Shippensburg
faculty member receives fellowship in Germany
A Shippensburg
University faculty member has received a four-month fellowship to the Institute
of Contemporary History in Munich, Germany.
Dr. David W. Wildermuth, assistant professor of
German, begins the fellowship in September and is the sole American chosen for
the program. He said it is part of the institute’s program, in
conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for
Advanced Holocaust Studies, for an exchange of scholars-in-residence.
“This exchange
is designed for Ph.D. candidates, early postdoctoral researchers and junior
faculty members for the purpose of furthering German-American partnership and
commitment to cutting-edge Holocaust-related research,” he said. “In this, its first year,
the institute invited one U.S. citizen working on a Holocaust-related subject
to spend four months utilizing the extensive holdings of their archives.”
According to
Wildermuth, he thinks he was chosen because his project proposal, demonstrated
the need to utilize the extensive holdings of the institute and because of his
linguistic and cultural fluency. “While researching my doctoral
dissertation during the 2009-2010 academic year in Freiburg, Germany, I had the
opportunity to familiarize myself with the latest German-language scholarship
on the Wehrmacht and to establish professional contact with various German
scholars, some of whom work at the institute. My ability to participate
fully in the scholarly life of the institute and to deliver a lecture in
German, requirements of the fellowship, were decisive in the awarding of the
fellowship.
“I am
particularly interested in furthering German-American partnership in the
research areas of Wehrmacht and Holocaust, and the access to German scholars
and scholarship that this fellowship provides would greatly help to position me
as one who can bridge the German and American scholarship in the field.”
The fellowship
will also allow him to fill
the last gap in his research on the 35th Wehrmacht Division. “My goal
is to present a micro history of the Wehrmacht and genocide, using the 35th Division
as the vehicle to draw nuanced conclusions about the “war of annihilation” in
the East, the relationship between occupiers and occupied, and the complicity
of ‘ordinary Germans’ in genocide and crimes against humanity.”
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