Dr Christina von Hodenberg
Reader in European History
Location: Arts Two 2.04email: c.hodenberg@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7882 8375
Dr von Hodenberg was educated at German universities and taught in North America before she came to Queen Mary in 2006. She took her MA degree at the University of Munich and a PhD in history from Bielefeld University. She then taught as an Assistant Professor at the University of Freiburg and as a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. She was a research fellow at Harvard’s Center for European Studies in 2000-2001 and a Visiting Professor at the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies (Université de Montréal) in 1998.
Research interests:
Dr von Hodenberg has written widely on the social and cultural history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. Her first book was a collective biography of Prussian judges from 1815 to the revolution of 1848-49. It argued that judges contributed decisively to a distinctly Prussian brand of bourgeois culture, liberalism and revolution.
From there, she moved to the history of working-class protest. Her study Aufstand der Weber (Weavers in Arms) changed the perception of Germany’s best-known workers’ uprising, the 1844 revolt of Silesian weavers, on the basis of new sources, and traced the legacy of this revolt in German culture.
In recent years, Dr von Hodenberg’s research interests have shifted to the post-war era. She wrote the first overview study of political journalism in West Germany between 1945 and 1973. Covering a wide range of mass media – including television, radio and the popular weeklies –, the prize-winning study explores how mass journalism helped overcome authoritarian traditions of German political culture (Konsens und Krise, 2006). Currently, Dr von Hodenberg is working on a comparative study of German, British and American television during the 1960s and 1970s.
Postgraduate supervision:
Dr von Hodenberg would be happy to supervise Ph.D. students in nineteenth and twentieth-century German history, especially in social and cultural history with a political component. She is particularly interested in issues of political consensus and social conflict, media and mass culture, the history of journalism and the legal professions. She can work with students on topics related to coming to terms with the Nazi past, or on political generations in twentieth-century Germany.
Publications:
Konsens und Krise: Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Medienöffentlichkeit, 1945 bis 1973 [Consensus and Crisis: Mass Media and the Public Sphere in West Germany, 1945-1973] (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006)
Aufstand der Weber: Die Revolte von 1844 und ihr Aufstieg zum Mythos [The Silesian Weavers’ Revolt in 1844: Myth and Reality] (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz, 1997)
Die Partei der Unparteiischen: Der Liberalismus der preußischen Richterschaft, 1815-1848/49 [The Impartial Party: Prussian Judges and Liberalism, 1815-1848/49], Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 113 (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996)
Wo ’1968’ liegt: Reform und Revolte in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik [1968 in West Germany: Reform and Rebellion in the History of the Federal Republic], (co-editor and contributor) (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006)
’Mass Media and the Generation of Conflict: West Germany’s Long Sixties and the Formation of a Critical Public Sphere,’ Contemporary European History 15, 3 (2006), 367-395
‘Of Nazi Werewolves, German Fräuleins, and Iraqi Insurgents: The American Fascination with Hitler’s Last Foray,’ Central European History 41, 1 (2008): 71-92.
‘Mass Media: Manipulation and Markets,‘ in: Kiran Klaus Patel and Christof Mauch, eds., Competing Modernities: The United States of America and Germany, 1890-1990, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press (together with Philipp Gassert)
‘The Protest of Silesian Weavers in 1844: Household Strategies and Moral Concepts,’ Jan Kok, ed, Rebellious Families: Household Strategies and Collective Action in the 19th and 20th Centuries, International Studies in Social History, vol 3 (Oxford and Providence: Berghahn, 2002), 39-56
’Politische Generationen und massenmediale Öffentlichkeit: Das Beispiel der Fünfundvierziger in der Bundesrepublik,’ Ulrike Jureit and Michael Wildt, eds., Generationen: Zur Semantik eines sozialwissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffs (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2005), 266-294
’Der Fluch des Geldsacks: Der Aufstieg des Industriellen als Herausforderung bürgerlicher Werte,’ Manfred Hettling and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, eds., Der bürgerliche Wertehimmel: Innenansichten des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 79-104
’Mit dem Rotstift gegen die soziale Frage: Die preußische Pressezensur und der schlesische Weberaufstand 1844,’ Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte NF 9 (1999), 91-122
Undergraduate teaching:
A Century of Extremes: Germany 1890-1990 (Level 2)
Protest and Revolution in Modern German History (Level 2)
Europe since 1890 (Level 1 Course organiser)