Dr. habil. Jasper Trautsch

Research Project (completed)

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

Postdoc-/Habilitation Project at the Graduate School

The project examines how Europe was divided into East and Weste on the mental maps of the people after the end of the Second World War, and how the idea of a political, cultural, historical and religious justificates transatlantic "West" prevailed in the political discourses of Western Europe and North America in demarcation to the "East".

See also the project outline in the Annual Report 2015 of the Graduate School.

Curriculum Vitae

Since 05/2018 Affiliated Researcher of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies. 05/2015 - 04/2018 Lecturer, University of Regensburg & Postdoctoral Researcher at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies. 2013 Rolf Kentner Dissertation Prize for an outstanding dissertation in American Studies. 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).

Publications

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] (Tectum: Marburg, 2008).

Edited Books and Journal Issues

Civic Nationalisms in Global Perspective, London (erscheint 2019).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

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

"Was ist ‚der Westen‘: Zur Semantik eines politischen Grundbegriffs der Moderne", in: Forum interdisziplinäre Begriffsgeschichte, Jg. 6, Heft 1 (2017), 58-66, im Internet abrufbar unter: http://www.zfl-berlin.org/tl_files/zfl/downloads/publikationen/forum_begriffsgeschichte/ZfL_FIB_6_2017_1_Trautsch.pdf

„Der Westen: Theoretisch-methodische Überlegungen zu einer Begriffsgeschichte", in: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Jg. 59 (erscheint 2017).

The Concept of the West. In: Critical Muslim, Jg. 20 (2016), 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, 235-245.

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

“1776 as an Identity Crisis: American Nationalism and the American Revolution,” in: Jahrbuch für europäische Überseegeschichte [Yearbook for European Overseas History] 14, 2014, 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, 322-338.

“The Invention of ‘the West,’” in: Bulletin of the German Historical Institute Washington (53) 2013, 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, 20-23.

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

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

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

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

“Disarmament,” “Globalization,” “Idealism,” “Isolationism,” and “Peace Theories,” in: Paul Joseph (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives 4. (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2017).

“Die Konstruktion kultureller Räume in Europa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert” [“The Construction of Cultural Spaces in Europe in the 19th and 20th Century”], in: Katherina Haberkorn (ed.), Raum und Identität im Wandel: Mitteleuropäische Geschichte(n) im 20. Jahrhundert [Changing Space and Identity: Central European History/Histories in the 20th Century] (Herne: Gabriele Schäfer, forthcoming, 2015).

“Thomas Jefferson,” “Louisiana Purchase,” “First Barbary War,” “Second Barbary War,” “Venezuela,” “Korea, 1945-1953,” and “The Ugly American,” in: David Bernstein and Chris Magoc (eds.), Encyclopedia of American Imperialism and Expansionism 4. (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Press, forthcoming, 2015).

„Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814)“, „Beer and Ale“, „Rum“ und „Whiskey“, in: Merril D. Smith (Hrsg.), The World of the American Revolution: A Daily Life Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa-Barbara: ABC-Clio Press, 2015), Bd. 1, pp. 68-71, 316-319, 368-370 and 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, and Jan Hansen (eds.), Making Sense of the Americas: How Protest Related to America in the 1980s and Beyond (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2015), 267-291.

“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 and Antonio Thompson (eds.), Handbook of American Military and Diplomatic History: The Colonial Period to 1877 (New York: Routledge, 2014), 190-197.

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

“Axel Springer Verlag: Mit BILD und Co. nach Polen," in: Stefan Schmid (ed.), Strategien der Internationalisierung: Fallstudien und Fallbeispiele, 2nd enl. ed. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), 247-281, 3rd enl. and rev. ed. (2012), 273-310.

Reviews (selected)

“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), accessible via: http://www.recensio.net/rezensionen/zeitschriften/francia-recensio/2015-1/19-20-jahrhundert-histoire-contemporaine/die-internationale-der-konservativen?set_language=fr.

“Marino Camboni et al.: 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], Vol. 94 (2014), 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], Vol. 94 (2014), 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), Vol. 94 (2014), 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, Vol. 54 (2014), accessible via: http://www.fes.de/cgi-bin/afs.cgi?id=81545.

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

“Lloyd Kramer: Nationalism in Europe and America,” in: Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2013), 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, Vol. 77, No. 2 (2013), 699-701.

“Hannah Spahn: Jefferson, Time, and History,” in: Amerikastudien/American Studies, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2013), 303-305.

“Charlotte A. Lerg, Amerika als Argument: Die deutsche Amerika-Forschung im Vormärz und ihre politische Deutung in der Revolution von 1848/49 (America as an Argument: The German Research on America in the Pre-March Era and its Political Interpretation in the Revolution of 1848/49); Die Amerikanische Revolution (The American Revolution),“ in: Amerikastudien/American Studies, Vol. 58, No. 1 (2013), 151-155.

“Paul Nolte: Was ist Demokratie? [What Is Democracy?],“ in: Sehepunkte: Rezensionsjournal für Geschichtswissenschaften (2012), accessible via http://www.sehepunkte.de/2012/06/21105.html.

Further Publications

“How Catholic Have American Presidents Become?,” in:Cercles: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone (2015), accessible via: 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), accessible via: http://www.cercles.com/review/r73/Waterman.html.

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

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

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

“American Exceptionalism Reversed,” in: Neue Politische Literatur (New Political Literature), Vol. 57, No. 2 (2012), 301-303.

Conferences and Workshops (selected)

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.