Gendering Modern German History

Writing on the history of German women has - like women's history elsewhere - undergone remarkable expansion and change since it began in the late 1960s. Today Women's history still continues to flourish alongside gender history but the focus of research has increasingly shifted from women to gender. This shift has made it possible to make men and masculinity objects of historical research too. After more than thirty years of research, it is time for a critical stocktaking of the "gendering" of the historiography on nineteenth and twentieth century Germany. To provide a critical overview in a comparative German-American perspective is the main aim of this volume, which brings together leading experts from both sides of the Atlantic. They discuss in their essays the state of historiography and reflect on problems of theory and methodology. Through compelling case studies, focusing on the nation and nationalism, military and war, colonialism, politics and protest, class and citizenship, religion, Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, the Holocaust, the body and sexuality and the family, this volume demonstrates the extraordinary power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.

Karen Hagemann is the James G. Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at the Department of History of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and teaches Modern German and European History and Gender History. She also held prestigious fellowships/visiting professorships in Uppsala, Princeton, Toronto and Trier. Her main fields of publication are the history of welfare states, labor culture and women's movements, as well as the history of the nation, the military, and war.