Activities › Reeducation Revisited

Workshops and Conferences:

The Ambiguous Semantics of “Reeducation” in Transnational and Transhistorical Perspective

February 16-18, 2022 (International Conference)
Organized by Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Bavarian American Academy in Munich

Jana Aresin at the conference opening in Munich

The program can be found here. Click here for the workshop report.

Beyond National Character? Identity Formation in the Context of Postwar Reeducation

November 5-6, 2020 (Virtual Workshop)
Organized by Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg
Click here for the workshop report.

Participants of the virtual workshop at FAU

Recreating Separate Spheres Across Not-So-Separate Worlds: Gender and Reeducation in Japan, Germany, and the USA after World War II

February 20-21, 2020

Workshop at GHI West, UC Berkeley Campus

Organized by the German Historical Institute and Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg

Click here for the conference report.

Workshop participants in front of Moses Hall, UC Berkeley

Reeducation Revisited: Strategies, Actors, Institutions in Transnational and Comparative Perspective

September 29-30, 2017
Conference at Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut Nürnberg
Conveners: Katharina Gerund (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), Heike Paul (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), and Anne Schenderlein (GHI Washington)

Click here for the workshop program.

Talks and Lectures:

Katharina Gerund: “‘America’s Germany?’ Reeducation and Its Legacies.” 39th Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange, Jan. 13, 2023, Nürnberg.

Heike Paul: “Re-Education und Westbindung der Deutschen nach 1945: Maßnahmen, Widersprüche, Kritik.” Workshop: “Rethinking the West. Versprechen und Krise eines Konzepts”, Dec. 15, 2022, University of Muenster.

Jana Aresin: “The Women Behind the Bamboo Curtain: Admiration and Anxiety towards ‘Red China’ in Japanese Cold War Women’s Magazines.” Workshop: “Cold War Disconnections and the Transformation of Internationalisms”, June 8-10, 2022, LMU Munich (Online).

Jana Aresin: “Visualizing Women at Work: Idealization and Realism in Japanese Women’s Magazines in the early Cold War.” Workshop: “The Politics of the Page: Visuality and Materiality in Illustrated Periodicals across Cold War Borders”, May 12-13, 2022, Philipps University Marburg (Online).

Katharina Gerund: “‘America’s Germany?’ Reeducation and Its Legacies.” 38th Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange, Jan. 12, 2022 (Online).

Akino Oshiro: “Beigun Senryouki Okinawa ni Okeru Okinawajin Kichi Rōdōsha: Sengo Fukkou wo Saikou Suru (Military Base Workers in U.S. Occupied Okinawa: Rethinking Postwar Economic Development).” Conference: East Asian Consortium of Japanese Studies, Organized Panel: “Peace of East Asia and Okinawa” Nov. 27, 2021 (Online).

Heike Paul: “Lessons in Democracy? Strategies and Paradoxes of (Re-)Education in Post-War Germany.” Learning, Unlearning, Relearning: Cultural Expertise and Its Praxis. Virtual Conference, Nov. 23-24, 2021.

Katharina Gerund: “The Legacies of Reeducation in Germany and Beyond.” Transatlantic Exchange of Civic Educators, Oct. 11, 2021 (zoom).

Akino Oshiro: “Military Base Work as Development in Postwar Okinawa.” Conference: European Association of Japanese Studies (EAJS), Section on Hist32: Notions of Race and Belonging, Aug. 25, 2021 (Online) & Mini Conference for Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) Annual Meeting, Section on Decolonizing Development, July 5, 2021 (Online).

Katharina Gerund: “The Gift of Democracy: American Occupation, Reeducation, and Gratitude in Postwar Germany.” Online Symposium Gratitude in Transatlantic Relations, May 19, 2021.

Jana Aresin: “Democracy, Consumerism and Gender Roles in Japanese Women’s Magazines during the US Occupation and the early Cold War. ” Conference: Cultures of Occupation: New Paradigms, Models and Comparisons at the University of Nottingham, April 14-17, 2021 (Online).

Akino Oshiro: “From Farm to Base: Mobilization of Local Population for Military Work in U.S Occupied Okinawa.” Conference: Toward the Future of Island Studies: Networking International Young Scholars 2021 (TFIS 2021) at the Research Institute for Islands and Sustainability, University of the Ryukyus, Feb. 23, 2021 (Online).

Akino Oshiro: “The 2019 Henoko Referendum: Exposing US Military Base Issue as ‘Japan Problem’, not ‘Okinawa Problem.” Guest talk for Japan-Zentrum Kolloquium at LMU München, Jan. 14, 2021 (Online).

Akino Oshiro: “From Farm to Base: The Culture, Politics, and Identity of Okinawan Military Base Workers from 1945 – 1972. “ Conference: Vereinigung fuer sozialwissenschaftliche Japanforschung, Fachgruppe: Geschichte, Nov. 21, 2020 (Online).

Katharina Gerund: “(Un)Learning Racism? The Racial Logics of US Reeducation Efforts in Postwar Germany.” HLCS Conference at Radboud University (Nijmegen, Netherlands), Nov. 14-15, 2019.

Akino Oshiro: “Testing Japan’s Democracy – Remains of WW II in Okinawa and a Message to the US and Japan” at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, July 22, 2019.

Jana Aresin: “From World War II Battlefield to Cold War Home Front? Reeducation Policies in U.S.-Occupied Japan, 1945-1952.” Workshop American Home Front(s) at the Bavarian American Academy Munich, July 20-21, 2019.

Jana Aresin: “Democracy, Consumerism and Gender Roles in U.S. American and Japanese Women’s Magazines during the Cold War” at the BAA Summer Academy, Nuremberg, May 29, 2019.

Heike Paul: “Reeducation and Romance.” Aesthetics and Democracy – Symposium in Honor of Winfried Fluck’s 75th Birthday. FU Berlin, May 3, 2019.

Guest Lectures & Workshops at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg:

Charlotte Lerg (LMU Munich): Book Presentation/Guest Lecture The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky: Into Germany at the End of World War II (Nov. 28, 2022).

Christine de Matos (University of Notre Dame, Australia): “Visualising ‘Modernity’: US Representations of Occupier Wives and German Domestic Workers, 1945–1949” (June 28, 2022).

Jeanpaul Goergen: “Women between Kitchen and Public Sphere: Screening Gender in US Non-Theatrical Films of the 1950s” (Dec. 9, 2019).

Vera Mackie (University of Wollongong/HHU Düsseldorf): “Gendering US-Japan Educational Exchange in the Mid- to Late-Twentieth Century” (Nov. 18, 2019)

Annette Schad-Seifert (HHU Düsseldorf): “Singlehood and Work-Life Conflict among Women in Japan” (June 24, 2019)

Public Events:

“Amerikas Mr. Germany: Guido Goldman:” Autorengespräch mit Martin Klingst

April 21, 2021, online (via livestream): Martin Klingst discusses his new book on Guido Goldman, the founding director of the German Marshall Fund and a significant player in transatlantic relations of the postwar era (in German).

Further information can be found on the website of the Bavarian American Academy.

Die Ambivalenz des Neuanfangs: Autorengespräch mit Uwe Timm über seinen Roman “Ikarien” und Deutschland im Jahr 1945

(The Ambivalence of a New Beginning: Talk with author Uwe Timm about his novel “Ikarien” and Germany in 1945 – in German!)
July 2, 2020 (online, via livestream)