PD Dr. Jasper Trautsch

Research Projects

Die Neukartographierung der atlantischen Welt: Die Visualisierung des Ost-West-Konflikts im 20. Jahrhundert

The Remapping of the Atlantic world: The visualization of the East-West conflict in the 20th century

DFG-Project at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Das Forschungsprojekt geht der Frage nach, wie die Welt im 20. Jahrhundert kartographisch zunächst in einen „Westen“ und einen „Osten“ und ab den 1970ern die „Dritte Welt“ aufgeteilt wurde. Dazu analysiert es, wie sich die Darstellungen Europas, Amerikas und der Welt auf Landkarten im Laufe dieses Zeitraums veränderten, um die Annahme, dass Europa gleichsam natürlich zweigeteilt sei und es eine geographisch identifizierbare, Nordamerika und Westeuropa verbindende „Atlantische Gemeinschaft“ sowie einen davon abgegrenzten „Osten“ gebe, visuell zu unterstützen. Dies schließt die Frage mit ein, wie sich die Grenzen dieser Räume – besonders in der Mitte Europas – in der ersten Hälfte des Untersuchungszeitraums verschoben haben und Westdeutschland geographisch zunehmend in Westeuropa und nicht mehr in Mitteleuropa lokalisiert wurde. Außerdem rekonstruiert das Forschungsprojekt, wie diese bipolare Aufteilung der Welt ab den 1970ern kartographisch erweitert wurde, indem die „Dritte Welt“ als weiterer Raum ergänzt wurde.Aufbauend auf der Annahme, dass Karten aufgrund ihrer bildlichen Eigenschaften und ihres Objektivitätsanspruchs unser geographisches Bewusstsein – unsere „mental maps“ – maßgeblich prägen, geht das Projekt davon aus, dass kartographisches Material einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Entstehung und Langlebigkeit des Ost-West-Konflikts leistete, indem es die Aufteilung der Welt in diese Großräume geographisch determiniert wirken ließ. Deshalb liegt der Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung auf Karten des populären Alltagsgebrauchs, die massenhaft produziert wurden, statt auf Spezialkarten, die für eng umgrenzte Personenkreise hergestellt wurden. Konkret analysiert das Projekt thematische und topographische Amerika-, Europa- und Weltkarten in Schulatlanten und Geographiebüchern, auf Briefmarken und Wahlplakaten, in Nachrichtensendungen sowie in Zeitungen und Zeitschriften. Als Untersuchungsländer wurden die USA, Kanada, Großbritannien, Frankreich und Deutschland ausgewählt, da sie führend in der Entwicklung kartographischer Techniken gewesen sind und hier etablierte Standards und Darstellungsweisen sich in Folge oft auch in anderen Erdteilen durchgesetzt haben.In einem ersten Schritt wird das Kartenmaterial auf seine Darstellungsweisen hin kartographisch, semiotisch und hermeneutisch untersucht (Projektion, Orientierung, Skalierung, Ausschnitt, Beschriftung, behandelte Thematik, Symbole, Farben), um Schlüsselkarten zu identifizieren und die Lebensdauer gängiger Kartendesigns herauszufinden. In einem zweiten Schritt werden die Schlüsselkarten, mit denen sich neue Präsentationsarten durchsetzten, auf ihre intendierten Botschaften hin genauer untersucht, indem die Hintergründe der Produktion rekonstruiert sowie die Auftraggeber und die Kartographen und ihre Motive in Erfahrung gebracht werden.

Remapping the Euro-Atlantic World and Imagining "the West:" The Spatial Reordering of Europe and North America, 1945-1957 — completed

Postdoctoral project at the Graduate School

This habilitation thesis is a history of the concept of the West as it developed in the modern period. It traces the concept’s origins, reconstructs its multiple meanings, and examines which political actors used it for what purposes and to what effect in the past. On the one hand, it thus investigates how Europe was repeatedly remapped in the 19th and 20th century, as the concept of the West divided the Continent, which had previously been horizontally separated into a “North” and a “South” on historical contemporaries’ mental maps, vertically into Western, Central, and Eastern Europe in the 19th century and into “the West” and an “East” in the 20th century, the dividing line(s) adjusting to changing political circumstances. On the other hand, the habilitation thesis analyzes how North America and Western Europe were imagined to form an transatlantic community, i.e. how the Atlantic Ocean was reconceived as a bridge connecting societies on both of its sides rather than a barrier that set two separate civilizations apart from each other. The study is primarily concerned with the period from the 1830s to the 1950s, as it was within this era that the modern concept of the West emerged, that it became a fundamental concept in the political vocabulary in Western Europe and North America, and that its four major modern conceptualizations developed: 1.) "The West" could refer to a political community of states with shared liberal values. 2.) "The West" could be used as a synonym for "modern civilization," i.e. all nations that were economically more developed and technologically more advanced than societies in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. 3.) "The West" could function as a racial category connoting the group of (predominantly) "white" countries, i.e. comprising all of Europe and its settler societies in North America, South Africa, and the South Pacific. 4.) "The West" could mean a historically grown cultural community of societies that had grown out of the West Roman Empire and were shaped by a non-Orthodox Christian heritage.

Curriculum Vitae

Since 05/2018, Affiliated Researcher and 05/2015-04/2018 Postdoctoral Researcher at the Graduate School as well as lecturer at the Universität Regensburg. 2012 - 2015 Postdoctoral Research Fellowships, German Historical Institutes in Washington, London, Rom, and Paris as well as German Academic Exchange Service. 2010 - 2012 Legislative Manager, Deutscher Bundestag (German Parliament), Committee for Cultural and Media Affairs. 2008 – 2015 Lecturer, Free University of Berlin, LMU Munich, and University of Kassel. 2007 – 2011 Free University of Berlin, Graduate School for North American Studies, PhD, History. 2004 – 2005 Tulane University, New Orleans, MA, History. 2003 – 2004 Sorbonne, Paris IV, École des hautes études en sciences de l’infor­mation et de la communication (CELSA), Foreign Exchange Student. 2001 – 2006 Free University of Berlin, Communication Science, Modern History, and North American Studies, Magister Artium (MA equivalent).

Awards

• Rolf Kentner Dissertation Prize 2013 for an outstanding dissertation in American Studies

Publications (selected)

Monographs

The Genesis of America: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Formation of National Identity, 1793-1815, Cambridge 2018.

Pressepolitik in Deutschland: Eine Untersuchung über pressepolitische Ziele und Motive von Bundestagsabgeordneten [Press Politics in Germany: An Examination of the Political Goals and Motives of Members of the German Parliament], Marburg, 2008.

Edited Books and Journal Issues

Civic Nationalisms in Global Perspective, London 2019.

„Expansions- als Friedenspolitik: Krieg im Denken von Thomas Jefferson“. In: Jürgen Peter Schmied (Hg.): Kriegerische Tauben: Liberale und linksliberale Interventionisten vom 19. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart, Bonn 2019, S. 37-56.

"Introduction: A Global Approach to Civic Nationalisms". In: Jasper M. Trautsch (Hg.): Civic Nationalisms in Global Perspective, London/New York 2019, S. 1-29.

"Homogenizing and Demarcating America: Civic Nationalism in the United States, 1774-1861". In: Jasper M. Trautsch (Hg.): Civic Nationalisms in Global Perspective, London / New York 2019, S. 168-197.

„Vom amerikanischen Exzeptionalismus zur atlantischen Gemeinschaft: Die Visualisierung des Ost-West-Konflikts auf US-Briefmarkenc. In: René Smolarski / Pierre Smolarski / Silke Vetter-Schultheiß (Hgg.): Gezähnte Geschichte: Briefmarken als historische Quelle, Göttingen 2018, S. 313-333.

“Atrocity and Reciprocity: The Burnings of Washington D.C. and Toronto and the Challenges to the Laws of War in the War of 1812”. In: Christos G. Frentzos / Antonio Thompson (Hgg.): Handbook of American Military and Diplomatic History. The Colonial Period to 1877, New York 2014, S. 190-197.

“Enlightenment as a Cultural Marker of American Identity“. In: Kristina-Monika Hinneburg and Grazyna Jurewicz (Hgg.): Zwischen Universalismus und partikularem Anspruch. Das Prinzip Aufklärung, Munich 2014, S. 199-216.

“Axel Springer Verlag: Mit BILD und Co. nach Polen". In: Stefan Schmid (Hg): Strategien der Internationalisierung. Fallstudien und Fallbeispiele, Munich 2007 (2. Aufgabe), S. 247-281; Munich 2012 (3 Aufgabe), S. 273-310.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

„Der Westen: Theoretisch-methodische Überlegungen zu einer Begriffsgeschichte“. In: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 61 (2019).

"Treaty of Paris (1763)". In: Gordon Martel (Hg.): Encyclopedia of Diplomacy 4 (2018), S. 1834-1838

"Trieste Question". In: Gordon Martel (Hg.): Encyclopedia of Diplomacy 4 (2018), S. 1921-1926.

“Disarmament", "Globalization", "Idealism", "Isolationism", and "Peace Theories". In: Paul Joseph (Hg.): The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives 4 (2017).

„La Révolution américaine dans les ‘guerres de l’histoire’ actuelles et les problèmes de l’historiographie conservatrice dans les États-Unis“. In: Politique Américaine 29 (2017),  S. 145-176.

„Was ist ‚der Westen‘: Zur Semantik eines politischen Grundbegriffs der Moderne“. In: Forum interdisziplinäre Begriffsgeschichte 6/1 (2017), S. 58-66. URL: http://www.zfl-berlin.org/tl_files/zfl/downloads/publikationen/forum_begriffsgeschichte/ZfL_FIB_6_2017_1_Trautsch.pdf.

“'Thomas Jefferson", "Louisiana Purchase", "First Barbary War", "Second Barbary War", "Venezuela", "Korea", "1945-1953" and "The Ugly American". In: David Bernstein / Chris Magoc (Hgg.): Imperialism and Expansionism in American History 1 (2016), S. 252-253, S. 253-255; 2 (2016), S. 404-407, S. 521-525; 3 (2016), S. 857-858; 4 (2016), S. 1116-1120, S. 1274-1275.

"The Concept of the West". In: Critical Muslim 20 (2016), S. 18-33.

"The Origins and Nature of American Nationalism". In: National Identities 17/4 (2015).

“Who’s Afraid of China? Neo-Conservative, Realist and Liberal-Internationalist Assessments of American Power, the Future of ‘the West’ and the Coming New World Order”. In: Global Affairs 1/3 (2015), S. 235-245.

“Von der ‘Mitte’ in den ‘Westen’ Europas: Die räumliche Neuverortung Deutschlands auf den kognitiven Landkarten nach 1945” [=“From the ‘Center’ to the ‘West’ of Europe: The Spatial Re-Imagining of Germany on the Mental Maps after 1945”]. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft [=Journal for Historical Scholarship] 63/7&8 (2015), S. 647-666.

"Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814)", "Beer and Ale", "Rum" and "Whiskey". In: Merril D. Smith (Hg.): The World of the American Revolution: A Daily Life Encyclopedia 1 (2015), S. 68-71, S. 316-319, S. 368-370, S. 384-387.

“The Transatlantic Drift and the Reinvention of Europe: West German Labor Unions’ Perception of America in the 1980s”. In: Frank Reichenberger / Christian Helm / Jan Hansen (Hgg.): Making Sense of the Americas: How Protest Related to America in the 1980s and Beyond, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2015, S. 267-291.

“1776 as an Identity Crisis: American Nationalism and the American Revolution”. In: Jahrbuch für europäische Überseegeschichte [=Yearbook for European Overseas History] 14 (2014), S. 43-81.

“Der amerikanische Nationalismus und die These vom Exzeptionalismus: Überlegungen zu den historischen Grundlagen der amerikanischen Nation” [=“American Nationalism and the Claim of Exceptionalism: Reflections on the Historical Foundations of the American Nation“]. In: Historisches Jahrbuch [=Historical Yearbook] 134 (2014), S. 322-338.

“The Invention of ‘the West’”. In: Bulletin of the German Historical Institute Washington 53 (2013), S. 89-102.

“Ungenutzte Chancen: Ist eine diplomatische Lösung des Atomkonflikts mit dem Iran noch möglich?“ [=“Unexplored Options: Is a Diplomatic Solution to the Nuclear Conflict with Iran Still Possible?”]. In: Neue Gesellschaft – Frankfurter Hefte 6 (2013), S. 20-23.

“The Origins and Future of Liberal Democracy or the Need for Strong States”. In: Journal of Transatlantic Studies 11/1 (2013), S. 109-116.

“The History of the Canadian Governmental Representation in Germany”. In: Zeitschrift für Kanadastudien [=Journal for Canadian Studies] 33/1 (2013), S. 143-169.

“The Causes of the War of 1812: 200 Years of Debate”. In: Journal of Military History, 77/1 (2013), S. 273-293.

“‘Mr. Madison’s War’ or the Dynamic of Early American Nationalism?” In: Early American Studies 10/3 (2012), S. 630-670.

Reviews (selected)

"Jonathan Israel: The Expanding Blaze. How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775-1848". In: International Social Science Review, 94/3 (2018). URL: https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol94/iss3/8.

"Matthew Karp: This Vast Southern Empire. Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy". In: H-Soz-Kult (2018). URL: https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-28654.

„Tiziana Di Maio: Alcide de Gasperi und Konrad Adenauer. Zwischen Überwindung der Vergangenheit und europäischem Integrationsprozess (1945-1954)“. In: Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 96 (2017), S. 660-661.

"Kaeten Mistry: The United States, Italy and the Origins of Cold War. Waging Political Warfare, 1945-1950". In: Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 96 (2017), S. 659-660.

„Michael Jonas, Ulrich Lappenküper und Bernd Wegner: Stabilität durch Gleichgewicht? Balance of Power im internationalen System der Neuzeit“. In: Neue Politische Literatur 62/2 (2017), S. 325-326.

"Patrick J. Maney: Bill Clinton. New Gilded Age President". In: Cercles: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone (2017). URL: http://www.cercles.com/review/r81/Maney.html.

"Wayne Steger: A Citizen’s Guide to Presidential Nominations: The Competition for Leadership". In: Cercles: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone (2016). URL: http://www.cercles.com/review/r76/Steger.html.

"William Earl Weeks: Dimensions of the Early American Empire, 1754-1865". In: Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 60/2 (2015). URL: http://dgfa.de/william-earl-weeks-the-new-cambridge-history-of-american-foreign-relations-vol-1-dimensions-of-the-early-american-empire-1754-1865-cambridge-cambridge-up-2013-336-pp/.

"Walter Johnson: River of Dark Dreams. Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom". In: Amerikastudien/American Studies 60/1 (2015). URL: http://dgfa.de/walter-johnson-river-of-dark-dreams-slavery-and-empire-in-the-cotton-kingdom-cambridge-ma-belknap-press-of-harvard-up-2013-526-pp/.

"Nicole Eustace: 1812", "Andrew Lambert: The Challenge" and "Paul Gilje: Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights in the War of 1812". In: Amerikastudien/American Studies 59/4 (2014). URL: http://dgfa.de/nicole-eustace-1812-war-and-the-passions-of-patriotism-andrew-lambert-the-challenge-britain-against-america-in-the-naval-war-of-1812-paul-gilje-free-trade-and-sailors-rights-in-the-war/

„Johannes Großmann: Die Internationale der Konservativen. Transnationale Elitenzirkel und private Außenpolitik in Westeuropa seit 1945“ [=“The Conservative International. Transnational Elite Circles and Private Foreign Policy in Western Europe since 1945”]. In: Francia-Recensio (2015). URL: http://www.recensio.net/rezensionen/zeitschriften/francia-recensio/2015-1/19-20-jahrhundert-histoire-contemporaine/die-internationale-der-konservativen?set_language=fr.

“Translating America. The Circulation of Narratives, Commodities, and Ideas between Italy, Europe, and the United States”. In: Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken [=Sources and Research from Italian Archives and Libraries] 94 (2014), S. 440-441.

“Alessandro Brogi: Confronting America. The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy”. In: Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken [=Sources and Research from Italian Archives and Libraries] 94 (2014), S. 535-536.

“Elena Agarossi and Victor Zaslavsky: Stalin and Togliatti. Italy and the Origins of the Cold War”. In: Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken [=Sources and Research from Italian Archives and Libraries] 94 (2014), S. 534-535.

“Jan-Werner Müller: Das demokratische Zeitalter: Eine politische Ideengeschichte Europas im 20. Jahrhundert" [="Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe"]. In: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 54 (2014). URL: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/afs/81545.pdf.

“Paul A. Gilje: Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights in the War of 1812”. In Reviews in History (2013). URL: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1498.

“Lloyd Kramer: Nationalism in Europe and America”. In: Nations and Nationalism 19/3 (2013), S. 593-595.

“Pietro S. Nivola and Peter J. Kastor: What So Proudly We Hailed: Essays on the Contemporary Meaning of the War of 1812”. In: Journal of Military History 77/2 (2013), S. 699-701.

“Hannah Spahn: Jefferson, Time, and History”. In: Amerikastudien/American Studies 58/3 (2013), S. 303-305.

"Die Amerikanische Revolution" [="The American Revolution"]. In: Amerikastudien/American Studies 58/1 (2013), S. 151-155.

“Paul Nolte: Was ist Demokratie?" [="What Is Democracy?"]. In: Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für Geschichtswissenschaften (2012). URL: http://www.sehepunkte.de/2012/06/21105.html.

Further Publications

“How Catholic Have American Presidents Become?” In:Cercles: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone (2015). URL: http://www.cercles.com/review/r74/McAndrews.html.

“What Can We Expect from the President of the United States?” In: Cercles: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone (2015). URL: http://www.cercles.com/review/r73/Waterman.html.

“On the Uses of History in Contemporary American Foreign Policy Debates”. In: H-Soz-Kult (2014). URL: http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2014-1-200.

“What Makes a Successful President?” In: Cercles: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone (2013). URL: http://www.cercles.com/review/r68/Troy.html.

“Whose War of 1812? Competing Memories of the Anglo-American Conflict”. In: Reviews in History (2013). URL: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1387.

“American Exceptionalism Reversed”. In: Neue Politische Literatur (New Political Literature) 57/2 (2012), S. 301-303.

Presentations (selected)

2018

"Who belongs to “the West”? Contesting the Meaning of a Key Concept in International Relations". (Jahrestagung der Graduiertenschule für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien "Studying East and Southeast Europe as Area Studies: Paradigms - Themes - Methods for the 21st Century", München, 25.-27.10.2018)

2016

"Der Westen: Genese, Geschichte und Gegenwart eines wandlungsfähigen Konzepts" (Joint Lecture Series "25 Years after the End of the East-West Conflict – Lessons Learned and New Challenges" by the Osteuropa-Institut and the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien at the Freie Universität Berlin, February 4, 2016).

2015

“The Visualization of the East-West Conflict: European and World Maps in West European and North American School Atlases during the Cold War,” presented at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, April 15, 2015.

“Remapping the Euro-Atlantic World and Imagining ‘the West’: The Spatial Reordering of Europe and North America, 1945-1957,” presented at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, University of Regensburg, June 17, 2015.

“West or South? Spain on the European Mental Maps of West Germans since 1945,” presented at the conference “Authoritarianism and Democracy in Western Europe: West Germany and Spain 1945-1986” at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, September 10-11, 2015.

2014

“Latin Empire, Occident, Europe, Atlantic Community or the West? Processes of mental remapping in Europe and North America, 1945-1957,” presented at the German Historical Institute Paris, February 4, 2014.

“The West as Christianity? Religion in Discourses on Western Civilization in the Early Phase of the Cold War,” presented at the annual meeting of the British International History Group at the London School of Economics, September 4-6, 2014.

“‘That this may end in … complete emancipation from Anglomany’: Promoting an Anglophobic American Nationalism in the War of 1812,” presented at the annual meeting of the British American Nineteenth-Century Historians conference at the University of Reading, September 5-7, 2014.

“The American Revolution in Recent ‘History Wars’ and the Problems of Conservative Historiography in the U.S.,” presented at the annual meeting of the Political Scientists in the German Association for American Studies, Atlantic Academy Rhineland-Palatinate, November 14-15, 2014.

“From Christian Occident to Democratic Europe: Christian-Democratic Networks and European Identity Formation in the Postwar Period,” presented at the annual meeting of CIVITAS-FARCD, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Berlin, November 18-19, 2014.

“The Theory of Republican Peace and Republicans’ Perceptions of the British Empire: U.S. Foreign Policy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,” presented at the “World Wars and Global Peace in the 18th Century” Workshop at the Université Paris-Diderot, November 26, 2014.

“The Spatial Reordering of Europe on West Germans‘ Mental Maps after the Second World War,” presented at the conference “Changing Space and Identity: Central European History/Histories in the 20th Century” at Andrássy University, Budapest, December 3-4, 2014.

2013

“The Transatlantic Drift of the 1980s and the Reinvention of Europe: How Union Worker Movements Imagined America,” presented at the “Making Sense of America: Representations of the Americas in the 1980s West European Protest Movements and their Aftermath” Conference, Humboldt University, Berlin, May 23-24, 2013.

“The Concept of the West in the Political Communication of the Postwar Period and the Origins of the Cold War,” presented at the “Comunicazione politica dall’antichità al XX secolo” Conference, German Historical Institute Rome, June 11-12, 2013.

“The West and Democracy: The Gradual Evolution of an Uneasy Relationship,” presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in Arlington, Virginia, June 20-22, 2013.

“Contours of a Conceptual History of the West,” presented at the 16th International Conference of the History of Concepts Group in Bilbao, August 29-31, 2013.

“European Consciousness and Western Identity: The Intellectual Origins of the Western Alliance in the Cold War,” presented at the German Historical Institute in Rome, September 4, 2013.

“Declaring War as an Act of Peace in 1812: The Paradoxes of American Foreign Policy,” presented at the awarding of the Rolf Kentner Dissertation Prize ceremony at the University of Heidelberg, October 17, 2013.

2012

“1812: War as Domestic Crisis Management,” presented at the annual meeting of the Historians in the German Association for American Studies, Catholic Academy Trier, February 10-12, 2012.

“Enlightenment as a Cultural Marker of American Identity,” presented at the “Between Universalism and Particularistic Claims – Enlightenment in the Context of Social Tension” Conference, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, May 6-8, 2012.

“The Causes of the War of 1812,” presented at the “North America in Crisis: The War of 1812” Conference, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, June 8-9, 2012.

“Europe, America, and the West: European Identity Constructions after September 11, 2001,” presented at the “Thinking of Europe… Conceptions of ‘Europe’ and ‘European Policy’ since the Interwar Period” Conference, Johannes-Gutenberg-University of Mainz, July 5-7, 2012.

“The War of 1812 and American Exceptionalism,” presented at the annual conference of the Transatlantic Studies Association, University College Cork, Ireland, July 9-12, 2012.

“The ‘Americanization’ of the Theory of Republican Peace in the Early American Republic,” presented at the 15th International Conference of the History of Political and Social Concepts Group, University of Helsinki, August 23-25, 2012.

“The Invention of the West after 1945,” presented at the German Historical Institute Washington, September 11, 2012.

“The Construction of Cultural Spaces in Europe and North America after 1945,” presented at the German Historical Institute London, December 4, 2012.

“Empire of Liberty or Land of Liberty? The Early Struggle over American Identity,” presented at the “Empire and Imagination in Early America and the Atlantic World” conference of the European Early American Studies Association, University of Bayreuth, December 13-15, 2012.