Frank Biess - Frank Biess is Associate Professor of Modern German History at the University of California, San Diego. He holds a Humboldt Fellowship for the period January 2007-December 2008.
His research has focused on the social, political, and cultural history of 20th Century Germany. His book Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany was published in 2006. The book combines political history of war memories and gender identities. He teaches courses on Modern Germany, Italian, and European History.
Heide Fehrenbach - Heide Fehrenbach is Presidential Research Professor in the Department of History at Northern Illinois University. She currently holds a Guggenheim Fellowship for her research and teaching on Germany. Her first book, Cinema in Democratizing Germany (1995) discussed the role of cinema in restructuring the postwar German national and gender ideologies. Race After Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America(2005) focuses on transnational responses to children born to German women and African-American soldiers during the military occupation.
She is now researching the effects of war, military occupation and the rise of international adoption of the notions of family, immigration, and citizenship.
Uta Poiger - Uta Poiger is a visiting associate professor of history at Harvard and associate professor of history and adjunct associate professor in the department of women studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. At Harvard she also teaches in the history and literature concentration. Her research focuses on cultural history and Germany’s international relations, the history of racism, and gender history.
She is the author of Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (2000) and co-editor of the anthologies Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan (2000) and The Modern Girl Around the World (forthcoming).
The article "Empire and Imperialism in Twentieth-century Germany" appeared in History and Memory (fall 2005). Among her current projects are a book titled Beauty and Business in Germany: An International History and Documents in German History, Volume 9, 1945–1961, an online collection co-edited with V. Berghahn for the German Historical Institute, Washington. Poiger is co-chair of the German Study Group.
Broken Men and Strong Women: Towards a Cultural History of Democratization in Germany after 1945 featuring discussants Frank Biess and Heide Fehrenbach. This event was moderated by Uta Poiger.