portrait

Julia Brüggemann

Albert E. Crandall '56 Professor of History and Chair of the History Department

jbruggemann@depauw.edu
(765) 658-6274

Julia Brüggemann is the Albert E. Crandall '56 Endowed Professor in History and the Chair of the Department of History. She earned her Ph.D. at Georgetown University, where she studied with Roger Chickering. Professor Brüggemann is a social and cultural historian of modern Germany, with a focus on how average individuals experience larger historical trends and developments. Her dissertation focused on the history of prostitution in pre–WW1 Hamburg, specifically how prostitution became a contested subject for politicians, reformers, doctors, and everyday people. It was one of the topics that revealed how contemporaries understood and negotiated gender, sexuality, class, and politics in a large German city at the moment of transition to the 20th century.

Her work on the history of prostitution has been included several edited collections in English and in German. She has also published articles about Prostitution and several German feminists in the Encyclopedia of Europe: 1914-2004, John Merriman, Jay Winter, eds., New York: Scribners, 2006 as well as book reviews in Social History, German Studies Review, and on H-Net.

Her current research project revolves around the translation and analysis of a unique diary of an ethnic German man and his family who were forcibly resettled from Romania to Poland by the Nazis during World War II, who also happens to be her grandfather.

Her research has been strongly informed by her teaching. She has developed new courses in Black German history, the history of migration, and others. In addition, Professor Brüggemann teaches broadly in modern European history including courses on the Holocaust, Modern Germany, Europe of Dictators, Imperial Germany, People and Politics in Modern Europe, and courses in the Honor Scholar Program.

At ²ÝÁñ³ÉÈËÉçÇø, she won the George and Virginia Crane Distinguished Teaching Award (2012) and several Faculty Fellowships. In 2008, her syllabus “Beyond Catastrophe” won the annual H-German Syllabus Contest. She participated in a NEH Summer Institute “Teaching the Reformation after 500 years” (2016). Currently, she serves as a co-coordinator of the Teaching Network at the German Studies Association.

Educational Background

Ph.D. in History Georgetown University, 1999; M.A. in German and European Studies, Georgetown University, 1994; B.A. with Honors in History, The College of William and Mary, 1991 (Majors: History, Economics)