Annika Frieberg
- Visiting Lecturer, Department of History
Education
- B.A. at Denison University, OH, 1995
- M.A. at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2003
- Ph.D. at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2008
Contact Information
|
| BH 710 |
| 855-7581 |
Background
My research is concerned with Polish-German relations during the Cold War, with transnational and national memory, and with the rebuilding of Central Europe after the Second World War. My book project, “Closely Watched: A Transnational Media Network in Postwar Polish-German Relations,” provides a surprising explanation for how Poland and West Germany formed functioning politico-cultural relationships in postwar Europe. Specifically, I show how bilingual media activists from the borderlands renegotiated their mutual relations in the aftermath of war, expulsions, and genocide to lay the groundwork for the official rapprochement spearheaded by Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. The study utilizes interviews with, and correspondence among, early media activists, as well as radio and television manuscripts and broadcasts to trace the dialogue between Poles and West Germans in the late 1950s and into the 1960s. It is the first study to investigate the media’s and media activists’ role in one of the most remarkable success stories in twentieth-century diplomatic history: the reconciliation of two countries that, before 1956, seemed hopelessly embroiled in a mutually antagonistic relationship defined by past crimes, chauvinism, and Cold War rivalries.
Selected Awards
• Dissertation Completion Grant, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• DAAD Dissertation Fellowship
• Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz
• Residential Fellowship
• Sweden-America Foundation M.A. Fellowship
Research Interests
- Central Europe
- Conflict resolution
- National/ transnational history
Courses Recently Taught
• Eastern Europe in the 20th Century
• The Habsburg Empire
• Europe in the 19th Century
• History of WWI
• The History of Western Civilization, Modern Sequence
Publication Highlights
Book manuscript under preparation: “Closely Watched: Transnational Networks and Audiovisual Media in Postwar Polish-German Relations”
“Reconciliation Remembered. Early Activists and the Polish-German Relations.” Re-Mapping Polish-German Memory. Eds. Justyna Beinek and Piotr Kosicki. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, forthcoming spring 2012.
“Catholics in Ostpolitik? Networking and Non-State Diplomacy in the Bensberger Polen-Memorandum, 1966-1970.” Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy. Eds. Jessica Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010.
“Transnational Spaces in National Places: Early Activists in Polish-West German Relations,” Nationalities Papers. The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 38:2 (March 2010), 213-226.
“Hansjakob Stehle and the Borderlands on the Polish Side of the Oder River and the Lusatian Neisse in 1956-1972.” Erinnerungsorte, Mythen und Stereotypen in Europa, Eds. Heidi Hein-Kirchner and Jaros³aw Suchoples. Wroc³aw: Wydawnictwo ATUT, 2008.
