AGI

Society, Culture & Politics

The AGI Society, Culture & Politics Program focuses on crucial topics within the German-American dialogue, including: demographic change, migration/integration, and aging societies; electoral politics at the national, state, and European levels, and comparative analysis of Germany and the United States; diversity within Germany, Europe, and the United States; the politics of collective memory and identity, Holocaust remembrance and reconciliation, and shifting conceptions of national identity that shape perspectives and policy responses.
Reset

Necessary but Hardly Sufficient: Assessing a Century of Women’s Suffrage in Germany and the United States

Long before feminists began lobbying for affirmative action, gender mainstreaming, and quotas, suffragettes around the world presumed that the formula “add women, voting rights, and stir” would quickly transform their …

Muslim Women in Germany and the United States

Common and Complex Challenges Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of practitioners and experts from Germany and the United States, this workshop held on February 20, 2019, focused on the economic …

Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman to Retire from AGI

The American-German Institute (AGI) at Johns Hopkins University announces that Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman will be retiring at the end of February 2019.  Dr. Gardner Feldman has served as Director …

A Doctor’s Mission: The Life and Work of Ernst Kisch

Read the stories of other Shanghai Jews Dr. Ernst Kisch was an opera-loving Viennese physician who was imprisoned in Dachau and Buchenwald for being Jewish.  Upon his release from Buchenwald, …

Us versus Them: The Steady Narrative of “Othering” in Historical and Contemporary Debates in Germany and the U.S.

Germany and the United States today face rising anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment as nativist politics on both sides of the Atlantic gain not only traction, but also legitimacy. From the …

Getting Over the Cold War. Why German-American Relations Need a New Narrative

According to the planners of Germany’s current year-long public diplomacy campaign, Deutschlandjahr USA, Germany and the United States are “Wunderbar Together.” Under this—some would say catchy, some would say naïve—slogan, …

Comparing the Experiences of Discrimination Faced by Jews in Early 20th Century Germany and by Muslims in Contemporary Germany

As a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow from October to December 2018, Dr. Ufuk Topkara conducted research on a project that emerges out of the interconnected strands of intellectual inquiry: comparing the …

The Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe between Conflict and Reconciliation

Edited by Lily Gardner Feldman, Raisa Barash, Samuel Goda, Andre Zempelburg Influenced by the crisis in the former Soviet Union following the March 2014 Russian annexation/integration of Crimea, the essays …

The U.S. and Germany Are Losing Cultural Ambassadors: Students Studying Abroad

Last month, the Institute of International Education and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs released their Open Doors 2018 report, which assesses the role of …

The Radicalization of the Extreme Right: Charlottesville August 2017 and Chemnitz August 2018  

In Germany, as in the United States, we are confronted with growing right-wing radicalism. Right-wing populists or radicals “offer” “solutions” by addressing perceived or real weaknesses or even crises in …

The Radicalization of the Extreme Right: Charlottesville and Chemnitz

As a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow from October to December 2018, Prof. Dr. Hajo Funke looked at the developments of two extreme-right events, in Charlottesville and Chemnitz, including the conditions of …

Migration – A Global Reality or Threat

On December 12, 164 nations ratified the United Nations-Migration Pact (or Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration) at a UN conference in Marrakesh, the very first of its …