Decide: The French Election and the Untenable Position of Abstention
Slavoj Žižek bemoans in The Independent that the upcoming French run-off election means no choice at all because between Le Pen and Macron, the French people fa...
Author: Torsten Kathke
Torsten Kathke is a historian specializing in the United States and Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries. His book "Wires That Bind: Nation, Region, and Technology in the Southwestern United States, 1854–1920" is due out in July from Transcript publishers.
Torsten earned his doctorate in American Cultural History from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany in 2013. He subsequently worked at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. He is a lecturer in American Studies at the University of Mainz and an adjunct lecturer in History at the University of Cologne.
Video: My Talk at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Back in November of 2016, I held a talk at my former academic home, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. I’ve only recently come across it...
Art Is Worth Fighting For
Science, we march for. The humanities, however, have not fared well lately. That is, the way we talk about the humanities has not been much in the way of apprec...
The Center Must Hold for a Peaceful Europe
It is not an exaggeration to say that with the upcoming French presidential election, the future of Europe hangs in the balance. To wit, Europe, not simply, not...
Year Two: ‘Thus, History!’ Had a Birthday
Here’s a meta-post not about history, but about the blog which I use to share some of my thoughts on it. Thus, History!, the place where you are reading t...
Donald Trump Is No Lyndon Johnson
John Fund at the National Review recently compared Lyndon Johnson to Donald Trump. Citing also this blog, he argued that there were similarities between the two...
Life on Mars, 2016
We pick our heroines and our heroes and we pick our battles and our places to stand. We may be wrong in these choices sometimes, but if our compass is true then...
Against Fear
What is terror, and who is a terrorist? The question comes up a lot these days. In Germany, the Berlin Christmas market attack was labeled a terrorist act prett...
On Patriotism: How to Practice a Constitution
Playwright Tony Kushner wrote of “beautiful systems dying, old fixed orders spiraling apart” in the 1990s, referencing the changes palpable at the e...
There’s Precedent for All of This Except Everything
Donald Trump will put all his business dealings in a blind trust. Except it’s not a blind trust, because it will be run by his kids. Not to worry. It̵...