Education

Ph.D., University of Michigan

B.A., Wesleyan University

Research Interests

Belinda Davis is author or co-editor of five books, including her forthcoming The Internal Life of Politics: Extraparliamentary Opposition in West Germany, 1962-1983 (CUP), and several dozen articles, on themes including popular politics and social movements; conceptions of democracy and how change takes place; gender; history of everyday life; oral history, memory, and emotion; urban history; transnational history; policing, violence, and terror; and consumption. Her graduate students have completed or are completing dissertations on topics ranging from Turkish “guestworkers” in West Germany, to identities in German-Polish and German-Czech borderlands, to sexualities in twentieth-century Germany and Hungary, to Holocaust survivors’ memory and resettlement, to “lived ideologies” (antifascism, socialism) in the postwar Germanies and Europe. She is currently co-editing the collection Voices of the Organized Poor: Learning from the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign’s Everyday Struggles for Survival and Alternative Futures; and working on a project concerning the meanings and implications of “the West,” progress, and other terms in the historiography of Europe.

Awards, Fellowships, and Grants

  • Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (Potsdam), Residential Fellowship, Summer 2006
  • Volkswagen Research Fellowship, AY 2005-6
  • Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University, Research Fellowship, 2003-2004

Selected Publications

Books:

  • The Internal Life of Politics: The New Left in West Germany, 1962-1983 (in preparation)
  • Changing the World, Changing Oneself: Political Protest and Collective Identities in the 1960s/70s West Germany and U.S., ed., with W. Mausbach, M. Klimke, and C. MacDougall (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010)
  • Alltag—Erfahrung—Eigensinn: Historisch-anthropologische Erkundungen, ed., with Thomas Lindenberger and Michael Wildt (Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus,  2008)
  • Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

Selected Recent Articls and Book Chapters:

  • “A Whole World Opening Up:  Transcultural Contact, Difference, and the Politicization of New Left Activists,” in Davis, et al, eds., Changing the World, Changing Oneself (New York: Berghahn, 2010), 255-73; also “Introduction,” with W. Mausbach, M. Klimke, C. MacDougall, in ibid, vii-xix
  • “Transnation/Transculture:  Gender and Politicization in and out of the BRD, 1950s-1970s,” in M. Ineichen, et al, eds., Gender in Trans-it: Transkulturelle und Transnationale Perspectiven/Transcultural and Transnational Perspectives (Basel: Chronos, 2009), 51-67
  • “Europe is a Woman, America is a Woman?”, Europa ist eine Frau, Themenportal Europäische Geschichte (http://www.europa.clio-online.de), November 2009
  • “Konsum im ersten Weltkriege,” in Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Claudius Torp, eds., Die Konsumgesellschaft in Deutschland 1890-1990 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2009), 232-49
  • “What’s Left?  Popular and Democratic Political Participation in Postwar Europe,” American Historical Review 113, 2 (April 2008), 363-90
  • “Einleitung,” with T. Lindenberger and M. Wildt, in Davis, Lindenberger, Wildt, eds., Eigen-Sinn, Alltag, und Erfahrung (Frankfurt/aM: Campus, 2008)
  • “The City as Theater of Protest: West Berlin and West Germany, 1962-1983,” in Gyan Prakash and Kevin M. Kruse, eds., The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008), 247-74
  • “Civil Society in a New Key? Feminist and Alternative Groups in 1970s West Germany,” in Sonya Michel, et al, eds., Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (NY: Berghahn, 2008)
  • “The Private is Political: Gender, Politics, and Political Activism in Modern German History,” in Jean Quataert and Karen Hagemann, eds., Gendering Modern German History: Rewriting Historiography (New York: Berghahn, 2007), 107-127; German translation Frankfurt/M: Campus, 2008
  • “The Street,” with Emanuelle Cronier, et al, in Jay Winter et al, Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) (contributing author)
  • “Jenseits von Terror und Rückzug: Die Suche nach politischem Raum und Verhandlungsstrategien in der BRD der 70er Jahre,” in H.-G. Haupt, et al, eds., Terrorismus in der Bundesrepublik. Medien, Staat und Subkulturen in den 1970er Jahren (Frankfurt/M: Campus, 2006), 154-186
  • "Violence and Memory of the Nazi past in 1960s-70s West German Protest," in P. Gassert and A. Steinweis, eds., Coping with the Nazi Past: West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict, 1955-1975 (New York: Berghahn, 2006), 210-37
  • “’Women’s Strength Against Their Crazy Male Power’. Gendered Language in the West German Peace Movement of the 1980s,” in J. A. Davy, K. Hagemann, and U. Kätzel, eds., Frieden - Gewalt - Geschlecht. Friedens- und Konfliktforschung als Geschlechterforschung (Essen: Klartext, 2005), 244-65
  • "Everyday' Protest, Violence, and the Culture of Conflict in Berlin, 1840-1980," in C. Mauch and A. Daum, eds., Berlin - Washington, 1800-2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representation, and National Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Professional Affiliation

  • Advisory Board, Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technische Universität Berlin, 2009-
  • Associate Editor, Signs, 2005-
  • North American Editor, Women’s History Review, 2004-2007
  • Co-Investigator, Project “Das Fremde im Eigenen: Interkultureller Austausch und kollektive Identitäten in der Revolte der 1960er Jahre," Volkswagen Stiftung, 2002-2005

Courses Offered

Undergraduate:

  • 510:102 Development of Europe II
  • 510:327 20th Century Europe
  • 510:363 History of Germany From 1871 to the Present
  • 506:402 Seminar: Political Protest and Social Change in Europe and the U.S. (also courses in European Studies)

Graduate:

  • 510:539 Colloquium in Women, Politics, and Everyday Life (also courses in Women’s and Gender Studies)
  • 510:549 Seminar in Women's & Gender History
  • 510:567 Colloquium in German and European History
  • 510:599 PDR in Modern Europ
  • 510:615/616 Seminar in European History