop should also include a short proposal (around 300 words). Please contact Heike Friedman (friedman(at)ghi-dc.org) if you have problems submitting your information online.
Thanks to the support of the German Historical Institute Washington, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and the University of Colorado Boulder we will be able to subsidize participation in this workshop. Priority will be given to paper presenters and graduate students.