Transatlantic Cultures: America, Europe and the West

For this reason, a rich body of scholarship, devoted to this subject, arose in both Germany and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Conducted mostly in the domain of political and diplomatic history, research into transatlantic history has focused almost exclusively on the immediate postwar period and the 1950s and 1960s.

By moving both back in time (into the early 19th century) and beyond the 1960s (up until the present) and by drawing upon cultural and intellectual history, "Transatlantic Cultures: America, Europe and the West" will broaden our understanding of transformations on both sides of the Atlantic. Individual projects will ask such questions as: Does the period starting roughly in 1970 demand new conceptual frameworks, separate from those developed for the first two thirds of the twentieth century? What role have American universities play in the popular imagination of Europeans and in politics? A second project is devoted to the transatlantic flow of ideas in the area of education and universities. Finally, a third project explores the Enlightenment in postwar thought and discourse; its premise is that the shared modern history of Europe and the United States and discussions about the decline of the West amount in a large part to a reckoning with the enlightenment concepts.

Spokesperson

Prof. Dr. Christof Mauch
(Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society and America Institute, LMU)

Working Group

• Prof. Dr. Michael Kimmage
  (Catholic University of America, Washington D.C.)
• Dr. Ariane Leendertz
  (America Institute, LMU)
• Dr. Charlotte Lerg
  (Lasky-Center for Transatlantic Studies, LMU)

Publications

• Wolfgang Koeppen: Journey through America. Translated and with an Introduction by Michael Kimmage (= Transatlantic Perspectives Vol. 1), New York / Oxford 2012.
• Thomas Adam / Charlotte A. Lerg: Diplomacy on campus: the political dimensions of academic exchange in the North Atlantic, in: Journal of Transatlantic Studies 13 (2015), p. 299-310.

Eine transatlantische Familiengeschichte, in: CAS Aviso 7 (2013), S. 12-15.

Events

• Lecture of Prof. Charles Maier – "Political Passions in the Twentieth Century: Transatlantic Comparisons and Global Perspectives"
  (Summer Semester 2011)
• International Workshop – "The Enlightenment between Europe and the United States: Twentieth-Century Tensions"
  (Summer Semester 2011)
• International Workshop – "Writing Post-1970 History: Conceptualizing the late Twentieth Century in German and American Historiography"
  (Summer Semester 2011)
• International Conference – "Academic Culture And International Relations – A Transatlantic Perspective"
  (Summer Semester 2012)
• Lecture of Prof. Jeremi Suri – "Human Rights and Nation-Building after 1968: Writing International History of the Recent Past"
  (Summer Semester 2012)
• International Conference – "The Cold War and American Music, 1945-2000"
  (Summer Semester 2012)