U.S. Embassy Teacher Academy 2008
“Lincoln's Legacy: Nation Building, Democracy and the Question of
Race and Civil Rights”

October 2–5, 2008

Organizers

Dr. Jörg Nagler is Professor of North American history at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. He taught at the University of Kiel, where he received his Ph.D., and studied at Indiana University. From 1987 to 1992, Dr. Nagler was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. During this assignment, he also taught as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. Upon his return to Germany, he became director of the John F. Kennedy House in Kiel, before he received tenure as a professor of North American history in Jena.

Professor Nagler has written extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. political, social, cultural, and ethnic history. His major focus is the subject of war and society in American history. His monograph, Nationale Minoritäten im Krieg (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2000), is concerned with national minorities and the American home front during the First World War. Dr. Nagler is the editor of a festschrift in honor of Peter Schäfer, Nationale und Internationale Perspektiven amerikanischer Geschichte (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002), and co-editor of On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Current projects include book publications on Afro-American Resistance (from the American Revolution to the Civil War), children as victims of the Civil War, and the American perception of the German Reich (1871-1914), and a Lincoln biography that will be published in 2009. He is co-editor of the book series: MOSAIC: Studien und Texte zur amerikanischen Kultur und Geschichte.

Dr. Martina Kohl studied at the Johannes-Gutenberg University in Mainz and Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. She received an M.A. (1985) and a Dr. Phil. (1992) from Mainz University. Her research interest concentrated on 19th and 20th century American literature. From 1985 to 1990, Dr. Kohl taught in the English Department and for the English Composition Board and served as writing consultant at the Business School of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Since 1993, Dr. Kohl has been working as Cultural Affairs Specialist for the U.S. Embassy in Bonn and Berlin. Dr. Kohl frequently teaches Cultural Diplomacy courses at Humboldt University Berlin. Her publications include 'The Wilhelm Meister Pebble': Bildungsromanelemente in Thomas Wolfes Look Homeward, Angel (1929), Of Time and the River (1935), The Web and the Rock (1939) und You Can't Go Home Again (1940) (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994) and Visual Culture in the American Studies Classroom. Proceedings of the U.S. Embassy Teacher Academy 2003 (Vienna: RPO, 2005) which she co-edited with Udo J. Hebel. Together with Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Grabbe, Prof. Dr. Alfred Hornung, and Dr. Rolf Theis, Dr. Kohl edits the American Studies Journal.

Faculty

Dr. John Dean is Professor of American Studies & Cultural History at the University of Versailles in France. He served as Chair of the American Studies Program at the University of Strasbourg and Director of Crosscultural Studies at the University of Syracuse, Strasbourg. Dr. Dean has frequently directed courses on U.S. Cultural Studies and given guest lectures at teacher training workshops in Germany (Akademie für Lehrerfortbildung, Dillingen) and throughout Europe. He has been a Resident Scholar at the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Michigan (regular intervals, 2002-2006); at the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University, Indiana (1998, 2003); and at the Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz (2001). For years, he has been teaching graduate courses at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder, during the summer. His research topics include the evolution of American youth culture in the 20th-21st centuries; American icons & monuments: techniques of visual decoding: Heroism Studies; Patterns of corruption & violence in the US; Patterns of social & cultural resurgence in the US; Problems of social reform in the US: successes, failures, problematic compromises (traced & illustrated via US popular culture). Among Dr. Dean's most recent publications are: Organized Crime in the US from Prohibition to the Cold War (Paris: Editions du Temps, 2002); Culture and Technology (Paris: Elipses, 2001); Media & News in the United States since 1945 (Paris: Messene, 1997); European Readings of American Popular Culture (US: Greenwood, 1996); and he was a major contributor to the recent Heroes in a Global World (US: Hampton Press, 2007).

Dr. David Goldfield is Robert Lee Bailey Prof. of History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Goldfield published an American history textbook with Prentice Hall, called The American Journey: A History of the United States. His most recent publication is Southern Histories: Public, Personal, and Sacred. He is also the author of the award-winning study, Still Fighting the Civil War: the American South and Southern History. Dr. Goldfield is an expert on the American South, including race relations, economic development, religion, and political culture. His research has also focused on the American City with many of the same issues, including ethnicity. He is author of "America's Changing Perceptions of Race, 1946-1996," in Cristina Giorcelli and Rob Kroes, eds., Living With America, 1946-1996 (VU University Press, Amsterdam, 1997), Race, Region, and Cities: Interpreting the Urban South (1997), Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture (1990), and Urban America: A History (sec. ed. 1990). Dr. Goldfield received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Maryland in 1970. He has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Urban History since 1990 and is consultant to numerous urban and southern history museums.

Dr. Reinhard Isensee is Professor of American Studies at Humboldt University Berlin. Dr. Isensee's numerous publications include The Other Reader: Erzählkonstruktionen im Jugendroman in den USA seit den 1960er Jahren (Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2003); Die Romane von Frank Norris. Eine wirkungsästhetische Untersuchung als Beitrag zur Bestimmung des Naturalismus in den USA (PhD-Thesis, Berlin 1983) and articles ranging from young adult fiction, youth culture, new media and multiculturalism. He repeatedly taught courses on narratives of the Civil War. Currently, Dr. Isensee's major research interests are related to recent developments in the New Media, theories of digital culture, the implications of electronic media such as the Internet for processes of (transcultural) identity formation at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century and the impact of electronic communication on the production, distribution and reception of knowledge in American culture in general and literature in particular, including adolescent literature.