Candidates: GSA 2023 Elections

Standing for: Germanistik

    • Faye Stewart
    • Name: Faye Stewart
    • Candidate Statement:
      I am an Associate Professor of German and cross-appointed faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I joined the GSA as a graduate student in 2002, since which time I have participated in 16 conferences and served on the GSA’s Program Committee (2016–2018). As a co-coordinator and founding member of the GSA’s Queer and Trans Studies Network, I enjoy working with colleagues to increase the visibility of queer and trans* scholars and scholarship. I thrive when working in a collective and am passionate about collaborative service, activism, teaching, and research. Feminist and antiracist frameworks inform both my research and my commitment to inclusivity, accessibility, and equity in the workplace, the classroom, and professional organizations. I want to learn more about how the GSA can support and mentor graduate students, emerging scholars, and precariously employed or unemployed colleagues. If elected to the Board, I will listen to the needs of members, amplify the voices of underrepresented colleagues, and help build coalitions to bring about meaningful change. Faculty union work is also important to me and, as part of my university’s AAUP strategizing team, I bring organizing experience to the table.
    • Candidate Withdrawn
    • Name: Candidate Withdrawn
    • Candidate Statement:
      The other candidate for this position has withdrawn.

Standing for: History/Social Sciences: 20th-21st Centuries

    • Erin R. Hochman
    • Name: Erin R. Hochman
    • Candidate Statement:
      I am an associate professor of history at Southern Methodist University. My research interests include modern German and Austrian history, politics, nationalism, and the exploration of German history beyond the borders of the nation-state. My first book, Imagining a Greater Germany: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss, showed how the supporters of the Weimar and First Austrian Republics popularized democracy by forging a transborder partnership and creating their own form of German nationalism. It received the Hans Rosenberg and Radomír Luža Prizes. Presently, I am working on a book entitled “Weimar beyond Borders: ‘Germans Abroad’ and the Battle for Political Legitimacy between the World Wars.” I have been a regular participant in GSA panels since 2007, and I would therefore welcome the opportunity to become involved in the GSA. If elected, I would like to expand GSA programming to include scholars who are unable to travel to the annual conference due to financial, visa, health, and/or family reasons. All scholars should be able to benefit from participation in GSA events. I would propose that the GSA host one or two smaller online workshops per year focused on a specific theme, during which scholars could share their research.
    • Paul Lerner
    • Name: Paul Lerner
    • Candidate Statement:
      I am a Professor of History at the University of Southern California where I direct the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. A historian of modern Central Europe, I have particular interest in German Jewish history, the history of the human sciences, and consumer culture. I have written two books and co-edited four volumes and two journal special issues and am currently researching two new book projects. I joined the GSA when I was a graduate student and have attended and presented at the conference whenever possible in the intervening years. I have not yet held a leadership position at GSA, but recently served as history co-chair for the Association for Jewish Studies and am part of the academic advisory board of the Leo Baeck Institute. I also co-founded and organized the Southern California German Studies workshops and am now a host on the New Books in German Studies podcast series. As Kade Institute director I have partnered with many institutions in LA and beyond to create scholarly exchange, cultural programming, and educational content and to enrich the broader community’s intellectual and cultural life. I hope to bring this energy, organizational experience, and public-facing spirit to the GSA.

Standing for: History/Social Sciences: Early Modern-19th Century

    • Heikki Lempa
    • Name: Heikki Lempa
    • Candidate Statement:
      I am a Professor of Modern European History at Moravian University where I have been working collaboratively across disciplines, currently on the Health Humanities program. At the GSA I have tried to remain true to this approach. Over the past ten years I worked with wonderful colleagues to launch two interdisciplinary networks: Emotion Studies Network and Body Studies Network. I served on the Program Committee and chaired the Seminars Committee for two years. Currently Ela Gezen and I coordinate a pilot program on undergraduate panels at the GSA. I have published three books, Bildung der Triebe, Beyond the Gymnasium, and Spaces of Honor. My current book project, The Bodies of the Others, attempts to situate German bodies in a global context. These books and projects reflect my interests in the histories of education, the body, and emotions from the late seventeenth into the early twentieth centuries. They also reflect my work at the GSA. If elected as Board Member, I would represent the earlier periods including the nineteenth century. I would also engage, in collaboration with other board members, in expanding the thematic and spatial scope and diversity of the GSA so that we can keep and grow the membership.
    • Denise Phillips
    • Name: Denise Phillips
    • Candidate Statement:
      Denise Phillips is a historian of science who works on eighteenth and nineteenth-century German-speaking Europe. She is the author of Acolytes of Nature: Defining Natural Science in Germany, 1770-1850 (University of Chicago Press, 2012) and the co-editor, with Sharon Kingsland, of New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture (Springer, 2015). Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the DAAD, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and the Fulbright Commission. She has been a GSA member since 2001 and has regularly presented work at the annual meetings. From her earliest involvement with the GSA, she has been interested in ensuring that the early modern period and the nineteenth century continue to be well represented in the Society. She has also watched with concern at the shrinking resources devoted to foreign language instruction across all educational levels in the United States, and would work to find ways that the GSA could cooperate with allied societies to raise awareness about the essential role that multilingualism plays in building a more tolerant and meaningfully interconnected world.