Prof. Dr. Katharina von Hammerstein

University of Connecticut, USA
German Studies

External Senior Fellow
Human Rights Research Consortium Connecticut & Baden-Württemberg
May – June 2020

Website

E-Mail: von.hammerstein@uconn.edu

Last Update: 31.08.2020

Curriculum Vitae

Prof. Dr. Katharina von Hammerstein (Ph.D., University of California Los Angeles [UCLA], USA)is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, Full Professor of German Studies, and member of the Human Rights Institute’s leadership team at the University of Connecticut, USA.

Her scholarship is located at the intersections of textual representation, content questions of violence, “race” and gender, and diverse historical, political, social, cultural and legal contexts. Covering ground from German Romanticism (ca. 1800) to colonial genocide (early 20th C), her twelve book publications and numerous articles focus on German and Austrian literature, art and nonfictional texts in relation to: human rights issues and collective conflict/war; whites authors‘ representations of Blacks in German-language texts and Black authors‘ perspectives on Germany around 1900; women’s self-(re)presentations as political practice between the pre-revolutionary German 1840s and the Weimar Republic. Applying a variety of theoretical approaches, she is currently investigating Ovaherero and German, nonliterary and literary, oral and written testimonies on the German-Ovaherero Colonial War and Ovaherero Genocide (1904-1908) in the former colony of German Southwest Africa (today’s Namibia) and its aftermath.

She is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Connecticut (USA) / Baden-Württemberg (Germany) Human Rights Research Consortium with its offices at the Human Rights Institute (HRI), University of Connecticut, USA, and the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg, Germany.

Selected Publications

Hammerstein, Katharina von. Women Writing War: From German Colonialism through World War I (ed. w/Barbara Kosta and Julie Shoults). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2018.
Hammerstein, Katharina von. “Hochverräterisches oder sonst Despektierliches“: Bettina von Arnim und Sophie Mereau zu Politik und Menschenrechten.” Acta Germanica 47.1 (2019): 106-119.
Hammerstein, Katharina von. “‘Grüßt mein Kind, wenn’s noch lebt.’ Kinder des Deutsch-Herero Kolonialkriegs.” Mission Afrika: Geschichtsschreibung über Grenzen hinweg. Ed. Michael Eckardt. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2019. 219-232.
Hammerstein, Katharina von. “The Herero. Germany’s ‘Other Genocide.’ Diverse Testimonies.” SITES: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 20.2 (March 2016): 267-286.
Hammerstein, Katharina von. “Europe’s Loss of What is Most Precious.” German Artist Käthe Kollwitz’sCross-European Antiwar Activism.” European Culture. Eds. Nicolae Păun and Enrique Banús. Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Presa Universitară Clujeană: Editura Funţiei pentru Studii Europene, 2016. 97-107.
Hammerstein, Katharina von. “Subalterne konnten sprechen. (Dis-)Positionen von AfrikanerInnen und Afro-Amerikanernim und zum Deutschland und Österreich des 19. Jahrhunderts.” Acta Germanica 41 (2013): 23-41.
Hammerstein, Katharina von. Sich MitSprache erschreiben: Selbstzeugnisse als politische Praxis schreibender Frauen, Deutschland 1840-1919. Heidelberg/Germany: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013.

FRIAS Project

Textual Representations of the German-Ovaherero Colonial War and Ovaherero Genocide 1904-1908 in the Former Colony of German Southwest Africa, today’s Namibia | Developing the Connecticut/Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium

This project investigates testimonies on the first genocide of the twentieth century committed during the German-Ovaherero-Nama Colonial War in the former colony of German Southwest Africa. Among the interdisciplinary theoretical approaches applied are the bottom-up definition of war as “experience of ordinary people” (Christine Sylvester), “forensis” of human rights violations (Eyal Weizman), definitions of “witness” (Didier Fassin), definitions of “direct, structural and cultural violence” (Johan Galtung), and attributions of “precariousness” in war (Judith Butler).

The outcomes of this short-term fellowship include my contribution to a volume on fictional and nonfictional textual representations of “Landnahme” (land grabbing; ed. Holdenried /Post, U Freiburg) as well as networking with the Freiburger Afrika-Zentrum, MIASA, PH Freiburg and possibly “Junge Universität” or “United World College.”

As Co-Director of the Connecticut/Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium (HRRC) I will furthermore enhance interdisciplinary, interinstitutional and inter-state/international research collaborations on human-rights-related topics by co-organizing the HRRC’s Inaugural Conference “Human Rights Research in the 2020s,” May 20-22, 2020 at the FRIAS.